Building & Growing a Commercial Real Estate Brokerage Business (Brokers Round Table)
Building a commercial real estate brokerage business was the best decision I've made for my commercial real estate investing career - I got to learn from the ground up how to find tenants, negotiate deals, and structure a capital stack while getting paid to do it. Today, we're diving into our day to day lives as commercial brokers, our thoughts on finding clients and becoming a thought-leader, and the infrastructure we've implemented into our businesses.
Key Takeaways:
It's important to find your niche and become a thought leader in your area of commercial real estate
Having the right systems and infrastructure like a CRM and calendar are crucial for staying organized
Leveraging technology like podcasts and blogs can help generate leads and position you as an expert
Building a team is important for scaling, but you need to clearly define roles and expectations
It's valuable to get experience on both the landlord and tenant representation sides of commercial real estate
Check out CRE Launch Pro: www.crelaunchpro.com
About Your Host:
Tyler Cauble, Founder & President of The Cauble Group, is a commercial real estate developer and investor based in East Nashville. He’s the best selling author of Open for Business: The Insider’s Guide to Leasing Commercial Real Estate and has focused his career on serving commercial real estate investors.
Episode Transcript:
0:00
This episode of the commercial real estate investor podcast is brought to you by cre launch Pro. This online commercial real estate program is designed to take you from beginner to pro commercial real estate investor with access to all of my courses, our online community and monthly group coaching calls. Learn how to confidently buy your first commercial property today at www dot c r e launch pro.com. Welcome back to the commercial real estate investor Podcast. Today we're diving in on another brokers roundtable where we're going to be talking about building your commercial real estate brokerage business. You know, getting started in commercial real estate is never an easy feat. Getting Started as a commercial real estate broker is never an easy feat. But I found that having the experience from the brokerage side knowing how to lease space up how to go through the underwriting process for other clients made my life infinitely easier when I started buying properties for myself, and I'm sure all of these guys on the panel would agree with me today. So we're gonna be diving into how to build and grow your brokerage business. Because even though we're contractors, it's just like any other job. Well, actually, it's unlike any other job where you really are running your own finances, you're running your own books, you're setting your own schedule. So we'll talk about kind of what our day to days typically look like, and how we go about that whole process. So, Adam, I'm gonna kick it over to you first. I mean, tell us what your normal day to day looks like, as a commercial real estate broker and and maybe how that's changed over the years.
1:34
Yeah, it's changed a lot. And I'd love to go back a little bit. Obviously, if people are listening, and they're really struggling or just trying to put some thought into how to build a business from scratch. Now I'm like an old lazy man. And you know, I have a, I have a book of business, and I have great listings and great clients I've worked with forever. So I would never say that the business is easy, because at the end of the day, you eat what you kill. But I think back to when, you know, I was just a chump kid trying to figure things out. And, you know, I joined a small firm, no experience, you know, here's your, here's your computer monitor, here's, you know, here's a phone book, best of luck kind of kind of thing. And what really helped me was was two things, one, finding something that I really gave a shit about, become an expert in something that I really cared about. And then try to differentiate yourself through you know, Tyler is obviously a wizard, this through kind of differentiation, marketing, name recognition, being kind of a thought leader in the space. That's, that's something that I always kind of enjoyed, and was able to lean into. I got a reputation for being kind of like the the restaurant guy in Charlotte years ago. And I remember and this was before, like eater.com and yelp.com and things like that. And I remember a female in the in the residential real estate space was like Adam, you you know, everything that's going on in the restaurant business, you should you should start a restaurant blog. And I was like, what was a restaurant blog? I don't know how to do that. yada yada. So literally one night watching Monday Night Football, glass or red wine, taught myself WordPress and then I created something called restaurant traffic, which became like the restaurant website in Charlotte. And, you know, started writing articles about started writing articles about that doing podcasts about that, and I wasn't doing it about you know, what's going on in industrial in Idaho. I wasn't doing it on, you know, office buildings in Manhattan, because frankly, I don't, I'm not qualified, but I tried to pick a lane and own it. And it turned into people calling me that I'd never met before saying hey, like, yeah, how can we work with you? It led to large institutional clients. Literally, somebody came to me and said, Hey, you're you're working with all these restaurant clients. Have you ever thought about doing it on the landlord side? And honestly, I really hadn't because I was a tenant rep guy. And that flip flop my business from you know, 95 five tenant rep to, you know, probably 80% Landlord rep. So, the short version of now I've been friggin flapping my gums for five straight minutes. The short version is find something that you think you would enjoy working on for years, because there's nothing quick in this business other than you know, losing a deal. Everything else takes forever. And you'll find something that you think that you want to work on for a long time, lean into it and become a thought leader on it. And just add as much value as you can for as long as you can without asking for anything in return. And then that will that will pay off forever. So I really worked hard doing that in the beginning. And frankly, it's paid for itself 100 times over.
5:12
Yeah, that's, that's funny. I'd never thought about nothing happens faster at brokerage than losing a deal. It's yeah. Everything else. It's painfully true. But yeah, I, I couldn't agree with you more. I mean, when you're first getting started, you've got to pick a lane. You know, you can always become a generalist later, but you got to find some sort of niche, right, like, I mean, I started off 100% on the landlord side, just because I was with a developer that had some shopping centers. And then once I realized, like, oh, I can do third party work very quickly, with the opposite route you did, started picking up a bunch of tenant rep, because the thing that I depends on the market, right, but back when I was doing tenant rep, in Nashville, you could get 4% Commission, and you were almost guaranteed a deal in a different way, you're also guaranteed a deal on the landlord side, I guess. But you're guaranteed a deal. Because you're you're the one working with a tenant. So it just comes down to finding the right space for them. And you get paid twice what a landlord rep gets paid. But that's really interesting. I didn't realize that you started that that restaurant website? Well, we'll dive into that here in a minute, as well, because I think that as soon as you know enough about commercial real estate, or any business in general, the sooner you can start positioning yourself as a thought leader, the better your entire life is going to be. Chad, what about you, man? What did your what does your brokerage business look like on a day to day now? And what did it look like when you first got started?
6:31
Yeah, it's definitely changed and evolved over the last 18 years or so. And I'd say it's changed in in a good way, much like Adam suggested, it does get easier, not that it's ever easy, but it gets easier than when you're first starting. And I like to equate it cheesy and probably cliche, it's like a rocket ship taken off, just takes so much energy and fuel and thrust and everything to get that spaceship off the ground. But once it's in orbit, it's a lot less work to keep that rocket ship going. That's think that's like brokerage, it sucks. first few years of brokerage are really tough. You're trying to learn the market, you're trying to learn who the players are, you're trying to get prospects, it takes a lot of work, and you don't get paid a whole lot for it in the beginning. So it's discouraging. As you start getting into the business, and much like Adam, you just you start having repeat clients and you start having business come to you through referral. And it does get easier from that way. So I don't prospect as much as I did when I first started, where at the beginning, I was cold calling all the time or door knocking, trying to go to industry events. That's that was really the majority of my day. Now that it's I'm on a team and I've got quite a bit of infrastructure surrounding me. I'm more trying to put the deals together service existing clients, a lot of my time right now is dealing on an active deal, or I'm talking to a client or going out for a lunch with them. So I'm doing a lot more on that side. But I think that that's actually a cautionary tale where I should be prospecting more. And perhaps we get into that a little bit later on. But I I think that having a team is where you can start delegating strengths and putting people in the best position to succeed, as opposed to just slotting them in anywhere. And that's that's the advice that I'd give to new brokers especially, although we're all guilty of it, to some extent is that we form teams or we start joining partnerships. And we might do the same job as the other person on the team. Whereas some of the most effective, profitable and productive teams that I've seen, they'll have one guy that's just the deal generator. He's the the Rainmaker, who's always out trying to he's the hunter, then they'll have somebody that's responsible for managing the files, perhaps are the ones that deal with the clients, once the deal is in motion, then they might have some administrative support, those ones function really well because they have one person dedicated to what they're a pro at, and not focusing on doing things that they might not be good at, or might might not even want to do. So I think that that's what I'd say to a new broker is find a team where you can use your strengths and have somebody that will complement your weaknesses. But to original question, yeah, my day has changed a lot. Although I think that that prospecting mentality is is first and foremost the most, the best thing a broker dude can do with their time is to try and get more more leads.
9:26
Yeah, and man, I would I would actually give you a counter argument to you not doing enough prospecting now. Because sometimes I feel the same way. Like yeah, I'm not sitting down actively making phone calls. But dude, you're out there creating so much content, like the amount of leads that we generate off of the podcast off of the YouTube off of the blog is more than I could ever generate off of phone calls. And those people are reaching out because they want to work with you like you don't even have to pitch them on. You're the right person to work with like, you just gotta go find them the right deal. Jesse, what about you, man? Yeah, so
10:02
similar to both good answers, we, you know, we had a term, or we've had a term at with like the team that I started with. And it's to the point that was just said, we call the finders, finders binders and binders, right, you have some that find the deal, some that mind relationships, and some that actually closed deals where a lot of times you'll bring them into kind of the important meeting. And I think that tracks on to where you are in your career, just like it's been said at the beginning, really hunting and finding deals, prospecting, that's a crucial aspect, you can't really move to the next phase until you get that down, unless you're, you know, you're inheriting a book, or you're coming in to a team that has a lot of clients in the pipeline. So I think, to answer the question, the way my day looked 10 years ago, versus five years ago, versus today, I think, is kind of going through that process, probably doing less prospecting. And in the way we think of the traditional prospecting, kind of pounding the pavement and making calls and moving more into minded relationships. Also, you know, depending on the team and brokerage you're in, you could be training younger guys. So if you are actually onboarding guys and gals onto your team, that I think in your kind of mid phase of your career starts to be more important and and later on. And then, you know, once you're, you're kind of the season vet, your day might look, you know, that you're basically building relationships and coming and closing. And you're being asked to come into meetings to add some color, add some experience some gray hair to, to a team that might not have it. So I think for me, it just like the other the other guys that I just said here, it's at the beginning, it's really a lot more business development. And I think it'd be behooves us not to forget that that's something that you need to continue doing. But it definitely changes I think in you know, 510 years in where you're, you're more relationship and actually adding the deal. I guess I'd say the strategy piece, though, like looking at complex deals, and hopefully using your experience to get things past the goal line.
12:09
Yeah, I mean, it's that first three years, five years is brutal. It gets better every year, it gets a lot easier, right? Because at least you know, one year into it, you know, what's going on and how things were supposed to go. I didn't know any of that when I first got started. And there's not really any classes out there. And when you take your licensing class, it's all all residential. But yeah, I mean, that my first year, it was all phone calls and door knocking. I mean, I was going out and knocking on tenants, you know, looking up, okay, we need a medical tenant in the shopping center, I would look up every single dentist in Nashville and go hand out a flyer in person at every single office, I'd make phone calls, you know, it was, it was a lot, a lot of work. But now, you know, same thing as what you guys have experienced. It was year five, when things completely changed for me, to where instead of cold calling, I was getting more referrals, I was getting repeat clients. And people started reaching out to me to come work with me. And what I found was, you know, the more cited you have out there, more people that know what you do, the easier your life gets. And that's just kind of how it is for the first you know, three to five years to really get it rolling. You guys did something really interesting, which is, I mean, one one of the reasons why I know all of you and why why we're all on this podcast together. But you got out there and and really started the thought leading side of things. You know, Jesse, you were the first person I ever saw do commercial real estate videos for bigger pockets and speaking at their conferences and doing things like that. Chad, you're the reason that I got started writing blogs and, and obviously, Adam, you started a website that started generating a lot of that traffic for you. At what point? Were you guys confident enough to do that? And what made you do it originally, because it's it's very intuitive today. But when y'all were starting all of this, it was almost counterculture. In commercial real estate, Chad will kick it over to you first.
14:07
Yeah, it's a great topic. Tyler, I'm glad that you're you're diving into this. So I started in 2004, actually at a residential office. So I did a year of residential before I switched over to industrial. And I noticed at that time that the residential industry just seemed to be 10 years ahead of the commercial industry, generally speaking, when it comes to advertising and marketing themselves. When I got into industrial 2005, it was very old culture. Most people had crappy websites, even the large companies had crappy websites, whereas the residential brokers were already having personal branding. It's common to see agents on bus benches or billboards, and they just always did cool things to brand themselves as opposed to just working under a corporate umbrella and letting that do all the branding. So I just saw it as an opportunity as soon as I got into it, so Got a couple of website domains registered, I got in 2005, there weren't people thinking of this. So I ended up getting some pretty cool websites for $10, the registration fee, and I just saw an opportunity that nobody else is doing it. It's working very well. And I'm sure we all know, residential agents in our market who are just kings or queens of their industry, because they've carved out such a great profile through that digital branding. I just saw an opportunity that nobody else was doing it, and essentially have the whole thing to yourself. The one the one obstacle, and I didn't really start putting myself out there until I started a YouTube channel three years ago, and podcasts at the same time. And I still get comments from people saying that it's a waste of time and should be doing other things, I still get those comments. And I don't know if that's people that are just envious, or if they, they'd be too afraid to do it themselves. But it's what's interesting is that that held me back from getting started three years ago, and why I didn't do it sooner. But now I couldn't care less. Like if somebody wants to say that I just laugh at it. Because I know what it's done for my career. And for me professionally, having done it now, that to not have started that would have been such a big regret. But you do really need to get over that hump because there are people that that are going to say negative things about it. Don't know why envy jealousy, they really just don't like, like my face. If you've got a punchable face, they just want to jump all over that. But you will have naysayers you know, people say that's a waste of time. Push through that, because the benefits and what comes with actually doing it far exceed a little bit of criticism that you're gonna get.
16:41
Oh, yeah, man, I couldn't agree with that more the amount of like, random hate comments that I've gotten, you know, on on social media, of course, too, but like, also in person from other brokers. I mean, man, it's like, some of these guys think that, you know, sitting in an office for eight hours a day, making cold calls is some sort of badge of honor. Like, no, that's just an inefficient way to run your business, in my opinion, like, you know, you're, you have to go out and hunt every day. Whereas, you know, I might have 20 fishing lines sitting out there that are bringing food in for me, instead of me having to actively do it all the time. Like, if you have to make cold calls every day, you don't have a business, you have a job. Like you have to actively put work into that to get a return out of it. Jesse, what about you?
17:24
So it's a good question. I don't think I don't know if I've been asked that before. It's because it's going back so far. Now how I originally, well, the bigger pockets thing, I think it I guess the backup when I first bought my first rental property, we talked about it before, and it was one of the college towns in, in, in Canada. And I remember seeing like an indigo chapters bookstore, like Barnes and Noble where it was like the Canadian real estate magazine, and it was so and so bought, you know, first five properties in this college town. And I was like, there was a contact, like an info at back and like, I was like, 20. So this is whatever it's 2010 or something, or 20 maybe 2009 I remember reaching out to them, like how do you get featured in a magazine like this, like, alright, well like you put there, here's this form you fill out and I think that was the first time that like, basically got featured in this magazine. And then I had I guess there was a contact and people reached out to me and it was the first kind of idea of like, instead of you know push marketing there's pull marketing and this is before I was even in brokerage this is just as an investor. And I think like that type of personality sounds like we all share of you know first realizing early on that you can actually contact authors of books and just reach out to them personally and asked to talk to them or be able to you know, do something like contact bigger pockets and ask if the you know, you guys don't do commercial real estate Do you guys need somebody for videos I think that's how that kind of came about. But to your point on having brokers you know, badge of honor in the off, it's like there's I think there's a time and place for all this all these different aspects of our business. And for me with the podcasts and videos, and even today, a lot of to me, it's not about making hundreds of $1,000 of with the podcast, but being able to be constantly well informed we on a weekly basis with some of the thought leaders in our industry like that is the price of admission for me. Even if you know the some of the YouTube income or any of the sponsorship income, even if it didn't cover my expenses that to me is worth paying something for because I can go on these shows and be somewhat informed because you're speaking with hopefully great guests on a weekly or monthly basis. So yeah, I guess that's that's probably how I kind of got into this world.
19:40
Yeah, I mean, selfishly that's one of the reasons I started this series, right like you guys are all doing amazing things across North America. It's it's basically a one hour mastermind where we get to sit down and talk about all the best practices that we have going on. I learned so much from these every couple of weeks when we do them. And you know, you hear people talk about that when they You say, you know, reasons why you should start a podcast, you can get people on there and learn from them and this and that the other and you always kind of think like, oh, yeah, that's just BS, but me, it really is true. Like, I use it as my own personal education. And I mean, you know, going back to why I started my first podcast, with Bruce Peterson, before I got in on this one. It was like, you know, Bruce, and I would have one hour phone conversations almost every day, because he was my mentor. And I just started thinking, like, what if we just started recording these and sending them out? You know, I'm sure somebody's going to be interested in it. I would have been interested in hearing that when I was, you know, first getting started. And so that's, that's why we did it. Adam, what about you, man?
20:38
I hate to be an echo chamber here. But Chad says the same thing. You know, I learned so much my wife owns a really successful residential real estate company. And so I've always been, I've always been in that world. And they are killers when it comes to advertising and marketing, right? Because, obviously, you could argue that, that some of that is a commodity business. So they're so good at it. So like I said, a female real estate agent gave me the idea idea to do the blog. And then I that kind of ran its course. And another friend of mine started a podcast, and I was like, wait a minute, what else would you have to do? He's like, Dude, you need a mic and a frickin zoom? Or like, yes, Zoom four channel mixer. And, you know, he kind of showed me the ropes there. So I think the thing that you have to really think about is, what are you not going to get sick of talking about, right? And I know I said that earlier, but your what is it that really gets you excited, because any kind of content production, it's like a bill collector come in every day, or every week or every month, right? Like knocking on your door being like, hey, you owe me content today. And so if you don't care about what you're talking about, it's gonna come through really, really quickly. So yeah, rip off, whatever the residential people are doing a, and then and then find something that you that you really want to get good at. And I also echo the mastermind, I always say it's like a cheat code, being able to talk to all these smart people on podcasts all the time. Because their their guard is down. They don't think you're trying to sell them something. And you know, you're just able to connect with these people for 30 minutes or an hour and really pick their brain and they're usually pretty smart freaking people. So
22:30
can I add on that real quick, Tyler, go for it. Yeah, that's such a great point by Adam, whether you're you have the opportunity to get in front of people that you might have otherwise not have. An example of that is I reached out to Walt Radovich, who's the former CEO of Prologis. So largest industrial real estate owner in the world, like massive, massive company, fortune 500. Company, and he agreed to do it. And he gave me probably an hour of his time, before the interview, just talking about topics. And then he gave me an hour during the podcast interview where he was so humble, and so gracious. And here's a guy that was running a fortune 500 company, and he never once made it seem like he had somewhere that he had to go, or you had to get off the call. And I can't imagine that that would be easy to do just being some random guy reaching out and saying, Hey, can I have two hours of your time? I'm sure he's just too busy for that. But because of the podcast that opened the door for a guy like that, who was willing to do it, and so gracious with his time. So I, from a mastermind standpoint, I think Jesse said it, it's so great getting to spend an hour with someone that you admire that you genuinely want to talk to you anyways. And then like you said, Tyler, you just you happen to record it, because someone else might want to take some value for that. It really is like, I pay money to actually do it. I I don't even come close to covering my costs on podcasts. And I'm happy to do it just because of the amount of value that I personally get.
23:54
Yeah, exactly. I mean, excuse the metaphor. But using like, reaching out to guys like that is it's like talking to the hot girl at the bar. Right? Every other guy is so afraid to go up and talk to her. You're gonna be the one person that calls him right. I mean, how many? How many people have probably reached out to him to come on a podcast? Probably very few. Because everybody's so scared. They're like, Oh, he wouldn't come on my show. I mean, it's yeah, the people that you can get can be pretty remarkable. Just because they want to get out there and they want to talk and, you know, I hear all the time, like, oh, you know, like these guys all have their own commercial real estate, podcasts, that contents already covered in the field. I mean, yes, there is commercial real estate content out there, but not from your perspective. I think that's a really interesting thing is you have a totally unique and different perspective on this market based on your role based on your location based on your property niche. There's so many different directions that you could take that that somebody will find interesting. And you know, the more you niche down, the smaller your audience will be. But the more like have a better customer base, you will actually get out of that, right? Like, if you have a 1031 exchange podcast, man, that's probably gonna be really tough to listen to. But you know who's gonna find that a guy that's in the middle of a 1031 exchange that needs to do one? Right? So you can get you get a lot out of that. We've got a question in the live chat from Charles, this is actually gonna be a pretty interesting one. I want to get your thoughts on it. The local broker here in Buffalo has listed a gothic church for $1.2 million. And as 20,000 square feet, what do y'all think can be done with it? I think that's pretty interesting. I mean, let's let's go ahead and take out the we don't know anything about the city, right. So I mean, we don't know if it'd be good office or good retail or whatever. We don't know where the traffic is all that kind of stuff. Guys, yeah, check the zoning that that's great point talk. Talk more about that, Adam.
25:50
I just so I'm scarred right now. Because Charlotte is going through what's called a Udo, their new unified development ordinance. Nobody in the whole freaking city knows what any of the zoning means yet. deals that made sense on June 15. Don't make any sense. Now. When you talk to city council or heads of zoning, they tell you like oops, like really should have taken a little while before we made this law. So I mean, especially when you're talking about a church, you the first thing you're going to think about doing is make it into loft apartments or make it into a dope ass restaurant, right? There's a there's two churches in Charlotte, one was just turned into a restaurant called supper land. Feel free to Google it. It is absolutely beautiful, wonderful, wonderful restaurant, and they're about to do another one in Dilworth. That's going to be similar. So churches are you know, sometimes quite beautiful and make great redevelopment projects, but sometimes can can carry with them really strange zoning. One good thing about a church that might have good parking, which is which is killer, but love to see people get really creative with adaptive reuse, but check that zoning first. And if it's zoned incorrectly, you got to figure out if you can resent it, or get out. Yeah, I
27:07
mean, there's there's a church on every corner in Nashville, and not all of them are zoned commercial seminar, which is always nice, because they've become, you know, cool hotels. I've seen them converted into restaurants. They make awesome restaurants because you have basically this giant banquet hall. I've seen churches become breweries. But yes, the zoning is the weirdest part with churches because in Nashville, they're often residential with a special use for a church. So if you if you get rid of the church, then it reverts back to residential and you can't do anything with it just depends on your height restrictions too.
27:40
We've we've done this actually fairly recently. In this kind of situation, I hear Buffalo and it really depends who has leverage, you could always make the vendor warranty the zoning. But what we've found is to your point taller like a scent like place of worship type of zoning, what we found is that the conversion at least up here has been easier to convert to low. Just low story, low rise residential. So townhomes like that's really where we've seen kind of the bigger the biggest value because at least the areas that we've seen that zoning you can't do high rise, unless you're going for major changes of zoning, but I agree most of the ones that we've come across it's not commercial, it's actually residential with with like place of worship or some additional zoning.
28:28
Yeah, they I think Chad's sitting over here going turn it into some badass flex space. Actually, I do have an idea. Oh,
28:39
for every real estate question in my world,
28:42
every pickleball. But what what I would stress is and the Adam and Justin makes such good points is that it's all dependent on zoning. But I would stress that be creative as possible and be open to different ideas. So that whoever has it listed has to be really aggressive marketing that and just open to ideas open to suggestions open to redevelopment, because it could work for an inter participation group, like a gym or badminton or gymnastics, or trampoline parks or pickleball. It could work for that could work for indoor training, or like a training or a school that could use all that parking and use all that open space. So I would just you've got to market that. So that is open to as many different types of users as possible. Depending of course $1.2 million pickleball courts are Charles mentioned. They're spending so much money on Pickleball it's actually crazy right now. I wouldn't be surprised if someone is actually contemplating doing a $1.2 million pickleball facility somewhere because that's seems to be the all the rage these days, but it could be anything. volleyball, basketball court, trampoline park, I would just be as creative as possible, because those buildings are hard to find for these users. And there's usually The limitations like columns in place or height issues. So if it's a building that's compatible for those types of uses, you might be surprised who would actually go in there.
30:10
Yeah, and and, you know, pickleball wouldn't be the only use, right, you probably just put that cord in the sanctuary. So Charles, you wouldn't just be doing $1.2 million on a pickleball court, you could turn it into a co working space that has pickleball as an amenity. There's any number of directions you could take it, he also said it was built in 1888, no longer religious status, and it is on the National Register of Historic Places. So Charles, that is one thing that you've got to keep in mind on that project. Dealing with anything in the National Register of Historic Places, is really, really tough. I mean, I love it, I love preserving our historical buildings, but you will have a lot of hoops to jump through to deal with that. Right?
30:48
We call them the hysterical society and
30:52
to deal right now trying to get a phase two of a hotel built in a historic neighborhood. And my building was a like a halfway house. So this really nice neighborhood, and Charlotte has had a halfway house like in their neighborhood. And I've turned it into this cool little 17 room, boutique hotel. And it's my building was built in like 9219 92, right? And these and they have a tremendous amount of power, and a tremendous amount of sway. And unless you're just absolutely in love with this building and have more money and time, then you know what to do with? I would I would start I would put your strap your helmet on? Is this gonna be Yeah, be rocky
31:44
1.2 million sounds good until you start getting those bids back from contractors for the cost of what they're gonna have to the materials, they'll have to use the type of construction they'll have to do in order to adhere to that call. Conrad also said concert venue event space, you have seen all of those. I mean, there's a beautiful event space here in Nashville that that used to be an historic church, it's it can be worth it. But you've just got to get a budget for it on the front end. Guys, let's let's get back on track. That was a pretty cool little exercise guy, we had that question. But let's let's talk about infrastructure in your business. You know, when I first got started, I kept hearing like, Oh, you got to build systems in your business, you got to build systems. And for the longest time, I was like that I hate hearing that phrase, because I don't know what that means. Like, just tell me exactly what you're doing. So you know, in terms of a CRM, your email management, how you research tenants and pull data on, you know, how do you find out? Which tenants would be right for a property? I mean, let's let's talk through all of that. Adam, I'm going to kick this whenever you first I mean, what kind of tools do you use to structure your business?
32:46
Yeah, we I am not the most systems oriented person in the world. So I'm probably the worst person on the call to walk people through the systems they need therapy session for you then. Yeah, exactly, exactly. You got to sit down and take notes while you guys talk. I'd say as early as I could, I found somebody that is hyper organized and hyper hyper systems related, because you're I'm extremely good at relationships. I'm pretty good at marketing. And I'm pretty knowledgeable about what I do. But just keeping everything organized and pushed in the right direction and researched. I just needed help, right. So as soon as my business could afford it, I went out and got, you know, really smart, organized person that doesn't like being on a camera and talking into a microphone and being in front of people all the time. And some of it is really about being humble, honestly, because I just I learned fairly early on that I was going to hit a roadblock in my business until I can get some people working with me that were more organized, and more thoughtful as it relates to systems than I am. So I would highly encourage just knowing what you're good at knowing what you're not good at and, and not being a cheapskate like I know, I know people my business that never want to hire a team. Because they're, you know, they want to save that extra X dollars a year a month, and they're leaving six figures on the table all day long by not doing that. So, yes, I have a good CRM. Yes, we have good outreach. But for me, it was more about finding people that could take ownership of that. And it comes on the marketing side, on the outreach side on the organization and the system side. I chose pretty early to outsource as much of that as I could. So I could concentrate on doing kind of what I'm what I'm passionate about.
34:52
Yeah, I mean, if you if you set it up the right way, each person you bring on board should bring you two to three times the value of what you're having to pay. see them? Right? So I mean, it's it's a good, you got to set it up the right way. I've definitely had my trials and tribulations with dealing with employees or, you know, Junior brokers. But in the end, it tends to work out a lot better. And I fall kind of on Adam's side, right, like, I learned very early on, I've got to just pay attention to my calendar. Like, if it's not on my calendar, it's not in my life. So if we have a conversation about I'm calling you tomorrow, I'm putting it on my calendar. I mean, whether it's an official thing or not, like it's it has to be on there. Because you know, there were times early in my brokerage career where I set up a phone call, and I didn't think to put it on my calendar, just thinking I would remember it, missed the call, lost that client. And I deserved that. So it was tough. Jesse, what about you?
35:46
Sorry that I'm laughing just because it reminds me of Ron Burgundy when he's like, You will read anything on the teleprompter? Yeah, like, if it's not on my calendar on the same way, dude, it's like, it's, and it's funny, it takes it's embarrassing of that, for me that it took 567 years to be like, you're not gonna remember it, put it in your calendar. And like I'm big on notifications to like, even on the phone, a lot of times, I'll set an alarm if I'm like, I gotta call this guy by this time, that's not good enough to just to get that little bell of, you know, an outlook, I need to get a physical like, alarm going off. So I think that's great. I think Adams point. I think that is really the Rosetta Stone is finding the people that do the things that you are having challenges with, and what if that's attention to detail for some things, if that's building systems, I also think it goes even deeper than that were you see, you know, I'm sure you everybody here has talked to people or had them on the podcast that talk about virtual assistants. And that's great, until you have to give complex tasks and there's distance and there's potentially a language barrier. And then you start realizing that even when you have people that come on you, I think you have to be very specific about what task you want out of them and what you are basically trying to train them to do. So I definitely think that's 100% important terms of the people that you have, in terms of our systems, it's it's very simple, I think it's Adams point, it's, it's a CRM that you're comfortable using. You know, I won't say any particular CRM because we've gone through HubSpot, we've gone through Abdo Salesforce, I really think it's one that you will use, it's kind of like, you know, you play guitar, Tyler me as well, it's like, choose the instrument that you'll actually play, like, you know, something that you're going to actually put time and effort into. And if it's a complex CRM, you that you don't use, then, you know, you don't use it. And that's I've seen guys in our industry, you know, go take just excel and become extremely successful, but to actually have a system in place that you're taking, that you're making calls on it, and you're organizing them and then, you know, to again, to at this point that might be having another team member that helps out with that, you know, to make that kind of strategy complete.
38:07
Yeah, I mean, I've seen guys that keep a little daily journal, you know, they carry it with them everywhere, they just write everything down in that, I mean, I could never do that it stresses me out. I'm like, I will lose that it within 24 hours, and all of that information is gone. I actually and I had
38:22
one more, can I add one more thing? Before we move on prepare, when you are able to do that, and you bring in kind of a good right hand. Prepare for people to give you shit about it. Prepare for people to talk down or kind of pissy email other people on your team, because they think they should talk to you for every thing. I've had to deal with that a lot. Like even to the point of like, you know, how dare you make me talk to your minions or just like nasty kind of stuff like that shouldn't change the decisions you make shouldn't change. You know how you operate your business, but just be prepared for other people that haven't taken that step to very similar to them talking smack about you doing these awesome podcasts with Fortune 500 CEO, right. It's the same kind of, of just kind of pettiness that you're gonna, that you're gonna see. So just be prepared for that because it's gonna happen, but doesn't change the way you operate your business.
39:31
I want to dive into that here next after we get Chad's thoughts on this. But yeah, I couldn't agree more. Like we had to deal with something earlier this week where, you know, a broker, I mean, sometimes brokers just get this in their heads, like any new name that they see in commercial real estate brokerage, like they've got to treat him like shit or haze them or whatever it is. But like we reached out on behalf of a client and the broker, just, you know, I flicked my, one of my associates away, she's like, whatever. It's like, Dude, we're representing a client. He's working for us. Mike, come on, he would never do that to me. I don't know why he would do that to that broker. But Chad, what are your thoughts on infrastructure in your business?
40:09
That's so funny listening to you guys talk because it's the exact same for me even though we're in different markets and all over the continent, I if it doesn't go in my calendar, I forget to do it too. So I live and die by my calendar, it's always looking at it. CRM, I'm the exact same as Jesse, I've gone through probably 10. And we found a very simple one that works. And we've been on for probably five years now. So I couldn't agree with that more as you just have to find one that you'll use. And I play guitar too. So we might have to jam session on here, one of these days. You sing.
40:45
I sing like a bird. It'll make grown men weep
40:53
of your generation.
40:56
One more that I just add on real quick that I that I do use all the time and I organize my life by it is I used to use Evernote, but we've gone over to Office 365. So it's I use OneNote now, but it's basically just like a notepad where but it's a digital notepad where it syncs across your phone, your work your office computers, and I run my entire life off of that. So I'll have folders for personal stuff, I'll have folders for podcasts or folders for work, I have folders for each one of my clients. And I'm able to just quickly go through and get access very quickly. So I think being organized just saves so much time, Microsoft 365 is great, very happy with it. And you can just access documents, my team can access the same documents. So that's one that very simple to do. But if you use that daily, just like calendar and just like your CRM, it's it's a game changer in terms of organization.
41:51
Tyler can plug, plug in office 365 thing here to gorse so we use planner. And it's it's connected with Office 365. And it's kind of like a Trello board and my team every Monday we go through the through the tiles on it. So it'd be like listing sub listings, active clients business development, and it has the tiles underneath. And then when you click one of the tiles that connects emails that are associated with that client, so attachments, so it'll say, you know, is this something you're looking for. So that's super useful, just planner, office 365. The other one, I don't know how I came to this, but it's a system called follow up then.com. And what it is, is you download it, you, you email it once from your outlook, and then all of a sudden it has all the different timeframes so that when you send an email, you could put five day and it'll spell five day follow up then in the BCC, so it will email you back and five days and say, Hey, like, has this has this person responded, or you need to take action on this. So like you could do five day One day, one month, I found it super useful. Again, my personality of having that email to me to ping me saying, hey, you know, don't let this get fall through the cracks. So just plug that because that's usually I'm usually hesitant to plug any apps, but that one has been super useful.
43:13
Yeah, that's great. I we use HubSpot for our CRM, because it integrates directly into Gmail, it's the same thing. Like it's very passive, it automatically tags people it automatically logs their emails into, into, you know, whatever deal is associated with them. But then we also use a program called Boomerang for Gmail, which does the exact same thing, where I can set it when I'm sending an email, if I don't get a reply, it'll boomerang it back to me in two days, or five days or 30 days, which is pretty great, right? Because you'll be cold calling people or whatever. And they'll say, we're not interested right now follow up with me in three months. It's like, man, you know? Okay, I'll call you in three months. But I'm writing that back in three months. And you know, it's pretty great. Let's talk about building your team. You know, kind of like what Adam was mentioning. I mean, there's, there's a lot of hazing that goes on in this industry, a lot of people will get upset. You know, I made the mistake of putting my name on the door, which, you know, was really great starting out when I was a one person shop. But people will regularly call us wanting to work with us, and they're like, Oh, why isn't Tyler on the call? It's like, well, you know, yeah,
44:20
maybe I should have called my brokerage something else. But, you know, you're not gonna be able to scale without bringing people on. And like I said earlier, you should be making two to three times the amount of value out of each individual person that you bring on. Jesse, what's what's been your experience in, in building a team? And if and if you haven't built the team, team dynamics, because that starts to really change things as you grow a brokerage because everybody, you know, like we said earlier is eat what you kill. Yeah. So it's fairly early on in that journey. It's maybe a year and a half. It's been a year and a half since we brought our first associate on so that experience In the last year and a half has been, it's been I've really liked it. I've always liked in sports, football and hockey always like kind of getting to the point where you're training new guys, on your team. So for us, I think the vetting process is kind of done for us in the commercial real estate side, to a certain extent, right, you have, you know, our MD says, Here's three, or three or four candidates, here's, you know, their bona fide ease, and whatever our culture up here is very, you know, NCAA or college. And, you know, business degree is a very standard thing that we see. But I think it's, again, to Adams earlier point of having somebody that can do the things that will add value, so you're not just getting somebody that's equivalent to you in their strengths, the actual dynamics themselves, I think, to my point of like, planner, I think having a touch point, whatever that is, whatever software you use, that you everybody's on the same page, I think you need to do it weekly. You know, some people might say that you need less or more of a frequency, but I find that that kind of pulls everybody back. Then the other thing that I kind of changed my opinion on from when I was younger, my career where we were talking about cold calling and banging out calls. And that's definitely something I think earlier in your career you need to do. But I've also realized that there's certain people have different styles and how they do that, you know, some people are the Xerox old school in the bullpen, loud on the phone. And other people actually genuinely need to genuinely need a quiet space to do that, or, you know, they are better in person. So I think it's allowing for that little bit of kind of tug and pull and or kind of push and pull in terms of your team dynamics so that you don't, you know, say that we train one guy this way. So that's how every other person needs to, you know, conform to. So that's probably what I'd say on it.
46:50
Yeah, I mean, I started building and adding Junior brokers once I started getting heavier into sales, I kind of kicked off more on the leasing side. And once I started building reputation up as being a pretty good sales guy, I started working on one to $5 million deals. And the leases were, you know, 250,000 to a million, sometimes a little bit less, sometimes more. But you start thinking about, Okay, what's what's the better use of my time. And so the first thing I brought on was a tenant rep, leasing agent, because we just had so many of those deals coming in and, and that take it's a lot of work on the tenant rep side, it's really more work than, than anything else in this business. Tenant rep on leasing, because it's just man it can be it can be painful. But, you know, that was one of the best things ever dead because we had somebody that was fully focused 100% on the tenant rep side, making sure those clients were happy. And I got to go focus on on the bigger sales deals. Chad, what about you, man?
47:48
Yeah, so I started building a team for the first time probably about eight years ago, and just started by hiring an assistant. And it's evolved now to where I've got a partner, him and I split everything. And then we've got two young two associates, I suppose you'd call them. So we're a four person team looking to bring on a fifth probably sometime next year, I would say what I've learned from having a lot of people on the team over the years is you need to have clearly defined roles. And you need to have clearly find expectations. sounds obvious, but it often gets swept under the rug, or it just gets pushed down kicked down the road. So if clearly defined roles, what's everybody responsible for, there should be no gaps. And if something doesn't get done, that's a big problem. So everyone needs to know what they're doing. Everyone needs to be focused on the same collective goal. But everyone's has a different role in that. And then expectations is also key. Because there's, you're gonna have a superstar that comes out of your team one one day, maybe you hire an associate, and he starts off learning the business and two or three years in, he's a superstar, and he wants to go and do something on his own. That's that's happened to me with my first assistant actually, how do you deal with that? It's, it's very difficult looking at that retro actively as opposed to just proactively trying to get ahead of that. And just understanding that when you bring in a team, you're not just focused on day to day operations, to Adams point is it's a long term endeavor. And I think you have to take that long term approach. Whenever you're building a team that you've got clearly defined expectations on what everyone's supposed to do right now. What does it look like next year? What does it look like five years from now? It's probably impossible to plan accurately, we should still at least have a plan and a contingency on what happens if A happens or what happens if B happens. I think so long as you're you're doing those two things, clearly defined roles, clear defined expectations. hire the right people, it's that you're giving yourself the best chance to succeed.
49:42
Yeah, I mean, we're five years into the brokerage now. And we're still doing that, right. I mean, I had really three agents working with me last year. I've got six agents working with me now. And once you get to that point, you know, I think a boutique brokerage in Nashville can handle maybe 10 agents. I don't know how you could really gets bigger than that without starting to create more of a corporate environment where you've got teams that are pitted against each other. And so, you know, we're going through the process at the moment of dividing up asset classes, geographic locations, you know, we might have somebody that's solely focused on East Nashville, they can kind of do anything there. But then we'll have somebody that's, you know, hospitality, well, hospitality is a little more niche, they need to be working on the hotels within East Nashville, so then you kind of carve those out. But as long as everybody has very clear expectations of what that ends up looking like, you know, and we also separate it by prospecting, right? This is what you're prospecting for, if a client calls you and they want you to do you know, a listing in East Nashville, but you're the general industrial guy, well, then, yeah, it's your listing. But you got to be very conscientious about that when you're building a team and just have those tougher conversations on the front end, because the last thing you want, is people starting to argue about commissions and splits and who should be working on which deal and how this should go? It can, it can get messy really fast. Adam, what about you,
51:02
a couple of notes. So I agree with you on the 10 person thing, we're roughly in that in that camp as well. But more importantly, I would, I would stress a couple of things. One, if you're gonna bring on younger brokers, as opposed to a guy that's pissed off at CB and he just wants to come join for a better split or something, right? That's not really what I'm talking about. But if you want to bring on somebody, two things, you get out what you put in, right, if you're not ready to if you don't like this person enough to let him shadow you and let him kind of nipping at your heels and lists and, you know, listen to you talk on on calls all day and go to meetings with you, then you're not going to get anything out of them. So I'd say be prepared and really liberal with your time, if you want to bring somebody on. And the second thing I would say is you've got to kind of feed these people enough rope to hang themselves. You know, I've I found more success. When I give people on my team maybe deals that are like this much too good, or prestigious or complex for them and make them kind of reach and get out of their comfort zone and sometimes fail sometimes. Sometimes they kick ass so So those two things like give them for a while. And this sounds bad to say you know, you're given people, just whatever you don't have time to work on or whatever you don't want to work on or whatever you think is kind of blow your station or whatever. And that and I've found much more success with with giving, giving people something that that maybe you're not 100% sure if they can handle but but yeah, they kind of can rise to that challenge, especially if you're there to, to kind of set the hook and and be there for the first those first few really hard calls. And, and you know, they just see how things operate. So those are two things that I've just, I've just seen in my own business that are really helpful.
53:03
Yeah, I think those are great points. Well, we're coming up on the hour here. What a lot of this out to you guys. What do y'all think about our next one, just doing a general update on what we're working on? And what we're seeing out there in the market. Not quite a market update, but like, Hey, here's what we're working on. Here's what we're seeing still transacting. I think there's some interesting types of deals going on right now. I mean, just in talking with my brokers, you know, the deals that we're having to negotiate I think are interesting. So selfishly, I'd love to hear what you guys are working on and what we can all
53:29
learn. Absolutely. And I want to plug somebody else that I don't know, have no affiliation with. Have you guys listened to the fort.
53:41
Chris powers.
53:44
Adams cut it out. But yeah, I think he was about to say the fort podcast. Adam, yeah.
53:53
I've been fortunate.
53:54
Right when I start right when I started talking, I freeze up the podcast. Yeah, haven't listened to it. I have no affiliation with this guy. But I've listened to a couple of these lately that have been kick ass. So shout out to that gentleman. That's that's, that's running that.
54:11
Yeah, Chris is he's killing it, man. I've tried. I've gone to Dallas. Thursday. I reached out to him a couple of times trying to try to sit down with him. If anybody in the audience knows Chris and can get him on the podcast, I would love to talk to him. But yeah,
54:26
I know, Chris. That's Oh, yeah. I've I've interviewed him a couple times. Because he's, he's a huge industrial guy. Huge. And he's awesome. He's such a beauty, so I can make an introduction for you.
54:38
That'd be awesome. I appreciate it, man. Yeah, I couldn't agree with Adam more highly recommend that podcast I only subscribe to like three other more. You know, other commercial real estate podcasts and his is one of them. It's so good.
54:52
You did with Dean Adler was awesome. So yeah, so no, no affiliation. and never met the gentleman but it was really good.
55:04
Yeah, well, he's he's one of those guys to like me talk about people that get ripped apart for starting something like he started his podcast while he was doing a syndication. And I heard people like, you know, talking trash about him doing that, because he was really one of the first guys to make a big kind of having a syndication as well as doing the podcast. And I'm sitting here going, I don't get what you guys like you guys are just absolutely jealous of what he's building because he probably gets so many investors from his podcast, because it's, it's really good. And he also he has some really interesting people on there that talk about it from a high level investment perspective. Because I mean, he you know, they own millions and millions and millions of square feet of industrial real estate. So that's that's kind of the level of people that he's having on the show. So yeah, agree with that. Go check out Chris's podcast. Check out the other guy's podcast. We've got Jesse Adams and Chad's links in the description below. We will be back in a couple of weeks on Tuesday, November 7, just diving into kind of what we're seeing today, what we're working on what life looks like, and appreciate you guys being on we'll see you all next was great show.
56:12
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