The 300 Cold Calls a Week That Built Her Career

Elizabeth Clark, welcome to the Forward One podcast. Thank you for having me. Excited to be here. Super grateful to learn from such a dynamic leader in the commercial real estate space. And I'll say that for those who aren't aware, there are not a lot of women in commercial real estate. It's really a male dominated field. But I'll let you comment on that, but I'd love to just hear where does your journey start? So it started in about 2007, 2008. I was waiting tables at the time trying to figure out what I wanted to do, and I decided that I wanted to go into commercial real estate. And so I took a class at UCLA Extension and then started in commercial real estate shortly after. I met someone in the class who said, you have to go commercial, and so I went that way. And when you were thinking about real estate, was there a decision between residential and commercial or was it like was that not even a decision? You just knew it was commercial. My mother was a residential agent, and so I'd always been around that. But I like kind of the math and the dynamics of a commercial transaction a little bit more. And it's funny because I thought that being a commercial agent would take the emotional decisions out of it. And I was wrong because I feel like commercial real estate is just as emotional as residential. That's interesting. I'd never heard anyone say that. And we have a lot of commercial people. When I invest in real estate, which I do a fair amount of, I really look at, you know, it's, it's numbers first, you know, and, and, you know, what's the upside, but it's, but it's a, it's an economic analysis. Like for example, if you were to show me a deal and I didn't like the, I didn't like the deal, there's probably a price at which that deal would work. But in residential, you know, if you show me a house I don't like, you know, I just don't want to live there. But I think the point that I take away, it's interesting you say that it's like it's obviously very analytical and cash flow oriented and so forth. But it's also by humans or emotional beings. So whatever they're making decisions, there's an emotional component to it. Absolutely. And I think also when you get into the owner user deals, because they are buying it like they're buying a house. And so they're getting much more emotionally invested into the real estate because they are going to, you know, occupy their business at the site. Coming back to that decision, you had been exposed to real estate through your mom so that seeds had been planted. Is that fair to say? Yes. Seeds had been planted. And then, hey, I'm going to go into commercial because I like the mathematical, analytical piece to it. Yeah. So I went into kind of the more commercial side and then you kind of get thrown into the deep end because our business, probably similar to yours. It's the cold calling. It's the going to meet with clients. It's everything that's a little bit different. You have this like image of commercial real estate, you know, this glamorous image, and then you hit the streets actually working, you know, how to get deals. And I would say that it is a fair amount different because, yes, it's true that the grind is not like what's shown on television and residential for sure. However, when you go into a commercial firm as a new agent, you're making a certain number of cold calls per day. It's hardcore compared to residential. There's a lot more structure and accountability more broadly, for sure. I would say so. And you start and you're all of a sudden like, what have I jumped into? I remember my first week being like, what am I doing? And it is male dominated. And so you're one of the few women that are actually in the office. And I kind of took a little bit different perspective with commercial real estate. So a lot of women get into leasing, get into multifamily sales. And I decided to start in kind of the more of the commercial investment sales. And so I was definitely one of the few women at our firm that was focusing on that. And so define what that means, commercial investment. So because a lot of we take a lot for granted and our audience may not understand that. Absolutely. So I sell office buildings, development sites, retail centers, trying to think what else. But that type of like more of a commercial deal. As opposed to multifamily. As opposed to a multifamily deal. We really steered away from leasing during the majority of our business, although we have picked it up along the way. And if I may ask, so where did you begin? What brokerage? I started at Marcus and Millichap. And I started in 2007, 2008. And I thought the funniest thing about it was they kind of pick a market area for you. And they picked West L.A. for me to focus on commercial investment sales. And the market tanked. And so everyone that owned there didn't have as much debt, weren't kind of in trouble at all. So you'd cold call them and they'd say, why would I sell? And it's a true point. Why would you sell? The market just tanked. And so I ended up going into secondary and tertiary markets and had a lot of success there. And that's kind of how I expanded outside of just the West LA market. And I feel like that's dictated a lot of my career in terms of now I do Southern California and we've sold out of state and it kind of moves you into different markets. You mentioned secondary and tertiary markets. So West L.A., when you say when you say right to the opposite is a primary primary market is like the mainstay market. So like West L.A. is the central part of Los Angeles. A secondary tertiary market for you would be would be what? Well, I did a lot of business in Englewood. I went down there and it was kind of transitioning. It was starting to get a lot of momentum. And so I did a lot of business down there and different areas like that. I would say primary areas are going to be like Beverly Hills, Westside. And I moved to markets that had a little bit more velocity and a little bit more traction. traction. Again, just because I like to define all the terms. I certainly know what market velocity is, but why don't you? I would say market velocity is just deals trading hands. You don't want to be working in a market where the deals don't trade. You have one deal a year. You already know the agent that's going to do it. Sometimes I think you're better off moving into a market where deals are trading, where people have a need to do something, and therefore you just have more opportunity for business. How do you figure out velocity of market? When I'm looking at velocity, I basically go on to CoStar and I see how many deals have traded, what brokers. This is what I did when I first started. So I'd go on CoStar, see how many deals have traded, who are the brokers that are owning that marketplace? Are there opportunities for new brokers to come into this market? Every time I'm in a building like this and I look out the window, I see this vast expanse of real estate. And I always say there's enough to go around. And you just have to figure out where you can find your niche. And when you're focusing on commercial investment sales, not multifamily, multifamily, you really need to be in a certain pocket because you'll be in a 13 block radius. And it's very important to know that. But with commercial, our clients tend to own in multiple markets. They'll own a retail center in Santa Monica, they'll also own a retail center in Huntington Park. And so it's important that you know both markets and you can sell in both markets. So you talked about secondary tertiary markets. I'm assuming you mean like where there's new development in your particular case, like obviously Inglewood not nearly as developed then and certainly in even to a large degree now then would be Beverly Hills or West LA. Is that fair to say? It's an interesting point that you bring up about the new development. Because when I first started as well, I focused a lot on retail centers, retail shopping centers, but they're on larger parcels. And so we ended up becoming known as land brokers, but it was almost unintentional because we would sell these shopping centers that were on larger parcels and the highest and best use might be for an apartment development. And so all of a sudden everyone said, you're selling all these land deals, but it was really just, we had smaller buildings on larger lots. And then we were able to then transfer those to a developer that ends up building the site. And so I would imagine a value add, for example, would be that the natural thing to do when you're evaluating a piece of investment real estate is you're like, okay, well, here's the property we have. Here are the rents we have. Where could the rents go in the future? That sort of thing. But you're looking at the existing footprint, but it would add a lot of value, for example, to know, hey, we could take this shopping center that's producing, pick a number, $100,000 a month in gross rental income, and it could be this massive development opportunity. And so how do you find that out, and how do you make use of that information? That's actually extremely important to do in our business, because you'll get a deal, and it will look a certain way, but you have to look and see where there's additional value in the deal. We're selling a site right now that it's a covered land place. So it has a credit tenant on it, but over time, it's really going to become a multifamily development. And so then you're looking at lease expirations, how long they're going to be there, if the tenant has options in the lease to be able to stay further. But what you add so much value to the client, when you really look outside the box. We have one deal right now that's a little bit different in terms of looking at the value, but we have one deal right now where it had been previously marketed. We took it over and we realized, yes, there's additional income coming in from a cell phone tower, but that cell phone tower actually has a tremendous amount of value. And so other people might look at it saying, okay, well, it's bringing in some extra income. That's great, it offsets the mortgage. But in reality, the value of that cell phone tower and removing it or moving it somewhere else, there's so much more value to the buyer in having that. That cell phone tower is generating, you know, or do you know how much per month? It makes $3,772 a month. So someone will look at it and say, okay, this is great. That's additional income coming in. But if you use a capitalization rate, that adds a tremendous amount of value. And when we're looking at, okay, what do you value a cell tower at? Just for an owner owning it, you'd say anywhere between a seven and 10 cap, depending on what you're selling the building for. That's kind of that value of that income. But when you take that income, let's say that what this particular cell phone tower is bringing in and you apply a 7% cap rate on it, That's additional like $650,000 in value to the owner. And once you add that and you can sell that to a potential buyer, it increases the price that we're ultimately going to get for the property. So it's really thinking outside the box in an informed way, like highest and best use. I mean that's like – right? And there's a lot of layers to that, and someone who's a real expert can think outside the box and really understand what its potential value is, right? A hundred percent. Yeah. And if you do that math, just to break that math down, let's just say, you know, I'll use rounder numbers, but let's just say the cell towers bringing in, you know, $50,000 a year, you know, and again, very round numbers. If you're working with a 10 cap, right, that, that is going, what that means is that's adding $500,000 to, it might only be, you know, $50,000 a year is whatever, $4,500 a month, you know, roughly. and sure, $4,500 a month sounds great, but then when you annualize that and then there's not a lot of maintenance on it or whatever it is, it sort of is what it is. Now you've got an extra $50,000 a year coming in. If you're working at a 10 cap, then that's $500,000 additional value to that piece of property. And that's the math behind what Elizabeth was just talking about. And it goes even further because if you can't replace the cell phone tower, it's similar to billboards where there's a moratorium. So once you have it, you know, you don't want to lose it. And a cell phone tower as well, from my understanding from, you know, I'm not a cell phone tower expert, but it's hard to move those. And once you have it and to get a permit on a new property, it's more challenging. So it has even more value to a potential buyer. Right. Because that that creates that that then creates scarcity. So, you know, and it's not that hard, for example, to to do that analysis. So I would just say it was in West Hollywood or pick a neighborhood. It's in a which I knew a neighborhood in Omaha, Nebraska, where our good friend sells a lot of real estate. But, you know, you're in a neighborhood in Omaha, Nebraska. It wouldn't be that hard to find out what are the restrictions for cell phone towers. And then if the restrictions are massive, that means that, okay, so we want to put up a new cell phone tower over here. If there are all these restrictions, the neighbors are going to scream, and then you're not going to be able to put your cell phone tower up. But once you've got it up, now you're grandfathered in, and you could make an argument, for example, that in a place that normally trades at an 8 cap, that you should be able to charge a 10 cap for your cell phone, for that one additive piece. But this is why we're talking to Elizabeth. And so let me ask you this. So are you representing, I assume you're representing both buyers and sellers. Do you lean more toward one or the other? And tell us a little bit about what that translates into for your business. In terms of every day in real estate, are we representing the buyer or seller? It really depends. There are some deals that we tend to represent the buyer more. With the owner-user deal, I would say most likely not because we don't know who every owner-user buyer is. When it comes to investment-grade deals, we do know who the likely buyers are. But in this market, I've said we don't know who all the emerging buyers are. And some of these emerging buyers are paying more than the usual suspects are. We have a listing right now, and I tell them if you want the usual suspects to come to the table, they're never going to pay your price. But if we find the emerging buyers who are entering this market, then we might be able to get you that higher price. And your focus, though, just to be clear, is on representing sellers. And you often can bring the buyer as well because that's, I guess, my question because I'm just relating it back to residential real estate. I am known for seller representation, and that's what we've built our career on. It's a harder path to go when you start out in this business, when you just focus saying I'm only going to work on seller representation. But then once you establish yourself in the marketplace as a seller representative, it just works better. Yeah, list to last. We've heard these terms. When you control the inventory, then you just have a lot more leverage. So you're definitely confirming that, I think. Oh, I think it's really important. And I think sometimes I see people kind of try to go the easy route saying I'm just going to represent buyers. And I think it is a little bit in commercial, a harder route to go with representing sellers. but then you get a name for yourself in the business. You mentioned the usual suspects and you mentioned emerging buyers, and I definitely understand the concept of the usual suspects because what happens, and I'll take a smaller market, for example. I'm invested mainly in multifamily, some shopping center stuff, but I invested only in Los Angeles where I live and know the market and Pittsburgh which is where I grew up and have an existing structure there And when you get to a certain price point then the usual suspects are there which is there's only so many people, for example, in Pittsburgh that are looking to buy something that's $20 million or more. Now, that's going to be a lot different price range where there are higher value here. That's the usual suspect. So when we know that we're taking our property to market and it might be a $50 million sale, we know. Like, here are the six or eight people. You might as well just call them up. But how do you find your emerging buyers? In terms of finding the emerging buyers, though, I think it is a matter of, you know, number one is looking in comps. Because you're going to see people that you may not have seen before. And you should reach out to everyone in comps. see what they're doing. And that's oftentimes how you do find them. And reaching out to networks, and this is where you really have to reach out to your broker network, because you need to see who's working with someone new, who's working with a buyer you may not have known. And one thing that I think has been really important in the past year that we've done is sometimes we have these partnerships with residential agents, and they have a network that we might not have. And so it's been very successful in terms of working with them saying, hey, which buyers are you working with in this marketplace that might be looking for an asset like this and just getting it in front of them. So one of the things I want to highlight, which was interesting, is Elizabeth said looking at the comps and I'm going to translate that. And of course, you're going to tell me you got it wrong, but I'm going to translate that. And that is that being in the business so long, Elizabeth is going to know the usual suspects or the usual buyers for a particular product at a particular price. Generally, the people are out looking for them, so we'll go ahead and contact them. In looking at comps, she's looking at recent past sales, and now by looking at recent past sales, you can say like, oh, wow, here's somebody that just bought two of these things that I've never heard of. Exactly, and that's a great way of finding people, and we go even further to another way that we've gone back to, which I haven't done since 07, 08, we started door knocking again. And especially on some of these larger owner user deals, we show up at the, you know, where someone might be leasing a property and we give them a pamphlet and say, you know, instead of leasing, there's a lot of benefits to owning real estate. There's a lot of tax benefits. Take this to your accountant and they're going to tell you, this is what we've been telling you all along. So I think there's a couple different ways of finding kind of those emerging buyers. But going through comps too, you're going to see names that you haven't seen before. And you say, you know, what is this group doing? Are they looking for other assets in this market class? You have money coming in and out of California all the time. And so I think it's important to see who's coming in. Okay. So I love this because you're giving me now three interesting ways to find emerging buyers. And I may have done a nice job. I hope I did a nice job giving the synopsis of the comps. But but I got to tell you, I hadn't heard that before. So, you know, credit where credit's due, Elizabeth. So I like that. And and so we discussed the comps piece. Then with residential, sometimes, and we do this a lot within our team, is that you've got the residential clients that have significant money, and now suddenly do they want to deploy it in real estate? And there are new tax benefits and significant tax benefits. And so, oh, I have a client that has a bunch of money. This person has an opportunity. And so using the residential network has proven to be a great way to get emerging clients. And then lastly, one of the things that I, again, so number two, I got that one. Number one, new cool idea. Number three, very cool new idea. And that is creating, not just finding, but creating emerging buyers by going to a storefront or talking to the owner of that business and saying, hey, what could we do to get you into your own real estate? And even though Josh and I invest in real estate, for example, and we're always investing in real estate, we don't own any of the offices that we occupy. So we're paying a lot in rent. And we talk about it periodically. Yeah, so maybe you're going to give us the – we're your emerging buyers. Right. But, you know, and you mentioned that as sort of door knocking. Are you doing that yourself or do you have a team? That's literally on its own. No, I do it myself. And it is extremely valuable. And I'll give you an example. During COVID, we had a deal that we were having a very difficult time selling. I thought it was priced well. I didn't understand why it wasn't selling. So we ended up going and door knocking and dropping off flyers. I spent one afternoon doing this. And it wasn't the owner of the business that ended up purchasing the property. It was one of his employees that wanted to go out on his own and start his own business. And so we ended up selling it to him. He's like, I knew about this deal. I hadn't really paid that much attention to it. And the most important thing about door knocking, why I love it so much, and just in anything with an, this is, this was an owner user sale. They don't understand the financing that's available. And so if you're going to be an SBA buyer, you can come in with 10% down. If it's a specialty use, you might be at 15% down. If you're not going to hit the occupancy requirement of 51%, there's other banks that have programs that mirror SBA at 25% down. And you're educating these buyers because oftentimes they're coming into the marketplace and they think that they've bought a house and they think they're going to have to put quite a bit more down. And if we say you can put 10% down, it can be gifted to you. There's so many opportunities for these buyers to come in. And it actually builds real wealth. And that's what we tell them. We say, this is what's going to build real wealth for you. They could even do a sort of a mini syndication or a friends and family thing. So if I own my own, if I own my own mattress shop, you know, and I've been paying a bunch of rent, Elizabeth comes to me and says like, Hey, you know, have you ever thought of owning your own? You know, you could go over here. The, the, you know, it might, it might be a million dollar purchase and we've got a program where you could come in with a hundred thousand dollars down well i could go to friends and family and get that hundred thousand dollars and then i'm already the tenant so you don't have to worry about you know there's a problem with tenancy right now but i am the tenant and then you become a landlord and you have additional revenue streams right if you have other tenants in that building that you're buying it is such a powerful thing one of the first deals I ever sold was this little, you know, tow truck facility on exposition. And the, it was a husband and wife that owned it. And, you know, he was a tow truck driver and they met because she was an operator at AAA and they met over dispatch. They ended up buying all the real estate. So when they were retiring, we were selling off the real estate and they had done so well. And that was their retirement at the end of the day. And they were able to retire very early and they had their wealth through owning the real estate and buying it early on. And I always tell clients that story because I'm like, you want to be like this where you can end up selling off your real estate down the line or giving it to your children, but you're creating that wealth for your family. So I have two questions. One is you own real estate, correct? So maybe tell us a little bit about, as you're saying that, it's just making me think like you're practicing what you're preaching and tell us a little bit about that story. I do own real estate. And so when you're in the market and you see opportunities, I think it's important as a broker to then reinvest in kind of what you know the deal, you know the market, you might as well reinvest in what you know. And does that, I'm going to guess that gives you that much more credibility with your own clients to say, hey, I'm doing this myself. And it gives you that much more knowledge and ability to give them the right feedback and guidance and be that fiduciary for them because you've done it for yourself. It does. And where it gives you credibility is you've dealt with the same issues that they've dealt with. You're preparing for the reins when they come. You've had issues with insurance. You have had all tenant issues. You've gone through evictions. And then the client really understands that you are on the same page as them in terms of understanding the struggles that they've had. Yeah. There's a balance for sure. So that when you make your living representing professional investors, you know, if they see you as like gobbling up all the deals, you know, or whatever that, that they might be concerned about that, or you might have that sense. But as long as you're providing great value to, to your clients, then I think you, you then slide into the area where, you know, where you're you're, you know, you, you eat what you cook or whatever. I don't know how, whatever, whatever that term is, but you certainly are experiencing the same challenges and therefore living through it. And it just, as you say, that just reminds me when you started, you talked about you look out the window and you just see a world of abundance. It's an abundance mentality. There's so much opportunity out there that like, you know, I think people that have that scarcity mentality are not particularly the ones that are going to be the most successful. Well, and it's funny because I joke with my clients. I'm like, I don't have the bandwidth to take down the amount of deals that you guys have to take down. So I'm like, I'm very limited in what I can do, and you have the bandwidth to do more. Sure, of course. One of the things that we didn't really pick up earlier was you go to college, then you do the UCLA extension thing. You're like, okay, I'm going to try commercial real estate, male-dominated world. Then you go to M&M, Marcus & Millichap, which is a – Boiler room. Which is a boiler room. And in the most favorable way, I say that with all due respect that we have so many agents that they got probably some of the best training in their in their whole career. Side note. Side note. Do you know Jonathan Weiss? I know the name. OK. He was a managing managing partner for for Marcus and Milla Chapel. We'll have to get him on the on the podcast. An old friend of mine. Super nice guy, though, and very, very kind person, and you would sort of expect the guy that's in charge of the thing. But what we mean by – what Josh means by boiler room, if I might, is that you do residential real estate and the folks who do residential real estate that we talk to a lot, one of the disadvantages is that there isn't somewhere where you have to be. Um, there, no one's going to fire you if you don't make the certain number of calls and that those certain number of calls don't turn into a certain number of transactions. And so there is a massive amount of structure missing when you, when you go into residential real estate. And I do think that there, that there, you know, the failure, failure rate's very high. Um, I'm sure it's high in commercial as well. Um, but they'll run you through the ringer real fast. You'll fail faster, which I think is better. And I think that there are a certain percentage, and it might be a high percentage, of residential realtors that if they moved into – they stay in your lane, keep doing residential real estate. But if we applied that Marcus and Millichap model, they would suddenly – they'd suddenly go from making $30,000 a year in GCI to like $250,000. No question. I say it all the time. If residential real estate agents as a whole took on the discipline, the consistency, the rigor of commercial real estate agents, they would propel their business significantly. And I have to ask you, when you go into Marcus and Millichap as a first-year agent and you're making cold calls, how many cold calls are you making? How many hours are you spending cold calling? Give me that real sense. Give us a sense of that rigor. It's very rigorous, which is I thrive on structure. And I actually agree 100% with what you're saying, that if you applied it to residential, it would really – I think people – most people thrive on structure. So you're making about 300 calls a week. The expectation is that you have one proposal a week and one new listing a month. And I still, to this day, follow those guidelines in terms of my, now my goals have shifted slightly, but my expectations and what I want to accomplish in a week. And I think this, it's really important because in this business, it's really tough. You don't have instant gratification. You're not selling something that you're going to get paid tomorrow. And so you always have to celebrate the small wins. And so when you keep the structure of saying, I need to do this every single week, and if it's Friday and I haven't done it, I have a problem, then it keeps the momentum because you're not going to get that instant gratification from a paycheck the next day. You're preaching the choir, so I can't help myself. I always say, play the long game with urgency. And it is about embracing the process. And I like what you say about celebrating the small wins. The wins is the process. It's the activities. It's not necessarily the results and the dollars. It's the actions and the activities that are going to lead to the dollars. So six months ago, I said, my goal is every week I need to have a money making activity. I don't care what it is, but there's something and it's not that I'm making money that week, but I'm moving something ahead that is going to get me paid. That mindset changed my entire business and it was extremely structured. I said the market's tough, but if I focus on this and I say every week I have to do this, then they start to build up. And all of a sudden you're six months in and your pipeline is very strong. And it is the long game in this business. Okay. So when you're making 300 calls per week, you're not counting. Like if you call and you don't get through or you leave a voicemail or whatever, that still counts. Still counts. And the goal, Marcus, because I missed one point, is getting three meetings a week. And I think that's extremely important to keep yourself to getting that meeting count because that's really what's going to propel you. Everyone you meet is not going to be ready to sell. I met with an owner last week. I met with her husband two years ago. I have been calling her for six months, leaving messages. She finally called back and said, OK, I'm ready. And if I hadn't made those calls or I hadn't done that follow up, we wouldn't be in the position where she's ready to go to market now. it's the conversations that lead to the meetings that lead to the contracts that lead to the closings. Right. And it is about the conversations. I always say, um, again, to get face to face and get the meeting because without that, the deal is never going to happen. And our deals take a long time. You not occasionally you get someone that you call and they like Oh I was thinking about selling and that does happen But it not the majority of the deals Majority of the deals are you cultivating a relationship over time And I always tell people, you're going to meet someone and they might not be ready that day, but you need to be a resource for them. And it's not a matter of saying, do you want to sell? Do you want to sign a listing agreement? It's saying, hey, this comp just sold. This is how it affects your building. and staying in touch with them, like pleasantly persistent with the client. That's one of Paul's favorite statements, pleasantly persistent. And one of our good friends, Mr. Gary Gold, always says, they're not a buyer-seller is not going to transact until they have confidence. And your goal is to educate them, to give them the confidence such that when they're ready, they're confident and educated to buy or sell. And to be honest, we've been in a tough market. So sometimes the education that you're giving them is not necessarily the best news that they want to hear, but it's important for them to know what's going on in the marketplace because it does affect the value of the property. And I think one of the greatest things to tell people is if it's not a great time for them to sell is to tell them, I don't think it's the right time for you to sell. Why are you selling? You know, there might be extenuating circumstances that put them in a position that they need to do something, but understanding that maybe it's not today and maybe we'll revisit in six months. And it is, again, relationship building, trust, timing. It's not telling people what you think they want to hear. It's telling them the truth because that's how you build trust and credibility. And then when they're ready and the time is right, you're there and you're the first person they think about because you've built that trust and that rapport and you've given them that confidence and education. You also said that just six months ago, first of all, how many years have you been in the business? Oh, gosh, I'm going to age myself. 18 years. Wow. Don't do the math. Okay, okay, I won't do the math. I'm a math guy, but I won't do it anyway. You know, one of the things that you said was, first of all, I like it. You're in the business 18 years, and you're like, hey, you know, I shifted everything by doing something different, slightly different six months ago. That tells me immediately you're our growth mindset and ready to learn and do more, which, of course, we love. but you said that what you shifted six months ago was that you're doing one money-making activity per week. And I know from having spent this small amount of time with you right now, that what you define as a money-making activity is not going to be what most of our realtors or people listening to are gonna define a money-making activity, that hers is gonna be way further down the line. So tell me, what is a money-making activity? What's the criteria that has to be met for that to be? So I have a couple, and I tell people that I work with, because you're going to be at different points in your career, and a money-making activity for me is not necessarily going to be a money-making activity for someone who's new. Or a money-making activity for you five years from now or five years ago. Exactly. And you always have to be pivoting in this business. You have to say, okay, things aren't working. How do I change things? For me, a money-making activity is either we get a new lease signed or we get a new escrow or a new listing. So there has to be something that falls under there. People I work with who are less experienced, I said a money-making activity for you is you hit your calls and you hit your meeting goals. And it really comes down to meeting goals. I said you need to be on the phone and your whole purpose on the phone is to set three meetings. Don't worry about how many calls. Make sure you're having the quality of call on the phone. So that is sort of what I anticipated because a money-making activity for you is actually something that's going to put money into the bank basically in short order. And like you said, if you're brand new in the business, then – It's less short order. Yeah, and to which thing I would say, you know, it's – you don't have the luxury of doing one money-making activity per week. What you're doing – that's when you defaulted right back to you're like, okay, well, your one money-making activity is making the 300 calls, setting the three appointments, you know, and sending out your – It's not as far along in the chain. I mean that's – right? Your money-making activities are further along in the chain than people who are newer. Well, I tell people this, though, all the time when I tell them what their money-making activities should be. I said, you're going to get to the point where your money-making activity is. I need to open escrow on my listings. I said, but you need to have these money-making activities before you get to that point. And then it's going to shift for you at that point to now I need to get these in escrow. And not everything is going to – you'll open an escrow or the deal might fall apart. So there are things that can happen along the way. And you're not going to hit it every week. But if your goal is this is what I'm trying to do. I mean, for me, I'm not going to hit it every week. I'm not going to open it. I mean, I wish I would, but the likelihood I'm going to open a new escrow every week is not, you know, 100 percent. But as long as I have that mindset going in that this is what I need to do. And to be honest, when I changed my mindset for the first four weeks and even now, I mean, we were hitting it every single week. It was just about changing that mindset of like, no, this needs to happen now. I would challenge you to take the word try out of it. I would challenge you to take the concept of, well, I'm not going to do it every week. And I would ask you, what would you need to do or be different in order to open one escrow every week? It's funny you say that because I tell people to take try and hope out of their conversation. So I just got told what I tell people. I would say we're pretty effective in getting deals into escrow. And I'm the same way. I'm like, we're not going to do it. I have one client that I joke. He called me a year ago and he said, we're opening escrow this week on my deal. And in my mind, I'm like, we have no showings. We have no buyers. But I'm like, OK, yeah, we're doing it. We opened escrow. next week. And I was just, I'm like, so I believe in you. And I believe in what you're saying in terms of you have to have that mindset of we're going to do it. So I think in terms of my business, I write a list out at the beginning of every week. And I write every deal that I want to put in escrow. And we have a lot of deals. So we have a lot of opportunities to open escrow, but I make a list that says money-making activity. And I write every deal that I want to put in escrow or I want to get leases signed. And it's funny because I'll put deals on there that I had one on there last week that I didn't have an offer on, but it was on the list and we put it under contract on Wednesday. So it's just putting it out there. These are the deals and I, on the list, I, it's very important to me. I hold this list. It's on a thicker piece of paper. I take it with me everywhere. And I'm constantly looking at it because I'm saying, what on this list can I move forward? What do I have the ability? There's some deals that I don't have the ability for encounters and we're waiting for someone else. But what do I have the ability to get into escrow? And it comes back to like, you look, your thoughts drive your actions, your actions drive your results. So it starts with the right mindset, right? And then that mobilizes action and then things start to happen. These little things too, Elizabeth, that you're talking about, like just these little tiny things, like that money-making activity not lost on me when Elizabeth says, oh, I put it on a thicker piece of paper. Because, you know, if you're, hopefully you're not too much like me in the sense of like I got papers flying everywhere, but, you know, just being more purposeful about like, hey, I've got the one piece of paper that's like the thick piece of paper. Oh, and I'm going to carry it with me everywhere. And, and, you know, a long, a long, long time ago, uh, I had the opportunity to meet, uh, Jack Canfield and Jack Canfield was a school teacher, um, you know, later to become, you know, a great bestselling author and entrepreneur. And, and one of the things that he did as a school teacher was he put, he put a money-making goal, like on a piece of paper like I do, but he put it above his bed. So like when he woke up, he would see it, you know, or I'll see people. It's very effective. I don't have it for myself. And I think maybe you and I should do that. How about as a challenge? We'll take the Elizabeth challenge and really, you know, we're going to get a thicker piece of paper. How about that? And put some of this into action. It's all about – the common theme to me is how do you create accountability, right? You said everyone benefits from structure. The problem with real estate agents or the challenge is they tend to be real estate agents because they want the autonomy and the flexibility. And yes, the structure would absolutely benefit them. But very few of them choose the structure and the accountability. And the more accountability we can have within ourselves and then, of course, others around us, which also is like writing it down, visibility, like saying it to other people so you don't feel foolish if you don't do it. Like these are all things that make a big difference, especially when they become habits. And I disagree that – I think the biggest misconception in our business is that, oh, it's just come to the office when you want to. I actually think we put in more in our business than someone that goes to a nine-to-five job. I mean, right now we're working seven days a week. You absolutely do, and there are others that do similar to you. And we do. And we do, but the vast majority of agents do not. One of the things, a book I used to give away all the time, I have many, many copies of it, called The War of Art, not The Art of War. And it's Steven Pressfield, and there's three sections. And the first section is resistance, and the second section is breaking through resistance, and the third section is turning pro. And one of the pieces of resistance that he talked about was that, you know, sometimes things that you think are helping you break through resistance are really your worst enemy because you have the illusion that you're doing it, right? So if you're – we did a session today on open houses, and we see people walking around touring these fabulous open houses, and they don't have a buyer for this open house, nor do they – they don't know anyone that could afford to buy this open house. So why are they spending their time walking through this great house other than to get some good Instagram pictures or whatever? And so they have the illusion that they're working, and that's worse than not working. Because if you were laying in bed, you'd at least be like – You'd feel some pressure and accountability hopefully to get up and do something. Oh, no. Wait a minute. I'm going to get dressed up. I'm going to walk through. I'm going to get my friend to videotape this. Now I think I'm doing something. But it's not, to your point, the money-making activity. And I think one of the other things that I see some people doing, which I think is a huge mistake, is we're in like this tech world. where everyone, you know, I'll tell someone called this person and all of a sudden I see a text go through. I'm like, I didn't tell you to text them. If I wanted you to text them, I would have told you that. But it's this in-person, you know, meeting with people, meeting with clients. And I think that's very valuable in our business. And I, you know, when you're having an issue with a deal and you're trying to figure it out, go see the client, sit down with them, figure out how you can get over the issues on that particular deal. And I do think there's like that little bit of people just saying, okay, I think I'm working, I'm doing this, but they're not. It's all the idea of being busy versus productive or purposeful, you know, and, and, and just like everything. And I always come back to like, I always view people through a lens of how intentional are they? And, you know, typically very strong correlation between how intentional they are and how, how much they achieve and how successful they are. So just clearly you're super, super intentional and you understand the value of your time and what you're doing and with whom you're spending it with realtor used to work uh in my office and has you know subsequently passed away he was an older guy he was with us for a long time and one of the things that he did and when i say this you'll be like the only the 100th time or 500th time josh has heard it for sure but one of the things that he not one of the things it's sort of the thing that he would do And he had a very good business. He had a solid business, which means, you know, what will happen for residential realtors is they'll get real busy and then meaning selling real estate, making money. And then and they stop lead generating and then they sell the three houses they were working on. And then they're like, you know, where's my next deal? There's no pipeline. And so this guy, this guy was a busy realtor who would have busy times and not busy times and in between. And the thing that he did was he had a standard of having 10 live purposeful real estate conversations per day or he didn't leave the office. And then he had a list and he would email. I don't know who was on the list because he wanted to protect privacy. So he would send it. John was his name. You know, he would be the send line and then he'd send it to himself and they would blind copy all the people. I was one of the people on the blind copy, and he would list the 10 people that he talked to and a little bit about what he talked to them about. And every once in a while, you know, I'd go in the office. The office is – our Beverly Hills office is above Wally's. I'd have dinner at Wally's where I'd go upstairs afterwards, and, you know, John would be sitting there at like 8.30, and he'd be – you have to know John, but John would be swearing and, you know, furious. And I'd be like, dude, what are you doing here? And you're like swearing in the office. And, you know, he's like, I told my wife, you know, to start making dinner, you know, over an hour ago. And I've been, you know, screwing around all day. And, you know, I only have eight calls done. And I, you know, and he'd literally like, he's like, who am I going to call at 830 at night, you know, and get them on the phone? He's like, but he would not leave the office. Sometimes the 10 would be done before noon. almost all the time. The 10 would be done before 5 or 6 o'clock. And once in a while, he would get jammed. But he just didn't leave the office until he had those 10 calls and sent that email. And what an incredible practice because that is your money-making activity. You can go out and look at an open house if you want. You can go do this. You can do the other thing. You can go have lunch if you want. But if you don't do those 10, you don't have those 10 live calls, you're not going home. So let me ask you. I might borrow that. How is your business structured personnel-wise? Do you have a team? What does that look like? Yeah, I mean, things are always shifting and things are always moving around. But yes, historically, we have a team. It varies in size depending on the market. During COVID, we lost a bunch of people moving different places, getting different careers. The past couple of years, it's been down a lot too just with people getting out of the business. And it's a tough business. It's not for the faint of heart. and so you have to be prepared to put in the grind. And so we're always going through ebbs and flows in terms of how many people we have or who we're working with. Why do your clients gravitate toward you relative to others in your particular area? That's a tough question. I would say everyone's always trying to fit in a box and I'm absolutely not trying to be the box at all. I'm marching to the beat of my own drum. When I first got into this business, someone would say to me, like, you're too nice, you can't be in this business. And I'm like, well, I'm not gonna change. And then even with Marcus, it's big on the value of representation. And my senior goes, you're terrible at the value of representation. And I told someone who worked with me maybe a couple of months ago, we were going to meeting and I'm like, I'm still bad at the value of representation but I who I am in this business And I not trying to be someone else I think you connect with your clients in a different way I not trying to be someone else I think you know you have you connect with your clients in a different way I not trying to be a robot I not like everyone else. I think that's always what I valued is that I'm a little bit different than the traditional, you know, commercial salesperson. And that's always kind of been to my benefit. And so instead of, you know, trying to be what everyone else thinks a commercial real estate broker is. I lean into who I am more and my personality and it's worked for me. And it's funny. I tie that back as you say that into what you said that you view commercial also as very emotional. And I think that authenticity and look, again, human beings by definition are emotional beings and relationships are emotional. It doesn't mean that they can't also include a fair bit of analytics, but at the end of the day, that's how you connect with people. I don't care who they are. 100%. And I had a client who's very intense. I absolutely adore them. But I finally told them last week, I'm like, if I go to jail, you're my first call. Because honestly, I know you'll get me out because you're extremely intense, extremely emotional about the deal. And it's just, you are dealing with emotions. And especially right now, I'll say, people are dealing with lender issues. They have development sites. The bank's not giving the loan that they want. And so there's a heightened level of emotional, just being emotional and owning real estate. And so you really have to listen to your clients and understand the full picture so you can help them. There's a guy who I went to see him speak, who's a famous economist named Richard Thaler. And I remember him being introduced as, we think this guy's going to win the Nobel Prize for his new book. And he did, actually. He hadn't won it at the time that I saw him speak. And when the book came out, it was about that thick, which means I didn't read it. But I did listen to him. And the title of the book was Misbehaving. And this is a guy that won the Nobel Prize in economics. And at the heart of economics, when you're trying to be predictive and you're trying to figure things out is you assume that people will behave like what is known in Econ 101 as the economic man or woman or person, right? The economic man is what is – and that means that you're going to follow the laws of economics. So if you're going to get in a deal and you lose $20,000 over here, but you're going to gain $25,000 over here, the economic person says yes to that deal. And the whole thesis of the book is basically we're way too psychologically driven to be predictive like that. And somebody might look at that deal, and instead of another clean deal that's going to make them $3,000, they're like, oh, I've got to do this, and then I get crushed over here for $20,000, and I make $25,000 over here. I'm net five. Over here, there's no loss. I'm net three. The economic person is going to take the net five, but people don't want that. And so it is somebody who won a Nobel Prize for saying that it's an emotional business. Well, it really is. I think that's actually a really good point because it comes down to when you're in a transaction. You have emotions, and sometimes emotions can get in the way of people making rational decisions. and I always think being the broker, I've had clients that have asked for a credit and they just wouldn't give it to us. And it was really, it was deserved. And I told the client, do you want to own the real estate? And he literally, and he goes, yes. So I think sometimes our job is to clear the emotion out of it. So you get to the point because they do want to buy it and, or they do want to sell it. And you're kind of bridging that gap. And the client that ended up buying the property, he called me last week. He's like, I got such a good deal on that. I'm like, I know you did. And I knew you were, for 20,000, I didn't want you to walk away from it. It was a matter of being like the voice of reason, but you sometimes have to, and sometimes it's justified and you need to walk away from a deal, but it's understanding what your client's motives are. If your client wants to buy something, if they want to sell it, your job is to facilitate that. How often do we talk about that? You took the words out of, be the voice of reason, because it does get so emotional and people often let that cloud their judgment. And our job is to keep them focused on the end game and what's in their best interest. I just did a deal for a client and it was a large deal. It was over $12 million. I ended up saving them $250,000 that they didn't even want me to do. They're like, you know, they were afraid to lose the deal. I'm like, you're not going to lose the deal. I'll make sure we'll at least get it at this price. But I think I can do better. Let me do me. I wouldn't have done it if they didn't agree because there's always a risk. And they're like, okay, fine. They wanted the deal at that price. And I went back and I managed to get it at $250,000 less. And then there was – I don't want to identify too much of the deal, right, because people that work with me will figure out who it is. Heaven forbid the person I'm talking about will hear the podcast. But, you know, my clients were then treated very unfairly, very unfairly in a piece of the deal that was a net $8,000. And, you know, and I fought for that $8,000. And then eventually I just called my clients. I'm like, hey, you remember last week, like the $250 that you really didn't even want me to try for? You know, this is an ongoing relationship because it's a development deal. And we could I could continue to fight for this eight grand. How about if I just say my clients decided to, you know, just go ahead because there's a lot of ego on the other side wrapped up in this eight G's after we just got to 50. And, you know, and as soon as I say that, they're like, oh, my God, of course, absolutely. But understandably upset about the eight grand because eight grand is not nothing. And it was really an unfair eight grand. And we use the paradigm principle versus practical. And sometimes you got to take a stand on one or the other. But oftentimes you got to sort of choose if you want to forego the principle to really make sure you stay in the practical when the practical makes a lot bigger difference in the end. For sure. One of the things that we didn't get is – give me a sense of order of magnitude of your business. How much real estate are you selling? I mean we're pretty active in the marketplace. When the market's hot, we're doing between 24 to 50 deals a year depending. Things have obviously slowed down a little bit, but we're ramping back up to those numbers. And what does that translate into in terms of like fees? What's the average price? Oh, gosh, that's a hard one. I'm not sure what our – right now, I would say ever since ULA, we're definitely – the deals that we're getting – and just in the marketplace in general, there's been an interesting shift in the marketplace where our deals under $5 million are selling very well. Our deals 10 plus, not selling very well. I'm not saying they're not selling very well. They're more challenging to get done. So just by definition of the price range, as you pointed out, we're talking about significant fees. So we just want to make sure everyone understands who we're speaking. Oh, yeah. A voice with trusted authority. Correct. For sure. So let me ask you one other big question. How would you, from a business perspective, define success for you? That, I think, is probably one of my most challenging questions that you're asking me. And I find that a lot of people in our business feel this way. Oftentimes, you always feel like a failure. You're not doing enough. And so I actually was thinking about that this morning. I'm like, God, I've got to get over always feeling like the minute the deal closes. I'm like, what's next? What's happening? So in terms of what is success, I don't know if I can answer that because I don't even know if I know. It always needs to be more, and you always need to be striving for more, making yourself better, making yourself a better broker. So I don't know if I have the answer to that. Well, it says a lot about you. I mean I'm a big believer. How many times have you heard me say it? Perpetually raising the bar, the best of the best can always become better, and people that are always striving to improve regardless of where they are. You know, we interviewed a guy who's, you know, we've worked with for quite some time, and he just sells 500 million. In residential, he sells $500 million worth of deals per year. That's sort of his minimum. You know, he's had years where it was 480, you know, but he's had a lot of years that exceeded by a lot. And he said the same thing. He said that it is his sort of like internal, like I haven't succeeded kind of thing that drives him. So it's not necessarily a bad thing and it's more common in people that are really crushing it than you would think. It's really common, I think. Look, I can completely relate to it. So, you know, and I think for me personally, I think it's just like as long as you're enjoying the journey, you know, because I love the journey personally. I do too. I don't think of it as going to work. Right. I love what I do and I feel very fortunate. I mean even when we're working seven days a week, I'm like I love this. I feed off of it. I don't get upset to go to work on Monday because I probably was working on Sunday. You know, it's fun and you get to meet people and that's the one thing that I love is that you just get to meet this cross. section of people that you might not have met. You get to go to neighborhoods that you didn't know before, eat at restaurants that you would have never been to that neighborhood before. And you're just meeting so many people. And that's what I think we all thrive off of. And that's enjoyable. And that's what creates sustainability. You're so positive. I know in commercial real estate, you've got what folks refer to as the bottom feeders. Or it's like, oh, I'm looking for a deal. And then, yes, I'm a buyer. I've got plenty of money. I've got plenty, plenty of money. Let me show you a proof of funds. I'm a buyer. But then they want to steal the deals and just sort of difficult personalities. How do you deal with the really difficult ones? Well, usually with the bottom feeders, I know who they are. We really haven't closed together for that reason because we're known for seller representation. and our job is to get the highest price for a deal. And we take a pretty firm stance on deals too. We don't allow, we're very careful on contracts too to make sure that we don't open ourselves up for a massive retrade. We have obviously a lot of things that can happen environmental. So it's, and I think this just comes from experience. I've been doing it for so long that we know all the environmental games that can be played. We've sold sites that we had a bid for 401.5, depending on who the buyer was. And so it's a matter of understanding that having our own consultants that we go to. So I think it's always about having, I was selling one deal. They put under contract at a very healthy price. And I would end every email with, P.S., there will be no credit or P.S., don't think about asking for anything. And finally, he responded back to me and said, I'm not going to ask for a credit. I'm like, I just want to Make sure that we're all clear that we're not giving you a credit. And just for the non-commercial real estate people, a retrade is you open escrow at a healthy price and then the negotiation begins. Yes. So we try to limit – and we have deals. We try to limit that as much as possible. Sometimes it's a matter of saying, okay, here's all your due diligence items up front and do your homework. Or we try to limit it by having them come in with as little contingencies as possible. Now, anything can happen up until the closing. All right. Fire around? Yes. And it's really – What's fire? And it's been a real pleasure. Yeah. I've really enjoyed this. So with Fire Round, what we do is a series of questions, and a lot of them are deep questions. So you could go on, and we could respond, but we just sort of give you the question. Yeah, you give us the answer. Don't overthink it. And we'll go from there. Is there like a pass option too? Sure, whatever you want. What's your idea of perfect happiness? This isn't a very fast Fire Round. Perfect happiness. I mean, I think just being content in your life and in your relationships, and that's perfect happiness. What's the attribute you most admire in others? I think the attribute that I admire most is honesty. What's your greatest fear? Probably failure. What's your greatest accomplishment? I don't know if I've had it yet. What's your greatest extravagance? I do love clothing. What's your most fond childhood memory? I have so many fond childhood memories. It's going to be hard to pick out one. I think any time that I was spending with my family. What's an insult you've received that you're proud of? I probably have a couple of those. Oh, it was an insult that I didn't – I'll tie it to real estate. So it was an insult that I didn't even know was an insult. He goes, you're aggressive. I've asked around about you. I'm like, when did aggressive become an insult? I'll take that one, by the way, because I've been accused of such. Mind you, he hired me after he closed escrow to sell his building, so it worked. Bingo. What's a quality that you'd most like to improve in yourself? I think you're always a work in progress. I don't know if I can pinpoint the quality, but I think the bigger thing is always pinpointing where you're lacking and making yourself better in those qualities. So that's a constant thing. What's the trait you most deplore in others? Dishonesty. Who do you most admire? Most admire? I would probably say my father. What's a talent you'd like to have? I'd love to speak multiple languages. I'm a one language and I wish I say it all the time. I really wish I spoke more languages. is there's a lot of great uh there are a lot of great places to go hiking in la um and you go on this great hike maybe arduous uh climb you get to the top there's also great views you get to the top of this great hike with a great view and you look down and you see your family and your friends and your work colleagues and your clients and your community and you shout one thing what do you shout? I think I would shout, keep going. Love it. I've not heard that one. I like it. There you go. That's great. Absolutely phenomenal. Yeah. Thank you. It's amazing. Thank you. Thank you.