When the doubt gets loud, but answer that call, uh, vision ain't real to your grind at speed, so breathe in deep, then call the damn leads, call the damn leads. Hey, welcome back to call the damn leads to show by sales professionals for sales professionals. I'm your host, Drew B. Wilson. With more than two decades in sales, I've seen it, been through it, heard about it. Now I'm bringing those stories to you, my favorite people in the world, the sales community, because let's be honest, this is the greatest job on earth. It doesn't matter where you come from, what background, what personality, you can create an amazing life in sales. Today's guest is no stranger to the journey. I'd like to welcome Mr. Joel Friedman. Welcome to the show. Hey, thanks, Truby. It's great to see you. Hey, I appreciate it. I'm excited to have you here. I was looking up your profile online, doing a little research. So I know you've got a great sales story. So let's jump right into it. Yeah, I graduated from college a long time ago, 44 years ago. I'm 66. And I was looking for a job in real estate. And I made a cold call to someone that I was told owned buildings. So I called him and I said, I want to get into real estate. And he said, I'm hiring. And it was in the morning on a Tuesday. I was 22. and I said, how do we do this? He says, well, come to my office right now and we'll interview you. So I went to his office. His name was Milton Podolsky and he was the age that I am now in his 60s. And I sat with him and he said, I own industrial buildings. Those are buildings where people manufacture products and distribute products. They have truck docks. They've got these tall ceilings. Today, when you drive by an Amazon building, that's an industrial building. But he had smaller ones. Those Amazon buildings are gigantic. And Milt had 80 smaller buildings. And he hired me and he mentored me. And he said, this was 1981. We were in a recession. Interest rates were 17%. And 10 of his 80 buildings were vacant. and he said to me, kid, how would you fill up vacant buildings? I said, well, I would go to the industrial park where the building's located and I would go door to door and I would ask the other tenants in the area if they wanted to leave and move into a better building because I have one right down the street for lease. And he said, that's amazing. And I've been doing that for 44 years. I've stopped in and talked to thousands and thousands of business owners in industrial buildings. And I've hit, there's 16,000 industrial buildings in the Chicago area. I've hit them all at least five times in person, in person over 44 years. The math doesn't lie. That's the thing about the sales game that I really love is that the numbers don't lie. And the people who are the most successful in what they do and who have created the most wisdom in the topic have done this thousands and thousands and thousands of times. And so you're young. What made you pick real estate? You know, like, what was it about that that was like, that's the space you wanted to go into? Well, where I grew up in Highland Park, which is a suburb of Chicago, there were two very, very, very wealthy, famous people. They're both in real estate and they made their billions in real estate. And I said, Oh, there you go. Story of every salesperson who's ever gotten into it because they saw someone else going, well, that dude's making a lot of money. How do I do that? And what's interesting, though, is how, Joel, some people look at it and they say, how do I do that? And then they take the route you took. They get out. They knock doors. They make calls. They have conversations. They talk to people and they never give up. And eventually they succeed. Or there's the people who say they want it. And then they knock a couple of doors, make a couple of calls and go, well, this sucks. So 44 years, how do you deal with the rejection and the nose and the constantly being thrown out of places? Because I think that's something a lot of people right now are really struggling. Well, I'm going to tell you two things. I'm going to hijack that question and go backwards and tell you something. Every year, I have hired young people starting when I was 22. I figured out this rejection thing and this cold calling thing is great, but I need to leverage my time. So I started hiring people when I was 22 who were college students to work for me for the summer to make the calls with me. I've done that every summer for all 44 years. Last year, I had 10 summer interns. And what I did is I'd take all 10 of them to an industrial park with me. And I'd assign them on a map because you can get Google Earth. And we would divide up the industrial park. Let's say there's 200 buildings in the town of Wooddale, which is a suburb narrow airport. report, I would say, okay, 200 buildings, 10 interns, 20 buildings each. So we would go out and it would be on a hot day and we'd be sweating our butts off. And all of these interns go door to door to door. Like I taught them how to do it. And then I'd go be with one and then I'd go be with another one And if someone found a lead they call me and they say come over quick there a lead And we go into industrial parks And the reason we do that is we buy industrial buildings now Milt taught me how to buy industrial buildings He owned 80 of them. So over the years, we've bought 107 of them, which is incredible because I look back and I think, how could I have more buildings than Milt? Because he was the guy. And the way that we've done it is literally cold calling every single day and leveraging that effort. Now, as far as getting rejected, I've been rejected maybe 10,000 times. So what? So what? If I went back there a year later, the person that threw me out, I have no resentments against them. They were busy. They didn't want to talk to me. They weren't interested. so I have no resentments I have total forgiveness in my heart I let it go and I walk in a year later and they don't even remember me and then they might say oh come on in this we're looking to do something they don't remember that they threw me out last time but here's the best story I went in and this is so great I went into a building when I was 23 it was I've been in the business for one year. And I said to these two guys, it was a place where they sold business phones. You used to have phone systems as opposed to the cell phone. Oh, you mean the Polycom SP or the IP335, the voiceover guys? Yes, come on. So these guys had a phone store and a warehouse. And I walked in, it was in the town of Allsup, Illinois. And these two guys are behind the counter. And I said to them, just kiddingly, because I had a building a few doors away. How would you guys like to move out of this dump? I've got a building two doors away that's available for lease, and I could give you a really great lease rate, and you can move out of this dump. And they said, you think this is a dump? I said, I'm just kidding. They said, just a minute. So they go behind a wall, and one of them pushes an old man in a wheelchair out to me, and the old man is their dad. and the dad says, I heard you called my building a dump. Well, I own this building and it's not a dump. Boys, pick them up and throw them out. So one son took me under this arm and the other son took me under this arm. I was wearing a suit in those days. They picked me up. They carried me. They literally threw me on the parking lot. I landed on the asphalt on my knee. I'm going to show you my knee. It's never been the same. I ripped my pantsuit and I'm lying there on the asphalt thinking, what the hell just happened? That is rejection. It's also a reminder to ourselves that we have to be careful that even though self-deprecating humor can pass in a lot of situations, we don't know every prospect and not every person reacts the same. So this is one of the things, Joel, this is a great path to go down because I love this conversation about sales and communication, right? Not everyone communicates the same. And so you can't knock 16,000 doors and use the same script every single time and not learn a thing or two about how to read people, how to judge what you're going to say, when you're going to say, how you're going to say. all of these things start to really matter. And this is the part that I think most people never get to that level of expertise because they just don't have the number of reps, Joel. And so early on, this is an experience that you have that you realize like, okay, hold on a second. I've got to be a little more mindful of the process. So as you start having these awarenesses, what do you start doing as a leader, right? Because you said you're hiring interns and you're like, so what are the things that you start putting in place to help pass that wisdom along? Because like when you joined Milt and he started pouring into you, this is the thing that I love about growing and entrepreneurship. And a lot of our listeners will notice this too. You start leading a team. So like what were some of the things that you did early on to really lead the team and share some of that knowledge with them? So the first thing we do is I take them to lunch. When they all start, there's 10 of them. I go to a fancy restaurant where they can have a really nice steak. And we go and we sit in a private room and I do what I call a sales training. And really, it's role playing. So what I do is I pretend that I'm the person they're cold calling and they watch each other and they learn from each other practicing for the first time doing something they've never done before. and they role play with me. And then I break them into groups and they role play with each other. And then we get back together after they role play with each other and we talk about what they learned. Now they go out on the street, let's say the next day with very high expectations and they do have a lot of disappointment. So we have these meetings once a week where we go to the restaurant and we sit in the back and we have a steak. The vegetarian guy never had a steak. But it was really, with the 10 of them this past time, we actually bought buildings that they found. So what I do is these are little buildings They worth let say under 5 million In my world that very small small A million to million in industrial is a tiny building It only a 10 building or a 20 building so one of the interns found an opportunity to buy a building while he was there the seller who he met and who i then went and met and by the way i brought all the interns to the meeting with the seller to watch how you this seller was freaked out like whoa these are the interns it was so incredible to have you know all these interns and the seller was a woman um and she brought in her sister because she was afraid she was very afraid because there were 11 of us so uh they sat there and i showed them how we negotiate to buy a building. They accepted my offer. And then we ended up going out and getting investors. The cost of the building was a million five in this case. And I had to go out and get investors. So we do it in increments of $25,000 to $100,000 per investor. So if I had 10 investors for a million five, it would be 150,000 from each one as an investment. That's called syndication. And they're called limited partners. And I'm the general partner. So I run the thing and then I send them their money by ACH every quarter. So we made the deal and I was able to give a bonus. My deal was, if you find a building that we buy, we'll give you $1,000. And all the other interns also get a smaller thank you bonus just for being part of it. They were not the lucky one that found the deal, but they get something. And so it's pretty awesome. Yeah. Just recently I sent a thousand dollars to Jordan and $250 to all the other guys. It's, this is the power though, uh, being willing to try. That's the other side. I think of sales that I really love and why I say early on in the introduction, like it doesn't matter where you come from. It doesn't matter what your background personality your gender like if you are willing to go out and have conversations with people and try you can find opportunity is it easy no is it fun not always but when you do find those gems and you pull off a deal and you start to see what's truly possible for yourself. The feeling is very, very special. And Joel, I would imagine in your world, as you've continued to develop and grow, you have had some of those deals that have come together that you really were just like, oh my gosh, I never thought this would work. But here we are. We've reached the finish line. We want to celebrate. What are the things that you're going to do to celebrate that deal? Like, is there something that you like to do for yourself? Is it like, tell me more about that. Cause I'm always interested in how people like to appreciate like getting a good deal done. Yeah. This is going to sound really bizarre. I go to the nurse. That's why it's great. Come on. I make a few bucks. I go to the nursery. I buy plants. I load them up in my Yukon XL, which I have so I can bring plants and I just do a lot of gardening. That's my thing. I love planting. So when we bought our house, which we've had for over 30 years, I started by putting 200 plants in per year, all around the yard. We have a pretty big yard. And every year I do hundreds of plants. And over the years, I've watched them grow. We've got these trees that started out as these little saplings. And now they're these gigantic trees all over our yard. It's an incredible way to celebrate for me. It's exercise. It's like meditation and I'm doing something positive and I can watch it grow over the years. And my wife knows if she wants to get me a present, it's a, it's a, like a, let's call it a rose bush, whatever. And my, my in-laws, whenever they would get me presents for my birthday, it was always going to be some tree or something. No, that's how I celebrate. And it seems kind of crazy, but my daughters both live near me. They're both married and have children. And one of the daughters has a house that had, they just bought a house with virtually no landscaping. It looks like what my house looked like when I moved in. Now we have a forest and we have flowers. I asked her, do you mind if I ran out of room at my house, do you mind if I do some planting at your house? So I went out and bought thousands of dollars. When we made this deal that Jordan found, I went out and I bought thousands of dollars worth of plants. I loaded them up in my Yukon. I brought my shovel and I brought my headphones so I could listen to podcasts. I get to listen to you when I do my planting. Come on. In fact, I did listen to you while I did some of my planting, just so you know. And I'm hanging out in their yard, sweating my butt off, thirsty as hell because I forgot to bring water. and I do these plants. And then whenever I go visit my, my kid's house, I drive up and I go, look at this. It was nothing. And now we've got all these bushes and trees and hostas and hydrangeas. It's, that's how I do it. Joel, I really appreciate you sharing that with us. First of all, like what a gift. And also it interesting to me to think about the correlation between planting those saplings and knocking on all those doors and having those conversations and continuing to follow up into nurturing those relationships It's a total metaphor, Drew B. It's exactly, exactly the same thing. So planting the garden is the same thing as prospecting and finding clients and tenants and buildings to buy. It's the same. And by the way, some of my plants die. And, you know, we've got deer in our yard. Some of my plants get eaten by the damn deer. That underwriting. Damn you, underwriting. Curse you. Oh, my goodness. But I really love and appreciate that because, again, that's the thing about sales is that when done correctly, you can create whatever life you want. Maybe you want to plant. Maybe you want to travel. Maybe you want to buy material stuff. It doesn't matter. You can create the life that you want if you will work hard in sales and you will continue to show up through the rejection, dealing with all the things. and one of the things that I know and it is always tricky but when you invest in the right places and the right opportunities it can create a compounding effect and Joel I know we don't have time to go like crazy deep into the entire side of investing and how that works but for the folks who are kind of getting to that point in sales where they're making a little bit of money and they're starting to consider like, what are some things that I should be thinking about in terms of where to safely invest some of these earners? What maybe could you tell them or some, you know, maybe one or two tips that you could share with us here? Because I know there's a lot of people that don't want to lose everything they've worked so hard for. Yeah, the key thing is diversification, not having all your money in one thing. I don't think anyone should have more than 3% of their money, maybe 5% in any one thing or with any one investment group, unless you're with a gigantic Morgan Stanley or somebody like that who does give you the diversification in the portfolio that you're in with them if they're your advisor. So I believe in a stock portfolio for sure, a bond portfolio for sure, some cash in the money market or in treasury bills or somewhere, safe that gives you a little bit of interest, some real estate, and maybe some other alternative investments. And diversification is everything. Because if one deal goes bad and you've got three or 5%, it won't feel good. But it's not the same as if you put, I have a friend who bought a stock and he bought it for about a half a million dollars and he wrote it up to 200 million. And that's all he had. He had nothing else. And the company went bankrupt and he wrote it all the way back down to zero. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So diversification is really, really important. I, I love that advice. I think that's a great reminder. It's very simple. Again, it's not easy for people to actually wrap their head around and to do the easy things for them to throw all their money in the super high risk thing and bet it all on black and try to get rich. But the simplicity of the simple, the math is the math, right? I think we said this early on, or maybe it was right before the episode started, but the math is the math. There's the numbers make sense, then the deal can be done and we can get to it. And at the end of the day, Joel, again, we could probably sit here and nerd out for several hours about this, but I want to respect your time. I know I'm super interested to come and learn more about this. So how do we find you, follow you, check out more of your content and then learn about what you guys do on a deeper level? Sure. we've got a website. It's Brit Properties, B-R-I-T with one T, BritProperties.com. Simplicity. See, that's the thing. I will make sure we get that in the show notes. Joel, this has been an awesome conversation. Thank you for sharing some of those stories. What an honor. And it will be super exciting to see the feedback we get on this one, because I bet there's some other people that love plants just as much as you do. That's great. And by the way, you do a great job. I think you're a really good host. Well, thank you. I received that compliment wholeheartedly. And if you guys are listening and you agree, share this episode on social media. Put it out there. Tag me. Tag Joel. Let the world know you spent a little bit of your most valuable asset here, your time. And you got some value out of it. And then maybe you know somebody who's putting all their eggs in one basket. and they need a reminder to diversify, send them this episode. You don't have to tell them they're crazy or they're making wild, bad choices. You don't have to do that. But you can just send them this episode. Say, hey, I heard a thought of you. I wanted to send it your way. Check it out. And in the end of the day, if you've got a great sales story, I'd love to have you on the show. Head over to callthedamleads.com forward slash podcast. Send us your details. We'll get you on the calendar. while you're there grab a hat grab a shirt keychain wristband some of my books some swag you know what it is go pick up the phone call the damn leads we'll see you guys next time take care when the dog is out but answer that call vision ain't real to your grind at speed so breathing deep call the damn leads
