A Surprising Way to Thrive in Commercial Real Estate

Aviva (00:00)
this week's listener of the week is A. Wood CRE. A. Wood's CRE. Thank you so much for leaving us a five star review.

for those of you listening, if you leave us a five star review below, you might be next week's listener of the week, week. So this week.

Ken Ashley (00:17)
Ha ha ha.

Aviva (00:19)
We've got just a value bomb coming your way. We have Ken Ashley, who is the executive director of Cushman Wakefield in the Atlanta area. I'm very excited for this episode because Ken is not just a top producing broker. He's also an innovator in our industry. So Ken, thank you so much for being on the show.

Ken Ashley (00:44)
Well, it's an honor to be here Aviva and I respect so much what you've accomplished in TikTok and how you've changed our industry in Denver in a lot of ways. So it's good to be here.

Aviva (00:54)
Hey, what an opportunistic industry. You couldn't convince me there's another industry with more opportunity. And that makes it really fun to get up and challenge your ourselves daily and grind towards helping people, helping ourselves and having some fun in the meantime. So Ken, I would like to know how did you get started in commercial real estate? I've heard.

Ken Ashley (01:16)
That's right.

Mm-hmm.

Aviva (01:23)
There's a story and I'm on the edge of my seat.

Ken Ashley (01:28)
Okay, great. Well, you know, we're in a pretty opaque business, but I bumped into a friend who was a tenant rep who took me to breakfast and I've tried to repay that favor many times since because we are in one of the greatest businesses in the world. And, you know, because we control our time. And wouldn't it be boring to know what you're going to make on January 1 every year? So it's an adventure. But I talked to a bunch of different real estate firms in Atlanta with this guy's help.

Aviva (01:50)
Yeah.

Ken Ashley (01:57)
And the only one I wanted to work at, Cushman and Wakefield, offered me a job. It was one of the greatest days of my life, but it would soon be the scariest because I went home that night and I had taken a position. I didn't ever want any debt, so I didn't want to draw. And back then, this was many years ago. The training isn't what it is today. It was a lot of training, basically how to use the voicemail system. But I went home and I talked way too long at dinner as you would when you got a new position in my commission only environment. And then.

When I finished Karen said, I have some news too. And I thought we were going to talk about the social plans for the weekend. And she said, I'm pregnant.

and my heart sank. And so, you know, after I recovered my jaw, you know, we were excited, of course, it was great to have Jonathan, who's now a wonderful young man in the commercial real estate business. But I gave myself nine months to be successful or not. And eight and a half months in, I had not closed a deal. Not a dollar, not anything. I was violating cars on the weekends, till four in the morning, I had all these side jobs.

Karen had a job, so we had a little bit of income, but I knew we couldn't make it on really on one salary. So I almost quit and the manager at the time, God bless him, taught me into staying in the business. And with two weeks to go, a transaction closed, I didn't expect it to close, but it did. And we took some of the commission dollars from that deal and we bought the bed frame, we sleep into this very day. So every morning when I wake up, I'm grateful.

Aviva (03:24)
Wow. You know, can you explain to the listeners what tenant rep is? Because I think it's a very unknown industry with amazing opportunity.

Ken Ashley (03:38)
Sure, so a tenant rep simply means you represent the company, the occupier or the user or all synonyms for the operating company and not the building. And people think in commercial real estate, they think like a house broker and it's not a perfect comparison. But what a tenant rep does is challenging because you have to be, you're going to represent the company with whatever their real estate needs are, their office, their industrial and most companies in America don't want to put capital in real estate.

operating companies, they want to lease it. And so the tenant rep has to be an expert, let's just say for office for a second, where do people live? What does the commute shed look like? Why would they come back to the office? Part psychologist, you have to be part architect to understand the building, part contractor to know how buildings are built, part space planner, part attorney to understand the lease, part negotiator to understand the negotiation. So there's a lot that goes into what a tenant rep does, but probably the hardest part.

is at the end of the day, the only thing we deliver is a lease. The landlord delivers the building. And so that's why it's so hard to build trust, to build respect. It takes someone to have a few gray hairs, perhaps, to be able to build the respect and trust of prospects.

Aviva (04:55)
But tenant rep is an unbelievable way to start in the business. If you're starting in commercial real estate, it's like you said, you're not getting a check. Nine times out of 10, you're not getting a check the first month, the second month. You better have a second job. Like I did the same thing, I was a waitress at night. And get comfortable with that delayed gratification because if you can stomach it.

Ken Ashley (05:10)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Aviva (05:23)
um, it'll pay dividends in the long run.

Ken Ashley (05:26)
Mm-hmm. It will, and I would just say Aviva, that there are a lot of great things about this business when you get going, but one of them is the ability to control your time. My only boss is my clients, and when they call, I run. But other than that, I don't have to ask permission ever to go on vacation or to take Friday afternoon off. I'm looking myself in the mirror. Now I will say also, you wake up every morning unemployed. And so it is, you gotta have the fire in your belly.

and you gotta keep pushing and keep pushing. If you are not self-motivated, this is not the profession for you.

Aviva (06:03)
You know, it's so funny what you said about not knowing what you're going to make on January 1st. My brother-in-law said to me, he said, how do you, I couldn't live waking up January 1st with a zero balance. And, you know, we obviously just come from different schools of thought. I wouldn't have it any other way because there's nothing more humbling than unlimited opportunity. And so.

But speaking of unlimited opportunity, Ken, you're a pioneer in social media, in commercial real estate, and we would love to hear your story, when it started, how it started, and the journey you've taken since then.

Ken Ashley (06:36)
Yes.

Sure, so it was 2009, I was mid-career, and what happens to really everyone, no matter what profession you're in, is you grow your lifestyle. You know, you got the house, you got the cars, you got the kids, you got the school. So there's a certain level of income that you need, and you get past the ability to be a waitress or a valet to fund your lifestyle, so you have to be successful. Well, in 2009, the music stopped, and I will...

be very transparent. You know, I'd allowed some debt to build up and it was a terrible time. It was really rough. But I made three decisions that changed everything financially in my life. And the first was I started to change the way we conduct the tenant rep business from a one-off. We still do one-off deals in Atlanta. They're great, they're fun. They don't have to get on a Delta jet. They're profitable.

We love that business, but I augmented the business with the accounts business. And so what that means is MidCap and even some Fortune 500 companies, I now have about three handfuls of them and transaction managers on each one. It's less profitable because I pay a field broker to do a deal, but I now actually wake up on January 1, knowing that we're going to have a lot of transactions happening that year, but it took me years to build that business and in a very intense focus on chasing portfolios. Number one.

Aviva (08:10)
Well.

Ken Ashley (08:13)
Number two, we worked very hard, Karen and I, to pay off all our personal debt. We were successful. It's great to sleep in that bed at night and know that I don't know anybody, anything on a personal level. And then number three, social media. And so I started looking around and thinking, and I realized that there are two things that you have to do to be successful in business development. The first is sales, and sales quite simply is speaking and listening with the intent to convince. And if you're a broker and you can't do that, maybe you wanna find a different profession.

But the second is a lot harder and it's called marketing. I have a degree in marketing and marketing quite simply is what they think about you before you walk in the room. And the synonym for that is your brand or your influence on whatever your market shed is. And I was looking for ways to do it differently because I've never really liked golf. You know, I mean, I have probably any friends here in Atlanta, but I wanted to be able to appeal to people and have them know who I was before I walked into the pitch. So I started.

look messing around with this thing called Twitter. And on Twitter, the most prolific user in commercial real estate at the time is a guy named Coy Davidson. And he's a callers in Houston. I hope he sees this podcast. But Coy gave me what I call the most generous 30 minutes of my entire life. He took a call from an erstwhile competitor. He told me about his strategy, told me about how he did it. And I became a believer. And now since, I guess, April of 2009, I've been on Twitter. And

Aviva (09:13)
Hmph.

Ken Ashley (09:43)
I've tweeted over 20,000 times, among other social media platforms. But I can report to you, it works. I have real life stories of using the most powerful tools in human history, called social media. And there's a lot of stuff about influencers in the pejorative selling clothes or whatever, that isn't what we're talking about. We're selling professional services to executives, and they're paying attention.

Aviva (10:05)
Hahaha

You know, in commercial real estate, the use of social media is widely taboo. To this day, right, you discovered this in 2009 and Koi was already utilizing it. Why do you think it is?

Ken Ashley (10:32)
Well, I think it's what you talk about sometimes. There is a graying of commercial real estate that's happening. And there are people, listen, God bless people that make a living by developing relationships at the golf club. There's nothing wrong with it. Or whatever you do, taking people and entertaining them, if you do it the old fashioned way. But I think there's a big base of people, Aviva, in commercial real estate who are making a really good living doing what they've always done, so they just continue.

And there is also the perspective or the perception, I guess, you know, that we don't want to be showboats. Listen, it isn't about that. We're trying to sell work here and develop a brand and develop a reputation. And so people can think whatever they want. All I know is this stuff works.

Aviva (11:21)
So your conversation with Koi in 2009 brought you to founding CREI, the summit where like-minded brokers all come together and literally share our trade secrets and CREI Plus which you just launched last night. Can you tell us a bit about CREI?

Ken Ashley (11:27)
Hehe.

Mm-hmm.

Aviva (11:51)
the story with how you got there, what it is, and what we can anticipate at the summit this year.

Ken Ashley (11:54)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I love it. Appreciate the question. So I didn't mean to. You know, what happened was in March of 2020, COVID was breaking and I was, I would never forget, I was sitting on my back deck listening to the birds and wondering what in the world was going on with COVID and you know, all those fears that we had at the time, it was a very scary time. And I was making my buddy calls. Hey buddy, how you doing? Just calling people and there wasn't a direct business purpose. I was legitimately concerned about my friends and I called up Duke Long.

He's been a good friend for a long time and Duke had published a list of people he said you should follow on Twitter for about 10 years. And I always respected Duke and his list. And, um, you know, uh, in our conversation, he said, he just told me he was tired of doing the list. I said, well, I guess I don't need your permission, but what if I did it? And he said, sure. It'd be fine with me. And so just like that, the, uh, the baton was passed. And, um, yeah, so I had no idea what it was getting myself into. We worked.

really hard to generate the first list because we had Duke's list, but nobody had compiled a list of influential people other than that. And so I looked all over the internet, I spent a lot of hours on it. And as we were about to hit publish on the first list, my graphic artist said, hey man, what if we do a badge if you're on the list? And we can just say congratulations and they can push it in their social media. So I've gone on 99 designs and I spent 200 bucks to have that blue.

logo design and he put the bat put it on the badge and all of a sudden it started appearing worldwide that little logo and I'm just a guy I have no authority I just started making lists and then in November of that year one night on CRE chat which is a thing two ladies do on twitter they're great folks uh koi tweeted one night uh that night he said hey we ought to get together and he later said he meant to drink beer but uh

Aviva (13:58)
Ha ha

Ken Ashley (13:59)
But I heard it differently on Twitter. And so I rang up an event planner who was out of work, who is now a great part of our team, Jamie. And one thing led to another. And Natalie Wainwright suggested Lake Tahoe for the first one. I'd never been. I thought it sounded cool. I flew out there on my own dime and signed a contract with the Ritz-Carlton. Put up a lot of money. I mean, I think about it now. It's just crazy risk to put on the first meeting. But we came together.

You were there, we had a ball, so.

Aviva (14:30)
You know, I am newer to the world of commercial real estate conferences. You know, you go to your continuing education locally. It's the same faces. That's not always the most exciting interactions, but I have the time of my life at CREI. If I weren't having a baby a month before CREI this year, I would be there because I'll be honest, I struggle.

Ken Ashley (14:54)
Yeah.

Aviva (14:58)
with my local brokerage community. I just don't, I don't have the same values. I, you know, I'm looked at as that taboo extra character because of the social media thing. And then I jump in with the CREI community and these are like-minded brokers who also see the value in social media.

Ken Ashley (15:11)
Mm-hmm.

Aviva (15:24)
in our jobs as brokers in commercial real estate. And it's just like, these are my people I've been looking for my whole life. And it's like, yes, there's the value add element of learning in the, you know, anything from a keynote speaker, which they were all excellent last year to the breakout sessions. But then it's also the social hours. And...

Ken Ashley (15:28)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Aviva (15:55)
I just had the time of my life every minute of it. And so I commend you because it's a culture that I didn't think existed. I was sad because I love this industry. I'm passionate about it. And I'm passionate about social media and marketing. And CREI was, finding CREI was like literally opening up a portal of my people. And so...

Ken Ashley (16:04)
Hmm.

Hmm.

Aviva (16:24)
Thank you for seeing that and creating that because and taking the risk to get us there because it's like you said, I'm sure it was a huge risk to put on the first summit but I'm sure, out of curiosity, have you gotten business from CREI? Okay.

Ken Ashley (16:29)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yes. Yeah. And, and you know, there, there were, listen, uh, people asked me, I mean, are you in the conference business or the Tenerife business? Yes. You know, um, I, this is a passion project. I've been doing commercial real estate a long time. I've got something to say and a group of people to pull together and a dead comment. I'm going to do it. And, uh, it has been so meaningful to me. The purpose of this for me is not personally to, to make money or

Aviva (16:54)
Yeah

Ken Ashley (17:12)
anything. It's just to build relationships, to build legacy, and I just, I love convening people. And the really cool thing, and I appreciate your comments so much about the conference is except for me, it's young and diverse and there are, Iron Sharpen's iron and there is nowhere else you can go to learn the skill that is ever changing with new tools. And you think about that, and we're starting to talk to colleges and universities.

Aviva (17:26)
Oh, please.

Ken Ashley (17:42)
They're reaching out, which is awesome. We'll have more announcements coming soon. But if you went to college, with all due respect to our friends who are professors, they're not out there hitting their head against the wall trying to get business every day. To our friends who are in the marketing community, they're wonderful. A lot of them are big supporters of this community, so I'm thankful, but they're not out there hitting their heads every day. So to be able to talk to people who make their living by being able to do...

good marketing in social media, some of the leading minds in America all in one place, that's pretty cool.

Aviva (18:16)
And the cool thing is that everybody is really open to just sharing their secrets. There's, you know, in an industry that was so gate-kept, it's the exact opposite. And I think an element of it is like, Gabe Marins can tell me his LinkedIn strategy because he does office in New York City and I do warehousing in Denver, you know, and I'll share with him my strategy right back and we can just benefit each other.

Ken Ashley (18:37)
Yeah. Right.

Aviva (18:45)
But just the overall willingness to spill the secrets. It's like, duh, of course, of course, we should act this way. Of course, we shouldn't gatekeep. But in the commercial real estate industry, that hasn't always been the case.

Ken Ashley (18:48)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, you're so right. I mean, I call it walking down the corn rows. You know, we're all walking down the rows, but we don't ever look at each other. You know, there's this, you know, we try to keep everything secret. Well, listen, let me tell you something. First of all, an abundance mentality is a cheat code to a happy life. The second thing is, and Bob Knakal says this, he tells a lot of his strategy all the time. I do as well. I will be doing in my own market in Atlanta this year, but you know what? 95% of the people aren't going to implement it.

And then the last thing is the competitive issue is not the idea, it's the execution of the idea. So I get far more by being open and sharing my strategies and my approaches in return than by keeping everything secret. The exception of course, I never talk about clients, I never talk really about deals.

Aviva (19:54)
sure.

Ken Ashley (19:56)
you know, obviously you have to protect your professional reputation like any attorney or any consultant, etc. But in terms of the methods of our business, I'm an open book.

Aviva (20:08)
I think that's a really important thing to note. Yes, we can spill all of our secrets, but confidentiality for our clients is key. I thought it was particularly special this year at CREI with Bob Knakal in general, just sharing his wisdom, but also, you know, Bob is one of the top producing brokers probably in the world, probably of all time. And...

Ken Ashley (20:15)
Yeah, that's right.

Aviva (20:36)
Bob was just as engaged. He was in the front row taking notes. He was at the happy hours shooting it. It was so funny because you have somebody who's so respected in the industry and there was just no ego. It was just nothing but participation and value and excitement to be there. And in an industry where there's a lot of ego, that was...

Ken Ashley (20:42)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Hehe.

Hehe.

Aviva (21:06)
It was very humbling to be like, wow, we are walking with the greats of this industry, and they are walking next to us. And there's a lot of amazing people out there. So

Ken Ashley (21:12)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, and I'll say, you know, Bob's become a dear friend and, you know, someone I really respect and to watch what he accomplished and not really starting all that long ago. I think it's proof to people who are kind of, let me call it in my age bracket, that it's not too late to start. And if you want to come join our merry band and learn more about it.

Aviva (21:38)
Sure.

Ken Ashley (21:45)
You can have a major impact on your career, and goodness gracious, if you're there to impact your team, that would be great. I was talking to the managing principal of a large brokerage in another state earlier today, and he said, maybe I'll send my team to the conference. I said, well listen, someone can play the violin, but you need to be the conductor of the orchestra, and you need to know what the music is, so you gotta come. You can't delegate this stuff. So.

Aviva (22:14)
funny. You're like, you're not getting out of this. That's cute. So, um, and, uh, I'm after our podcast, I'm hopping on a podcast with the gentleman I met, uh, at CREI. So it's, yeah, it's just, I had no idea going into it, how much I would get out of it. So, uh, we'll see you.

Ken Ashley (22:16)
Nope.

Terrific.

Awesome.

Aviva (22:41)
Like I said, if I wasn't having a baby a month before it this year, I would be there. But...

Ken Ashley (22:45)
Well, here's the good news. As you said at the top, we launched CREI Plus. And so I hope you Aviva will join the community and I can help you with that by the way. And we can get folks involved because we wanna take the excitement of the summit and continue it all year long. And I think it will be a meaningful experience and it will be the first time our industry, commercial real estate has convened.

Aviva (22:56)
Okay, count me in.

Ken Ashley (23:14)
in an online community. We built it on the Mighty Networks chassis, which is terrific. And we control it. There's a platform that you're on that they're talking about taking down. Not ours.

Aviva (23:20)
Wow.

Hey, it's not about the wand, it's about the wizard and we will persevere no matter what platforms stay and what platforms leave us. And I will join CREI plus, so I'll see you in there. So you are writing a book right now and you have some secrets to share.

Ken Ashley (23:33)
There you go.

I hear you. I hear you.

Thank you. Awesome.

Aviva (23:58)
I love secrets, that's my favorite thing to talk about. Will you tell us a bit about the real estate prescription and everything it entails?

Ken Ashley (24:00)
Yeah, it's, yeah, sure.

Yep. Well, I'm forever grateful to Brad Smith, who was the first guy who told me about Tenant Rep. He's still around Atlanta today. He's very successful. An amazing man.

and I'll be repaying that just like the conversation with Koi. And so over the years I've taken a lot of meetings with young people, you have as well, we all do it. But what I found myself doing is explaining the industry in a certain way, which I'm going to now document, but more importantly giving them a customized real estate prescription. I would write their name at the top, the date, and list six or eight things that they needed to do and sign it and say, call me in 90 days. Well, what I found...

unfortunately is a lot of people don't follow through and therefore they're not candidates for our business. The few that have, I'm meeting with one here and just as soon as we finish are at the exception. But a friend of mine said, you know, actually if you just wrote all this stuff down, maybe fewer people would want to meet with you. I'm like, that'd be cool. So what I'm writing down is the narrative of how to get into...

Aviva (25:05)
Ah!

Ken Ashley (25:14)
brokerage. This is not a book about all of commercial real estate, but if you want to get into brokerage, and of course I see it through the lens of a tenant rep. And so how to determine what the firms are in your community, and then here's one of the secrets. I ask people to create something called the meet sheet. And the meet sheet is real simple. It's actually something I want them to fill out in a spreadsheet and bring it with them to the meetings. What the meet sheet is, is everybody you've met, the date you met them,

two or three sentences about what you learned from that meeting, and then follow up. And it's a CRM, but it's a flat file. And the reason you bring it to the meeting is if you've met with 10 rock stars in Denver, and then you're meeting with Aviva, you're like, oh, wow, you met with this guy, this guy, this guy, it gives you credibility, and it also helps you remember why you met with folks. The second strategy is, it happens all the time, young people will come in.

And I warned them of this, that you and I are busy. We got a lot going on. We got a lot of demands on our time. A lot of people want us and need us. And so they come in and we'll have a 30 or 40 minute conversation and they think I will remember them for all time.

Well, we know because we're in sales that you have to follow up. What I tell them is when you go hunting, you're going to be out there a while. If you just go into the field and discharge some ammunition, that's not hunting. You can't go to one meeting. So there's a follow up strategy and it's real simple, but it worked for me and that is this, through social media or in a conversation, I am really listening hard, tactical listening we call it, to understand what they're interested in.

Aviva (26:40)
Eh?

Ken Ashley (26:57)
and I'm going to develop some questions. So let's say they're interested in tractors or sporting clays or sailing or aviation, whatever it is. I'm going to happen to find an article in 14 days. I'm going to send the thank you letter. In 14 days, I'm going to send a note that says, hey Aviva, I remember our conversation about your passion for aircraft. I saw this article and thought of you. And then you're going to do that three more times. And then you're going to follow up and ask what do men...

and probably women in their 50s like to do, give advice. So you're gonna say, hey, my meat sheet is filled up, can I get 15 minutes on your calendar because I'm really trying to, fill in the blank, solve a problem, develop my business plan. The other thing we're gonna talk about in the book is how to develop a tenant rep business plan. And here's a earth shattering revelation, it doesn't have to be original. When you play football, you block and tackle.

When you play football, they all use the same plays, it's about the execution. So I've seen people spend hours and hours trying to think of a whole new way to rationalize and listen, this industry is about hustle. Hustle is the strategy. And it's about focus after that.

Aviva (28:14)
I love what you say about not reinventing the wheel because I have spent a lot of time reinventing the wheel. And then when I switched that mindset and realized, uh, it's a lot easier to just do what's tried and true and what works, then you can actually execute, uh, on the strategy. And here's, I, I'm just going to say it. The biggest commission checks I've ever made were in tenant rep.

I think people think it's all about the listings and it's all about the sales, but tenant rep is magical. In a year like 2023, when interest rates had sales toppling, you know, our multifamily friends were hurting, we were partying in big warehouses, smiling because of tenant rep. So, when do you think...

Ken Ashley (28:51)
Yep.

Mm-hmm. Heh heh. Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Aviva (29:11)
real estate prescription will come out.

Ken Ashley (29:15)
Yeah, I'm working hard on it. It's a real challenge and focus for me, but I'm hoping the fall of this year.

Aviva (29:25)
You're busy. What's your hacks for time keeping your time and management?

Ken Ashley (29:32)
Yeah. Well, I'm what I call a plate spinner. And so I come back every week. I have a lot of 15 minute meetings with a lot of people on projects that we're working on. I take good notes, an Evernote and I have another secret. I create email drafts and I learned this from a CEO of a public traded company. So

After we have a meeting and there's some specific to-dos, I'll come back or dictate and then I create a draft. And then I go back through my drafts and then when it's time, if someone said they were gonna do something in 30 days, I've got very clear recollection because I wrote it all down and I'll send them an email and say, hey, we met 30 days ago, even though I wrote it right after the meeting, and say, how's it going? And people are surprised at my recall, but now you know my secret.

Aviva (30:26)
I love it. It's impressive to say the least. So we have one last question for you. And it's a question that I ask everybody on commercial real estate secrets. What is currently making you happy about commercial real estate?

Ken Ashley (30:31)
Thank you.

Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, what makes me happy is this misconception that office is dead.

I won't call out specific journalists, but there are some clickbaity journalists who are writing articles about how the world is ending. Just this morning, our friends at NCR announced all back to the office. Carol Tomei at UPS, all back to the office. Delta Airlines, all back to the office. So what makes me happy is that there's this misconception and unfortunately for the companies, they're taking too little space. They're making mistakes. And in 2025 and 2026, tinder reps are going to make a lot of money correcting those mistakes

Aviva (31:09)
Well.

Ken Ashley (31:25)
space. What makes me happy is that knowledge work is going to continue, it's going to grow, AI is a big source of the jobs, but the jobs will come back and you know the buddy slippers crowd won't get promoted as much as people who actually show up at the office. So it's a there's a lot of opportunity for office tenant reps and goodness gracious for industrial.

I asked you in our pre-call, can I borrow some money from you Aviva?

Aviva (31:57)
Hey, it's like you said, you look at the media and it's like, are we living in the same universe? Because that's the reality is office isn't dead. Commercial real estate isn't dead. I always say, don't pull out your tissue box for your local landlord. We're gonna be okay. So, okay.

Ken Ashley (32:17)
Yeah.

Well, you know, I do want to acknowledge that we both have a lot of friends who are investors who are suffering a tough time. And I don't mean to be glib about the office market. I mean, there are some real people having difficult times and it's going to take a year or so for this to work itself out, maybe 18 months.

But, and so I don't dismiss the pain that people are feeling. I'm sorry about that, but it will work out. And I would say this, and I've seen it over and over again, for people who have had financial failure and difficulty, many times the best chapter of their life starts right after that.

Aviva (32:57)
Absolutely. Hey, look at what you were able to do after the pandemic, right? Probably some of the hardest times, we weren't getting inbound phone calls. And so much more has come. I'm sure your phone is ringing much more now, because of the steps and actions you put into place during the pandemic. And so only opportunity to come.

Ken Ashley (33:02)
Yep.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

Yeah, well listen, what you have accomplished is so impressive with your podcast, with your reach through social media. I love the way you think differently about the delivery of services and how you market your company. So hats off to you and congratulations and much success to you.

Aviva (33:41)
We got a lot more work to do, Ken, and many, many years to come and to do it, and I look forward to doing it by your side. For the viewers, where can they follow you? Where can they follow C-R-E-I and get connected?

Ken Ashley (33:51)
Indeed.

Mm-hmm.

at Ken Ashley and on Twitter Ken Ashley Atlanta on LinkedIn. Hello, David Murphy and then CREISummit.com is where you can find the latest of what we're up to and all the associated handles and hello to my friend at CBRE Yeah, we

Aviva (34:17)
I'm sorry.

Hey David, this is funny. This is what happens when you use the same link for every podcast. For all the listeners, thank you for listening and we'll see you next week with Mr. David Murphy on Commercial Real Estate Secrets. Thank you, Ken.

Ken Ashley (34:27)
Hahaha!

Well, I was going to say, I can go now.