Practical Tips for Real Estate Agents Looking to Boost Their Visibility

Aviva (00:00)
This week's listener of the week is MB Virtue. MB, thank you so much for leaving us a five star review. And 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. I am very excited for this week's episode of Commercial Real Estate Secrets. We have Joe Killinger of Commercial, of course I butchered it. Joe, what's your brokerage?

joe killinger (00:30)
Commercial Brokers International.

Aviva (00:32)
Commercial Brokers International. And something I love about Joe is I get inundated with four million questions a day about being a commercial real estate broker with an online presence. And Joe could write the book. So I'm excited selfishly to learn from Joe in this untapped, undiscovered world we live in. Joe is a full service broker out of Los Angeles.

And thank you for being on the show today.

joe killinger (01:05)
I'll thank you for having me, Aviva.

Aviva (01:07)
So Joe, let's do me a favor and tell the audience who you are, what you do, and what brought you here today.

joe killinger (01:17)
So I'm a partner in Commercial Brokers International. We also have ICON Capital, it's a mortgage brokerage company, we're a partner in that. And we have CRE affiliate networks. We have an affiliate group of independent commercial real estate brokers around the globe, well, around the globe too I guess. We have about five international clients, but 26 members altogether. And again, they're all full service independent brokers that work together around the country. And

Commercial Brokers International I have with my business partner George Pino. Aviva, I think you've met George at the CREI Summit meetings and you've actually met some of our agents as well. And we've got an incredible group that they work very well. Our company culture is our pride and joy.

Aviva (02:06)
I don't say this for any other reason, but to just be honest, if I could choose any brokerage in the country to join.

If I could dismiss my ego and not have my own brokerage, I would want to be a part of your brokerage because George is awesome, Ari's awesome, your whole brokerage, like you said, the culture, it's just, I've never even stepped foot in your office, but it seeps out from meeting you guys and seeing your content and everybody's super cool. So, WE HAVE FUN

joe killinger (02:21)
Thank you.

We have fun. We have a lot of fun. And you know, the business is, as you know, Aviva, the business is hard, right? And you know, if you, you've got to surround yourself with people that make it, you know, you're going to get kicked in the teeth every day. So you want somebody that's going to be like, you know, Joe, let's move up, let's move beyond that. Let's go do something fun. And you know, let's, let's create some more business together. And so that's, that's important for us. Cause like, it's just.

I love the business, but I just love having a very supportive team.

Aviva (03:10)
It's funny you say that you have to get kicked in the teeth every day I say you got I get kicked in the mouth for breakfast and

joe killinger (03:17)
Yeah.

Aviva (03:18)
And I noticed there was a point in my career where at the beginning when I was doing deals, and a big one was coming to a close or something that was big for me at the beginning, I would like wake up at night and be up all night thinking about like, and you know, I've been in the business now for eight years. Now, thankfully, I've been able to separate myself from those nights where I sit up and worry about things I have no control

roll over. So it's it's.

joe killinger (03:51)
Yeah, it's the curse of being an entrepreneur. I mean, if you're a true entrepreneur, that's what we deal with.

Aviva (04:00)
Hey, but you gotta love getting kicked in the teeth for breakfast or else this business is not for you.

joe killinger (04:05)
Oh yeah.

Yeah, yeah, it really is. But the thing is, is it really is you get out of this business what you put into it. And if you're going to show up at the office at 10 and leave at three and, you know, put a piece of content out, make 10 or 15 calls, then you're probably not going to make any money in commercial real estate. But, you know, you've got to, you've got to take that first 18 to 24 months in the business and you've got to build a business. You've got to show up at

830 in the morning, do your 80 to 100 phone calls a day, get your content out, and never, ever stop learning. You know, that's the thing, is you don't stop learning.

Aviva (04:46)
And I want to get into your.

journey with social media and just your online presence. You know, I feel, you know, something you just said was, you have to be willing to learn. Something I feel that has been my advantage and all the really social media front-facing brokers advantage is that so many people in our business refuse to learn or want to really just step into 2024.

and the realities of brokerage in the 21st century. And I empathize because it's just done nothing but build our book of business. So, you know, my question for you, and I'm sure you've seen that firsthand as well, when did you start in the business and when did you realize social media was going to be a thing that would impact it?

joe killinger (05:28)
Yeah.

Well, I started in the mid 90s, but I was doing auctions, real estate auctions. And that is, if you know the way auction work, it's all marketing based. And you know, you've got to, you take a property and you put it out on the market for everybody to see it and get everybody to show up. And, you know, we would take listings from, and these were residential, this is for the RTC, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae.

We were doing those back then and agents, residential agents would have these homes or small apartment buildings listed, couldn't get them sold. We'd take them to auction and we would get a higher price and those guys had it listed for before. And so, and the way that was done was through our mass marketing. You know, we'd run back then, there was no internet really. So we, it was, you know, full page LA, it was in LA, it's in around Los Angeles, LA based. And so full page in LA Times, which was

crazy expensive. We had email lists that we created. We had an 800 line that people could call into. I mean, but I saw the power of marketing then. And then so when the internet started going and these websites started popping up and it was free marketing, I'm like, it's free? So wait a second. So how do I make this work for me and for our company?

And so I was right off the bat. So we hired, and I just did a video with George not even 10 minutes ago about how we got started with Commercial Brokers International. He'll be out on the YouTube channel. But when we started, we were first off, brought in a young guy out of USC that had his master's in how to really set all this, he had a master's in marketing. And applied, I don't remember what his exact degree was in, applied something to marketing.

But he studied the colors, he studied the design, he studied all that 18, 19 years ago. And so we started back then working on our SEO. And so it was really something. And then all of a sudden the site started hitting, you know, the Facebooks and you know, all that. And they're like, wow, this is gonna be, I can't believe it's free from what we used to have to pay. And so we just, we really embraced it.

And you can go on and look, if you look under commercial brokers international or you Google a commercial broker in Los Angeles, we're in the top few brokers. And we don't do any paid advertising. It's all from content creation and understanding how SEO works. And so it's just marketing that is, we're consistent. Consistency is the key. We put something out every day. We take a look at our analytics almost every day.

what's working, what doesn't. We try new things. We fail a lot. Things that I think are like, oh, that's gonna just really kill it. And you look at the analytics the next day, you're like, huh, really? Just because it'll really humanize you because if you think you've really got this down, you probably don't. There's gonna be something that, we as humans are funny people, what we like and it changes. So, and you're probably hearing that

Aviva (08:55)
Yeah.

joe killinger (09:06)
TikTok might be going away and people spend a lot of time and money into growing that business and now that's going to be gone. You know, it's something you have to stay on top of.

Aviva (09:18)
So for the listeners, what is the impact of having your brokerage be one of the top ranking organic Google results in Los Angeles? What does your inbound look like from that?

joe killinger (09:35)
We now, we do, so we work on our SEO. We do our SEO every three to four months. And I just put a post up this morning on all the platforms about here's two things you can do to bring in more leads. If you haven't done your SEO in the last three to four months, it's time and keep consistently redoing every three to four months. And then build a funnel. Bring people into your website. You gotta build that funnel and let people come into your business. And we generate about three to four leads per week.

of which about two to three of those actually translate to revenue per month. And so on a good month. And so we get a lot of people that like, Hey, I want this freaking pickleball thing. If I get one more pickleball person called me and say, Hey, I want to start a pickleball company. I'm like, okay. So our agents know how I mean, when cannabis happened, I'm sure it happened to you in Colorado.

the phones just started ringing off. It was all day every day. So you have to really understand how to vet people out. But yeah, the can of the pickleball now is like, hey, I want to open my pickle. Okay, walk me through your business plan. Walk me through your financing. Walk me through. And you know, but now we have a couple of them that are solid, but these companies are impressive. They can tell you, you know, I'm going to keep the court leased out for this amount of time. It's going to generate this much revenue every day.

and you know they've got merch that they're gonna do, they've got concessions they're gonna do, they've got it all figured out, they've got their financing in place, it's hard as hell to find them a location. You know.

Aviva (11:14)
I know, big footprints and hard to place, but.

joe killinger (11:16)
Yeah.

Yeah, it's hard. I just saw one in Austin that's on the roof of a parking garage. That was brilliant. Yes. And they have their own little have concessions up there. It's brilliant what they did. Whoever thought that was. Yeah.

Aviva (11:26)
Wow.

You know, I think something people don't realize when we talk about leads and you say, okay, two to four a week or maybe two will materialize. I don't think people understand that those can be very significant leads. The cool thing about our business is that we sell arguably one of the most high ticket items you can sell, which is commercial real estate. And so.

joe killinger (11:42)
Mm-hmm.

Aviva (12:02)
Sometimes you only need a couple, sometimes two, four leads is too much. I mean, I know you have a number of brokers who work under you, but the numbers might not make your head spin, but we're not selling baseball caps. We're selling buildings, and those numbers will make your head spin. So it's impressive.

joe killinger (12:09)
Yeah, we feed them out to the agents, yeah.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah, and you got to remember, they might not, if a lead comes in now, we've got a lot of, we nurture, we've nurtured one for two years and they're just now getting going. But they call and they go, oh, I want to start this business. We walked them through it. They're like, oh, you're not anywhere near ready. And so you got to get your business plan put together. You know, you're going to have to show this, since this is your first location, you're going to have to show this to a landlord. You're going to have to get approved. We got to work on your financing. We're going to season a lot of this.

And they're so thankful now that we took the time to work with them all these years. It's not been a lot of time. It's maybe been once every couple months for 15, 20 minutes, just an update call. Where are you guys at now? And so they've got everything and they're ready to go. At one point they're going to throw in the towel and we're like, okay, well, just let us know what you decide to do. That was a pivotal moment for them. Like you're not going to, you didn't try to hard sell us. So, you know, it's, you gotta be.

Aviva (13:07)
Hm. Wow.

joe killinger (13:20)
You gotta remember that the people that are reaching out to you, sometimes they have a dream, but they just don't know how to get from A to Z. And you can help them do that.

Aviva (13:30)
I got a call on a, we run Google Ads and we crush it with Google Ads. Got a call and it was seemingly an unimpressive deal altogether.

joe killinger (13:33)
Yeah. Yep.

Mm-hmm.

Aviva (13:42)
half an hour away, which I know in LA is like nothing. But it was like a lease deal, whatever. We just went under contract for three point five million. So I've learned with my online leads, never judge, pursue everything and.

joe killinger (13:46)
Yeah, that's two blocks.

Yeah, yeah, and educate them. You know, there's a good number of them. You know, they're smaller retail. So we get a lot of smaller retail people that'll reach out and they have this idea. They wanna be a coffee shop. They wanna have, you know, their own line. And I put them on to Marcus Limonis. He used to have a TV show on, it's on YouTube now. You can go see it. And it was called The Profit. He breaks down how to set up a retail store and how to operate a retail business.

I said, you gotta go watch that. I can't give you an education. You couldn't have gone to college and got the education he gives you on that show. Just go watch a bunch of those shows. It'll give you a really great understanding how to even set up your store. Because after watching his shows, I walk into stores, and I go, yeah, this is all wrong. Yeah.

Aviva (14:46)
Wow. Well, you have, you know, you brought up education, you brought up YouTube. You are the commercial real estate YouTube guy.

joe killinger (14:57)
Well, I don't know about that. I mean, my thing is, is I want to be an educator when getting into coming out of high school, going into college. Fortunately, I grew up on a farm in Nebraska, so I didn't get very far, ran out of money and couldn't finish college. So this is kind of my way of doing my education thing. I love it. I love teaching. I love helping people get their businesses started. And so I look for ways that we can really enhance that experience. And when...

We started ours, I look back, we did everything so wrong. I mean, everything. And it's so much easier now, and I'm happy to give that. If you go on my website, joekillinger.co, there's contracts there, there's books there you should be reading, there's tools and tips, and yeah, there's everything there that I think is really gonna help.

And I also spend time on the phone. A couple days a week, I'll sit like an hour aside just to sit down and talk to people about growing their brokerage business.

Aviva (16:01)
Wow. So when did you start your YouTube journey?

joe killinger (16:05)
Oh, if you go watch those early videos, it's... So we had another company that we had, we ended up selling it off years ago. And it was just to help, it was on tenant screening. And so it was a great concept, so much so that one of our bigger competitors in tenant screening decided to approach all of our clients and give them one year free of tenant screening.

And so fortunately, we had some of that, that pretty much shut us down. So we ended up selling a good portion of that company off. But we started advertising on video then. But I saw the response to video, and they're terrible videos. But I mean, I look back and I'm like, good God, how did I even think this was gonna work? But it did. And people reached out, I ended up starting getting business out of it. And I really think that now video is where we're going.

more and more. I think you're going to get away from just creating content and putting it out. You have to start creating video content. That's where it's going.

Aviva (17:12)
And why do you feel that way?

joe killinger (17:15)
Everybody I've talked to that's in the industry, their analytics are leading them that way. That's what everybody, that's where the big pop is coming from. More video. You know, that's why I really hate to see TikTok, uh, you know, if it ends up going away. I mean, I would like to think somebody's going to step in and buy them up or it doesn't get passed, but video content is if you look at your analytics, which, you know, everybody that's doing content, if you're not looking at your analytics regularly, you need to be doing that.

Aviva (17:23)
Wow.

joe killinger (17:44)
And so, but yeah, it's really where it's going. And with AI, the stuff that they can go in and create your thumbnails for you now, and the subject lines, and you know, I can't believe the number of people that I talk to that are creating content, and they don't put their headlines in a headline writer. I'm like, what do you mean? You don't know what a headline writer is? Who does your headlines? Well, we do, I'm like, okay, and what is it if you put it in a headline writer, go see what it is, it came in at like, out of 100, it came in at like 15.

I'm like, okay, now go put something that's gonna rate, you know, in the 70s, you know, at least. And they saw a uptick in there. And so people, and it comes down to education. They should have known it was like, what can I do? If you just Google, what can I do to make my video content? Thumbnail is gonna be number one, headline is gonna be another.

Aviva (18:31)
Right.

You know, it's so funny. I always say that I'm a marketer with a commercial real estate habit. Like I, what, what I have found is I'm marketer one commercial real estate professional too, and I find an overwhelming trend in our industry that. You know, people are marketer. They're far.

joe killinger (18:41)
Yeah.

Every business, every business first and foremost is a marketing company first. Because if you have the best product or you have the best service and nobody knows about you, you don't have a business. You know, so you've got to be a marketing company first. And then, and I'm talking about, it could be cold and people that say cold calling, well, that's not marketing. Well, actually it is. It's marketing, you know, so you gotta be marketing first and then give the best service.

Aviva (19:10)
Yeah.

Do you cold call? Okay.

joe killinger (19:29)
I don't right now. I'm not doing so, but everybody in the office does. We have the companies that we're operating right now. That's our focus. So that and the YouTube channel.

Aviva (19:37)
Okay.

So do you find that you get leads from your YouTube channel?

joe killinger (19:44)
Yeah, yeah, just from the YouTube channel, we collected an additional 200 grand in commissions last year. So I'll do a video with George or one of our agents on an asset class. So I'll do something about an asset class. Somebody will call in and I'll talk to them about it. And I'm like, okay, but you're talking, if you want to find a business, talk about the business, I'm great. But if you want me to find you a property, then I got to get you hooked up with one of our agents. But yeah, add an additional 200 grand to our bottom line.

Aviva (20:14)
So how do you use YouTube to target the correct people in your area to then give you a call? If that makes sense. Okay.

joe killinger (20:25)
Well, I don't do just our area because everything I'm doing is education based for commercial real estate and some residential and it's brokerage or investment and so I Look at the analytics, you know It's I look at the analytics every day who's looking at this you know 85% male very few. I mean the rest are female of course, but 25 to 44 that's my sweet spot

And almost everybody's in real estate and 92% of it's in the US. Cause that's really where we target and where our businesses at. But yeah, yeah. So, and I get some from Kana, Chad Griffiths up there. I don't know if you know Chad or not, but he'll come in every once in a while and make a great comment. So I'm thankful that Canadian. Oh yeah. He's awesome. They, what a great YouTube channel he has too. If you want to know anything about industrial real estate, he's the guy.

Aviva (21:03)
Bye.

Yeah.

Yeah, love Chad.

Yeah, Chad's a wealth of knowledge. He's a great, great guy.

joe killinger (21:25)
Isn't he? Yeah. And all of a sudden he's got a personality. I'm like, where'd this come from? I'm like, he's putting these funny, funny stuff out. I'm like, all right, I gotta do better at that. Yeah.

Aviva (21:30)
Ah!

Hey, that's the evolution of getting in front of the camera, getting comfortable in front of the camera. And it's a learning curve, just like everything else. Everybody wants to post and go viral, and that's just not a reality.

joe killinger (21:44)
Yeah.

It's not easy. I mean, Hootsuite put out a report yesterday, a 38 page report, which I'm not done reading yet. But, and here's the thing, they give this information out for free that everybody used to hoard all this information. So I take that information and I'm reading every bit of it and so much is changing so quickly that you've gotta stay on top of it.

Aviva (22:16)
Wow, so if you were to start as a commercial real estate broker today, knowing what you know, what would you do from the ground up?

joe killinger (22:21)
Yep.

In my market in Los Angeles, I would be retail in an area that I really knew very well. I would focus on retail. I would be obviously cold calling everybody, cold calling tenants, cold calling landlords. I'd be getting boots on the ground at least every other week. I'd pick three blocks, I call it block program. I would pick three blocks of a street and I'd go in, go in and meet the retailer.

Hi, I'm Joe Killinger, I work this area. What's your name? What's your position here in the company? Are you the manager? You're the, oh, okay, salesperson. And, you know, and then get to know them. And, you know, if you can get to know the manager, capture the information, walk out, make a note. You know, this is what was said, this is the person I spoke to. Go to the next store, do the same damn thing. All three blocks, go across the street, go to the three blocks back down. I'm gonna do that at least maybe.

every other week until when I walk in they're going, hey Joe, how you doing? And then what's going to happen is they're going to start saying, hey Joe, did you hear about across the street what's happening over there? I'm like, no, what happened? And they're going to tell me. So I'm going to build all this information up over time. And that's going to bring me so much value. But also about every three months, I'm going to take an additional three blocks off. So eventually I'm going to own that street.

I'm going to be the person that's got all my signs on that street. And every tenant and every landlord is like, hey, that Joe really works this area hard. He knows everything. I'm going to call him. And so do that, cold call, get involved with the Chamber of Commerce. If there's a community group that I should belong to on Facebook or they meet, I'm going. I would start there. Then once I get the retail going, I might diversify a little bit.

because maybe I'm going to do some investment sales, and as long as I know it, or while I'm doing retail at night or on weekends, I'm going to be learning maybe multifamily sales or something, some investment sales, so I can diversify a little bit. And then eventually I'll probably bring a team member in that's going to run that for me, and we're really going to blow that out. And so, you know, that's how, if I was new in this industry, that's what I would do.

Aviva (24:48)
Los Angeles is an intimidating market. I...

joe killinger (24:52)
We've got a lot of good brokers. And I mean, if you think where we're at, I'm in Brentwood and just, no, just in our building. I don't remember what the BRC I think is downstairs. They have an office within probably a half mile. There's two, 300 agents, commercial agents that are competition. Yeah. That's just, yeah, it's that's just on the West side here. You get into Santa Monica, there's more you get into Beverly Hill. There's a ton.

Aviva (25:12)
smokes.

joe killinger (25:19)
There's some big companies there. Yeah, West Hollywood, same, Hollywood.

Aviva (25:24)
So how do you all differentiate yourself?

joe killinger (25:27)
It's our marketing. Our marketing, like I said before, if you Google a commercial broker in Los Angeles, we're going to come up in front of most of them. And, you know, especially in a market like this, we don't want a listing right now that's above market. I tell our agents, do not take a listing unless you're at or even below market. And, you know, if you're below market, you will get up to market. But seller financing might need to be, would be helpful as well.

You know, you've really just got to be the most aggressive and But also bring the most value if you're just doing a cold call to do a cold call You're you're beating a drum that is never going to get you anywhere You want to bring value in everything you're doing if you're cold calling an area and you don't haven't been on co-star and spend Five minutes looking at the step the analytics for that area

how many properties are on the market, time on market, price per unit or whatever if you're doing multifamily. You need to know all that so you can have a conversation and the latest transactions. Go on CoStar and have all this information in front of you. This many properties are on the market in your area. How are you gonna compete with them? Not by having a high price. We're gonna have to be at market value.

Aviva (26:46)
We want paychecks, not projects.

joe killinger (26:48)
Yeah, yeah, you got to, you know, so many agents that I know that are, that I'm so busy, I'm so busy, I'm like, okay, that's great. Let's talk about your productivity. They hate that word because, you know, I mean, if I bring that up, you just see eyes like, oh, not that. But that is the key. If you're doing something that is not productive, you're not busy, you're wasting your time. You know, do something that there's, you're going to get a return with.

Aviva (27:00)
Hm. Ha ha.

joe killinger (27:16)
You've got to get a return for your time in this business. Because if you're just sitting here all day every day doing nothing that is going to get you forward, moving forward, then it's just not, as you know, this business is going to eat you alive. So when we get new agents, and this is something we do really different in our company, is we do a training every morning for the newer agents, 8.30 every morning until it takes about 45 minutes to an hour, George does them.

Aviva (27:29)
Yeah.

Well.

joe killinger (27:44)
And then at the end of the day at five o'clock, we sit down with them and go, okay, how did your day go? How many calls did you make? How many emails went out? And we monitor that for a few weeks. And if they don't have any appointments, they're like, okay, I'll sit with them and go, okay, give me your pitch, let's hear it. Because we gotta tweak something somewhere. You know, you can't keep doing the same thing every day and think something's going to change. You've gotta tweak it, you've gotta analyze it, tweak it. So that's our five o'clock.

Aviva (27:49)
Wow.

joe killinger (28:12)
And you know, even our more experienced agents will sit in on that too. They're like, you know what? I need to, I need to tweak some stuff here. Could we work on this with me? Cause I've spent two weeks of cold calling and I don't have any appointments. Um, can I work on this? And so yeah, it's, you know, coming from, uh, I mean, as you know, Ari, she is, she's somebody that hates cold calling, but she's phenomenal at it. When she gets on the phone, you know, how personable she is when she gets on the phone.

But to get her, she just knocks it out of the park when she gets on the phone, but to get her to do it, it's like just drag her to the tank and try to get her to drink. You're like, come on, Ari. And then she makes money, and next thing you know, she's walking around the office and high energy, annoying the hell out of everybody. And that's what we love about her. But yeah.

Aviva (29:01)
Hey, I get, yeah, she, her energy is contagious and I adore her. I get it, I'm the same way with cold calling. I can schmooze, I can talk to, but boy, starting that engine is not my priority.

joe killinger (29:07)
It is. Yeah.

Me too, I was.

Yeah, yeah, it's when you get the first one that is really, it really gives good feedback that it really helps. It's just the con, we had an agent crying yesterday. She got, and I'm like, well, you know what? I'd rather have you this way than not care. Because the fact that you care is why you're here. And so, but it's, we've all been kicked, you know, so many times and.

You don't want it to start not affecting you. It should affect you and maybe you learn from it. Maybe you did something and you're like, oh yeah. Lord knows I did when I was cold calling. I'm like, okay, I need to change my pitch up a bit.

Aviva (30:01)
Oh yeah, there's definitely a balance between not having any emotion towards when you do get kicked in the teeth and understanding that.

joe killinger (30:08)
Mm-hmm.

Aviva (30:14)
You could still pick yourself up and you could still close a deal. You know, you never know what's going. That's the cool thing about our business. You never know who will come back, who you'll revisit and what you'll close today, tomorrow or the next day or in 10 years. So.

joe killinger (30:28)
Yeah. Oh yeah, we had a young lady about end of last year, she got, a guy was nasty to her and hung up on her. So two weeks later I went back and let's call him again. She goes, no, he hung up on me, let's call him again. I said, he's not gonna remember you. She ended up talking to him. He just had, was having a bad day that day. So she ended up talking to him, she goes, I had no idea that he would be.

So it could be just that maybe they're just having a bad day or maybe somebody kicked their cat. You don't know. He just got to kind of roll with it. There's a cat there, the one tooth cat right there. The orange cat. Yeah, well, he looks like we're born to hell out of him.

Aviva (31:06)
I got... No, no, the orange cat. He's...

Yeah, well, he's used to it. So I have my last question for you that I ask everybody on this show. And then I'll have you tell all the viewers where to find you online, on socials, et cetera. And my question is, is what's currently making you happy in real estate?

joe killinger (31:36)
Oh, well, there's actually a lot. I think, other than these freaking allergies today, there's a lot of opportunity out there. I mean, everybody is sitting, oh, the interest rates need to go down. If you look back, I mean, you know Bob Knakal, right? I had him on. And I said, Bob, when you started, what were interest rates at? Don't quote me on this, because I know you can go back on the video and check. But I think it was 17%, maybe 15%. And I said, yeah, that's about what I thought it was.

And I said, so what do you think of rates now? He goes, they're normal. You know, they're good rates. And so, you know, I'm of the same school of thought as he is. And I just think there's a ton of opportunity out there if you go out and find it. And I'm talking to, I had a meeting fairly, I was in Dallas a month and a half ago and met with a bunch of guys. They own banks and they own a few of these guys on mortgage companies. One of them's our partner in our mortgage company.

And they said, we've got a lot of workouts happening. We've got a lot of people that are calling saying, hey, I've got a bunch of dry powder. Let me know when. And so there's going to be a ton of opportunity. So there's a ton of opportunity for brokers, too. You've got to keep your head up. You've got to keep the energy flowing. You've got to just keep going and doing the basics. And the block program I told you about before, I hope that if you're in retail,

If you go do that for the next six months, you're going to see a change in your business. It will. The opportunity is there. Well, depends on your market, of course. Here in LA, retail is still very strong. I don't know about everybody's area.

Aviva (33:16)
but it's having boots on the ground.

joe killinger (33:17)
Yeah, yeah, knowing what's going on in your marketplace because so many people don't wanna leave their office and they're just gonna get on Coastal and call and get out and shake hands, kiss babies. Man, maybe not kiss babies, but it's get out there and be seen, get people to know you when you walk in and get involved in your community. It's huge, it's a game changer. And so many agents don't, if you really look at.

what agents are not doing.

It's crazy. I'm like, why are you guys not putting content out? Why are you not creating video? You know, I don't know how to create video. Well, document your damn day then. It's that easy. When you go out on the showing, document the day. You're the queen of it. You know, you're very good at it. You know, so you've got to cut the excuses and just say, you know, it's time to do this because there's a lot of opportunity out there. I rambled on a little bit there, didn't I?

Aviva (34:14)
I know, I'm like, no, hey, it's like, I know you're consuming videos, everybody, literally everybody does. The excuse, I can't, I don't know how is like, well, fire up a brain cell when you're scrolling online and yeah, and see your excuses out the door. I couldn't agree more. I think our industry is so opportunistic. Yeah.

joe killinger (34:33)
Yeah.

Yeah. Find somebody that's doing what you want to do and copy it. I mean, if I could do what Kyle and Eddie and you do on TikTok, I was just, you know, I, I've got so much other stuff I'm focused on, but TikTok I think is a powerhouse and it's aging up very quickly. You know, it's in the high thirties, low forties now, right? As far as age range watching it. And so yeah, it's. Yeah.

Aviva (35:02)
Oh yeah.

Everybody's on TikTok. So.

joe killinger (35:06)
Yeah. A lot of cons... You got to find your consumer, you know, and it's, you know, the phones, if you're doing seven, you do a hundred phone calls a day. That's not going to take you all day. You should be creating content. You should be writing a blog. Writing blogs are... Yeah. They're key.

Aviva (35:25)
after CREI, I fell in love with LinkedIn. I never thought I'd say that.

joe killinger (35:28)
Oh yeah. LinkedIn's a powerhouse, isn't it? If utilized right. And here's another thing. Your profile on all these. Everybody needs to make sure your profile on LinkedIn and all your social is filled out completely. If you go look at, go look at Ari's, Ari Mencius on LinkedIn, go see how her freaking LinkedIn is filled out. We sat down with that and filled that all out.

People are calling her. She's in luxury real estate in Beverly Hills. Fill out everything on your profile on all your apps. Make sure it's as easy as one step to find you on all these platforms.

Aviva (36:08)
Hey, I really, really appreciate you being on the show today. Tons of amazing value. Tell me where the viewers can follow you, find you and watch your YouTube videos.

joe killinger (36:21)
Yeah. Uh, Instagram is at Joe Killinger, YouTube, Joe Killinger. Actually, you can just go right there, joekillinger.co and you'll find everything there. You can find all the connections. There's a, we try and put as many resources for everybody on there that we can to really help drive value and help our community because I just, I love this community. I love working on it. I'm thankful that CREI summit, uh, you know, is coming up again. I wish we could do that every month because I learned so much.

Aviva (36:49)
I know.

joe killinger (36:51)
Um, but I think Ken would be, I don't think you can handle it. It's a lot. Yeah.

Aviva (36:57)
He's got deals to do. But definitely go to the CREI Summit. I had the time of my life there. I had so much fun. I'm going to go to the CREI Summit.

joe killinger (37:04)
Mm-hmm. Oh, me too. And the people. You know, that's the thing. You put 120, 150 top producers in a room and you would think, now years ago, it probably wouldn't work so well, right? Because it'd been all competition. CREI Summit is all about support. How can I help you? Or this is what worked for me. You should try this in your market. That's unheard of. You know, nobody, no other seminar or network.

Aviva (37:26)
Yeah.

joe killinger (37:32)
gets together and does what CREI Summit does.

Aviva (37:36)
I definitely felt like I had found my people because I did not feel those warm. I don't feel those warm fuzzy vibes as much when I step into a local room and with just with brokers who don't talk the same language, you know, you and I speak the same language. A lot of brokers aren't at this party yet. They will be because

joe killinger (37:39)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Well, they're going to be forced to. I mean, if you've been in the business for a while and you're relying on just cold calls, you're going to get somebody that's going to come in the business and month number six that they're in the business, they're figuring everything out, they're starting to do their content and they're starting to figure out how to write the blog and all of a sudden they're going to take over your market share. And you have been in the business for 10, 15, 20 years are going to get left behind. And so, you know, evolution, this business is going through a serious evolution right now.

And the people that are gonna make it are the ones that are paying attention right now.

Aviva (38:31)
and we are just getting started.

joe killinger (38:33)
I agree. It's going to be, and I think it's going to go faster. AI is going to speed things up. You know, it's going to make things move a lot faster. You know, so.

Aviva (38:44)
I know, I'm excited to learn more about AI and our business. It sounds like you have a, well, more content coming around that.

joe killinger (38:48)
Me too.

Yeah, yeah, we do. And you know, another thing is I think if you're a brokerage, you can see that I'm in a studio, right? Well, this is in our brokerage. So we created our own studio, which I don't know of any other brokerage that has it. We have our own studio within our office. And so, and it gives a place for our agents to go create content. And so, you know, there's a green screen right behind me over here, tons of lights, one that's not where it should be, as you can see.

Aviva (39:12)
Brilliant.

Eh.

joe killinger (39:24)
I should have moved out somebody. Y'all trip over those things when I'm walking around here and I forget to put it back. But yeah, you've got to figure out how content creation is going to be a big part of what you're doing.

Aviva (39:27)
I'm sorry.

It should be the standard, but it'll get there.

joe killinger (39:36)
Yeah. You're going to see bigger companies. I just did an interview with Jay Olshansky, the CEO of NEI Capital, Global, NEI Global, and he's all on board. And that's, you know, that's within one of the top six largest companies in the nation. And they're, they're figuring it out quickly. Smart dude.

Aviva (39:57)
Well, hey, love it, love to see it. Joe, thank you so much for your time today. Thank you for being on the show and for, yeah, and for bringing every, well, first off, for what you do for our greater community, it's amazing and it's impactful. And thanks for, yeah, being here on Commercial Real Estate Secrets today. So thank you all for listening and we'll see you all next week.

joe killinger (40:05)
Thank you for having me.

Thank you.