Repeatable routine in commercial real estate - by Daniel Gardner

For some context, I quit a perfectly good salary-and-benefits job with roughly $500 to my name. Looking back, it was either incredibly brave or one of the worst financial decisions of my life. Fortunately, it worked out. Remember, I have a real estate license now in addition to that $500, and I was now working as a rental agent in Newton Centre. I did what all rental agents did at that time, post on Craigslist (CL). Like every apartment broker back then, I lived on Craigslist. If you were in rentals in 2008 and weren’t on Craigslist, you probably weren’t renting apartments. Side note, “miss connections” on CL back then was probably the same as doom scrolling on social media. That context was the best! But while posting apartments on CL I noticed the “commercial/office” section which I started checking out and noticing most of the ads where owners posting, often times the ad had a number. I would call these owners in between qualifying leads to show apartments. If you’ve never cold called a commercial landlord before, image interrupting someone’s day so they can tell you they already have a broker…usually in under 15 seconds.

Listen, these are tough calls, so buckle up if you do them, these owners don’t want to hear from apartment brokers, so I had to come up with a script, which was, “Morning, I saw your add for a commercial space in Newton, I happen to work for a brokerage firm in Newton Centre and I come across start-up companies and sometimes other businesses call our firm looking for space, do you mind if I come by with a coffee and introduce myself?” 

So guess what leads to a system? Drinking a bunch of coffee and meeting landlords! Turns out, if you drink enough coffee with enough landlords, eventually somebody starts returning your phone calls. I set goals for myself, rent one apartment, meet one Newton landlord a week. This started compounding and became a daily habit.

I figured that I only need to rent one apartment a week to “stay alive” I got very lucky the first weekend, I remember my first check it was $2,600, which was close to what I made at my salary job in a month. Remember, times were tough back then, $2,600 went very far and I figured, if I can do this once a week, I could do maybe $8,000 - $9,000 a month while I figured out this commercial real estate thing. That goal did not happen, it was close to $4,000-$5,000 a month at best, that make $100k a year in real estate never made sense to me. It took much longer than a year or even 3 years to get to that point for me anyways.

I started asking every person that I showed an apartment to, “hey who to you use for your commercial real estate?” (I already knew the answer, it was usually; no one, because they were renting an apartment). What were the odds they owned a shopping center or an industrial park! (But the truth was…they knew somebody that probably did!)

People think commercial real estate brokerage is some glamourous, million dollar listing job. It wasn’t glamourous, my networking strategy was basically coffee, Craigslist and politely bothering strangers until somebody gave me a chance.

Keep in mind I was doing this daily, and now having around 20-30 new conversations a week, coupled with the cold calls off CL, I started generating a daily routine. That’s all you really need in brokerage is a repeatable routine. I’ve uncovered the basics of the “repeatable routine” but in the next column I’ll discuss my own routine and what works if you stick to the “plan.”

Daniel Gardner is founder of DMG Brokerage, Norwood, Mass.