Commercial Brokers International With Joe Killinger

 Josh
 Good day, fellow dealmakers. Welcome to the deal scout on today's show. We're going to have a conversation with a deal maker. Who's going to talk to us about all sorts of stuff in commercial real estate and investing and triple net deals and some stuff that I'm sure it will pop up. So Mr. Joe, welcome to the show. 

 joe
 Thank you, Josh. Thank you for having me on. 

 Josh
 Yeah, man. All right. So who are you? What do you do? 

 joe
 Okay, well, that's this, get this out of the way I have a boring part. My name is Joe Killinger. I do a few things and actually I've been a real estate entrepreneur for a long time. This wasn't this color when I got started, but it's been over 20 years old, actually pushing 30, I guess, but I'm a partner in commercial brokers international in Los Angeles. We are a full service commercial real estate company, and we do deals all around the country. I have a motto, an investor real estate ambassador. We have focus, we've owned multifamily. We used to, we started off flipping homes and low to moderate income areas. That's a lot of stories that herb were interesting, but now we have a focus on STNs that we're buying around that are looking to buy around the country. We have our real estate show real estate jam session. 

 joe
 You can see behind me that we're putting out videos twice a week to really help people that want to become a real estate investor or a real estate agent. So never a boring day, 

 Josh
 Never a boring day. All right. Anytime an acronym or a industry talk comes out, I want to dig into that . STNL what is that? 

 joe
 A single tenant net leased, like a, a, what, a burger McDonald's any of those kinds of stores are single-tenant net lease. 

 Josh
 They're. 

 joe
 Standalone. 

 Josh
 Got it. You mentioned prior to hitting record triple net, explain what that is. 

 joe
 Oh yeah. That's just a term of what the lease is like. The tenant pays for all the expenses on the property. You as a landlord, really just, it's more like coupon clipping. We just get your check every month. That's really what we focus on right now. We weren't into multifamily before. Got some crazy offers on that stuff. We're in Dallas, Texas, where our assets are right now. We sold everything out of California a couple of years ago where we're looking to get back into it. The deal is just, I mean, to find multi-family here in Los Angeles, all around California, very difficult right now on the investment side. We are looking, we've put offers out on a few, got our ass handed to us. Most of them people are willing to pay a lot than were, but we focus on those assets around Texas and our multi-family portfolio. 

 joe
 People just came in and they weren't listed. People came in and said, Hey, this is what I'll pay you. I just, we're like, okay, well were going to develop these. It turns out that the numbers that we got on those offers were about the same as if we would have went through the whole process of evicting demo rebuild, ? We said, okay, this is kind of a no brainer. There's no risk here. Let's go ahead and sell these assets. And we started buying some triple net. 

 Josh
 Yeah. I think as a deal-maker sometimes, and I'd love your advice on this. It's sometimes I get tied to the project rather than tied to the outcome. I'd be looking at a project and then, by the time I'm in it, man, it's blood, sweat, tears. I might've been able to just sell out the deal and make the same amount. How did you make that shift in your own business and in your own mind? 

 joe
 The opportunity was just too good to, I mean, I had to do a really gut check. I love the properties that we had. I mean, we'd had them for about six, seven years and there was a personal connection there, but with what the ownership was going to come in and do, they were going to do a lot more for this property and the tenants weren't going to get displaced in the short term like were going to do. And honestly, the money was too good. I got, I did have kind of a personal connection on our second investment. When I first started, I bought, we bought a 10 unit apartment building for $250,000 here in LA. And it was a home run. Our first property was a home run. I think our ego kinda gotten flagged because our second property was not a home run. It was the opposite. 

 joe
 It was. I got, I think, got a little personal because I'm like, why is this just not working for us? Well, I can tell you why now is a three story. Walk-up is so hard to keep that third story. It was a lower income area keeping at third story, a third two units up on the top is six units, two, and two top two. They, it was impossible to keep them leased at a good rate. We had to discount those cars, carrying groceries up three flights of steps was just not going to happen, but I had a personal connection to that property. The more I took it personal, the more money we lost. If I had a cut and run early on, it would have made a lot more money. I can talk myself out of something pretty easy right now my head might be a little too close on this one. 

 joe
 So let's take our money and run. 

 Josh
 Yeah. I, I, I too have gotten too personal in on deals, right. Where it's just like, when do you cut this thing, man? I, I held one deal where, it wiped me out, wiped out my government pension, like I went all in and I held all in until the thing hit the bottom of the ocean. When I should've like, let the things sink without me, as you've learned this, you said, like you might've held on too long and you got personal and maybe some ego was in this. Right? Like how do you, what guardrails and what advice do you have, like with your real estate jam sessions and with working with other real estate guys, like guys and gals, like what advice do you have on how to remove ego, how to remove the personal opinions and in this kind of stuff out of the deal. 

 joe
 What I know now stick to your business plan. If you have, you should, when you get started in this business, Josh, you and I both know that there needs to be some kind of plan. You want to have the numbers that you're going to invest. These are the numbers, this is the lowest investment I'll take, as far as the return, stick with the numbers that and just follow that path. It's just every time I talked to somebody, he goes, well, I really thought I could save it. I've had a few instances where people are like, okay, I was able to turn that around, but I'll tell you what, that's very, very few in my entire career that they've been able to go in because you just, it becomes such a big project that you start losing money on other deals to them because your focus is just not on the entire portfolio. 

 joe
 I'm saving this one asset and it's just not a winning situation. Stick with what your business plan was originally, stick with your investment criteria. 

 Josh
 Yeah. Throwing good money at bad money, saving the deal. A lot of it is for me, man. I could speak to this for a lot of me. It's been ego that has cost me the most. My ego has cost me more money than anything else. Right? Yeah. I've made a lot of dumb decisions, but I've backed those dumb decisions with money. As you're building this, you say, stick to your business model, stick to, what you're working on. Your business model evolved. You said you started low-income fix and flips. Now you guys are evolved to multi-family. Now you're evolved to triple net deals. How do when it is ready to evolve to the next business model? The next idea, 

 joe
 Because it comes down to our plan on our growth. We started, we were in Watson Compton, buying four and five homes at a time. This is when we really got going. And, there was a great lesson there, cause we thought this is going to be a really good way to learn investments. Now, when I say that we started there's a lot of beautiful areas. Everybody hears Watson Compton here in LA and they think gangs. It's not that bad in some areas. So there's a beautiful areas. These little craftsman homes are absolutely incredible and there's a need for homeownership down there. Now this was, 20, some years ago we started this keep in mind. It is, the market is shot up in price where we are buying these homes for 120,000. You know, it wasn't a big deal. We, you using hard money to do it. 

 joe
 We started there to really learn about investing and building our maintenance team and on and on. And, but we didn't see this as being a platform that really re we really wanted to do because we're also doing, it was more of a side hustle for us. Right. If you're going to do that many homes in these areas, that's a full-time job. That started taking on too much time. And then, so we moved into multifamily. We love multi-family. We just, the market, the last couple of years is kind of dictated to, people have come in with these offers. We're like, okay, well let's do something else. And, and again, we are, we're still growing our brokerage company here in LA. So, our time is a little short. The triple net stuff was just a natural progression for us. So it's always kind of led us. The business has led us to where, because of time, because with the STNL investments, they don't take a lot of time. 

 joe
 I mean, we go buy the properties every couple months. That's about it. 

 Josh
 Yeah. And then responsible for all the smells. Yeah. 

 joe
 We just go and make sure that everything is being done. There's no graffiti, especially one of the dark properties that we have. We make sure there's no graffiti, no homeless, that kind of stuff. But, but in our back to our case, it's been because it's always been a side thing for us. It hasn't been a main source of money because we never spent that money is we make investments. We just take it and reinvest. We are always looking at, as, what's our time look like and how can we capitalize best on it? 

 Josh
 What do you mean by a dark property? 

 joe
 Oh, sorry. Yeah. Dark means it's vacant. We bought a chase bank in Dallas, Texas. There's eight years left on the lease, but they moved out and they're still paying their lease. They will for the next eight years. What will work our plan with that property? What we'll do is we're going to go out and find a new tenant for it. We'll go get on buy and try and get a buyout from them. Say, listen, you guys have got eight years left, let's meet it 2 million bucks. And you know, let's take that. You guys are now out of the lease and we take that 2 million bucks and then we're going to rebuild a new whatever, what, a burger McDonald's burger king, what, Dave's hot chicken, something like that and have a new location. It has two drive-throughs, it's a great property. We're, we're very happy with that one. 

 Josh
 Yeah. That's super cool. So, they might have, eight years left. How much would that be equate to? Like if they paid it. 

 joe
 It's it's, there's over two we'll discount it and take a buyout at 2 million. 

 Josh
 That's awesome. Right. So for them, it's a great thing. If they could come up with it, now they get out of the deal. 

 joe
 Yeah. They're paying, they're paying a lease on a property. That's just sitting there and not being utilized. They've opened a brand new location less than a mile away is why they did it. They combined, they made it bigger and they combined three banks within that area. We've got this great asset sitting with 40 some thousand cars a day driving by it and over an acre of land. We can take a double drive through there. Fast food is dry, but we could do another bank. And that could be plug. And. 

 Josh
 Yeah. Now where you guys are located the west coast. Right. But this is someone. Yeah. 

 joe
 I am in Los Angeles, our properties that we're buying right now, or that we own are in Texas. We own in Dallas, Texas, and we own in Allen, Texas and Allen, Texas is just north of Dallas. It's one of the, I think the top 10 fastest growing cities in the country, we own a Jack in the box up there. 

 Josh
 Oh, that's great food. Have you speaking of fat? 

 joe
 Well, it's very cool. It's unique because when you go and I'd never had it, I went in and had their ticket sandwich thinking that all this is going to be just tastes like ass. Right. It was, I was like, okay, this is pretty good. It was a lot better than I expected, but the property also has a fireplace in the two-sided fireplace. You can sit and sit inside next to the fireplace or sit out on this big patio. And you've got a fireplace. It's very nice. It's all very Texan looking property, but still in the Jack in the box look, 

 Josh
 That's pretty cool. My, I have three kids. My middle child was born in Dallas, Texas, actually, grapevine. We lived in Lewisville, but we love. 

 joe
 It. 

 Josh
 I love it too, man. It's really cool. 

 joe
 Yeah. Have you been back lately? 

 Josh
 The last, so we moved there 2000 16, 15, 16 to work with a group VC group. And then we moved away in 17. I moved to New York. Thousands of bad decision moving to New York was a dump. That was a change. Yeah. But yeah, Dallas is cool. Now, how did you guys choose Texas as a place to go because you're living in LA. 

 joe
 Yeah. Well, it was because, when I first got into the business, we ended up starting real estate auctions. So, it was, we ended up doing auctions with Freddie Mac that was based out of Dallas there above Kuwait and in the 6 35. I got to know a lot of people there. Were wanting to invest out of state, Texas was our nap. That's where we knew most people. He was just made a great, very easy decision to go there. We got back there and bought a few properties and then we decided to start a, we launched a tech company called the RD. It was a background check company. We end up selling that off to a private equity firm about three and a half years ago. So, but we just love, we have a corporate condo. We keep their demo on turtle Creek. We'd love it. 

 joe
 I just love Dallas. I just, the growth there is insane though. Yeah. I mean, it used to take us about 15 minutes to get to our first property. Before we sold it, my last trip, it took like 40 minutes, just so much population coming in. Then. 

 Josh
 I tell you, I used to drive to the train station because we lived in Lewisville and I worked downtown on market street and I would take the train. The train would take an hour, but it's always a consistent hour, whereas it could be 30 minutes, but it could also be an hour and a half, two hours. Yeah. So yeah, man, and the task of. 

 joe
 Growth, 

 Josh
 Proud people, 

 joe
 WhatsApp, 

 Josh
 The Texans are proud. They're proud to be Texans aren't they? 

 joe
 Oh, wow. Yeah, yeah. It's yeah. They're very proud of it. They're, they stick to their guns and, but they're entrepreneurs, it was very interesting for me because coming from LA in real estate, I've been in real estate all my life here. I got back there and I was doing a pitch for our tech company. Right. I'm sitting there doing the pitch with this VC and he goes, this isn't a good fit for me. I think I know a couple of guys, this might be a good fit for I'll have them reach out to you. I just thought, here's a blow off, right. Nobody is going to be calling me. I took the guy's names down just in case lo and behold, both guys the next day called and said, Hey, this other guy who said that, I need to reach out to you to say, have you sent me information on your company? 

 joe
 I guess maybe I was a little jaded coming from LA and thinking, nobody's gonna reach out to me. Nobody's gonna help. They're there more entrepreneurs, they really want to see if there's an actual opportunity here or there. And so it was really amazing. I carried that back to our commercial real estate agents here in LA going, if you can help somebody and maybe get a leg up or meet somebody else, pay it forward, make that connection. All of our agents, we will, some of our agents will even, it just happened Monday. We got a call on a property and we've got it under contract, but a similar property is getting ready to come on the market. Our agents said, Hey, yeah, no, this is under contract, but you need to talk to this agent. They're bringing something else on the market. We get nothing for that. 

 joe
 Or she gets nothing for that. Other than to know that she actually helped us personnel. That other agent could not believe that our agent was willing to do that for. So, I learned that from big in taxes. 

 Josh
 Yeah. I, Texas is a really cool place to do business and to learn that I learned a lot of cool stuff from there too, as you're building this out, right, you got your brokerage is doing well. You got your investment company doing well. You just sold off a bunch of cool stuff. You've sold off a tech company. Why do you keep doing it, man? Why don't you just go sit back and kick back and move to Laguna beach and just chill there. 

 joe
 It's honestly Josh had was, I'll never retire. I've come from a, I come from a very small town of 281 people in Nebraska. Right. And I grew up on a farm. Work is not something I'm afraid of. And I love it. We've, I guess if there's anything great about being the boss or the owner of the company, it's, you kind of get a pick and choose who you want to have in your life and work with. Our brokerage is the people here are real estate is trainable, right? This is what I'm, when I'm recruiting. I always say, real estate is trainable. What I can't train is it work ethic and a good sense of humor or a positive outlook on life. I can't train that real estate. I can train. I'm more interested in getting somebody in here that has a great personality and because company culture is very important. 

 joe
 Right. I, I focus on that and then turning to real estate. Also now I'm around people that are a lot of fun. 

 Josh
 Yeah. All right. Let's say I'm sitting across you and you're interviewing me. What, what kind of questions do you ask in an interview? So I've got my real estate license. Went through the course, man. I I'm a hardworking guy and you're going to ask me a few questions. Like what kind of questions did you like to ask? 

 joe
 Can we do this a lot? I'm mostly focused on what are you looking for? How can I help if I can help you build your career, then I'm in, because in commercial real estate, now it's different than residential in residential. You go in, you pay for your MLS, an agent you're paying for, you do your marketing in commercial real estate. We have to belong to. There's a system called CoStar that I'm sure you're very aware of. We have nationwide CoStar. So it's stupid, expensive every month. We got all these there's like five or six other sites. They belong to that, we're a few thousand dollars a month just to have per agent to belong to. I really sit down and like to drill down on, why do you want to get into commercial real estate? What do you hope to get out of this? What do you, where do you see yourself in five and 10 years? 

 joe
 And how can I help you? What do you think I bring to the table for you? I just sit and listen and I listen to how they're answering and it's been amazing. 

 Josh
 What's a red flag. Actually how many brokers, how many agents do you guys have working with your groups? 

 joe
 14 agents in this company. Right? Sweet. 

 Josh
 How many people are part of your real estate jam sessions? How many people do you have, like in your real estate jam? JAMstack. 

 joe
 For the commercial brokers international, we have 14 real estate jam session is just a few of us. There's myself that does this. And then I've got the editing team. So three total. 

 Josh
 Yeah. Let's just say I'm looking to become one of the 14 or now 15 or whatever. What's a red flag that if I said, you'd be like, oh, that dude is not a good time for this. 

 joe
 When they start asking, do I have to be in the office? How soon will I make money? Questions that really lead me to believe that, they're just here to really get answers or not really that they want to have me tell them, what their future is going to be like, how they're going to get there. If you don't want to be in the, if you want to work from home and commercial real estate starting off now, I believe that as once you get established and you've got your stuff going, then they fine. We do training Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays at eight 30 in the morning. If you're missing those because you want to come in at 10 o'clock. You're, you're not going to make it. And this is another thing that I tell them. I said, you know what? I want you to just stop and think you've got to start by knowing your competition, because I can tell you right now, within a quarter mile of this office, there's 300 and some odd commercial real estate agents. 

 joe
 I've got some big companies, some smaller companies all within the area here. And so I said, that's your competition? How are you going to beat them? What are you going to do? How are you going to out market them? I said, because are you going out cold call them? And I said, that's. So I asked him, what's your plan? Most of them haven't thought about it, but , 

 Josh
 Yeah, the, yeah, this is so cool. I don't know if this is just a 20, 22 challenge because of what's happened in the last crazy couple of years, but it's hard to find people who want to show up and work. 

 joe
 Oh yeah. I've seen that the last couple of years, we tell our agents and we've got a good agent. That could be great, but he works from home and it just, but he lives a ways away. It's a, it's a long time in the car, so I get it. But, and he's a great guy. He just brings a lot of value to every one of his clients. And, but it's also an hour drive each way. So I get it. But, and I've seen that I've seen it slow down. He was in the office, he was getting about a listing a month that he was getting under contract. And it's been about five months. He's been working for five or six months and that slowed down considerably. So, it's just being in here and being part of a team, and it does work for some people. 

 joe
 Some people can work from home, but when you're trying to build a team, you really have to have people that want to work together and build something. Because if myself or my business partner, isn't available, they can go to a senior agent here and they'll get the answer. And, and we've all, I mean, our company culture is that if if you're a broker, Forrest, Josh, you'd go on vacation. You want to go for a couple of weeks, but yet you've got these listings and showings, somebody in our office will cover they'll say, yeah, go, enjoy your time. Just let us know when the showings are, let's get them calendar. And I'll take care of them. Somebody here, including myself and my business partner, we'll get you covered. When somebody else goes on vacation, we just ask that you were segregated. You know, 

 Josh
 That's a, that's a part of being a team, like being in the office because I'm rubbing elbows with people and I'm learning from other people's successes and failures, right? Like I have a house right down the road. I walked to my office every day. I walk out with my daughter and I love being in office because I didn't get the distractions. I, I could probably go on a rant for this. I just love being around people I'm energized, but I'm also learning consistently grow my ecosystem. Yeah. Yeah, man, I think so in your, 

 joe
 I've been around the people doing the deals and I got all excited because one of the agents sitting right out here this morning, she's been working so hard on this deal and she'd been negotiating and it's, it's going to come through together. She found out this morning and but listening to her, negotiating it, and she's only been in business six months and she's got four deals under contract. And, she came from property management and she had connections. It's, she had to start from ground zero, but she's also here all day and learning and listening very key. 

 Josh
 What makes a good commercial real estate broker? What makes, so we mentioned a few things that might not be a good fit, but what makes a really good one? 

 joe
 Somebody that really listens. I mean, here's the thing as salespeople, right? John, should we want to sell, sell, sell. There's actually, it's funny because a willful Jordan Bell, whatever it was, Wolf of wall street, what was, I don't remember his last name, but he was talking on a show last night that I was at a friend's house and they had it on and they had this. 

 Josh
 Built. Right. Okay. 

 joe
 Yep. Yep. That's it. He said, we use this thing, it goes, sell me. This pen, sell me this pen. He goes more often than not people would go on and actually sell me this damn pen. He goes, that, wasn't what the exercise was about. Ask me why, how long have I been looking for a pin? What kind of pin have I been looking for? Find out the needs of the client. Bringing value. That's, there's so much information about real estate on the internet now, right? Most buyers or investors are so informed. How do you bring value to them? Well, you need to know your marketplace if you're, and then if you're a multi-family guy in west LA, you better know every property that's on the market, you better know how long it's been on the market. What's the average sales price in the area occupancy rate in the area, concessions in the area and bring value. 

 joe
 That's how you become number one, that market, the hell out of yourself. 

 Josh
 Yes. For real best deal, worst deal you've ever done. 

 joe
 Oh, well the worst deals that when I was telling you about where I let it get personal and that was, we didn't take a loss on it that we made very little money. We got lucky that somebody actually wanted to put a, a group of properties together in that area. Best deal was my first deal that we ever did. It was like I said, 275,000 for 10 units. We sold it six years later, four or seven years later for a couple of million bucks. 

 Josh
 Wow. Yeah, that's a good one, 

 joe
 Man. It was cash flowing all along. 

 Josh
 That's but that's. 

 joe
 How we bought the first property in Texas. We took that and bought a 73 unit in Texas and learned about property management in Dallas. Did you do property management, Dallas at all? Were you involved with it? 

 Josh
 No, no, no. I've, I'd never been in property management. I like, I like dreaming up of the forts and I like putting the plan together and putting the team together. I don't, I'm not a good manager. 

 joe
 Yeah. It's hard. And it's different in Dallas. Obviously laws are a lot different from California to taxes, but you started investing in out-of-state properties and you don't understand the community of, or that what's going on in that community. You could, and you don't hire the right property management. Yeah. You can get your ass handed to you pretty quickly. We were very, we started, we had one company that we hired two weeks and I stopped by and they didn't know I was staying there. I stopped by every day and there was a week that they weren't even on the property yet. They send invoices every day. They go in just to send us invoices and call us from that phone number. 

 Josh
 Yeah. Yeah. 

 joe
 Got to careful boots on the ground. 

 Josh
 Boots on the ground, boots on the ground, butts in the seats, people in the office. That's, that's what I, I like I'm learning that there's some rules for that. I'm learning that there's some rules that I don't need to ever see the people. It could be an outsourced VA person. Right. Man, I'm having a hard time and I'd love your thoughts on this. Like when it comes to team building, like finding the right people, what have you found the best way to find the right people. 

 joe
 That's changed in the last couple years? It's really changed if you've to find somebody, and I'm speaking about commercial brokerage now, property management, we just look for people that came from a team that were similar to what were trying to build. As far as brokerage, it's difficult because there's, the personalities are so different. I mean, it's, we try and recruit people that are, a great fit for our company culture. And, the interview process is I usually have a conversation for about half hour when I first sent in a resume or reach out to us. We do one meeting and maybe do a second meeting, but that's always best behavior stuff. Right. You get them in and it's not, so it's very difficult. It's very different, but it's just, I think it's more listening to them and what they're actually saying, because I always in the beginning found that I always talked about what we offer, this is what we offer. 

 joe
 We talk about our company and I wasn't really asking enough questions about what are you looking for? How can I help you all that? You know? So that's how we started building. Well, we've been very lucky. I mean, I I'm blessed to come into these people. I hope they can't hear me. 

 Josh
 Their heads will get so big. 

 joe
 Yeah, exactly. I'll have to take them all to lunch to. Yeah. I don't know. But, but yeah, so it's been, I'm learning as I get older, that listening is very powerful to understand why. When I was a kid, my dad had a do something. He goes, Joe, you've got one mouth and two ears. Just listen more than you talk. I'm like, okay. Now I see. 

 Josh
 Now I see it. Right. How old are you, Joe? 

 joe
 57, 57. 

 Josh
 What is the, what is something that you're in personal development in your own growth? What is something that you're working on now that you're like, man, this is, 

 joe
 That's an easy one. Patience. It's always been a problem of mine. I'm an, a type personality, it's a Leo. Patients is something I'm short of and I've got to learn to not just stop and take a deep breath. Don't react. Just kind of, I never want to say react. I, don't not in a negative way, but just like stop, take a breath and really think about what you're going to do or say, and not in a negative way, but I've just learned that you can be more productive if you really stop and think, okay, maybe there's a better angle to approach this and don't try and fix every damn thing I do that I'm like, okay, this needs to actually play out so they can. So, if you're mentoring somebody or if it's new age or new employee, don't do it for them, let it play out. 

 joe
 Really don't fix, let them learn, give them the path and then sit back and let them learn. And, hiring for the job is something I don't want to ever micromanage. I try not to hire anybody, not have to do that work. 

 Josh
 Well. If, if I picked up your phone, it's just going to be some personal questions. I like to get to know the people, this show, by the way, this show is about connecting deals and deal makers. The best way to find a deal is find the good deal maker that like and trust, and then, send it to get the deal, right? This shows where we could get to know people and then deals always come from it. Like it just the way that God works in this is pretty cool. Personal question. If I picked up your phone and scroll through your playlist in terms of song that is played the most, what song has been played the most on your phone or your H. 

 joe
 Play it a lot on my phone. I will have it on at night. I do a lot of meditation music. It just to call me down every night. That would be the most listened to because that's, I've really learned as I've gotten older to really take the time. I keep mental health, I guess, but meditation for me is something that's really helped to really step back from the day, think about it and then think about what's the plan for tomorrow. That to me as a team, it's really helped. I've just picked that one up the last few years. 

 Josh
 That is so hard for a type a hydro, 

 joe
 Oh, you have no idea. We'll still sit there. And I meditate. I'm like, oh yeah, I've got to write that down. It's just, then finally, I'll get to that space where I guess there's no more thoughts and then I can finally do it. I actually find that I sleep a lot better. Now I do a lot of reading. I read as many business biographies as I can. I actually just finished the book and now I'm like, what am I going to do tonight? Because now I got to get another book. So, but yeah, it's those two things are something that, music, isn't something I do listen to it a lot, but I will. It's mostly that. 

 Josh
 The book you just read, you said you like reading a lot of biographies. Why and which book was that? 

 joe
 Oh, it's building your business from the end and it's starting, I mean, start your business from the end. It's really something I have got onto the last year or so is really think about, w it comes from our recruiting conversation is where do you want to go? And then let's build a backward. How are we going to get you there? 

 Josh
 Yeah. A. 

 joe
 Lot of it's about KPIs, key performance indicators, on everything you do. I'm sure you look at it every day. What YouTube video had got the most views. How can I go down that path? You know, all of that. You need to be looking at it every day, every week, every month and every year. 

 Josh
 Yeah. What gets measured gets grown. Wait, what was the, I don't know that saying, 

 joe
 Damn. 

 Josh
 I got ya. I D I don't know. 

 joe
 What gets measured gets. 

 Josh
 Improved or something like that. Yeah. 

 joe
 But it's spot on. It's spot on. If you're measuring it, looking at it will help you grow your business. 

 Josh
 As you're growing. What is, what's your end look like? Cause you're like guy, if a little farm boy from Nebraska, come here to LA build out some, 

 joe
 I only came when I came because I was, I've been in college about a year and a half and my parents were losing the farm. There was no place to go back home to. There was no place that I'm like, well, s**t, no money. I got in my car, I drove to Colorado. I'm like, well, I've been here. And so I just kept driving. I ended up on pellizotti street in San Clemente, California got gas looked at it's like two o'clock in the morning and drove over a couple of Hills just to kind of keep going a little further west. There was the ocean. And so call my dad. And I just said, Hey, I'm here. And he goes, where's here. I said, I haven't got a clue, but I'm being, I'll call you later on. They ended up in San Clemente, California, just starting to live. 

 joe
 I work at stride, Rite shoes, selling kids shoes. I started doing telemarketing at night and I am the worst telemarketer you could ever find. What I'm really bad at is technology. I was so bad on the phones. They moved me into the tech side of it, which I don't know what they were thinking. I was like 21 years old. I had no clue, but they kept me employed for awhile. And so that was good. 

 Josh
 Yeah. Now, when a new agent comes to you and they're like, especially say, and you're like, Hey man, I was terrible at cold calling telemarketing. I was terrible at it. Right. I worked at a company that I had to do a hundred calls a day. Right? Yeah. Talk about brutal. Like you grow some thick skin and you grow, you get pretty callous and you learned how to drink. 

 joe
 I had to eventually do it. I mean, it was when, coming out of Nebraska and coming from such a small community, I was always very shocked and actually still am for the most part, but not like I was then. Cause I didn't grow up around a lot of people, most of them are relatives. Right. I got off the university of Nebraska and then I was in this ag fraternity. It was kind of around the same guys all the time. It was so it was very hard for me to start with a cold calling, but then I got to LA and I got into this business and my current business partner, my business partner, George is CEO of our brokerage actually laid me off a company. That's that sob, he got laid off about a month later. He called me up this, Hey, what are you doing? 

 joe
 I told him and he goes, well, he goes, Hey, I'm getting laid off. I said, yeah, I heard it was going to happen. The secretary of pool, the back then was, this was in the late eighties, early nineties. Yeah. They knew everything. Right. They were letting me know that George was going to get laid off. So I offered him. I said, listen, if you want to come do this 50 with me and were doing real estate auctions, I said, you want to do 50 with me and let's go ahead and get going. And that's how we got started. Now it's been 20 some years and I've been making him pay every day for laying me off. So I hold a grudge. 

 Josh
 I could feel that. How long has it been? 25 years. 

 joe
 It's funny. I don't even know. Know it's a forever damn near 30 years actually. 

 Josh
 It's time to let it go, buddy. 

 joe
 Yeah, I think so. Yeah, it's been, but to get that company started the auction company, I had to do a cold call and so, and and it was commission only. You're forced to do it, you hone your craft pretty damn quickly. Right. You're like, okay, this is what I got to do. And so yeah. 

 Josh
 Yeah. I had to do telemarketing and I've done door to door sales. That's terrible too. 

 joe
 I couldn't do that. 

 Josh
 I think it builds some cool skillsets from all the years that you've learned. What would you say is your super power in business? Like at, of all the things you've done and tried, like you've honed this cool, skill set. What do you think is your superpower in business? 

 joe
 Figuring out a path. I mean, it's, I think that was, it started fairly young because the real estate auction company that, I was at and then George came over later, he ended up being the number two commercial real estate auction company in the Western region, the United States. And we hadn't done an auction yet. Within 18 months were the number two company right behind the company that latest both off. Right. So, yeah, we knew we'd done some damage because were up for a, an auction. They were going to give our previous company 400 properties, us 400 properties. I was in Dallas getting ready to fly home. By the time I got to the airport, the client called me. Of course you got to, I was 20 some years old going broke. This was a big deal for us. We're finally gonna to make some money. 

 joe
 It was, I think at $1,200 in the bank, they call sell cake. They're going to take your half of the auction for free. We're not going to need your services. Ouch. We learned then that, we are doing, we did create some damage there, but a lot of it was just seeing, seeing where it was going to go next. So, we saw the auction business was something that was going to work for a few years. We started doing, lower income housing. That was something that was really up and coming in LA. Lot of people start kept doing that. You know, where I probably failed. There was deals that we talked about with people that we didn't follow through with. Other people took the idea and ran with it. They were very successful. Maybe we had some ideas we should have, we could have done better. 

 Josh
 Yeah. Follow through for me. What I'm learning is man, the money's in the funnel, the money's in the follow through right. Is conversations already started. People have already paid, they've already done deals, like get in that to another dealer or a closed deal. But that's a lot of work, man. It's. 

 joe
 Yeah. I love it though. I love starting companies. We're getting ready to launch a, a broker or a pay a mortgage company. I con capital will be out in the next, probably 60 days. Yeah. 

 Josh
 Nice. 

 joe
 We'll turn our company, the brokerage company it'll be a investment brokerage firm. So we'll start buying properties. George and I are always buying or trying to buy properties anyway. Our agents will be able to participate in. Cause I just think everybody should own real estate in some form. 

 Josh
 Yeah. Super cool. Super cool. So I've got a deck of questions. Oh, going to stop. Yeah. This is going to, who knows? What's on this one. Tell me when to stop. I'm running out right there. Okay. I, for my, we have a sh an uncensored show. So I have adult cards. We, this is the dealer show co the deal spot. Yeah. Oh, this is important for, as in the deal, all apply it to deal the deal world. What is the easiest way to earn and break your trust when it comes to syndicating a deal with you or being a deal maker in your network, 

 joe
 Just not communicating properly. When you're dealing with somebody else's money. It's it's, I don't care when it's personal and so communication for me is a key. We tell our agents, even if, I got after one of our agents this morning, she's a phenomenal agent, but I introduced her to somebody chit and reach out to them. You have to dance. Why not said you need to communicate or always communicate it really. If you don't communicate, it really breeds distressed. 

 Josh
 Yup. Yeah, absolutely. It's what are some tools you use or you recommend your agents use to, be a good agent, 

 joe
 A really good CRM. Now there's when I say a good one, depends on, what you're doing, but there's free ones out there. There's, there's paid ones that are very good, but structure is one of the top things you've got to have structure and that CRM is going to be key to that. You know? It's organization, if you want to be, if you want to build a business, you'd better be organized otherwise. And I learned I'm speaking from experience. We got the auction company, I was just focused on biz dev biz dev, right. Just cold calls all day, every day. And this was before the internet. I couldn't email anybody had actually anybody spoke, we spoke to, I had to type out a letter on printer, fold it, put it in the mail, send it. So, but, so it was a little different back then, but then I got super busy. 

 joe
 I mean, I just, it just, the spicket turned on and then I was chasing my tail to get organized. If I had to put that in place in the beginning, I've been a lot better place. 

 Josh
 Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. As you're, as we're going through this interview, what's something that you love talking about or that you wished I would ask you during this interview that I completely skipped so far. 

 joe
 Oh my God. I don't really know. I really liked, we've touched on, I mean, mentoring, I think is the thing that I like to talk about because I think it's critical in any career. If you can find, especially in our career, right? If you can find somebody that's gone down the path that you've already gone down or want to go down and they've been down there and had success with it, finding a good mentor and then bringing them value. You can really help them continue down their path and even do more, I think is key. And I love talking about that. Actually, we have a foundation called mentor one and it's for young women that want to get into real estate. Now you don't have to be a real estate agent. You can, if you want to be a title, officer, escrow, officer, whatever you want to do in real estate. 

 joe
 Now, if you want to be a residential agent, a commercial agent, we'll find you a mentor, but we find mentors for all those people. Whatever you want to do and trying to bring more women into commercial real estate or into real estate, 

 Josh
 That's pretty cool. Where, where can you find out more information about that. 

 joe
 Mentor wire dot or M E N T O R w I R e.org. 

 Josh
 That's cool. And it's a foundation. Why, why did you guys set that up? 

 joe
 Well, we had a foundation before, when we first started investing in multifamily and this just goes back to the small town, right? We first started multifamily. We were in these low income areas. I'd go out and I'd see all these kids standing around and you, and there was gang members across the street. We had these young kids that were just very, very young and just trying to figure out their path in life, right? What will these gang members across the street? I just didn't like their opportunities for going that direction. Going back to my hometown, if I had a math problem, I could pick up the phone and call my aunt who was my English teacher or my math teacher, whoever, I mean, being in such a small town, you just call them, they'd walk you through a problem. As if too bad, they don't have that. 

 joe
 I went home that night and I'm thinking about it. I came up with this concept called learning leaks centers. And so we started buying bigger properties. Actually, this is why another reason we ended up in Texas because of the larger assets. We buy that multi-family properties and we buy properties that need fixed up. We take a studio or one bedroom. We turn it into a resource room where kids could go after school and get tutored four days a week. Went to a local school and we're talking to teachers because teachers just weren't making enough money and they'd have to take on tutoring gigs at night, right? They'd leave the school and have to drive someplace to do tutoring. We then offered them a discount and rent. If they just tutor in our building. Now, if they want to live there, they can have free rent and go that route. 

 joe
 And that took off very well. We don't have seven buildings here in LA. The kids ended up just instead of getting the gangs, they were in that resource room. Every night. We had computers with educational software. I obviously had the teacher there. We had a mini library where kids could check out books and board games were a big thing and it was shocking to me. We created the foundation to take them on trips. Like we take them surfing. They'd never been, they live seven miles from the ocean and they never been to their camping. We had annual camping trip and take them up north of mammoth. Most of them hadn't been out of LA county. And so that was great. We also get installer ships to get them onto higher education. Now some of them went to be constantly, one guy wanted to be a construction worker. 

 joe
 Another one, another young lady wanted to be a producer. She's in New York and we gave him partial scholarships to get them started. So, and now those kids are in their late twenties and we still stay in touch. So it's been phenomenal. We ended up to where the buildings, probably our big mistake there was, we didn't realize that, people weren't going to move in. We ended up without any kids because as the kids grew up and went on to higher education, nobody moved in because it created this sense of community. So we run out of kids. We had to, we ended up having to sell the properties, but we're going to continue to do it. So, but it's been fun. 

 Josh
 Yeah. That's pretty cool. As you're building this out, like what would a one big win like you and I let's just say you're 57. I'm 40. Yeah. 30 years from now. We're sitting on a front porch, on a rocking chair, looking back and we'd like, we did it. Yeah. Does that look like for you? 

 joe
 Yeah, it is. It's those kids that for me, when they reach out to me on Facebook still, they'll, or they'll text me or email ill, but there'll be a photo or something on Facebook and they'll make a comment. That to me is here was somebody that was headed down a path. It probably wasn't positive, but here now they've got an education of some sort and they've got a job and they've got this incredible life that they probably wouldn't have before because of those teachers, those teachers that were doing that tutoring every night, it's phenomenal. I would go back out there. It was always supposed to be an hour and a half a night. I would go back and be out there with an emergency on the property. The teacher would still be in the resource around it. What are you doing? She goes, well, he or she needed help. 

 joe
 They didn't want to do it in front of other kids. Those teachers are a lot of it, but we get the credit for it. Right. But that's the main thing. 

 Josh
 That's cool. What's a good place for people to connect with you and do deal with you. 

 joe
 You can call me (310) 943-8542 is my direct line or email is joe@joekillinger.co. If you want to check out our commercial real estate, the real estate company companies, CBI, commercial.com. Any of those, it's, we're, we are pretty easy to find. 

 Josh
 Yeah. And. 

 joe
 Subscribed to the real estate jam session. 

 Josh
 Yeah. Tell us about the real estate jam session. Tell us what that is. 

 joe
 It is, it's something that, when I was starting in the business, it was obviously a long time ago and everybody saw everybody else's competition right now. You couldn't get a mentor unless you went into a big company and you got put in under somebody. The path that I chose was just no mentors. George and I decided that when we could, we'd put information out and we'd help people. That kind of got shelved because we had our property management company I'm on a tech company. Over the years, there was always a reason. Finally, a couple of years ago, we thought let's start putting out content that can really help people to want to become a real estate investor or a real estate agent and was put up where they can find it. Let's make sure it's free for them to have. Hopefully it'll be good enough for them to want to take a look at it. 

 joe
 That's really what it, how it all started. I get people to come on and we just do interviews. We talk to people like today I have rod Khalif. And do you know who rod. 

 Josh
 Cleveland's? Yeah, 

 joe
 Rod cliff. He's a hunter. We recorded him last week and he's on today. That will come out at 2:00 PM DST on the channel. So he's phenomenal. His story's amazing. 

 Josh
 Super cool. Yeah. We've had dinner with him multiple times, went out to his house. Like he lives right down the road wall, a couple of hours down the road from us. Yeah. He's, he's a friend. He advises us. He gives us some input he's he slapped me and he's like, dude, don't do that. I'm like, yes, sir. You know, he's a big. 

 joe
 Something. He tells me way. It is the way he feels, where you stand. I love that. 

 Josh
 Yeah. Nah, he's a good, this is, it's a small circle, small world for, for good people. I love that band and I that's why we love the show is we get to meet cool people and then we're like, oh, so-and-so yeah, we should all hang out and drink or whatever. So one more thing. What, what, as we're ending out this interview, describe the perfect deal. If someone has it one more way of how they could connect with you. 

 joe
 Yeah. I love it. What we're looking for is more as T and L deals, Stan single-tenant net lease deals like the deal were talking about earlier with a chase bank, a standalone just a few years left on the lease. We can go in and renegotiate it and return it. You know, we're mostly looking, Texas, Florida. We're looking at California as well. It's just, it's pretty saturated here, but yeah, looking for deals that we can go into and add some value to them, all S T now. 

 Josh
 Very cool. Very cool. One more way of how they could connect with you. 

 joe
 Best is Joe and Joe killinger.co. 

 Josh
 Sounds cool, man, fellow dealmakers, thank you for listening in. I hope this was educational and an enjoyable. If you have one of those deals, right? That fits Joe's criteria. That's man. Reach out to them. That's the mission and purpose of this show put deals in deal makers together. If you are working on a deal or would like to come on the show and talk about the deal, head on over to the deal. Scout.com little microphone in the bottom right hand corner, you can leave me a voice message or contact button up at the top. Fill out a quick form. Maybe get you on the show next till then talk to you all on the next episode. See you guys.