Marketing Historic Buildings with Amanda Friedlander

Josh Wilson
 Good day, fellow deal makers. Welcome to the deal. Scout. This show is all about deal makers and putting deals and deal makers together. With that, I try to find people from different industries and then also different roles within these industries. I found a very cool person that I'd like to share their story and to share some of the things that she's working on. We brought on a CMO, a chief marketing officer of a well established commercial real estate firm, to talk to us about deals and the personal journey about being a female in a deal making industry. So, Amanda, welcome to the deal. Scout. 

 Amanda Friedlander (she/they)
 Thanks so much for having me. 

 Josh Wilson
 Absolutely. Alright, so where's home? What side of the world are you guys located? 

 Amanda Friedlander (she/they)
 We're in downtown Chicago, and that's where our market is based, in the central loop, south loop River North, East Loop, that kind of area. 

 Josh Wilson
 Super cool. All right, so tell us about what your firm does and some of the things you guys focus on, and then we'll kind of get in the weeds of, like, how you got into the industry and such. But what do you guys do? 

 Amanda Friedlander (she/they)
 Absolutely. Willard Jones Real Estate is a uniquely positioned boutique real estate firm, and that's because our product tends to be smaller, class C, class B buildings in downtown Chicago right now, all of the news is about these big, new, fancy developments in Fulton Market, the West Loop River North, all of these multi million, billion dollar buildings being established. We kind of pred ourselves in having a lot of smaller floorplates, the buildings that are typically overlooked, buildings that people pass by because they don't have the flashiest new thing. It's not to say our product is lesser than we do, have a lot of really cool buildings with fascinating histories, but we also have the benefit of being a small business. Our team is very tiny, and because of that, other small businesses that are tenants and clients of ours, they tend to trust ups because we understand what that's like. 

 Amanda Friedlander (she/they)
 We know the financial situation, the emotional investment in your small business, and the fact that you can't always afford to take huge risks. Because we're also small, we offer a really personalized, highly customized approach. We're very approachable, highly communicative, very responsive, and we're also really tightly knit. We're constantly looking at new ways to innovate, constantly collaborating with each other, and it just makes for a really positive environment where we can establish great relationships with our clients. 

 Josh Wilson
 Yeah. Amanda, this is super cool. One of the things that I want to pull out in this interview is if you have four us fellow deal makers, and if we have commercial real estate and maybe we don't have the newest new development building, but we still need to get it leased up or sold right. I'd love some of your tips and tricks that you have found being in Meeting on your side. Your job is to market these buildings to the world, right, and get these things sold, or at least up. Before we do that, how did you get into this? Give us your story about getting into Meeting, getting into real estate. What does your journey look like? 

 Amanda Friedlander (she/they)
 I completely fell into this industry by accident. I actually used to live in Los Angeles. I'm from Chicago, but I lived there for a few years. While I was there, I was working for this high powered litigation PR firm, working 1820 hours, days, nights, weekends, holidays. I was convinced that was the direction my life was going to take. I was even about to start a law program at Marymount, and then COVID happened, and my life completely fell apart from the inside out. My engagement ended, I lost a ton of money. I had to move all the way back home by myself. No job, no money, nothing. Moved back in with my parents, all of it. It was just crazy. I was applying like a lot of other people, I was applying to anywhere and anywhere that I could use my degree. My degree is in advertising creative with a minor in marketing. 

 Amanda Friedlander (she/they)
 One day I applied to Willard Jones. Not really knowing very much about real estate, kind of having my own preconceived notions about what that meant. My very first interview with my predecessor and my colleague Jonathan, we had such a great conversation. It was so easy and lighthearted and personal. It felt like just having coffee with friends. I was offered a job, took it right away, started a couple of weeks later thinking, okay, this is going to be a temporary thing. I'm just going to be here until I find something better or find work at a law firm or go back to school, something like that. Well, two years later, a little over two years later, not only have I grown from, I think my title was like, assistant marketing, something like that, to Chief Marketing officer and future broker at the business. I'm hopefully just a few weeks away from earning my broker's license. 

 Amanda Friedlander (she/they)
 We'll see how the test goes. Running all the recruitment practices, making decisions on where our office was, how everything's laid out, making huge business decisions. Jonathan was so supportive of my journey and we had such a great professional relationship that my loyalty to the company just grew. Through that I really developed a passion because commercial real estate, especially with the work that we do, a lot of it is problem solving. It's creative, innovative problem solving. I never saw that side of it until I was in the weeds of it. It was completely accidental, but it honestly ended up being one of the best decisions I've ever made for my career. 

 Josh Wilson
 Yeah, super cool. I'm so glad of your journey to discover that and to develop the passion. Right. Commercial real estate, if you just look at it from the outside, it's buildings and square footage, right. It's nothing super creative, maybe the architectural design or something. That was done maybe 100 years ago with historic buildings. Right. Finding the creativity in how to make these things new again, make these things appealing again, or bringing out the history is something that it taps into the creative mind. Let's do this for these old buildings, right? How old are some of these historic buildings that you guys work with? 

 Amanda Friedlander (she/they)
 Oh, gosh. Well, one of them is actually a survivor of the Great Chicago Fire, so they go way back. 

 Josh Wilson
 Wow. Super cool. So tons of history. What are some things you found because you're competing, right? Square footage. You're competing with the office building next door, and it could be a brand new building if it wasn't. Dollars for dollars competition. How else can you computer creatively? 

 Amanda Friedlander (she/they)
 One thing I always try to do is not capture just the logistics of the building. I guess I would compare it to, like, the stem science of the building. I really want to tap into the heart of it. What is the essence of this building's identity? What can it offer people that they wouldn't get with a building that was just put up like a year or two ago? The Gaza honest truth is, Chicago is teeming with fascinating history. There is so much beautiful blood in the veins of all of these buildings, the ones that are historical. I think a lot of people, when they see an older building that hasn't been vastly renovated in the past few years and still has some of those old markings of its history, they tend to give up on it because they assume that people are going to want something newer and flashier. 

 Amanda Friedlander (she/they)
 What I've tried to do is find out everything I can about where it came from, who built it, who was the architect, what was the purpose, what was the original plan for the building? What happened inside its walls that give it a special kind of spirit, if you will, one of ours, even the ones where you do your research, you go through all the historical archives and you can't find all that much. There's always something. For one of our buildings, it was used during World War II as a place, one of the few places where women could work and help create jobs and provide supplies for the men who were off to fight in the war. It's of like a feminist icon building, and no one would know that unless they actually dug into the research. I don't even know if the owners know that. 

 Amanda Friedlander (she/they)
 That's one way that you can kind of computer without having to flash special competitive rates or anything like that. Believe it or not, I think real Chicago and Scotland, quote, really do value the grit and the resilience that flows through these buildings that have survived so much. I think they really respect that. And that's something that makes Chicago so. 

 Josh Wilson
 Great and so unique, super awesome, right? As you're going through the story and you gather this information and it's a side by side comparison, let's just say money. People are coming to lease the space, and money is not an issue. They're just trying to find something that's the best fit for their culture, the best fit for their business and their operations, right? And then they look at that. How do you take that story, the essence, you say, like, it's the blood, the spirit of the business, the spirit of the building. How do you take that into a tactical marketing piece right, that goes to these people that they can say, oh, I'd rather go there because there's history. How do you do that? 

 Amanda Friedlander (she/they)
 A lot of that is getting creative with your graphic design and actually putting pen to paper and creating something that's going to get that message across in a very quick way. Because, if someone opens up your email and I'm very proud to say have an open rate of an average of 30%, which is unheard of in this business, you are going to have maybe half a second to capture their attention before they move on to the next thing. Especially with these brokers from bigger firms. They're looking for something that's going to bring them money. If you're sending them information, it has to be interesting, useful information for them. That comes down to, I guess, the physics of what captures people's attention. There's color theory involved, there's accessibility theory involved. That's very important to me. Not all of our emails are all that universally understandable. What I'm getting at there is we've experimented with more like risque emails. 

 Amanda Friedlander (she/they)
 Like, I created a campaign that was mocking a peep show type thing for one of our spaces. Yeah. We did one that was a long multi week campaign where I created my own version of the allegory of the cave by Plato and use that to create a metaphor for how people were coming out of there, working from home spaces back into the world of the office. All of those things need to be, first of all, immediately legible attention getting, sometimes shocking, and make people think, oh, what is this? I'm curious enough that I want to click on this. Even if it's not a conversion, even if they click onto the page, the image, the website, whatever, and then they click off and we never hear from them again, we know we've planted that seed in their mind. We've planted that seed and the cookies of their data on their computer. 

 Amanda Friedlander (she/they)
 That's all it takes for something to come back, even years later, because they will remember you. You just have to be willing to put in the work and wait. 

 Josh Wilson
 How brave of you guys to take things like that in the commercial real estate world. I've been doing this for a while. Sometimes we could get super boring. Here's the building, here's the cap rate, here's the numbers. Does it make sense? Yes or no? Very logically driven, right? Like numbers and such. But you're taking a unique approach. That's why we love talking to deal makers, because we can learn across different plates. You guys are taking the approach to get people's attention and to show them, like, here's some history, here's some cool things. How did the kind of risque email in that campaign go? Did it work in commercial real estate? Does it help it? 

 Amanda Friedlander (she/they)
 Oh, yeah. All the time. Whenever I'm on a show and with Jonathan and he is introducing me to a client or someone that he's known for a long time, the first thing they say to me is, oh, you're the marketing girl. I love your emails. They're so funny and it's the best compliment I can ever get. It makes me feel so good because a lot of these people are a generation ahead of me. They're they're older than me. As someone who's on the youngerish side, I think I'm technically a millennial. I have no idea. The truth is that a lot of new talent is feeding into these businesses. I'm not necessarily going for like, the octogenerian who is completely jaded in the industry and doesn't even open his emails because he has four associates doing it for him. I'm going for the people who still have a bit of passion and soul in them, or people brand new who aren't even licensed yet, who just started a week ago and are so tired of reading those same template emails again and again. 

 Amanda Friedlander (she/they)
 If I can shock them, maybe scare them and fascinate them, they're going to show it to their boss, they're going to show it to the rest of their team, and then the rest is gravy. 

 Josh Wilson
 Yeah, super cool. I want to actually see one of these emails because I think it's cool, right? Like, there's no reason that you can't have both creativity and a positive ROI for your investors. There's no reason that it can't not be fun, too. As you're doing this, you've been doing this for a few years and you found your fit and you said, I'm even going to get my commercial real estate license. Now, you said you've experienced coming into the industry, that yourself are seeing it from a different perspective, from a female perspective in commercial real estate. What are some things that you'd like to see happen in the industry, some things that you'd like to happen for other females? Talk to me, your heart, because to be honest, I'm a dude and I just don't get a lot of things. So I'm just going to ask you. 

 Amanda Friedlander (she/they)
 Well, so there are a few overarching issues when it comes to being a woman in a primarily male dominated field. Of course, there's crew, there's all of these different associations for women in commercial real estate, but for those of us who are just starting out or aren't part of, I guess, a place of women who are well established and well respected in the industry. I have had a few encounters where clients that I'm meeting for showing or even just other people in the building make f hand remarks to me, like wondering if I'm someone's intern or making comments about how I look, what I'm dressing like. I have tattoos, I have piercings. I don't look like the typical business woman that you think of at one point I had pink hair and it can be really difficult to command an air of respect and discipline and seriousness when you're not fitting that typical mold that people are used to from. 

 Amanda Friedlander (she/they)
 The other thing about it is it's a safety issue. Sometimes I do have to wonder if I'm going to go on a showing with someone and I'm going to be alone in a building where the lighting is kind of wonky or no one's going to be around, or maybe it's during off hours. I have to be concerned, I have to watch out for myself and take those steps. I would really like to see certain things in place. I think, first of all, promoting younger women into positions of power, even if they don't have a certain degree or a certain level of experience, but at least getting them on the ground in a way where they can develop a lot of confidence really quickly. For me, I was really thrown into the showings pretty fast. I was with Jonathan on a lot of them in the beginning, but anytime that he had to go out of town or he was already on a showing and we got someone who needed to see something today, like at this exact hour, or else the earth will explode, I would have to take over. 

 Amanda Friedlander (she/they)
 For the first few months I was shaking like a leaf. I was so nervous because I didn't think anyone would take me seriously. Trial by fire can be really helpful for women not only seeing what they're capable of, but starting to believe that they can see themselves as that high powered woman, that high powered professional, even if other people don't see it. That's something I would like to see. Certainly more respect for, like the female experience at work. It's less prominent today and the Crown Act was recently passed for women having their natural hair in schools and in businesses, women of color can't be discriminated against for wearing their natural hair, stuff like that. Also companies that demand women have a certain type of wardrobe, wearing heels or dresses, not having visible piercings or tattoos. Some of those things are very personal decisions. Some of them might have medical purposes or what? 

 Amanda Friedlander (she/they)
 Sometimes we just don't want to wear high heels. I certainly don't want her neither, right? Exactly. And fortunately, this company is so fantastic. I have never ever been told anything about my appearance. I have always been encouraged to express myself and to go on showings looking exactly how I am, as long as I'm not wearing like a bikini or something, obviously, which in Chicago gets cold. 

 Josh Wilson
 You may not want to do that. 

 Amanda Friedlander (she/they)
 That would not work out so well. Yeah, but I this that some of that gets overlooked because people think it doesn't exist anymore. The truth is, a lot of young women in the industry do still struggle with weird comments from the men in their company. And I think that's really important to. 

 Josh Wilson
 Address what I love about our conversation today and beyond. Like, to be honest, I'm ignorant of other things that are not right in front of me. Right. That's why I have a podcast show, to ask questions and then let people share this opinions. That's the beauty of podcasting, which you have a podcast show we're going to talk about in a second. What I love about this is we've taken a creative and put in a highly structured world of commercial real estate, and it's working really well for you guys. 

 Amanda Friedlander (she/they)
 Yeah, it is. 

 Josh Wilson
 That's cool. 

 Amanda Friedlander (she/they)
 It's so cool. It's been an amazing experience for me. I honestly never thought I would use my advertising degree, or I thought if I was, it would be really simple, basic banner ads or something like that. This has been such an amazing creative outlet for me, and I've even been able to use it in my law school career. It's been so valuable, and I'm really grateful for it. 

 Josh Wilson
 Super cool. Now, you do have a podcast. So, fellow podcaster, tell us about your podcast and where can people find it? Sure. 

 Amanda Friedlander (she/they)
 My podcast talking is hard when you're a podcast, SOP s. It's called The Cowcast by Willard Jones Real Estate. It's available anywhere and everywhere that you get your podcast. I encourage you to download it on Spotify. The name comes from a reference to our namesake, willard Jones Real Estate. You can read the full story about who Willard Jones was on our website. I won't bore you with the details, but essentially he was one of the first settlers in Chicago. When he did settle, he had all these parcels of land. And early Chicago was quite rural. It was a lot of farming area. As he started to sell these parcels of land, he had some kind of deed created to ensure that the path where his cows would cross would remain intact. To this very day, I think it's on, like, Madison and Monroe. Don't quote me on that. 

 Amanda Friedlander (she/they)
 I know it's somewhere in the central loop. The doors still exist where his cow path ran through. It's a landmark now. Willard Jones and cows kind of go hand in hand. It's a recurring theme in a lot of our marketing, which works out great because I'm a big fan of cows, and that's where it comes from. What we do is every month we talk about overarching themes from the commercial real estate world based in Chicago. What we used to do is I would pick three stories and cover them, just kind of not word for word, but just kind of do a summary of them, like I'm reading a Wikipedia page, but we transitioned into what is at the heart of these stories. What does this mean? For Chicago, why should you care? Because when you're reading Cranes Chicago Business or whatever, it's easy to just get lost in the doom scrolling and not know how it's really going to impact you or how to react to it. 

 Amanda Friedlander (she/they)
 We try to get serious and get down to the meaning of these words and should we be concerned about something? Should we be celebrating something? What are people overlooking? Sometimes we do this week in history. This Month in History. I like to find weird, odd news stories from, like, the Chicago Tribune from Prohibition era. There's always a bunch of weird stuff in there. You would just not imagine what I've seen. We always do a non profit shout out and try to promote a non profit in the Chicago area. A lot of ours are South Side and West Side nonprofits helping people from underserved areas get school supplies, or when Central Camera was attacked during a few years ago, during the protests, we did a lot of work trying to get them back on their feet. Sometimes nonprofits reach out to us. We did one with this archival service, these LGBTQ plus archives, to promote the preservation of these really important gay and transgender historical pieces. 

 Amanda Friedlander (she/they)
 So that's what we like to do. It's always under ten minutes long. It's a really quick listen. I try to encourage people to listen to it on their commute, whether they're walking, driving, or taking the L, because there's no excuse not to listen to it when it's only ten minutes long. 

 Josh Wilson
 Yeah, taking the L, that must be one of your trains or subways or something, because I'm not familiar with it. 

 Amanda Friedlander (she/they)
 Sorry. So the L is Chicago's subway system. I think it stands for Elevated Platform, but no one calls it that. 

 Josh Wilson
 If I come to Chicago, I've been there once or twice, if I come there again, I'm going to be like, I'm taking the L, and I'll fit right in and I'll come visit you guys at Willard Jones. Right. 

 Amanda Friedlander (she/they)
 I wouldn't say if you're walking down the street being like, I'm taking the L, I don't think anyone can look at you positively. But you know what you do? You yeah. 

 Josh Wilson
 They'll be like, that's a tourist right there. He looks like he's from South Florida wearing borrowed shorts and flip flops. Amanda, as you're doing this, you said that a part of your journey is you want to get your broker's license yourself. What inspired you to do that? Coming from a highly creative background to jumping into commercial real estate, looks like you're diving in. Why? 

 Amanda Friedlander (she/they)
 Yeah. Well, a big part of it is Jonathan, he really has encouraged me to continue my education, continue my professional career. He sat on multiple occasions. He doesn't care if I'm with the company for the rest of my life. He just wants me to be successful and happy, which is so rare. He doesn't like when I call him my boss, but he signs my paycheck, so he is. It's really rare in a boss to get that kind of support. With that freedom to grow and explore, and with him being willing to pay for the course and the testing and the licensing and everything, there was really no reason for me not to. I've always been a lifelong learner. My dad always encouraged me to continue learning and growing, both personally and professionally. That's always been really important to him, and he's made a lot of sacrifices for me to have those opportunities. 

 Amanda Friedlander (she/they)
 It happened to be the end of my last semester. I had a whole summer ahead of me. I'm the kind of person where if I sit still for more than ten minutes, I start to go crazy. Yeah. All right. So I figured I might as well. I'll take the class, I'll see how it goes. A lot of the material was stuff that I was working with in my daily life at work already. It came to me relatively naturally, and I do have that creative side, but I also am blessed with a logistical logical brain as well, very analytical. Being a broker with my marketing background allows me to do this creative problem solving, and a lot of people watching and relationship building. I'm more maybe eccentric than Jonathan is, and I think that energy can be really beneficial for getting deals to happen, being open and kind of playful at times, really getting to know people on the showings, asking what kind of shoes they're wearing. 

 Amanda Friedlander (she/they)
 I mean, it's little things like that really make a difference. So that's really what inspired me. I'm really excited about getting my license. I hope that eventually I can combine once I'm a licensed attorney, I can combine the two of those to really push my career on an upward trajectory. 

 Josh Wilson
 So hold on a second. You have a background in advertising and marketing, right? You work with some law firms, so you're in the process of becoming an attorney yourself and getting your broker's license? 

 Amanda Friedlander (she/they)
 Yeah. 

 Josh Wilson
 Holy moly. All right. What drives you to want to do these things? Because a lot of people may not be as driven as you like. It sounds like you're very ambitious, and it sounds like you've got a drive to accomplish some big things for yourself. Why? 

 Amanda Friedlander (she/they)
 Because I cannot imagine a life where I'm not trying to make a difference for the people around me. That's what my personal meeting of life is about. Law is a great way to make a difference for people, and honestly, so is real estate. People need a place to work. People need someone to represent them so they don't get screwed over by other brokers or by building owners or companies that are really seeing them as a rent check. They need individuals to vouch for them, and advocate for them. That kind of support is offered both as an attorney and as a broker. Even if it's on a very small scale, even if I am only making $30 commission on a deal, I still made a difference for that person. My dad always had this little sign hanging above his computer in his office, and it was the parable of the starfish. 

 Amanda Friedlander (she/they)
 Do you know that one? 

 Josh Wilson
 Sure. That where someone throws one in and they look and they said, well, I saved that one? 

 Amanda Friedlander (she/they)
 Yeah. It's two men walking along the beach, two people, whatever, and it's littered with sea stars just everywhere. They're all drying up, they're getting cracked, they're dying actively. One person looks around and is like, there's no way we're going to be able to save all of these sea stars. There's no way we're ever going to make a difference. The other one picks up a sea star, throws it back into the ocean and says, made a difference to that one. That's the philosophy that I've lived my life by since I was old enough to understand parables. 

 Josh Wilson
 Even though I've been doing this for like eight years, I pulled such a rookie mistake. You're like, hey, did you hear about the parable? What I'm supposed to say as a great podcast host is, hey, tell us more about that. And I totally gave away the things. Yeah, the person throws us out. I'm on the same rip, man. So, Amanda, awesome job. So let's do this. I know that there's people in the audience who want to learn from the creative side of what you've done. Where could people go to connect with you and maybe even see some of your creative ideas, maybe share some ideas with you, or maybe they get some advice from you. Where's a good place for people to do that? 

 Amanda Friedlander (she/they)
 I would recommend, first of all, subscribing to our newsletter. I'm the one who handles pretty much all the emails, so that's where you'll see some of my creative work. If you go to Willardjones.com, you can sign up for the newsletter right on the front page. You can certainly connect with me on LinkedIn. It's Amanda Friedlander. I think it's a black and white picture of me as my profile picture. We do have an instagram. We have some social media. It's under construction right now, but if you look up Willard Jones, C-R-E you can follow us. Instagram, Facebook, possibly Twitter. LinkedIn linktree on YouTube as well. We have some videos up there as well. 

 Josh Wilson
 Super cool. I just followed you on LinkedIn, so we'll stay in touch that way. Fellow deal makers in the audience, as always, reach out to our guests and say, thanks for being on the show, and reach out to them and say, how can we do a deal together? Let's buy some real estate in Chicago, or at least have some real estate in Chicago. So, as always, reach out to them. Their contact information will be in the show notes. Amanda, I'm going to come back to you with a few more questions, right. We spoke a lot about you. Let's talk on the deal side. What kind of deals does Willard Jones and your group specifically focus on? Because you mentioned it, and I want to make sure that our audience picks that up too, because especially if they're in Chicago, they could do a deal with you. 

 Amanda Friedlander (she/they)
 If you're looking to lease a space, retail or office space in the downtown Chicago area that encompasses River, north, all of the Loop, Fulton Market, I think that's everything. We are a great resource for you, especially if you're a small to mid size business and you're looking for something that's maybe under 20,000, looking for an office with small floorplates where you go to, especially in class B and class C buildings. Of course, there's tons of options downtown. There's a lot of vacancies that we're looking to fill. We do primarily focus on office and retail. Jonathan has an extensive background in medical office business, so that's also a really great option. Those are the types of deals that we focus on. But you know what? Once I get my license, I'm able to do any kind of deals. I'm always telling Jonathan, I would love to open up a cemetery portion of our business and be the designated cemetery broker. 

 Amanda Friedlander (she/they)
 So we'll see if that works out. 

 Josh Wilson
 That is so cool when that happens. Definitely. Let's chat, because that is an interesting business that I have not dug into, no pun intended, on the grave site. I've got three kids, so dad jokes galore. I got it. Amanda, what questions should I have asked you during this interview that I screwed up and did not ask you? 

 Amanda Friedlander (she/they)
 Oh, man, you should have asked me if I can show you a space that you're interested in leasing, and I would be happy to do that. 

 Josh Wilson
 Sounds good. I'm going to get a spot in Chicago. Fellow deal makers, if you are looking for some place in Chicago, head on over to Willardjones.com and sign up for the newsletter, which you'll see some stuff that might shock you and have some fun doing it. And I hope you've enjoyed this episode. If you guys have a deal that you would like to talk on this show about, head over to thedealscout.com fill out a quick form, maybe get you on the show next. If our guest has a podcast, my encouragement to go listen to their podcast, give them a raving review, a five star review, and share it with your friends. Till then, we'll talk to you all on the next episode. Bye, guys.