Mini Series on Investment Sales Brokerage

Welcome, everyone. Excited for our latest miniseries on investment sales, brokerage. And with us, so happy to have our executive Managing director of US Capital Markets, Marion Jones. Welcome, Marion.

Hey, James. Thanks so much for having me.

Awesome. So let's first, before we talk about getting into brokerage, maybe, Marian, maybe you could share a little bit about your story and how you got into brokerage.

Sure. Happy to. So I started at CBRE many years ago. I was right out of graduate school, and I started at CBRE in the debt and equity side of their capital markets business here in New York. And I was really fortunate that while I had some great experiences and training on the debt and equity side, I had an opportunity to go work down the hall with Darcy Stakeham and Bill Shanahan, legendary legends in New York. And I think most of your listeners, if they don't know who they are, it's. It's definitely worth a quick read up on their kind of iconic careers. So I was really fortunate to get an opportunity to work with those two. And that was my foray into investment sales. And I loved it. I sort of got the bug and started working my way up to larger deals as a senior associate for them, kind of, to a certain extent, carrying Darcy's briefcase and being sort of an execution person on the deal team, but getting great opportunities to work on trophy office buildings in Manhattan. And it became a little bit of my sort of niche that I was the lead associate for multifamily portfolios sales. And that was a time in the marketplace when there were a lot. It was really an interesting time. There were a lot of portfolios coming to market in neighborhoods and areas in the outer boroughs that really hadn't attracted institutional investment. And so I sort of had this really great experience of saying, well, no one, you know, none of these institutions have placed capital in Brooklyn before. Let me use my sort of, you know, creative tools that I think I got from the people I worked with to come up with investment arguments, you know, and so I would look at their portfolios and say, well, look, I see that you have a huge concentration of multifamily in Atlanta or Raleigh, Durham. Let's look at Brooklyn. And I can show you that the income demographics, the occupancy and the rents are much stronger. So you're going to, you know, so that was part of selling the boroughs at a time when there really wasn't much institutional investment into Brooklyn or Queens or some of the other outer boroughs. So that was exciting. And that ended up becoming kind of a thread of my career. Was going into new marketplaces or what maybe was new marketplaces to certain investor types and trying to sort of create some investment theses and really get the opportunities to get to be noticed at a higher level. From there, I sort of started wanting to. I got the bug, and I wanted to work on my own deals and begin to build up my own book of business. And I went to eastern consolidated, which was a boutique investment sales group here in New York. It's no longer around. It was a lot of fun. It was sort of like a wild crew. Lots of, like, great personalities, incredible salespeople. I learned a lot there. When I first went there, I was. I was really doing my own book of business. So I was starting with, you know, five $10 million deals. By the time I left, I was closing $250 million deals. At that point in time, I went to ackman z, where I led a small investment sales team focused on New York city investment sales. And that was my first experience, really, in more of a leadership position, Training associates, working through sort of how to get best in class materials. And it was also a really positive, fun experience. And at one point, though, I did sort of make a decision that I felt like it was maybe time for me to revisit being in a larger firm. I think it was during COVID And for me, gosh, you know, like, Covid was tough. It was a tough time to be a broker. And having the sort of connectivity within a larger firm Seemed to make a lot of sense for me at that point in time. There I was leading the sort of market. I was a market lead for capital markets for the state of Connecticut and for Westchester county, and again, moving back into sort of a leadership position from a market standpoint and having a lot of fun with that. But when I began conversations with avis and young, the opportunity to be with folks like you, there's so much talent here, and we have this incredible scale where we're large enough to really service our clients across all of the different service lines. But we're. We're. We're in a. Maybe a smaller scale. We can really do it in kind of a bespoke, tailored way for our clients. And I think the talent on the ground and working with folks like you and Harry and the whole crew was just too compelling of an opportunity. So that's my. That's my short story, But I actually think for the purposes of today, I'd love to hear a little bit. I mean, I've heard some of it before, but maybe not in like one fell swoop. If you can tell me a little bit about how you got into the business and, you know, a little bit. I know your readers have heard a lot, or your listeners, rather have probably heard a lot about your career arc. But maybe, you know, with the, with this, with this topic in mind of being, you know, a young person looking into brokerage.

Sure thing. And Marion, first of all, so excited here at Avis and Young to have you on board with our really expanding our capital markets capabilities across the country. And yes, Avis And Young has 60 offices here and across the US 120 around the world. But the capital markets, there's a lot of room to build out. And so I'm looking forward to partnering with you in that and my new role as head of US Investment Sales to help build out our presence in these major markets. Certainly New York still being at the top of the list. But, yes, you, yes, you ask how did I get into brokerage? And again, the idea for this miniseries, by the way, we got to thank Eddie K. Who's at Binghamton University, and he asked, you know, James, how do you get into brokerage? So I'm assuming Eddie's an undergrad. It's a question. I get a lot. So for this miniseries, we're going to have three different segments. So for today, we're really talking about those new to brokerage. That doesn't mean that you're an undergrad, although that certainly can be something to leap from. But you could be finishing up your master's degree. Maybe you're already working for a big institutional investor and you've seen the broker on the other side of the table, so to speak, and you'd like to get involved in that capacity. Maybe you're an analyst sitting at an investment sales team right now, and you say, hey, I want to get in on the action. And so for me, I guess I would have been in the former situation, and today I think I probably would have had a much better tougher job breaking into investment sales because at the time, being an English major, I had zero real estate experience. And today it's amazing. I see these resumes where these undergrads have already done these incredible internships and they've gone and they've gotten certification at places like Adventures and commercial real estate. And there's so much further ahead. But I will tell you the one thing that I think would probably be most helpful to the audience and how I did land that first job. And that's again, where I get a lot of these questions. Is this is a business about relationships. And let me be clear, if Paul Massey had not graduated from Colgate University, I would not be here right now. Because I was a Colgate alum as well. And when I went to that career service center when all my friends had investment banking jobs, thinking, oh my gosh, what am I actually going to do? And I saw this posting for a job, I just said, hey, why not? I'm here. And we laugh about it. Today I actually had the chance to interview Bob Nackle and Paul Massey, who I started my career with over 25 years ago. And we were laughing about it because they always like to remind me that only two people applied for the job and I was their second choice. But over time, I think I showed them up. We had a great run over 20 years. Ultimately, we sold the company to Cushman and Wakefield for $100 million, had three great years there, and then had the opportunity to build out our investment sales platform here in New York at Avis and Young, a little longer than seven years. A lot of fun along the way. I'm still doing sales even in this new role. This is not a management role per se, where I'm running around with the clipboard. I mean, this is very much a client facing, deal facing role. So I guess once a broker, always a broker.

I think it's a great point about relationships and, you know, to a certain extent, relationships like the story with Paul. Right. And the Colgate connectivity, perhaps there's a certain amount of luck in that, but it's also not luck because there was, you know, there you were leveraging your alma mater and trying to sort of create some connectivities with folks in the industry that went to your school. So it's, I guess it's a little bit of luck. And I think all of us can look back and there were moments that were just like too serendipitous to not just be really grateful for and kind of consider it a little bit of the wind at our back. But the flip side is that, you know, you did, you did take action, right? And you did leverage something. You had to build relationships. So I think that's, that's really interesting.

Well, I always say, and I do my monthly Ask me anything series with adventures in commercial real estate. And the, you know, the question I always get, you know, how do you land that first job? And what I, what I said, and regardless if it's your first job or 10 years into your career and looking to make a switch that you have to use those leverage Those relationships, those connections. Because if you're just sending out cold, you know, LinkedIn messages or responding to a job posting from HR, you know, your, your resume is going to end up at the bottom of the stack, right? So you have to figure out, how do you know someone at that organization to make inroads?

Right? And, you know, we can maybe we can spend a little time just quickly before. I've got a bunch of questions for you. But it's just, it seems timely to me because we get a lot, we all, I think, get outreach from young people and, you know, maybe an undergraduate sometimes, you know, folks who are, you know, finishing up a master's degree in real estate or an mba and there's sort of, you know, they don't necessarily have a great network inherently to reach out to. It's not something that's really at their fingertips. And so, you know, you just referenced Eddie K, who shot you some great questions and sort of inspired this little mini series. What are the ways that when young students or young folks are reaching out that they can maybe garner some attention or get some responsiveness? It's not always going to be easy, and it's tough if you have hundreds of inbound emails a day to respond to every single thing. Do you have any thoughts on that type of outreach?

Well, you have to be politely persistent and you also have to try from a couple different directions. Yes, emails, LinkedIn messages, you can find the person's cell phone, texting. I've even resumes that way. But I think when you do reach out to show that you have been following, you know, what that person is doing. So that's. Hey, I just listened to your podcast. I really liked what you had to ask when you had Adam Gordon, you know, sitting with you or whatever is. I saw this article you wrote in Forbes. I really find this interesting.

Right.

Don't make the email or the message like, you know, 10 paragraphs long. I mean, it can be very pointed. But then, you know, the ask is usually, you know, busy people, the idea of sitting down, you know, for an hour. So it's just, I wish time was no object. But usually it's, you know, could we just have a quick 10, 15 minute call? That bar is very low. Now today with my monthly Ask Me Anything series, what I found is with career advice, oftentimes I get the same questions over and over. So I just said, hey, why don't I just jump on monthly with my friends over at Adventures and Commercial Real Estate? They can bring their members to that monthly webinar as well. And when someone asks a question for career advice, whether you're right out of school or you're 10 years into your current job, you find that people can learn from each other. And a lot of them have the same questions, right?

Yeah, I think it's persistent, but being very realistic about how much demands, how many demands are on the time of people like you. I mean, it gets to be a lot. So if you can. If you can get 10 minutes with someone, you know, like James or someone else, that's a big score. You know, 10 minutes is a big score. So I wanted to ask you, James, just you've. You've mentored a lot of people through the years, and you've seen a lot of brokers and other real estate professionals kind of come up in a variety of different ways. But what do you think are. I'm going to sort of focus in one on what I think is really a challenging, exciting, but also somewhat perilous time in a person's career where they're really moving into true production. Right. So for me, that was when I went commission only at Eastern Consolidated. I was not yet 30. I had been getting a nice salary bonus before, and I just went with it. And maybe, you know, there was probably some sort of blissful ignorance about, like, how challenging it might be, because it was. It was another sort of dip in the market cycle at the time. What do you think are some of the things that, as a person may be coming out of an analytical role or coming out of an associate position, or maybe they're coming out of graduate school, but they feel like they're ready to make that leap? What would you say are some of the things to consider and to be really realistic about and where should they sort of lean into the optimism, too?

Right. So, Marian, you're right. It is a leap to go into brokerage, meaning full commission. Right. That can be scary for a lot of people, especially when you're starting out or if you've just finished your master's degree and you've got, you know, student debt. I mean, that's real. And so, yes, there are positions out there that you can start as a sales associate, go work with a senior broker where there's salary. Yes, and that's how I started off. Barely enough to live off of, but then some bonuses along the way to kind of smooth that transition of going full commission. But, you know, look, that being said, for those of you who are in the financial position to make that leap, there are absolute. The great news about Brokerage is there will always be a seat for you with a desk and a phone. Right. And there's plenty of shops and it depends where you want to enter. You know, there's a lot of boutique firms out there who you know again that they've got some training. You just need to get your sales license. You need to demonstrate that you have the capability but they'll take a shot on you. Now if you want to go work for a big, you know, global firm, you know, coming right out of school without any brokerage experience, really tough and that, that kills me in that we get so many of the, you know, whether the undergrads, masters, people without brokerage experience. I found that unfortunately, you know, if you're coming in, you know, not even just institutional, but if you're kind of an upper middle market player where you're selling deals that are 20, 50, $100 million, you have to have some of that brokerage experience, you know, to kind of, kind of jump in at the right level because there's so much more going on. So you know, I think starting at a place that has a good training program that is willing to give you some at bats where you have the practice of researching property owner information. Cold calls look necessary evil. If you're looking to go into this and you are not willing to pick up the phone and call someone you don't know, this is probably not the right job for you. And it's you, you know, you don't have to be. It's, it's interesting when, when I work with my friends over at the Massimo Group, they do the, the mayor's Briggs kind of like personality test and it's not, you don't have to be the tycoon.

Can I ask what you get on the Myers Briggs?

So you know, surprisingly it's not just someone who is, you know, ultra external. Right. You don't have to be a complete extrovert who's just, you know, go, go, go all the time. I mean, yes, that helps but you also have to be thoughtful.

Right.

You have to be able to work well with other people. So you can't just be someone who's just a, you know, I'm going to go out and eat what I kill and go, you know, rainmake what you found in this and sure, I mean for some sales jobs, if you want to be an off market broker and just try to slam deals together, can you do it on your own?

Sure.

But I think one of the most exciting things and what I've loved Over my career is not just growing as a broker, but being able to grow with the team and work with the team. So it's.

Right.

I forget what the score is on those four major categories. Yes, it does help to be a little bit of an extrovert, but you don't have to be like a 10 out of 10. You have to be thoughtful. You have to be able to work with other people. And then the other piece that's important is you have to be details oriented. And that is a tough mix to find in a person because, yes, you have to have that. You have to be willing to go out and bring in that business, but then you have to be organized enough and thoughtful enough to execute on it.

Yes. Yeah. No, it is an interesting mix. And, you know, to my surprise, and the reason I was asking was we. So our capital markets group at Avis and Young has a rising stars program called the Capstone Cohort, and we just kicked it off for the year. We had everyone take a sort of a shortened, truncated version of the Myers Briggs. And I fully expected that this group of, like, amazingly talented rising stars, who I know have just like, like, each of them has, like a spring in their step. They're go getters. I fully expected that they would maybe all lean towards a certain personality type, and that really wasn't the case. There were a lot of people that sort of leaned towards a more dominant personality type. But it sort of reminded me of, you know, what I think a lot of us know now is that we're in an era where you really have to be a team player. And, you know, your clients expect a really great, cohesive team that is, you know, looking out for their best interests, coming up with interesting ideas. You know, we truly try to tailor our approach to our clients, and we really try to. We're always putting the best team on the field. And so I think, you know, I personally think the days of, like, the individual broker who just gets things done, you know, the team is irrelevant and just gets things done through the sheer power of his. Her own will. I think that's really more of a yesteryear model. It's really a team approach. There's always a team leader. You can expect to see some, you know, either deal level hierarchy or team level hierarchy. But I think it's really, we have to be ready to work in teams and be collegial and be responsive and be like good team players.

Yeah, Mary, no doubt. And there are so many important components of a successful transaction. Investment sales, starting from not only Just finding the business, that's only one part. Then you have to have the team that knows how to analyze it, obviously, great analysts who can help value the opportunity. You need a great marketing team that can then put the materials together and help you get it out to market.

Absolutely.

You need great executors who. People who aren't just, you know, trying to just dial for dollars all day. They actually are out there working the transaction, which also means kind of getting under the hood and understanding the due diligence. What I found, what's really, you know, evolved over my career is the specialization and how people really need to understand what they're doing because buyers are busy as well. Right. And if you don't have the expertise to kind of understand what's going on, whether it's in that geography, whether that's in the asset class, you need to understand. So look, that's why I think for a lot of you out there who are maybe thinking of brokerage, who maybe you started as an analyst, maybe you started on the principal side, but you have kind of deep knowledge in a specific geography or asset class, that's really helpful because I think what we've also, you know, you made a very good point about how, you know, teams have really, you know, become so prevalent. Right. In investment sales. But I think also specialization, I totally agree with that.

And it kind of comes back to. I mean, we've seen the. We're roughly contemporaries. We've seen the industry evolve, I think, in similar ways where there's a. It's about teams. The individual is important. The spring in your step, the ability to just go out there and really bring high energy every single day is huge. But also having the ability to work with different personality types across marketing or our research groups, all of that is important. The specialization, though, it kind of takes me back to this question we were talking about before, where it's like, how do you really, if you're sort of zeroed in on going into an investment sales brokerage role, do you want to spend some time as an analyst or associate, kind of getting a sort of generalist framework, but also maybe leaning into one or two specializations before you make the big leap? I mean, I think that would probably be my advice 9 out of 10 times. But I also don't think that there's one right way. I don't know if you have any feelings about it.

Yeah, no, I think it's in. Some of the larger firms do have these rotational programs. I know that that's something that we help Support, you know, newer brokers here at Avis and Young and giving them exposure to different aspects of the business, which, by the way, might not just be investment sales, it might be being a debt equity advisor. You spent time on that, that side of the house also, you know, maybe it's office leasing, maybe it's retail leasing. There's other. Within a brokerage house, you also have property management, you have appraisals, you have project management. There's a lot of different ways to get involved. And so I think kind of seeing what resonates with you and what you're passionate about, that's really important, right? Because again, in brokerage, there's going to be a lot of rejection, there's going to be a lot of deals that go south. And so if you're not excited about what you're doing every day, it's really hard to keep showing up and also become an expert. Right. So that's, that's important. So I like the idea of starting off as an analyst and associate where you kind of hear what's going on, on the floor and then you see what resonates before you jump into brokerage.

I really think that's the way to go. And what I've seen in recent years work for a lot of folks is a solid training in both debt and equity underwriting, as well as sort of the methodologies and best practices for investment sales and just getting a really great foundation in maybe your first year or two as an analyst or an associate. And then around year two, year three, kind of leaning into a product type or leaning into a geography and getting a little bit of specialization. I would say if all things being equal, if you're out there and you don't really have a set path, if you can craft something that looks kind of like that, it's probably a good way to go. We are rolling out a new analyst training program later this year in which all analysts, whether they're in investment sales or whether they're in debt and equity, all capital markets analysts will get sort of a foundational experience across our sort of three major service lines, investment sales, debt and equity. So that any given investment sales broker will have a rough sense of sizing loans and understanding sort of what are the pressure points and the key metrics for lenders. And you know, on the flip side, I really want, we all really want debt, young debt analysts to have a sense of how to really position something in the marketplace because the comps are important, right? And understanding the BRICs is really important. So that gives you the ability to go to a lender and say, well, look, the spreadsheet, you know, checks out. Maybe, maybe we're a little bit light on, you know, one or two of your prevailing metrics, the debt yield. But let me tell you why this is an incredibly compelling opportunity. When you look at these other three comps where they traded, what the story is and why, our opportunity is going to really be a home run. So I think. I think that kind of generalist type of training, which I don't know is as common as it probably should be, is something that's really important to us. And I'm really excited to see that rollout, no doubt.

And you know what you were saying about having an understanding. And yes, research is part of it. Having. And one of my mentors, Bob Nakli, used to say, or still says, we're in the information business. So having, you know, great research, understanding the market, especially once you start to focus in having that mastery, is really important. When I started off in brokerage, it was, here's your territory. Get to know every single sale that happened in that area. So when you call someone, you actually have something to say. So whether it's, you know, I'm calling you about this new zoning in your area, I'm calling you about this new tax abatement that's available. These are all helpful ways where instead of just like every other salesperson calling, saying, hey, is your building for sale? You're actually calling with them, you know, with something of value. I think the other thing I wanted to mention is thinking like an investor putting yourself in the client's shoes. I believe it was back at. Back in the day at Helmsley Spear, they used to say you couldn't actually go out and broker a deal until you'd actually bought one and owned it. So I don't know. I would suggest going that far. Although understanding how investing works, and at the very least not to just plug my book, but that does tell you how to start off how investing works. Certainly this podcast and going and listening to these episodes. How do investors think?

Yes.

Will make you a better broker. Right. Because you will then be able to speak their language and understand what they're looking for.

I think that's right on. I think the more that a young broker can really sort of walk through, like take a mental walk, you know, through an investor's lens and understand the risk equation, the downside management, the upside potential, the cost, the risk to the cost. Like the risk in terms of cost, moving or surprises in order to execute a business plan is really key because then you're speaking their language, like you said, and I think it makes us, I think it makes them a lot more effective. I wanted to ask you something sort of a little bit aligned with what you were just talking about, with really understanding the BRICs and the data around it and the recent trades. And I think it can't be underestimated to really understand, you know, if a comparable situation was a certain cap rate that was out of line with the market. Well, why, why? What tenants are in place? What is the lease role? Is there a new deal about to be signed that we don't know about yet, but it's going to be announced six weeks after Clos? All of those things are really, really important. And I think some of that is data that comes with just being in the mix. Right. You're in the mix, you've been at it a while and you start to really kind of almost like have this like market level osmosis where you're absorbing information. But if you are a young broker, what are some tools or technology that maybe you're not totally in the mix yet? You know, it's not like you're buddies with the top three, you know, asset managers in your area that are going to tell you the inside scoop on stuff. What, what are some tools and technologies kind of early in your career that you can use to really ramp up and get, get more fluent in that type of kind of intel around the bricks.

Sure. So in what you're talking about is really the premise of the book, the Insider's Edge to Real Estate investing and.

Why.

Real estate is such an exciting asset class to invest in, because you can gain that insider's edge. Find out that information that might not be publicly available. So, but that being said, to start with, yes, you have to have an understanding of what's come through the trades. So I'm not saying only go on, you know, information that you, you hear on a one on one discussion. I mean, you need to be obviously following media, the newsletters that are out there talking about the trades, understanding. But then to your point, understanding the why, that's really important. And so that's great. When you're at a conference, you hear someone speak, you talk about why did they pay this price, what were they looking to do, what is the business plan? And I think, and I know we only have a couple minutes here left, so we'll start to wrap up. I think listening is such an important thing when you're starting out, because when You're a couple years in the business and you call an investor who's been doing this for decades, right? They're going to be able to help you and teach you a lot more than maybe what you. And yes, you should have your bullet points and bring some knowledge, but then your job is to shut up and listen, right? Because they're going to tell you incredible information about what's going on the block, what, what are they hearing about other deals. And then that information, you know, I don't want to call it currency, but then you have some, some scoop on the area and then you go talk to someone else and you say, well, I heard, you know, this investor was doing this and how do you feel about it? So that's what you're really building. But at the end of the day, it's got to go beyond desktop research. You have to make those calls. You have to be in the flow, right. To be able to have that information and to be valuable in that capacity as a broker.

This kind of brings it back full circle to what you're talking about at the very beginning, which is your relationships are really important. And you're, you know, you've, you've been at this a while, but you're still constantly feeding those relationships and making new relationships and building it up on a personal level. And, you know, while you were talking, you talked about curiosity. It made me think, you know, I kind of have started recently looking at. Curiosity is sort of like a tool, just like it's, it's very in vogue and rightfully so, to practice gratitude on a daily basis. Right. And I've recently been sort of thinking about how practicing curiosity is really important too. Right. And so getting good at asking questions, getting good at listening and waiting for the right time to ask a question and having that sort of like bringing that curiosity with you. As busy as we all are, and we're all thinking about our to do list, but bringing that curiosity with you on a daily basis or, you know, in any given meeting, and the listening that comes with it is so key, and it's part of the relationship building.

Well, Mary, that is an awesome way to end today's segment. Don't worry, we're gonna have two more of these. So the next segment is going to be really, for those of you who are focused, you know, five, ten plus years into your business, how do you continue to grow it? And then the last segment will be on really mastery of brokerage. But Marianne, this was fantastic. And as always, you all can go tojames nelson.com I built this site for you. It's not about me. It has the show notes. You can find out how to connect with Marian, and you should absolutely follow the great content that she's putting out. She's got an incredible background track record and also is out there on the speaking circuit. So you're going to want to make sure and listen to what she has to say. And then there's also a lot of useful tools out there, whether it's our Forbes articles that we're putting out weekly, our market videos, sign up for the newsletter. That's how you get every single month you get the information all put together. So until next week, I want to really thank you all for joining.

Thanks so much. James Sa.