Ben Reinberg on Mastering Leverage in Deals

Practicing negotiation is critical in everything you do. Let's say you own a home. You're always negotiating with a contractor. You need someone to fix something or improve something. Whether you're out and about, there's always something. Every single moment of your life, you're going to be negotiating, whether it's with family, whether it's with your significant other, whether it's with employees, whether it's with your employer, whether it's with recruiters. I mean, all the people you touch.

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Ben, thanks for joining us today.

Kwame, what a privilege. I really appreciate it. It's a pleasure to always talk to someone from the Midwest. It makes me feel like home. So thank you for welcoming to your house and your podcast and look forward to adding a lot of value to your audience.

I appreciate that.

Yes.

And we are excited to have you, my friend. So how would you get us started? By telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do.

Well, as you know, I'm from Chicago, Midwestern kid, and I always wanted to build wealth. And what's special about your show to me is you talk a lot about negotiation, and I had to learn about negotiation at an early age. I started alliance when I was 23 years old, and if you want to talk about getting in the deep water and learning about negotiation, that was one of the first slaps in the face. I had to understand is how to negotiate with people that were Kwame, a lot older than me, a lot more experience than me. And so I started Alliance. We own commercial real estate around the United States. That was my mission and I taught myself the business through a lot of blood, sweat and tears to get to this point. I've always been a principal. I'M not a broker. I am a licensed broker. However, I am a principal. I am an owner and a landlord. We are office industrial retail and now we just opened a multifamily division specialist and then we have a hard money lending division. So we're commercial real estate experts. I have a leadership team of 200 plus years and you could read all about. One thing I did is I started a newsletter 25 years ago and it just took off and now it's a blog. And so I'm big on educating people about what I do, how to invest with us because a lot of people want to know. Like I don't want to get involved in commercial real estate in the weeds because it's very complicated. However, I see that you offer us the ability to put some money in to make us money and build wealth. And so that's what I do. I really. We act as a fiduciary for capital for high net worth individuals and family offices and various entities around the world where we produce wealth for them through commercial real estate. That's my expertise. And then moved out to California a couple of years ago for family reasons and opened up our west coast office in Newport Beach. And it was ironic because my personal brand, that's when we launched about two and a half years ago and it's grown significantly. And then we launched a podcast which is now a TV show. It's Ben, Ryan, Brie, I own it. And just great things ahead. I mean we have wonderful people at my company alliance and I love adding value and helping people. And I do a lot of educating online. That's the purpose I'm online. It's not to talk about me and my accolades. It's about how am I going to help you build wealth, maybe develop your own business, grow your business, scale it, whatever word you want to use. To give you one thought, whether you watch my TV show or you listen to this great podcast Kwame that you have, if you walk away with something that I said or our conversation, then I won. That's exactly what my mission is.

I love this. This is great. And just vibing with you beforehand, I already know this is going to be a fantastic episode. And with your TV show, the first season was all about leverage. And this is a concept that comes up a lot of times in negotiation in general. But I see it in the residential and commercial real estate world as just so frequently this concept of leverage, it's something that people talk about a lot, but something that I realize not a lot of fully understand. So first let's talk about that first season and then let's roll into what leverage means in the world of negotiation as it relates to commercial real estate.

Well, it was such a great learning experience for me filming this show on Leverage Kwame, because now I get, I met men and women from all over the world that come in. I get to meet them personally. We first shot the the season in Scottsdale, Arizona and then I was in New York City. And just the men and women that I got to meet and interview was fascinating. We asked them, we start off, we asked them the same four questions. We start off and say, well, what is leverage to you? What does it mean to you? It's interesting because that specific question, Kwame gets different answers every single time because people have different lenses in the world. And it's one thing if you could seek the truth in what other people are saying, you just can learn and grow. And that's how I been able to grow in my career is really listening to people and being a good listener and seeking the truth in what they're saying. And so as I was interviewing these people, we'd ask them questions the four same and then we would ask them a couple questions that would be geared towards them. So we've had like Lisa Simonson, who's a famous residential realtor in New York City. She's wildly successful, really, really classy lady, absolutely adore her. We had Jeffrey Hazelet from the Apprentice that we interviewed, who used to be the cmo, the chief marketing officer, Eastman Kodak back the day, which was the largest digital camera company and camera company in the world. And so listening to their stories, listening to their answers, it was just like I was a sponge. Just listening and gaining all this knowledge and meeting all these great people and building more resources and helping them. And it's been very rewarding for me. It's been kind of a labor of love situation for me. I really enjoy it and I love what we do. We do a front to camera situation where after the guest speaks, we kind of if when you watch the show, we'll freeze the frame, I will pop up and I'm going to educate you on what that person says. So if Jeffrey Hazel, as an example, because we mentioned him, said something and maybe the public doesn't understand. Exactly. I'm going to give you tips of here's what he said. Here's a call to action you can use. Are you thinking about this in your life? Because again, it goes back to even when my podcast started. Now it's a show and a Podcast is I want you to walk away with something. I want you to be educated. I want you to be like, oh, my God, what a great point. Just like I do, if I follow someone online or I listen to a podcast or I watch a show, I'm always looking for, what can I learn from that to keep improving, keep growing, and how can I use that to maybe implement and teach people as well, especially in my business or other companies I'm affiliated with or I sit on a board, a lot of boards. So for me, I'm always looking to learn and grow, and the show has provided that to me, but it's also providing it to the audience. And so what's great about leverage, okay, is leverage does tie into negotiation. So the key to negotiation, always you have to have the ability to walk away. And part of that for your audience to listen is living in a state of abundance and not living in fear. And that allows you to walk away. I've been through and I can give you thousands example. Being commercial real estate, we're constantly negotiating every day leases and acquisitions and dispositions and loans with lenders and employee contracts and contracts with vendors. And so we see all these negotiation goes on. But you have to have the ability to walk away. And that takes the confidence, Kwame, of I can find someone else. I have the resources I've been working hard and building up to be able to do that. So hard work does pay off, and commitment pays off. So the key in negotiation is having the ability to walk away like we talked to, and not the other person has leverage. Okay? And so you never want to give the other person leverage, and you want to be a good listener. So let's talk about how leverage plays a role in negotiation. So when you look at it, and knowledge is key, you have knowledge of maybe what is the market. If you're in commercial real estate or you're negotiating with employee or whoever, your son or daughter, you always want to be educated. You always want knowledge. Knowledge is going to allow you to educate people so you can create leverage. So if you understand that and then using it, the other thing, too, when you're negotiating, it's really important to say, well, if I'm the other person on the other side, how would they feel about this position that I'm taking? And if they feel good about it, that's a good way to use leverage. That's a good way to come together in a negotiation. A lot of people have this misnomer. It's like, I. It's gotta be a. All or nothing. I just gotta hammer this person and get what I want. The problem with that, especially in commercial real estate, if you're really experienced like we are as a company. I've been doing this now for three decades, Kwame, is you will see that person on the other side of the table. You will. And how you conduct yourself from day one carries it through. And it's just. It's good karma at the end of day, it's like, who needs the headaches? Life short, playing games doesn't serve yourself. And what ends up happening is usually you'll gravitate and you'll track people that understand negotiation, understand there's give and take. And you know what? If you're in a situation, you're listening is out there and it doesn't feel right. There are other resources or opportunities or deals. We've turned down deals where, you know what we just said, like, it's going to be a challenge to get through due diligence. It's going to be a challenge to get financing on this. The seller is not giving enough information to make an educated decision. And so sometimes your best moves is you have to walk away, and you have to be willing to walk away to negotiate. And life's short. So living in a state of abundance and having confidence that I'm going to develop the resources necessary, if something doesn't work out, I can find a plan B or a plan C. And so what we. And we talk about this on the show. We talk about a little bit about negotiation. We talk about leveraging. We talk. Because the last question, so everyone feel free to watch it, is when is taking leverage too far? You talk about the practice of negotiation. Right? And negotiation skill is so important. I encourage everyone. You have to work on it every day. You really do. And you have to be aware and listen to people when you're in these zoom calls and these meetings, because people will give you nuggets of knowledge that you never thought of. So listening and learning is so critical. And what happens is when you have conflict in a negotiation, or you're maybe fearful or you're not, you're concerned about, hey, am I going to lose this deal or am I going to ruin this relationship? Whether it's a personal relationship or business relationship, I want you to know that there's brilliance on the other side of a conflict. After you get through the other side of a negotiation or a conflict, now you're going to learn, but there's just brilliance that comes out of it. You grow. Practicing negotiation is critical in Everything you do, let's say you own a home, you're always negotiating with a contractor. You need someone to fix something or improve something. Whether you're out and about, there's always something. Every single moment of your life, you're going to be negotiating, whether it's with family, whether it's with your significant other, whether it's with employees, whether it's with your employer, whether it's with recruiters. I mean, all the people you touch. Even after, like today, after we get off this podcast, I probably have like five or six zoom calls and I would say a majority of it is negotiating something or expressing, hey, this didn't go well. Going forward, we need to fix this, this and this. So your communication and approach and your emotional balance is so important. Negotiation really has a foundation of emotional balance, how you balance your emotions.

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Event or hands on training for your team, we've got you covered. Don't just negotiate, master the art with the American Negotiation Institute. Click the link in the description to find out more. Elevate, negotiate and succeed. This is great. This is incredibly helpful because we've covered a lot here. Talking about leverage, maintaining your leverage, not giving it away, how it has a bit of a blend between what is tangible and intangible. So you want to make sure strategically you're in a good place where you actually have leverage. But mentally, you want to have a mindset of abundance because you can have all the leverage in the world and not feel like you have any because you have a scarcity mindset as well. And then the art of listening, asking questions, gathering information. And at the end of the day, negotiation is an information game. So the more information you have, you can find power and leverage there. And I want to dig into this, the art of growing and retaining leverage and not giving it away. Because you said you never want to give it away. So in your career, when you're thinking about the commercial real estate world, how do you build your leverage and how do you make sure that you don't accidentally give it away through the process of negotiation?

Well, I never give away my power. And part of that is like I mentioned is being emotionally balanced, being a good listener, but also making sure I control the frame of the conversation. I set an agenda. Why are we here? Let's focus. Focus is critical. Not to give your power away. You know, people go off on tangents and they have these personal stories and stuff, and when you're talking to them. And building rapport is important. Don't get me wrong, building rapport from the get go is extremely important. But the language you use, the knowledge you have about the topic that you're dealing with in the negotiation and doing your homework and creating that knowledge that will allow you that inner peace and confidence that you need when you're negotiating. Because we always question ourselves, especially when we're negotiating, saying, do I have to give in on this? Do I need to be more flexible? If you understand how you can benefit the other side, because if you could look at the other side and say, and their side can accept and be happy with what is going on, you'll have a great negotiation. I feel that a lot of people take this approach where it's all about them and it's not about the situation or how you're going to come together. You know, realize life is about relationships and you're going to see these people again, especially if you want to deal with them. I know in commercial real estate, I don't care what asset class, we're going to see these people again. I know in the personal brand space that I'm in now, whether it's a Marco diging agency or someone's throwing a mastermind or someone's doing something, I'm going to run into these people. It's just the way it works. And so for me is how I show up in life helps negotiations. How I show up as myself helps. That's why I'm so into health and wellness, because it allows me to show up better. It's why I read. It's why I take time to. For myself to be able to look at a situation and emotionally balance, I might have to rewire myself, where I just kind of take a step back and say, okay, what did I learn here? What were the reasons why it happened? What happened if it didn't happen? And I learned from it. So you have to kind of take a step back in life and laugh at life and look at yourself and realize, Kwame, like, okay, life is funny. It's humorous at times. And you have to kind of lighten it up a little bit and realize, surround yourself with great people and great people that you can trust and build and grow with will allow you to also have great negotiations. So it's really a holistic process negotiation. It's really working on yourself, educating yourself. Keep growing, keep improving. Don't be stagnant. Take every day and be grateful for it and realize, okay, I'm here to grow. For me, I don't have to be on all these podcasts. I do it because I enjoy it and I learned something from it. I also want to give back and help people and hopefully my experience in business and life, someone out there will be able to gravitate to what I said and learn and grow from it, because that's what I want to do every day. I want to learn from people. I want to be like, I never realized that. And don't shed out if someone's younger than you or older than you or. Or from a different background or a different religion or whatever might be the case. You will learn from everyone. Everyone has a mind. Everyone is human. And there's a real sense of if you could seek the truth, like I said, and what other people are saying. Kwame, the growth is tremendous. And negotiation all stems from all these skills that you'll develop. And like, for me, I'm 54 years old. I keep getting better and better at negotiation, and I keep learning. And by the way, I make mistakes like all of us do, and I'll be in negotiation. I'll say, oh, man, Ben, you really screwed that one up. Or you could have taken this approach, or maybe. And so I'm constantly battling that to figure out how to deal with different negotiations. But you're going to negotiate. Everything you do. It's never going to go away. And so just keep working on it every single day, and you'll see great success.

There's so much in here to explore, I think. First, there's a paradigm shift that I hope a lot of listeners are having right now where they recognize that when we think about the concepts of power and leverage, we often think about it from the coercive lens, where we're saying, all right, this is what I want. I'm using this against you. I'm using this at your expense. But you have a much more positive view on leverage because you're saying, my path to success is through working collaboratively with you. So I'm not going to use this as a. As a cudgel to come and attack you and beat you down. I'm going to use this with open hands and say, hey, this is how I can help you. This is how we can Help each other. And it's the positive use of leverage that is not only effective in the negotiation, but also effective in terms of relationship building. Because, like you said, it's not just this individual instance of negotiation. This negotiation exists within an entire constellation of communication with other people in your network and your reputation spreads. And so if you can comport yourself really well and have a good relationship, even if you have a lot of leverage over the person, it puts you in a much better position in your entire career and in the next negotiation as well.

Yeah, and I think there's so many things that create leverage. Like technology creates leverage. Like in our business, the fact that you can send over a package for someone to review to buy a property, or the fact with investors, our investor portal, and using technology which makes it more efficient, more effective to receive preferred return distributions. We pay every quarter. There's so many things that create leverage. Technology does your resources. I don't claim to know everything. However, I am outstanding at bringing in resources of things I need to learn or grow. And I have mentors and coaches around the world I work with. And I do that because it allows me to create leverage. When you can see something through a different lens where someone will grab me and say, hey, we need to do this, this, and this, Ben. Because it's going to produce this desired outcome. And maybe I didn't think about it. That's great leverage. So leveraging into people and your resources is critical. Leveraging into knowledge, technology. So all these things create leverage. And where people fail is they feel like they know it all. Instead of saying, well, let me leverage into all my resources and be vulnerable. And being vulnerable allows you to create great leverage because. Allows you to tap into people and say, yeah, I'm very honest with people. I'm like, I didn't know that even existed. You know, I didn't know. I'll give you an example. So I'm in Japan with my kids last winter break, okay, we go away every winter break together. And they taught me about Apple Pay. I've only been using Apple Pay for a year. People are gonna be like, is he crazy? What's going on with it? But I'll tell you something. My fear was I'm worried about security because every single year, multiple times for years now, it's a lot better. Like American Express and Chase and the credit cards we have, people would start making fraudulent charges overseas. And it was a pain in the ass. Kwame. Because I'd have to get a new card and. And then my staff would have to load everything back up and blah, blah, blah. It was. It was painful. And so I said, well, if I go on Apple Pay now, it's really out there. But I was wrong. And my kids showed me. And all of a sudden, you know, everything I do, I'm tapping, I'm tapping. I mean, it's dangerous, but it's a lot easier. I don't have to carry credit cards on me. So that was a learning moment for it. That was leverage knowledge. They showed me like, hey, you're looking at this wrong. And guess what? It created leverage of using technology. And so even though my kids are a lot younger than me, don't have the same experience, especially in business, I mean, they taught me something that I didn't know because they're more advanced in technology than I am, obviously. So the point of that story is ask, understand. Why does it happen? And that way you can feel comfortable, and that's how you create leverage. And so now I can go out and use Apple Pay and use it when I'm traveling, which is a huge thing, especially instead of whipping out my wallet and for security purposes, too. And I travel a lot. So it's made a huge impact on me to just be able to learn that skill. That's great leverage. That's what it is about. And so life is all about continuing to grow and using great leverage. And in negotiations, my advice to everyone is just understand and ask questions, because questions going to lead you. The answer of, is this negotiation going to be successful? Are we on the same page? They want things that maybe are unreasonable. How do I deal with that? I need to have a conversation with them about that. So asking questions, Kwame, is so critical when you're negotiating and people like that when we raise equity every single day. Okay, I'll give you an example, a story. So every day my staff is raising equity. I raise equity, too, when I get the privilege to do it. And the first thing I teach when it comes to raising equity is ask questions. Why are we here? Why are we on the zoom call? Why are we in this meeting? What are you struggling with in your investments? And I ask all these questions because it allows me to close them, but also get them to invest, to say, well, we have a product in the Alliance Medical Fund that will solve all these issues, Kwame, that you're having. And that's all negotiation is. They're looking at a lot of investments, and I'm trying to negotiate with them to say, this meets all your needs. Plus, and we're going to give you a white glove service, and you're going to be extremely happy. So you're always negotiating. Whether you're selling, you're always selling. You're always negotiating everything. Same thing if you have kids out there and you're listening and let's say you have young kids and you're trying to convince them to go to bed. Okay, you're negotiating. Okay. Family wants to go on a vacation, you're negotiating. How much are we spending? Where are we going? I want warm weather. No, I want cold weather. Here's what I want in the United States, to go or outside, you're always negotiating. You're always listening and learning and hearing the reason and to be able to educate your position. And that's what negotiation is all about. And you have to be able to emotionally balance yourself and you have to be able to continue to seek the truth in what other people are saying. It's going to be tough. And so I learned that as I grew in business and it's allowed me to become outstanding at negotiating.

Amazing. Ben, this has been an absolute masterclass and I really appreciate your outside the box thinking on the concept of leverage and how we can use that in our lives and use it actually build relationships, not just negotiate effectively. And for folks who want to learn more about you and the work that you do and keep up with the TV show, what's the best way for them to get in touch?

Well, if you want to learn from me Personally, go to BenReinberg.com we're working on providing courses and content that people can learn about commercial real estate in business. You can follow me on all the social media platforms. Instagram. I'm at the real Ben Reinberg. We post daily, a lot of great educational pieces and then feel free you could watch my show. It's Ben Reinberg Hyphen I own it. It'll be streaming all over the place and it's on YouTube right now. First season was Leverage. We're filming the second season. Kwame, I'm really excited about in a couple weeks. It's called obsess obsessed. And you need to be obsessed in order to hit the desired outcome you want in life. Whether it's you're looking for a certain type of income or money, you're looking to build wealth like what we do. You're looking to grow your personal brand, you're looking to start a business. We teach people through these incredible guests that are going to be coming on in the next few weeks about the word obsessed and what it means and how They've used that to benefit them and other lives all throughout the world. So really excited for it. It's going to be a great season. Stay tuned. And then if you're looking to invest, you know you want to invest in commercial real estate, go to my company, alliancecgc.com that's Alliance CGC. You can click on the button, fill out the form. We'll show you how you can invest with us passively and we will build wealth for you and your family. That's our expertise and we diversify your capital. Great tax benefits and it's extremely transparent investing. It's why I invest in what we do. I'm really excited about we have the fairly new Alliance Medical Fund. We're one of the leaders in medical office properties. We invest in multifamily industrial, retail, hard money lending, so many different asset classes that you could diversify into with us. So feel free to log on and we're happy to help you learn and grow with us.

Amazing. Ben, thank you so much for joining us. Really appreciate it.

Kwame, what a privilege and it was great seeing you and wish you all the best.

Likewise. Wait, wait wait wait, wait.

Now before you sign off, I have something to tell you that I've never told you before. Just kidding. I've told you before, but you should listen to it again. I want you to know about Negotiate Anything Premium. Imagine all of the things that you love about our traditional feed, plus so much more. I know you like our traditional feed because you're at the end of the episode. And with Negotiate Anything Premium you'll get more bonus content you've been asking for, more of the expert insights that you can't get anywhere else and more exclusive behind the scenes access into every conversation. Are you ready to get more of what you want out of your life, career and every conversation? With Negotiate Anything Premium, you'll have access to more high level, custom designed content and insights giving you the tools you need to negotiate higher salaries, better deals and better relationships in your life and career. Once I had a listener share that Negotiate Anything helped her to negotiate a $53,000 raise. Could this be you? What would that mean for your life? I've seen firsthand the impact this model has had on my life and the lives of my corporate clients and I am confident that it can do the same for you. Are you ready to negotiate more of the best things in life? Click the link in the show notes to learn more.

I'll catch you later.