Elite Broker Built a Real Estate Empire - Joe Killinger on the Owner Meeting Podcast

Here we go. We got Joe Killinger. I'm so excited for today's episode. Welcome back to the On Fitting Podcast. I'm Christian, your channel host. I'm joined by Joe today. We are going to be talking, uh, he does a lot of a lot. We're going to be focusing on the brokerage side and the business side, how he built a, and is continuing to scale, a large brokerage, what they're doing that is completely unique in the industry. We're going to talk about what it is to be an investor working with brokers, like Joe and his team. I am so excited to get started. Joe, welcome to the show.

Christian, thank you for having me on. Love your podcast. Happy to be part of it.

No, this is a privilege. I am very excited for this. Joe, for those who don't already know who you are, give us the quick 30,000 view. Who are you as an entrepreneur? Because you are just a real estate entrepreneur. You're not one thing in real estate. You have done a lot of a lot.

I love to start companies. I love to start companies and build them up, and I like to operate them. So it sounds like we do a lot, but I just have a really good crew around that I can rely on. So I've got Commercial Brokers International, full-service commercial real estate brokerage in Los Angeles. Great team, about 20 agents right now. I'm going to take that up to about 24. Then I'm going to open another office down in Newport Beach, Corona Del Mar area, which if you've been, You know why we're going down there. Love it there. And then we've got Icon Capital Advisors. It's partners, which is a partnership with BMC Capital out of Dallas where you're at. I don't know if you know Keith Van Arsdale or not, but if you don't, let me know. I'll connect you. He's a great guy.

Well, there we go. I'll have to bring him on the pod.

Yeah, you should get him on. He's very good. And then we have the Commercial Real Estate Affiliate Network, which was built out of frustration because I lost out on a few clients because we brought them into Los Angeles. They want to expand across the country, and we were just an independent broker at the time. We had like 12 agents and we ended up giving them up. So I built a system that allows us to work with these clients nationwide now. And then I've got last but not least, JoeKillinger.co. It's a platform that I use to really help people in commercial real estate brokerage and investing too. I've been doing a little bit more investing because I find that it was needed. And everything on the website is free. And I have a booklet on there called Your First Commercial Day— commercial days— Your First 90 Days in Commercial Real Estate. It's a free booklet for you. There's also another booklet if you're a broker thinking about opening your own shop. I put on there the same kind of booklet that really walks through everything we did when we launched Commercial Brokers International. So you can go in and learn from my mistakes so you don't have to make the same damn mistakes. It was, they were costly.

And so that's the whole point of this podcast, The Owner Meeting. Learn from others' mistakes so you don't have to make them. Move faster, smarter, and run your business better than the people before you. I love it. I love it. Love it. Yeah.

I've made a lot for, I've probably made enough for everybody listening actually, because it's, it's been a while. I've been in the business a long time. I love the business. I love real estate investing. You know, I've done the different asset classes. We own a bunch of property, multifamily there in Texas. And then we own a bunch here in Los Angeles. So right now we're focused on single tenant net lease. We're actually, we own some properties in Dallas and then we're going to start a syndication here, hopefully by first quarter next year where we can go out and get it funded and start buying single tenant net lease deals around the country.

Very fun. Very fun. I've done mostly JVs through my career. I've done a couple syndications. I haven't done the single fund to buy multiple deals though. I've done a syndication per transaction. I'm small on syndication, but it is a great model to take out a lot of real estate at a short period of time with an elite team. So I actually love the model when used correctly. Super excited for you to get that started because you're going to crush it.

Yeah. Well, my, uh, my business partner, he's the CEO, George Pino, he's the CEO of Commercial Brokers International. All he does is single tenant net lease deals. And most of these deals get off the market. They're on and off the market before it even gets put on the open market. So these brokers all talk to each other, go, hey, I got a deal coming on. I want to, I want to talk to you about it. And because they know that they'll close the deal, you know, you put on the open market, you get offers in from brokers you don't know, and then it's kind of a mix gamble. So these guys all know they can close. So we've got kind of an inside deal going on and it'll work pretty well.

I hear a lot of people out of California and I've had lots of people within my mentorship group, Multifamily Strategy. I've had a ton of them buy deals in California, but a lot of Californians are like, it is, it feels really hard to operate in that state and it feels like the state is against you in a lot of ways. If you're buying in California and Dallas, just objective view, what are the key differences in how you succeed in both red states and blue states that are so politically different in business operations?

To manage out here in Los— I'm in Los Angeles and we own multifamily here. You've gotta know the restrictions and you gotta know what's coming. You're gonna get, it's, you really gotta be on your, your A-game to really make sure. I mean, they're talking about now too. Where you can't increase your yearly increases, just a couple points, that's it. And yet your expenses are going up 5, 6, 8%, depending on what level of asset you're doing. So it's just a lot more here, a lot more restrictions you gotta watch out for. Now in Texas, especially when it comes to evictions, you know, out here what's been going on in Los Angeles is the tenant, you'll start the eviction and they'll ask for a jury trial. So, which means, you know what, here's $20,000, $25,000, whatever the number is, you negotiate it out. Because if you go to a jury trial out here, you're probably not going to win, you know? So you really want to be careful. Whereas in Texas, you know, you could be a little more stricter with the tenants and, you know, but you always want to be fair wherever you're at anyway. But it's just, it's easier management in Texas. But, and it depends on where you're at too. If, you know, a lot of the properties I bought in Texas, Actually, every one of them was an out-of-state owner that was losing the property. And most of it was because of the management. It was bad management on it because the broker, the investors were never boots on the ground. And the last one we bought was over off Coit and that area right near Richardson. And it was, I think it was 74 units. We were planning on running a program there that was for lower income people. And it worked very well. The plan was in the end was to redevelop the property because 74 units on about an acre, we could have added about 20, 30% more units. But when we bought the property, we were talking to the manager and she said, are you going to keep me on? I go, no, we can't afford to keep you on. You're the highest paid manager in the area. She goes, no, I'm not. And I said, well, this is what you're showing you got paid. She goes, well, here's my paycheck. It was almost half. The company was double dipping. Then we found out they had 3 other employees, 2 of which were getting free units. One of them didn't even work on the property. They worked at that property management company down the street. And yeah, and then yeah, it's, it was a mess. And so we were able to turn that property around real quick, just with being, we brought in our own management, managed it ourselves, turned it around because we got rid of all the extra fees. It was crazy. So you really gotta make sure you stay boots on the ground.

Oh yeah. There's a lot of ways to make and lose money in real estate. The number one for both of those would be management. It is not generally hard to be a better manager than the last person. 9 times out of 10, you come in and you're like, ah, well, here's where we're going to make our money. We're going to manage this thing correctly and we're going to be intentional about it. A lot of people who are selling properties have for some reason or another lost interest in the property. That's why they're selling it.

Yeah. They weren't having success.

Yeah. You come in and sometimes you see a lot of fluff. I've had deals where that's just been parked at half of market rent. You call their manager, their voicemail is 3 managers ago on the phone leaving the voicemail and some old lady. I came in, I was like, hey, let's go meet. And they're like, yeah, let's, I'm available in 3 days. Can we meet at McDonald's? I'm like, that's not my usual meeting place, but I mean, I suppose it would be, it would like, I'm like, okay, so this is what we're competing with, especially I do a lot of secondary markets. So you get further outta the city, you see some, some wilder property management. A lot of money can be made over good management. So that is a, oh my God, that's a great point. So is the answer to, to California over Texas is just stricter underwriting and tighter management?

It's just so much easier. The, the ease of management in Texas, as long as you, you are boots on the ground, it's just, there's no comparison really. It's so much easier though.

So, so your advantage in California though is physical proximity. The fact that you're there makes it.

Attractive, which, and the appreciation game, you get a lot more appreciation. Yeah. Your cash flow isn't there, but your appreciation, whereas in Texas, appreciation's just, it's minimal, but cash flow.

Yep. And being a Seattle, Seattle starting point for me, I, I feel you there. Very, very, very similar market. Tons of regulation, high appreciation. The beauty of it is when you find the deal that cash flows in those markets, the appreciation will take care of you. So the, the key is finding the deal. It's harder in those markets, but when you find it, it will take care of you over time, which is beautiful. Awesome. I love it. One of the most common questions we get here is how do people, especially people who are newer, who are starting, you want to build an elite portfolio. You want to work with the best multifamily brokers. You don't usually get to start at the top when someone's working with brokers. We're going to get into how you built your business and your brokers, but I, I, this is a question that I get all the time on my YouTube channel. So I'm like, oh, I'm just going to have you answer it. How does someone get to start working with an elite broker? If you're a newer and you're building up, what is it that you want to see in a client? Perfect ideal client, what do they look like?

Perfect ideal clients that come in and say, listen, I've got cash, I'm going to close. I really want to do the deal. But the problem with somebody new is, I don't know. I don't know if this is right. And that elite broker is going to get frustrated with you. You want to be prepared in advance. This is what I want. When I hit these numbers, this is what I— be, just be very specific about what you want because the elite brokers, their time is valuable to them. And which is time is valuable to you and you want to make sure you're doing the due diligence before you even start investing to make sure this is the asset class I want to be in. This is a size asset that I want. This is my exit strategy. You know, put the whole plan together in front of you and then get with that broker and say, listen, I'm a serious buyer. I'm gonna close deals. Work with me. We're in this business to make money. You know, it's, you know, our elite brokers work with people that are new, that they'll work with you as long as you've got the plan in front of you and you're gonna, you're going to pull the trigger. Now, if you're just out here looking, then we get a lot of that. I've been broke for 2 years. Yeah.

All I care about, are you a ready, able, and willing buyer? Can you do it?

I, I, are you gonna perform?

Preferably you have a boatload of cash and you're gonna close.

Yeah.

If you don't, Why are you going to be the person to close the deal? It is a business like anything else. Have a business plan. Your broker is one of your key people. Pitch them on a valid business plan and write offers and close deals when you have a deal in front of you. Be decisive, move quickly. And I found you can cut the line even if you're not the person who's starting as the perfect, I have $10 million, I need to deploy it now. If that's not you, have a business plan that addresses the fact that you don't have $10 million and why are they going to work with you and how are you gonna close the deal? Have those pieces in place. And if you don't have them in place, yeah, there's your next step.

The good investors have that in place. They know it because they don't wanna waste their time either. And they don't wanna waste the broker's time. And because they know that the broker's got people calling them. If you've built up a reputation in a marketplace, then you know what's going on in that market. And people are coming to you. And so you don't, and you just, it's common business. You don't want to waste people's time. And the minute you start hemming and hawing about, oh, I don't know. And you know, they're, you're, they're trying to, the good brokers will say, listen, this probably isn't fit a good fit for you. Let's move on to the next one.

And that's, if you have a broker that's giving you unlimited time and you're not pulling the trigger on deals, guess what? You haven't found an elite broker.

Right.

You probably want someone else on your team. Exactly. Yeah. Like, oh, this is the nicest guy and they're really helping me and I haven't bought anything in a year, but they answer all my questions. I'm like, you may have found the wrong broker that night, right?

You want a broker?

So how do you build, in building your business, how do you build a team of A players? Because you can't play at an A level without an A team. It's one of the hardest things to do in business. You can't do it by yourself. Personnel is getting the right people on the bus and then getting the right people in the right seats on the bus for almost every entrepreneur is the single hardest task. How have you attacked that in your brokerage side of the business?

At Commercial Brokers International, we just do it completely different than anybody else. I haven't seen anybody do it. So the training for our new agents, we don't just bring anybody on. We're, we're particular about who we bring on. They have to commit to training for at least a year and being in the office. And if you're not willing to do that, then we're done talking. Because as a brokerage, it costs me a lot of money to bring somebody on because in commercial real estate, the company pays for the fees, the co-stars and the marketing, the people and all that. Now I understand that the broker has their mortgage or their rent and their car payment, their insurance. I get that. So it's in my mind or the way we talk, it's really a partnership, but we're spending a lot of money. So if I'm going to invest in you, I want to make sure you're willing to put the time in. Once we've got over that hurdle, We talked about, okay, this is our training program. Whereas most companies you're gonna do, you're gonna get put in a team, you're gonna be mentored by somebody. What we do is every morning at 8:30, you're gonna sit down with a CEO. Well, usually it's a group of 3 to 4 or 5 people. Mm-hmm. And he's gonna train you 5 days a week. And then, and that's gonna go for like 45 minutes to an hour every morning. And on Tuesdays and Thursdays, we sit down with the agents, the newer agents. And we go, okay, what's working for you? This takes about 15 minutes. What's working for you? What's not working for you? If it's something is working for you, let's double down on that and let's focus on how to build what's not working for you. Let's, let's kind of get over that hurdle. And so that's how you build somebody that is, you make them an elite broker right off the bat. Because you take somebody that's been in a year in one of our agents has been in training for a year and you take somebody that's been in the business for 2 or 3 years in another company. There's no comparison. Our agent knows the market and how to do the contracts and all that so much better because they've been, it's been ingrained into their head. And we find that they're also performing a lot faster. They're generating revenue for the company a lot quicker and less chance of lawsuits, which we all like anyway, right? Yes. And so that's, that's the big thing. And so that's how we do with the new ba— but as far as the, uh, the more experienced agents that we onboard, I actually, we're recruiting right now and I can tell you exactly what I'm looking for. I'm looking for people that are willing to work, are willing to market themselves because right now there's a huge opportunity. If you've been in the business 2 or 3 or 4 years, we've seen activities really starting to take off here in Los Angeles. Well, across the country right now and going into 2026, I think it's going to be exceptional. And so I think there's a huge opportunity. For those that know how to market themselves. If you can create content and put it out on social media, not every platform, but at least a couple platforms, LinkedIn, preferably Instagram, maybe some of them are doing TikTok and killing it. So writing blogs, writing articles for real estate publications and writing proof stacking, which is something that Edward Winslow, there's a great book that Edward Winslow has out and it's on proof stacking and what that is. It's, Talking about a past client, how you connected with them, how you overcame their pain points, their goals, how you went through their goals with them, and you kind of write down the whole process, and then you write about the end results, and then you put that up like on LinkedIn or on a blog forum on your website, and that's living and evergreen for everybody to see. So if somebody's searching, which everybody's going on, on ChatGPT or Perplexity or wherever now. Searching is just taking over search and they're searching for, I need a broker in Los Angeles. Oh, look, Joe Killinger's done a multifamily deal in Los Angeles. Oh, it's not too far from where I live. Let's give him a call. It's gonna live there. So the more you write those, the better off you're gonna be. That content creation's very powerful and video. Everything is going video. You gotta get in front of a camera. It's really, especially it just lowers the barrier for people to call you. If they see you and see you talking, that's a lot easier to call somebody you've seen talking or do DM them and it just lowers that barrier to them reaching out. And cold calling's great. I love cold calling. Probably always gonna be the number one thing in commercial real estate. Absolutely. But it's also one of the hardest ways to grow a business. And if you can start getting inbound leads from creating content, marketing yourself, those close at a lot higher rate.

And I've seen that in my own business. It, it's been crazy. You go to, I, I don't do a lot of events this last year cuz I, I just had my first kid. I just turned 1, so last year was a little slower for me, but it's still crazy. I'll go to events and people come up and they're like, I watched your YouTube channel. I can't believe you're at this event. And I'm like, I'm just me. Like, I'm just a real estate investor. I haven't done anything creative. I don't, my entire economic thesis for real estate is if you buy deals that cashflow day 1 and you buy them in a way where you don't have to sell them, so you buy and hold, your income goes up every time you close a deal. Like that's not rocket science. That rivals Dave Ramsey for simplicity.

Yeah.

If you save more money, you'll have more money. It's about that simple. But that's having a personal brand where when people talk to me, they already come in pre-downloaded with the information of, I know how you like to buy. I understand your real estate principles and A lot of people, I'll talk to brokers, they're like, oh, I know who you are. I know what you've done, especially in my markets. It's the ability to market as an investor is huge. It's unbelievably more important when you are a broker, when you are an agent and you're trying to attract new clients constantly, and it is a sales job. It cuts your inbound in, I think it cuts it in less than half. I think you have way more inbound, but more importantly, it builds credibility. That personal brand, that is like, that is the capital of certainly my generation.

I'm the old end of millennials, but like, yeah, you're bringing value in your content. It can do a lot. I'm getting ready, I'm shooting a video tomorrow for my channel and it's on instead of buying more properties, which I'm a firm believer in buying more properties, don't get me wrong. This is a headline. You gotta get the people to watch. But look at your existing properties and there's a lot of money that people leave on the table and I see that in multifamily and I can tell you some things that we did in Dallas that worked very well was there's a property, Highland Park, and it was 400 units that we bought.

Wow.

Yeah. Yeah. There was no—

Talk about premium neighborhood.

Yeah. There was no, or excuse me, Lake Highlands, not Highland Park. Lake Highlands.

Oh, I was like Highland Park. That's as expensive as you guess.

Yeah. No. Yeah. Lake Highlands I love, or Highland Park I love, especially if you The Highland Park Village at Christmas.

My gosh. Unbelievable. Unbelievable.

Yeah. Gorgeous. But we, we bought this property and no parking, covered parking anywhere. We added about 25% covered parking. And then I don't remember what we charged for this is years ago, but probably an extra $25 a month. That killed it. You know, just take a lot of people don't look at their existing properties. How can I generate more revenue? Out of this property. Accent walls in the multifamily. An accent wall, I gave, we gave 5 different, we'd have like 5 different color schemes and over a fake fireplace, they'd have their own color in their unit. And that was an extra like $15 a month. We paint it, took us what, an hour to paint it, $15 a month while they're living there extra.

There you go. And you build a big portfolio, you stack a bunch of $15 revenues. That adds up in commercial real estate very quickly. That is amazing.

Yeah. Yeah. You'd be surprised how many people don't really take a look at their leases and understand how there's a lot of money that gets left on the table. I see it with some commercial deals where people don't update their CAM fees. CAM fees are going up, but they're not updating it on their contracts. You know, it just, all that money's getting left on the table. So very important to take, make sure you take a look at those leases.

You've had such an emphasis on marketing, especially social media marketing. And before we hopped on, you'd mentioned that it's been like a thing that's been 20 years in development of how to do this. What is one thing that people are missing on their marketing that you have learned? Like the one key piece of advice where like, hey, people do not do this and they need to do this.

It's probably the main thing is we post for ourselves, which is absolutely the wrong thing to do. You need to post for the people you want to attract. What do they want to see? If I can sit and post pretty pictures all day, but people want to see— if I'm an investor, I want to see stats for the area. I want to know if I'm multifamily in Dallas, I want to know how many properties on the market right now. What's the average days on market? What's the average occupancy rate, vacant, all of it. I want to know all of that. And we tend to just want to post pretty pictures. And that's one of the biggest mistakes. I see agents, well, a lot of people making, and you need to get over that is forget it. It's not about you. It's about if you wanna attract people, you've gotta give them the information they wanna see.

That is it. And, and that is not intuitive for a lot of people to do. They go, hey, I want my brand to be me. I wanna post what I'm passionate about. This is, this will be a newsflash for you if you're on social media. Uh, no one cares about you. They care about your content and they care about how does this serve me? So you want to get seen, spend— I mean, you can do this in an hour and you're set. Spend 1 hour quietly, just meditatively going, if I am my client, what is it that they want? Write out all of the problems that you are solving. So what are the problems that your clients have? Now divide that into a list of how do I answer these questions? You can make a, like a content map just out of what questions do my clients always ask me?

Yeah.

And that will give you your next 50 pieces of content. You can divide each question into 3 or 4 videos. And if you really want to cheat, feed them into ChatGPT, it will tell it for you.

You know, you really, again, with the cheating, if you want to cheat, go find somebody, a broker that's just knocking it out of the park in your asset class. Do what they do, only do more of it. You know, work hard, outwork them. You know, go look at what they're doing. And then just mirror it and then do more of it. And you know, there's, there's people that I, I look at every day. I'm like, Goddamn that. And I know that they're paying somebody, they're paying a professional person to come up with this content. So essentially I'm getting a free person to, I'm like, that's good. I'm stealing that.

Yeah.

That is, and that is, it gives you the idea.

Borrow from the best people in the space. And you said something that's brilliant, which is what I wanna talk about next. Outworking. I have a lot of people come on the podcast. It's actually very common. I just had Rod Cleef on and Rod talks a ton about motivation, which is which is unbelievably valuable. However, outworking isn't motivation. It starts with motivation. It comes down to discipline. It's extended periods of time of doing the same thing, believing there'll be a beneficial result without necessarily seeing that result for a long period of time. To build the business you have, you would've had to have gone through that multiple times of, hey, it hasn't worked yet. I think it's going to work. I believe it's going to work. We're continuing to march without seeing reward until eventually We do in fact get there. How does one become disciplined in their business? How have you become disciplined in your business?

My first company was disciplined because I had no money. I didn't have a choice. So that, that in itself created a hell of a lot of discipline because if I didn't get a deal done, then I was going to have to move back to Nebraska, which by the way, where I live is a town of 281 people. There wasn't a whole lot to do. So I was very motivated. But you know, it's, I know what I want and I know where I'm going and that's why I get up and do what I do every day. It's at this point, it's just really, first of all, I have a great team around me where it's a lot of fun to be around them. We have lunch together almost every day, but it's gonna be hard. But if you really want to get somewhere, I mean, there, there's no easy path. There's no shortcut. And you know, that's one thing I see agents getting into it. I had an agent tell me once, she goes, you're too old. You don't understand the way we do it. I'm like, we, I don't know who we is, but she was referring to younger generation. She's been out of the business after 6 months, wouldn't listen, was going to do what she wanted to do. You know, but you've got to, you really need to stay focused and really have an idea of where you're going with this. And that should be, you know, they always say if you're a woman and you're dieting, you want this red dress, you hang it on the wall so you see it every day. Put your red dress, look at that thing every day. If it's a Porsche, whatever it is, you know, have something there to motivate you. And, you know, mine was, I was going to have to eat. So that was my motivation, but have something that really helps you maintain that motivation. Because it's easy.

What is that motivation for you today?

The people I work with. I really want to build something. I want to open another office. Maybe this is a problem. I'm never really satisfied with the status quo. I think that's probably, maybe not, might not be healthy actually. I want to have an office in Newport Beach because I want to be down in Corona del Mar, which is an area that I love. And so that's my motivation for that. Icon Capital working with BMC Capital. This is, this is bad timing. So we were getting, we sat with BMC Partners and they're in Texas and we came up with, we're going to do this partnership together for Icon Capital Advisors. Took us about 8, 9 months to set up. We set a launch date. Well, that launch day hit, 2 days later, interest rates started going up and up and up and up. So I'm like, you couldn't have picked a worse launch date, but you know, I had to be patient because I knew I'm like, okay, well, we're a startup essentially. We're not going to get anything in the last couple of weeks. We're starting to get people reaching out. So, but that's been a couple of years. And I just know that when I get to the other side of this, That's what I'm going to be happy. And I love going back there and hanging out with Keith VanArsdale. He kicks my ass in tennis quite often, you know, friendly competition. But I just, I enjoy doing it. I just love building companies and you got to find something you really enjoy doing. If this is sales is not what you're into or being an entrepreneur, believe me, I understand it. It's not for everybody.

Yeah. You got to find a motivation. I love what you said too. It's, you're never satisfied as an entrepreneur. You're grateful. You can absolutely, and I think everyone should practice that. You should be grateful.

Yeah.

But satisfaction, I think for most entrepreneurs, we fear at the end of our life that we are going to look back and say, what could I have accomplished? And that, that for me is the scariest thing of like, I want to get to the end being like, I played the game as hard as I could while I could. Like, that is, that is so important to me. And I think most entrepreneurs who build, like, like you have multiple companies, multiple projects, and you've seen repeated success, getting to the end is never the goal. There isn't an actual end.

End.

It's the growing and the scaling. I know for myself, I really want to have an office in Southlake. I live like 15 minutes from Southlake. I'm this close to it. I've had a home office all my home life, my whole career. I would love, now that I have kids, to get a little bit of space to the office on occasion.

I get you.

It's funny how the goals evolve. You hit one goal, you do the next thing. You hit one goal, you do the next thing. One goal that you mentioned that you are also doing is this, the JoeKillinger.io and the actual, you're giving back a lot and there's a ton of free information on this. Tell us a little bit about JoeKillinger. Or.co.

Yeah, no, it's, it's something that I always wanted to do when I got started in real estate. Fortunately, I had my business partner George and, but there was nobody really doing mentoring and we have such a heavy turnover in this industry. I mean, after 3 or 4 years, I think it's 87 to 92% of the people are out of the business. And a lot of that's because of the training or the lack of the training and the lack of the mentoring. And, and that it, it's not just for brokers, but also for investors too. I'm putting a lot of content up. So there's free content up there for everybody. There's templates that people can use. If you're an investor, you're a broker, I've got templates up there you can go get and they're just download 'em and go. There's suggested reading by brokers and investors that's in there. You can go on a book that'll take you to Amazon. You can go from there. From there. Again, I've created the booklet, Your First 90 Days in Commercial Real Estate. It's a free booklet for you to download. And then the book on how to go from being a broker to a broker-owner, that's all in there for free. And it's just because, you know, this is an incredible industry. But the average age of commercial brokers is right, it's in the 50s, around 55 years old. So younger generation needs to find this industry. Because it's absolutely incredible. There aren't many careers that you can knock, you could be making hundreds of thousands of dollars in your second year in this industry. Mm-hmm. And, you know, it's just, but they've gotta find it. But they also need help once they get there. They need to make sure they're getting the right training. I do mentoring call every once in a while. I'll get, I'll jump on with somebody for 15 or 20 minutes. I do all that for free. And, but I also learn a lot about what's going on in the marketplace, or sometimes I'll record it and use it for content. So it's, it's a give and take. But yeah, that's really what this is all about. And I have a YouTube channel under my name as well, Joe Killinger, a lot of content for investors and for brokers there as well.

Perfect. Perfect. And we'll make sure that we put that in the show notes as well. Okay, perfect. So if you guys wanna check out more of what he has to say on brokerage and on business, absolutely check out that YouTube channel. Link will be below as well as the JoeKillinger.co. The big question, the question from every podcast, this is, it is awesome to know how to move forward and that's what we focus most of the time on. However, the best thing that most entrepreneurs can do is they, we make mistakes. No one's ever played a perfect game. Rod Cleve shared how he lost $50 million. So he has so far holds the record. My biggest stupid tax has been $1.4 million. So Rod's buried me in that tax system.

This is a hell of a story.

It is a hell of a story. It can be personal. So it could be a relationship. It could be monetary. The monetary ones tend to get a lot, a little bit more drama. But what has been the most expensive mistake you've made in building your businesses and how can other people avoid making that same mistake?

It was being impatient and mine is very similar to what yours, about the same price point. So our first investment we bought was a, and I was nervous to do this. Fortunately, we were our own broker. It was a 10-unit we bought in not a great part of town, but the area was, is quickly changing. For the better. And we bought it for $275,000, you know, and then we got it fixed up, cleaned up, filled up. That started going very, very well within less than a year. So we decided to go ahead and buy another property. And we were, we hit a home run on that first one. So I think maybe we were riding a little too high on our own juices. So we bought a 3-story walk-up in Koreatown, largely Hispanic. Ooh, that was a big mistake. You cannot keep that top floor occupied. The, the units were massive, but nobody is going to carry groceries up 3 flights of stairs. They don't want to do it. That was a tough lesson. And we barely got out of that. We fixed the building up, but we barely got out of it. I mean, I would have lived in the unit. It was beautiful. This building was built in the '30s and it was gorgeous. It had a fake fireplace. Architecturally is gorgeous, but nobody wanted to live there because it was just that walking up 3 flights of stairs after working all day. No thanks.

I just, I just found a deal that was exactly that, 4-story walk-up. And I'm like, you can't even do that in DFW without an elevator anymore. It was old enough where it was before you were allowed. I'm like, there are zero people and it's a penthouse on the top, so it's twice as big as the other units.

Yeah.

Overlooks the water. All 4 of 'em when we drove the property. Boarded up windows. Who's gonna walk up 4 stories? That's insane. Yeah. Understand that this is hard to lease. So how did you guys get out of it?

Time. We were able to make it cashflow, just barely. And we'd get some people that'd rent it out once in a while, but we had to give it such a big discount that, you know, and then finally we were able to sell. We got out, we made a little bit of money, but nothing to speak of. So that was a tough lesson to learn. I mean, we were doing a lot of the maintenance ourselves on there. We poured, So insurance came out and they said, well, you gotta fill these potholes in your driveway. So we went out there and filled them ourselves the day before the inspector showed up. 3 days later, it actually rained in Southern California, washed it all away. Like, well, shit, we are not very good at doing this.

Those are the, those are the projects though, where it's like, man, do, do they make you run a better business when you pick yourself up from those type of projects?

I, I absolutely, the lessons that were learned, oh my God. Yeah.

So that was a tough one. I remember all the foundational days. I'm like, boy, would not build the business that way again.

Yeah.

Oh, that's fun. What would someone, what would you have done differently then to have avoided that particular deal? Or that at least that amount of money?

Yeah, no, I could have done putting that time and effort and money into an asset that was just a better, we were just a little too anxious to buy the property. You know, it was an area that we really liked, but we were, there was others we should have just waited and found them. We just got impatient, you know, it was just our second property. And so patience, you know, as an investor, you know, that's part of the whole business plan thing. I didn't have one. It cost me or almost cost me, but be patient, wait for the right deal, make sure he hits all your numbers and verify, verify, verify, you know, make sure every, all the numbers are You're correct.

Yeah, that is the most— do not get, don't fall in love with a deal.

Right.

If you need to do a good drill, drive 30 minutes in literally any direction. If you live anywhere near a city, there's a ton of buildings. Someone owns every single one. Most of those people are not losing money on every single deal. There are plenty of properties in the United States for you to buy. The deal will come.

That's for sure.

You do not need to buy that property. And that is, that was the lesson for me. It was Robin Hood Village Resort. Beautiful one-of-one asset, so hard to run. We made it through the project just like you did, and it was so much work, so much time on site, so much staffing. And then I never bought hospitality again, so it didn't even fit in with the rest of my business. It's this outlier, time-consuming side project. The partners had financial issues. I had to buy all of them out with all of my hard-earned cash from the rest of my business. It was, it's the same thing. We fell in love with a deal early in our career. Because it was this unique, beautiful, incredible thing. Does it make money? Yes. Just because it makes money doesn't mean it makes sense.

Yeah.

That was a big early lesson for me as well.

You know, another lesson I got yesterday, a guy said, we were, 'cause we were talking about the videos getting ready to shoot tomorrow and it was all back to how to make money on the, how to increase the revenue on your properties. He goes, every couple years, he goes, I just walk onto my properties. With a blank mind, like this is the first time seeing a property. I'm getting ready to buy it. What would I do different? And he goes, Joe, that's made me a lot of money. He goes, we just get into the everyday of operating our properties and we just do what we're used to doing. He goes, you want to stop and walk out onto your property? He goes, there's probably never money in every one of your investments. There's probably an opportunity that you're missing out on because you're, you're not coming at it from a fresh set of eyes. And I, you know, that's probably right.

What a great drill. Am at my, funny enough, when I built my house, it came with a stock dishwasher and I have failed to find a buyer for that brand new dishwasher. It sat in my garage for 2 years now.

Yeah.

I have a property that needs it and I already need to go down there, so I'm like, okay, well I'm going to go get rid of my dishwasher and upgrade one of my units. When I drive down, I'm going to do that drill. I have, I'm in Stephenville, Texas. I have 186, units there between 4 deals. We did a lot of midsize multifamily. Okay, I'm going to do that. All 4 campuses. I'm going to walk in and I'm going to try that. Like, fresh mind.

Yep.

I own the company, so any ideas I have, I'm like, huh, why haven't I thought of this before? That's going to be really fun. I'm going to go in there like it's not mine and say, hey, if I didn't own this, what would I be doing differently? Then I'm going to ask myself, well, why didn't we already think of this? This is going to be a good drill.

It's a great drill. He said one of his big things, lighting. He goes, almost every one of my properties, The lighting was shit.

He goes, it's amazing what you do with solar lights on exterior. Now it costs you next to nothing. You don't need to wire them in there. They're super easy and they're beautiful.

Yeah.

You don't want to make your properties look so much better.

And we got on that because of time change. But yeah.

Wild. Oh, that'll be fun. I will, you know what, I'll actually, I'll add that to my personal YouTube channel. I'm going to go down and I will, I will, I will film myself walking through the properties if I don't know them. And you guys will figure out everything that I find that I'm doing wrong. Oh, great idea. Wow. What a great takeaway. Everyone do that. If you're listening to this podcast and you own a single rental property or thousands of rental properties, go there yourself, walk the property with fresh eyes. That sounds like a good idea.

Basically probably make you more money. Yeah.

I'm putting that in our SOPs. We must do that at least annually. Get to the properties and figure out what these yahoos are doing. Those yahoos being myself. Oh, that's great. What a great takeaway. Guys, this was Joe. Joe, it's so fun to have you on the pod. I really appreciate this. Please check out his YouTube channel linked below. If you are a broker and you're looking for information, JoeKillinger.co, also linked below, tons of free information there. Joe, thank you so much for joining us today.

Thank you, Christian. Thank you for having me on.

Absolutely.