…I reached out to them to have them um be part of the panel. So I went about it very differently than most brokers. Get on the phone, start doing the cold calling. I never did the cold calling. Wow. So I always found these other ways to reach people. The other thing I did was I marketed myself internally within the company. So I really promoted the referral fee idea. I went to different offices within our company. And sometimes it could either be nowadays it would just be, you know, an email blast. Yeah. But it…
It's a very difficult business. She's in training, she's cold calling 100 calls a day and she doesn't love it. And I'm I'm I'm coaching her. We become very close friends and she wants to be an entrepreneur and start her own business. We talk about this all the time. I wish I could do it right now. I said, "No, just suffer through this, get some clients, have success, you're going to meet people Totally. especially in that business. Rich people, successful people that can afford to spend 100 grand on a one-way…
…disaster that that trip like what am I doing here? So I just came back to work and and just started banging on the phones you know. Yeah. and still cold calling today. He's still cold call today as well. Still cold call today. I know one of your other interviews said the same thing, but you know, we have today 300 investors,
a family office which is composed of me, my wife and our kids, you know, and putting the money forward. We take up to 50% of our deals, in some cases 80%. And then bring in larger check writers along the way. But it still comes with that cold calling and then calling again and then calling again and being fearless, you know. You you have to be you have to have no fear. I I call it almost being shameless, you
brush it off and keep going and moving. Yeah. I think I think also what happens in the cold calling process and I want why am I saying this? Because I I speak for young people all the time. Uh I still think I'm 22, got the same drive, vigor, energy, thank God. Good. And uh I speak with young I relate to him and I tell him, you know, until you get a no, you don't stop calling. Mhm. You call, you're very polite, you're very persistent, and you got to get that person on the phone. And don't take it personally. You got…
…started a management platform. So in Florida right now they're managing properties for other people. We're going to do the same thing. They started cold calling owners and people like them they're nice likable guys. So they have that same discipline. So the idea is to have a con you know and then my my third son Ysef started a construction company in Florida. Now they're now doing management and construction for other people. So I think we got to bring all those verticals into uh you know our our firm and like a…
How do you think about writing? because clearly you have a voice. You found your voice. Um I get super nerdy about trying to improve the craft. Like I love trying to improve whether it's my cold calling techniques or the way that I ask questions. It's great. Yeah. Like I I love trying to just improve whatever that is. So how do you improve? How do you get where do you get inspiration from when you're writer's block? Like where do you go to to actually make your thoughts come and sit on that page?
I was cold calling. Okay. Back then he had the LA Times. People would put for sale by owner. Yeah. He also had the recycler for cheap people that wanted free advertising. I think he had a little tiny ad in the recycler which I bought on a Thursday. Yeah. Looking to buy cars to flip. I used to buy the Sunday LA Times on Saturday and buy the cars on Saturday, not Sunday because I'd get the paper early and make the first calls early and have the first opportunity. And I'd show up and say, "You want I I had a couple…
…of what is what it is you're actually doing. Taylor, I bet you were not like designing your dream life and it's like, oh, I'm going to start by cold calling for five years of my life. No, that's hell, right? But you did it because to accomplish goals that you had personally. So yeah, I think you forget about what you want to be doing and what you're good
and so you can be I remember you know cold calling tenants a little bit more bold like you got to figure something out like your lease And by the way, like the landlord pays our fees. So like why wouldn't you be represented?
cold calling. By the way, I'm going to say this. I'm going to get a thousand called up. No, but uh you know what? I don't I get some like It's not that I get zero. I definitely but but um I I get Yeah, for sure. I think you probably have. Um I get some. It's probably harder to reach me now cuz like my my office line at work, I joke like nobody calls office lines anymore, right? So like if you call me and I don't really publish my cell phone that much, so it's a little bit harder to get a hold of me. Um, but I don't…
as many cold calls as you would think. The real irony is I get nobody stopping at my office, right? And so like when I started in brokerage, you know, I was doing office leasing and some industrial leasing and the way we call it walking buildings, right? So, traditionally cold calling in leasing brokerage, specifically office industrial, is sometimes you do it on the phone. A lot of times you just go I'm literally staring an office building right behind us in downtown Long Beach. Like you would go and you would we…
…You always want long socks. So, I still to this day wear them. Me, too. I have them on right now. Yeah, that's right. And so Dave would do live cold calling, right? And he he had his office in the Irvine Spectrum and he would do a live cold calling with you. It's really intense. And you'd be calling tenants, right? Most of the time office tenants and his whole thing was like, how do you get you got to get something in front of the decision? So like don't just he he would his big thing was you can call the person…
So, I did not do cold calls when I did. Um, no, I was I was uh Oh, you were continuing. Yeah, I was thinking through your question. I'm a little slow on the update. Uh, it's Friday of a long week. It's all good. Um, I did some Okay. I I didn't do it like the Kyle Matthews way of cold calling or maybe, you know, the Marcus and Milichap or Meridian way of cold calling. I did some. Um, what I found was I think cold calling works. You meet a lot of people that way. You can build relationships. Um, it takes time and you…
That's right. Exactly right. For kind of middle market brokerage, which I haven't talked about priority and exactly what it does, but for middle market brokerage, call it deals that are have a total capitalization of call it 25 million and up. Mhm. That isn't so much the province of cold calling anymore. That's the province of relationship building, a lot of which
…single person so it took a long time and that was my schedule for probably the first 18 months of the business maybe two years and I I still love cold calling so I call from 9:00 to 11:00 a.m. today but in the beginning it was just the only way that I knew how to dig up business was on the phones had no other skills had no other attributes had no track record to really lean on um was calling a new area that my senior hadn't done any
…this was an incredible conversation. We talked about brokerage. We talked about how to grow your business, how to prospect, how Lorie never made a cold call, and how she generated a ton of business, her unique aspects of becoming friends with appraisers and getting referrals from inside of her own company. There are a ton of unique aspects of how to grow your business. Even if you're not in brokerage, there's some things that you can learn in this that'll help you whatever you're doing in your business. I'm a…
…line where if you're if you're selling houses, you're selling houses. You're not crossing over or very rarely. Yeah. And at that time when we were Coldwell Banker commercial, we had also the Coldwell Banker residential side. Ah, and those brokers I felt in this particular area like um Beverly Hills, Bair, Santa Monica, Brentwood, really high-end neighborhoods where we had these residential or house brokers. A lot of those house brokers were selling these million plus I mean, you know, multi-million dollar homes.
…know what to do in the beginning it was a lot of research trying to study the market figuring out what is going to be happening um you know who I'm calling for the day where the leads are studying some of the sales comps things like that like admin stuff maybe if I had a BV I'd work on a boov here and there but I really didn't have much to do besides cold call people and I took that to I took that to the extreme so I'll tell you a little story I think I was two or three months in and was still on this insane…
…to do to make deals happen and it was continuous and so typical we'll get back into the schedule again so 9:00 a.m. 8:39 a.m. rolls around I'm calling owners I had a list of 1500 2,000 owners that I was just calling Hey do you have any interest in selling this was from 9:00 a.m. to really like 456 p.m. and then if I had a BV maybe I'd stop around 56 but I would call until I got to 100 plus cold calls a day like that was my goal I had to to call a hundred owners leave a
…the previous day kind of write out my schedule and what I need to get done today and I do that until about 88 8:30 then from 8:30 9ish I start calling and I call from about 9 to 11: and most of these are either cold calls nowadays it's it's more of just following up with people because I've been doing this for so long I think I calculated it
I know I was basically I I never needed to get listings because I would go in there and cold call I I cold called the hell out of people. And then when they told me they were interested in selling, I already had a buyer lined up.
…the way we have been helping people has not been effective and efficient. And like I'm working on a pilot with a university right now that we're calling
…and you need to be the small fish in the big pond. Yeah. And and be, you know, get get tossed around and bossed around and and have to scrap and cold call.
Yeah. Um, you know, so so it makes it very hard when we are competing. We're competing with no geographical moat because there's a deal that's for sale. You have to either cold call them at the right time or have the right relationship with a broker or have the right relationship with an owner, but anybody in America could buy that deal because remote management now of self storage is is a big thing. So does that does that change your
…they have it's pretty easy to figure out what stuff is trading for around you there's a lot of every day there's a lot of brokers who constantly cold call you and tell you crazy numbers and then you get that number stuck in your head and you're like oh I heard 10 million your property is worth five some broker was blowing smoke and he's now that $10 million numberers in your head and even though Ula has come in and the market has tanked and interest rates have moved you can't get over 10 because that's what your…
…as you know when you're starting in brokerage you're you know there's it it's it's hard hard it is it's easy but it's hard anybody can sit down in cold call anybody can literally any unless maybe your voice doesn't work or saying
…the same time I started doing deals with my partner. I mean LA was really I mean it was just um you know the defense industry had the end of the cold war had just destroyed the defense industry. We used to have major defense uh Northrep was located here and the banks were leaving. So LA was really falling out of fashion. Uh, and they even made some movies about it. You know, they had Grand Canyon with Steve Martin and about, you know, how bad LA was and I have to watch that. Yeah. A classic um um uh scene where…
Yeah. And they're like, "Well, Taylor's a smart guy. He just found this amazing deal. Greg, I need a co-LP." Okay. You called me. If you called me, I'm now in your great deal. You didn't call the other person. So, like unfortunately, a lot of I think the haves and the have-nots in our in our world is most people that don't have the access, they get lousy index funds with high fees. You know, they get into bad investments. They own a laundromat, a gas station, a restaurant. I mean, it's you know, Totally. You know,…
So I think that I bounce a lot of stuff off a lot of people, right? And and Scott who, you know, is best friend and also, you know, kind of co-business owner, right? Like we talk probably three times a day and we're constantly bouncing stuff off. So, I think having a really good partner and being able to kind of go back and forth, you're able to shape ideas. I can't tell you the number of times where I call him and say like, "Let me just spitball with you on this." And he's like, "No, that won't work. That won't…
I I want to say just before CO um March, April, right? So I mean like right there um COVID hits immediately get the call from them like we did from many tenants. Ah we need this, we
want to perceive the data what data do you want what metrics do you care about we're bit a ways away from actually making that a reality from being a full up and fledging system but like that's what is going to happen and that's what I'm keeping my finger on the pulse for of okay what systems can we plug into the AR pretty robust system that we're building out that is going to improve that process and make that even stronger than it is so with all that being said that's a little bit about our marketing process…
uh thing on co-star for larger buildings um but like that information is just not available to a regular consumer um and so how do they even know that they're supposed to call Broker X if they have a building that's that's that guy's specialty or that woman's specialty and I think a lot of