May 20, 2022
Today, we welcome Zach Roesinger, a commercial real estate broker, syndicator, and CEO of CRE Pro Course. Zach is also involved in a lot of obscure deals which he discusses in this episode. With all of these things on his plate, he’s able to make it work by building scalable systems and delegating effectively. He also shares the value of actively going out, taking whatever opportunity is out there, and putting yourself in front of people.
Zach specializes in Opportunity Zone real estate acquisition, entitlement, and zoning, as well as construction management of new build projects. Specializing in 1031-Exchange consulting and third-party capital placement in QSRs (Quick Service Restaurant) and franchised businesses by providing risk-adjusted returns to investors.
He has traveled to over 100 countries and worked on 5 continents for companies like LVMH, Newmark Knight, Cloudera, and Montegra Capital. As a sales leader for Trulia and Zillow, Zach “cut his teeth” outbound cold calling [ >250 calls/day] closing large deals with some of the largest brokerages and real estate teams in the US. A polyglot (fluent in Spanish and Portuguese), Zach has built sales teams that leveraged automation and proven sales techniques, teaching Heavy Hitters to focus their efforts on out-of-the-box solutions to complex commercial real estate deals to provide their customers and clients with unparalleled sales experiences.
[00:01 - 10:01] What Keeps You Going?
- Zach shares his background, CRE Pro Course, and his other ventures
- How he’s able to focus on his multiple businesses
- Identifying tasks that you’re uniquely skilled to do
- Standardizing procedures
- Having the right people in the right places
- Why Zach prefers to personally go out and do listings
- Picking up new properties and projects
- Meeting and talking to people, especially the workers onsite
- The way that you advertise is by doing a good job
[10:02 - 19:55] Be The Master of Your Domain
- Zach discusses his racetrack business and targeting buyers for nuanced properties
- Exemplifying that you are the expert in the space
- Make it easy for your clients and contact to complete the task you want them to do
- Eliminate steps
- Zach’s recommended app
[19:56 - 21:55] Closing Segment
- Reach out to Zach!
- Avoid pitch slapping
- Links Below
- Final Words
Tweetable Quotes
“Put the right people in the right places, and make sure that they're happy and well-compensated for doing what they do, and that they're held to the certain standard that you know, a winning team is going to be held at.” - Zach Roesinger
“It's really just going to be what is exciting and appealing to you, and what keeps you keeps you going and gets you going every day.” - Zach Roesinger
“One of the most fun parts about brokerage and actually selling something is going out, hanging out with the dudes with the welders that are just in overalls. Those are the best people to actually get some insight from.” - Zach Roesinger
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Connect with Zach! Follow him on LinkedIn. Visit the CRE Pro Course website if you want to know more about the work they do. Check out his podcast, Coffee with CRE Closers.
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I love helping others place money outside of traditional investments that both diversify a strategy and provide solid predictable returns.
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Email me → sam@brickeninvestmentgroup.com
Want to read the full show notes of the episode? Check it out below:
Zach Roesinger 00:00
If
you had considered selling your racetrack, but you had never told
anybody about it, but you didn't want to be the guy out there
waving his hand saying, Oh, I'm selling my racetrack. I'm selling
my, if you want somebody else to be out there marketing it for you,
it just brings a prestige to your market. It allows somebody else
to actively go out and get those while you run your race track, and
it creates this buffer.
Intro 00:23
Welcome to the How to Scale Commercial Real Estate Show. Whether you are an active or passive investor, we'll teach you how to scale your real estate investing business into something big.
Sam Wilson 00:33
Zach Roesinger is a commercial real estate broker. He's the CEO of creprocourse.com. And also a real estate syndicator. Zach, welcome to the show.
Zach Roesinger 00:43
Sam, good to be here. My man very much appreciative of you and thanks for having me on.
Sam Wilson 00:48
Absolutely, pleasure's mine. Three questions I ask every guest who come to the show. In 90 seconds or less, where did you start? Where are you now? How'd you get there?
Zach Roesinger 00:55
Great questions. I'll start now. Clock go. I came from Denver, Colorado. My father is a real estate broker did land and big deals throughout my childhood. So I was brought into commercial real estate early, understand the cyclical flow of it, and how some days can be really great and other days can't. You have to come back to your family every day with a positive smile on your face when things are great, when things are not. I've traveled to over 100 countries around the world. Live now in Austin, Texas. And as you mentioned, I am the CEO of CRE Pro Course and CRE PRro Course is an online course that allows or teaches new agents who have yet to close their first deal to get their first listing and the first closing in the first six months so that they can bridge that gap and between coming over from residential real estate maybe or, or they're getting into it from another field altogether. So sometimes it's hard to get into commercial real estate because the closing time for your first closing is so long, most people can't last that long. But we teach you how to do it in your first six months. Some people do it in two months. So I also work in syndication, and I work in brokerage as well. So I sell warehouses, very obscure things a race track I have on a car dealership, a recycling center. So I really liked the obscure deals, and I'm always looking for more. So Sam, let's get together and do a deal soon, man.
Sam Wilson 02:14
Sounds like a winner, man. That's a lot of fun. And also a lot of different moving parts. How do you choose which one to focus on?
Zach Roesinger 02:22
Great question. It's funny because I have employees, and I work for people in each of these companies. And they say, you know, it's just mind blowing, Zach, I can barely keep one job straight, you know, throwing all the balls in the air and keep throwing them up. And it's just time attention to a particular task and importance, right? I attach a beta to every task that I'm doing. Is it really important? Do I need to do it now? And can somebody else help me do this? So as we talk about a scaling real estate venture, it's really important to be able to identify those tasks which you're uniquely skilled to do. that your company relies on you for and then make sure that you can, that you could probably do most tasks in your company, Sam, it's really helpful to be able to standardize those tasks, and then create a procedure around them and then have somebody who's maybe better apt to doing them actually follow through with it. So a good example is real estate flyers, right? When we get a new listing, you and I could probably sit down to InDesign or Paint program and come up with a really good-looking flyer, but is that the best use of six hours of our time? For me, it's probably not there are other people, my team that are really good at it. But they need to know what goes on there. Because they're really good at design, but they're not in the day to day, right, they don't understand the intrinsic value behind what I'm trying to sell in the commercial property. So it's really important to be able to scale out a business. And the way you do that is by standardizing, creating procedures, and then replicating yourself and really focusing on the things that you're good at. And more so on my teams. I know that there's some like I call them whale hunters, right? Some of the brokers that work for me, they are really, really good at closing deals opening, they're really good at relationship management. They're terrible at paperwork. So I don't want them doing paperwork, it's a bad use of their time, it's bad use of our resources. There are people on our team that are really good at it, right, you know, they're wizards at CoStar, they're wizards at Crexi, they can draft again, they can draft a flyer that makes just like, it's mind-blowing. But for them to do that, we have to have people going out, we have to have team members going out and actually getting the business without the whale hunters out there finding new deals, there's nothing for the rest of the team to do. So it's my goal as a manager or as a teammate, or anywhere in the organization is to put the right people in the right places, and make sure that they're happy doing and well-compensated for doing what they do, and that they're held to the certain standard that you know, a winning team is going to be held at. And if there's a breakdown, if there's an issue, if there's a bottleneck, we as managers, Sam, it's really important to be able to identify those and clear the bottleneck. So a lot of my time is spent addressing what works, what doesn't and how to standardize and scale those things which do work.
Sam Wilson 05:05
What about your current mix of of businesses, keeps you going out and still actively doing listings? It seems like that would be one of those things. As you're talking that you would say, Hey, wait, just from an efficiency standpoint. If you have a team of brokers, you guys take this you guys go list it. Why are you still involved in that side of it?
Zach Roesinger 05:22
I was asked my father this same thing to why does he not become a director or sales manager. I just think it's a really fun, I can be a little bit more selective on what I take now. But I tell all of our newer guys like take whatever is out there. Somebody that you used to go to college with, we run into them at a restaurant, they say, oh, yeah, I own this restaurant, thinking about selling it great. Let's figure out how to, you know, get you in the door and show you how to list that. Now if you decide you don't like restaurants listing restaurants, well, then we'll try it one time. If you don't like it, we'll move on to something else. But always be willing to say yes, in fact, earn the right to say no. And I know that Steve Jobs and there's others that say Warren Buffett that it's more important, the things you say no to than those that you say yes. However, when you're first starting out, I mean, you want to try, this really pertains to listing, I have oftentimes a listing agent or a newer agent that says, Well, you know, if I can't sell it, what happens? And I said, Well, okay, then you spent some time learning about a new field of study, you practice something new, you met a new potential client who is going to exude your praises, because the property didn't sell that's part of your fault. But also there's a lot of other factors that are out there. And I was referencing before the economy right or just you know, the hot topic of the hour. Here in Austin, we're starting to see a lot of resurgence back to an altered office. So and I say that by I come from Denver, Colorado, and I worked on this project called The Taxi Project, which is taking old warehouses and refurbishing them making them cool offices. Well, I just saw yesterday that I'm now big on TikTok, I'm @cre_pro_network on TikTok. When I saw on TikTok, this guy was highlighting an office building or a new office I called them warehouse, I think warehouse office buildings that were going for top dollar. And I think that that's going to be one of those things where historically, it has been a office building, everybody gets in an elevator and goes up. And now people are saying, you know, I kind of want a hybrid office. These cool, chic new buildings are pretty cool. So to answer your question, it's really just going to be what is exciting and appealing to you. And what keeps you keeps you going and gets you going every day. For me, it's not repetition. And it's not necessarily the money I don't really like when it becomes repetitive. You could sell the same, you know, warehouse over and over again. But is that really that exciting? So picking up new properties, picking up new projects, meeting new clients, one of the most fun part about brokerage and actually selling something is going out hanging out with the dudes with the welders that are just in overalls. And I'm an Italian leather suit. And they're there's this guy over here and I'm like No guys, like I really want to know, what do you, tell me more about this property, tell me more about what you like, and what you don't like, and what you would change. And so there's sometimes that's like those are the best people to actually get some insight from are people that are working and living there every day, not just the expenses and the NOI and the cap rate of it, but actually saying, Hey, I don't know if you know, to a new, let's just say a prospective buyer. I don't know if you saw this over here. But this is a unique feature that you won't find anywhere else. And I wouldn't have noticed it unless I talked to the guys who were on the shop floor. So that's what I really liked about brokerage is actually meeting and talking to people, getting outside of the spreadsheets and delivering, delivering value above and beyond. And I know it's cliche to say but that's how our business I think really scales out is that the way that you advertise is by doing a good job. If you're in residential real estate, you have a big billboard or you know you're on the side of a bus or something like that. But in commercial real estate it's completely reputation when somebody goes to sell their recycling facility and they're like, I don't know anybody in commercial real estate in their their country club or their you know the baseball game and they say oh yeah, Zach Roesinger, I know that guy. He sells just about everything and he was really good. Ge got us top dollar or he did a great job marketing. So all of the above and it feeds into itself Sam I would say that it's just much like your businesses that as I do CRE Pro Course and I have had a chance to launch our television show and we have Coffee with CRE Closers, my clients and some of my best clients today actually were guests on my show just much like this. I had them come on, talk about what they did they got to ask questions about commercial real estate. People gave me social proof by being the, you know, leading this TV show and so when they went to go sell their building, they said you know there's only one guy I can think of the guy keep seeing on YouTube and you know Facebook Live and LinkedIn live, that Zach guy. He sells real estate so they cross pollinate.
Sam Wilson 09:57
Man, love it. I love it. A lot of moving pieces there. Let's talk about these nuanced properties. How are, I mean it's one thing to find okay, you know, I'm beat on multifamily quite a bit because I'm kind of bored with it, to be honest, talking about getting bored, but it's like ever. You could find a million buyers for multifamily. I mean, you could be the worst broker in the world. Nothing you could move a multifamily property right now. I think it's a lot easier to move something such as a multifamily property. I'm presuming here. Over something much more nuanced, like a race track?
Zach Roesinger 10:30
Absolutely.
Sam Wilson 10:31
How in the world are you even finding are targeting the right buyers? Because not like, it's not like people are just hanging out on on LoopNet or Crexi. What are you...
Zach Roesinger 10:41
Well, I often think the same thing. And then I think to myself, well, it's a niche product, right? It's much easier, I believe, than selling a multifamily property, because there are only so many ferrous and non ferrous metal reproducers in this planet, and they all know where my client is located, like they do business with this person. And so it makes it very easy that no one's going to get out of a completely different business and just try their hand at a $25 million operation. No, no, they do it right now they're just looking to expand their operations. Yes, identifying the right one, that's a little bit more difficult. And because of that, we enter into a pretty ironclad agreement with the seller, because oftentimes, I say this sort of ingest, but a lot of our job in brokerage, I believe is to come in as a third party and well market a property which you may have thought was for sale or not. But I'm the one who validates that. So if you had considered selling your race track, but you had never told anybody about it, but you didn't want to be the guy out there, waving his hand saying, Oh, I'm selling my racetrack, I'm selling my, if you want somebody else to be out there marketing it for you, it just brings a prestige to your market, it allows somebody else to actively go out and get those while you run your race track. And it creates this buffer. So if you didn't want to sell to somebody, for example, you don't have to address them directly. Because I'm sure in the race track world, for example, it's pretty small, you're going to see that person again at the next race track owner meet up or whatever. So that's what's the great part about having a broker. And I think the other part of it is that as the marketing, I really think that for us, and in order to scale, it's always been an issue with, you know, you don't just stick a sign in the yard anymore when you're trying to sell commercial real estate, you actually have to be pretty dialed in in terms of the ability to replicate and scale. And I think that's much a testament to your show here, Sam, and I come out of commercial or I come out of computer and software sales. And those guys really have it dialed in. I moved from Brazil, up here to Austin to go through an IPO with a company called Cloudera. And the company's they've taken a billion dollars in investment at that point, a company that has a billion dollars in their only objective is to get on as many companies, fortune 500 companies as possible. They're going to spend whatever it takes in terms of software and scaling and, and replication and automation, in order to make sure that their salespeople are utilizing their time the best so that they get the most orders so they get the highest stock price when they do go public. So I just take a page out of the book from the software salespeople in that you want to be, just like you're doing here, Sam, which is a one-to-many approach, allowing people to engage with you when they're ready. But exemplifying that you are a master of your domain or what you're trying to put out there into the world to say, here's who Zach Roesinger is, here's who Sam Wilson is. And if you want to do one of these things, if you want to buy or sell a race track, I know the guy but I'm not calling the people that are selling and buying racetracks. They're calling me because I've talked about it or because somebody said, Hey, do you think this thing is ever gonna go up for sale, or maybe I just got it out there with my marketing team to some degree, and somebody says, Oh, I saw this on Facebook the other day, or I saw this on a Google ad the other day, or I saw a video on this the other day, we may want to buy this asset or we may want to talk to the guy who's trying to sell it. And there's only one of me out there. So I think that's a lot of what it required which is the one-to-many philosophy and then allow people to engage with you but make it very, very easy. I want to highlight one of these things that are might be embarrassing you but you do the same thing on your podcast as I do on mine, which is make it really really easy for your guests, make it really, really easy for your clients and your contacts to complete the task that your objective or your goal is. And I reminded of that this morning when somebody asked me can you write a recommendation for me on LinkedIn because I'm trying to get a job at this brokerage and I said I would love to. I first of all don't have the bandwidth to think that hard through it and look through like what you've been doing over the last few years but I liked you and I'll do it for you, make it really easy for me. Tell me who it is, provide me an email of what that looks like and what you would like me to do. I am more than happy to. I'll edit it. I wouldn't say anything that I don't mean. But it's going to be the same, it's going to be, hey, this guy, Johnny is a great guy, have a conversation with him, Bobby, if it works out great. And if it doesn't, that, you know, it's just another connection for you, but do it as a favor to me, right. And the only way that you know he's going to get that meeting maybe is if I write that letter, but I'm not going to remember to do that after the 97 things that I have to do. So make it really easy for somebody. The same thing on on an email, make it a clickable link, right? If I put up six listings on Friday, and I created or I had my marketing team create six different bullets, six different web pages with six different information sheets on it, so that if I had to give it to somebody, or if I had to give it to, you know, send it out to a few brokers I thought might be interested, I could just send them this, they could click on it, it has a way a call to action at the bottom, makes it really, really easy. But don't make somebody work harder than they need to because they won't, right.
Sam Wilson 15:56
That's absolutely spot on. That goes for reviews, LinkedIn recommendations, man, and everybody asked me for something like that I say you write it, send it to me, I'll make my tweaks. I will, it'll come, it'll be from Sam Wilson, but you're gonna write it and I'm gonna just edit a few little words here and there, make it authentic. Because again, as you said, I'm not gonna say anything. I don't mean, and I'll delete it if I don't mean it. But make it easy for me. And that goes for listings, that goes for onboarding clients in you know, investors, I'm dealing with a thing today. And I'm like, Oh, wait, that link is gonna take them here. And then they got to know we're not doing three steps. This is one step. One step, give me your money.
Zach Roesinger 16:31
I believe it's Occam's razor as well, right? Make the path of least resistance, the most apt choice and why I say that is at the end of Coffee with CRE Closers, my podcast, I say how can people get in touch with you, but I pre warn them and say, hey, look, have something loaded up. But make sure it's not temporary, right? Don't give me your Clubhouse username, or whatever it is, you know, like, it's something that might not last the test of time, or may not even last as long as this you know, as this podcast or my podcast or whatever. But do something that like is where you're heavily followed. So if it's LinkedIn is where you do a lot of business, but you're trying to grow your TikTok, and I'm speaking personally, because I'm trying to do this right now. I'm big on LinkedIn live, but I'm really small on TikTok live. Yeah, so I tempt myself to say, oh, I can build my audience by sending them to my TikTok channel. Well, if tick tock doesn't work out for me, I know LinkedIn will long term like that's just where business gets done, but don't sacrifice in the short term. Really, you can build your audience organically on tick tock, and you can mention it may be but stay with the channel where you're going to deliver the most value. And then once they get there, once they're on LinkedIn, which you know, has 20,000 People that follow you sure mentioned it on there as well, right? Then they can redirect and go to TikTok. But when there's too many steps, Sam, if you ask somebody to endorse you, here, here, here, here, here, I get like one or two maybe, and then I'm like, okay, like I'm endorsed out, I want to do this for you. And if there was one button, I could push that would syndicate across all of them, I would do it. I wish it would post to all of them. And it there may be something out there where people are going to email in to your program here and say, Oh, well, Zach, you should use this really great plugin, which, you know, that's, that is one of your questions on your sheet here. And I want to I think that knowledge is power. And the more resources we can get out there, the better my number one tool for commercial real estate or real estate in general. And I think everybody should look into this because it's not that expensive. It's maybe $100 A year is one called LandGlide. It's really just the shortcut way. It's available on iPhone, and maybe Android as well. It's in the Apple Store. So maybe it's just anyways, what it allows or what it does is it systematically organizes on a map all of the CAD data so the Central Appraisal District data, it's also kind of a cool parlor trick, right? If you're driving down the street and someone says, Hey, what do you think that house is the value of that house is well, sometimes it's hard on Zillow and Trulia or Redfin or something to like, dial in on that then it's like speculative. It's the Zillow price or Zestimate. This one is actually just the appraisal district and how much of the land is used for agriculture and how much is you know, for the residential, how big is the house square footage? It's all the stuff that's in the Central Appraisal District, but it's just in a very easy to read format. So it's one of the few apps that I pay for, and I relish try to offer that as much as possible to someone who, particularly if you're driving in a neighborhood, you're like, Oh, I really like this neighborhood. I really would love to purchase his building. How do I get in touch with the owner? The owner is written right there, right like it maybe it's an LLC, or maybe it's a business entity, but that's really, you know, go to open corporate.org or calm. You can find out what the phone number is who the head of who the board directors are. It's one more step but it's also like if you really want something you're gonna have to put in some effort. This just eliminates about 10 of the steps going with LandGlide, so I heavily endorsed them outside of my own software which is creprocourse.com. Plug it.
Sam Wilson 19:56
On that note, Zach, what is the best way to get a hold of you?
Zach Roesinger 19:59
I am Z-R-O-E-S-I-N-G-E-R on LinkedIn. So I'm Zach Roesinger. Find me on LinkedIn and what I was asked him and encourage you to do the same. It's hard for me to always put together exactly who is the best contact for you. So tell me who that is. If we connect today, and you say, hey, great to connect, do not, we call it pitch slap. Don't pitch slap me. Don't tell me how I need auto insurance or, you know, we should jump on a call to find out whatever my car warranty or something. Yeah, let me know how I can help you out. And that's not necessarily going to be buying your product today. But if it's an introduction, I'm more than happy to do that, even if we just connect, because that's what LinkedIn, I believe should be used for. It shouldn't be used for selling, it should be used for connecting, providing connections is what we do, Sam, it's one of the biggest things in commercial real estate, we've connect a and b and we get paid handsomely for that, or at least we solve the connection problem between A and B. LinkedIn helps me do that because it shows me what your skillset is. And it also shows me where it allows me to connect you directly to your next big investment or your next client.
Sam Wilson 21:09
Love it. Zach, thank you for coming on the show today. I certainly appreciate it.
Zach Roesinger 21:12
I really appreciate it. Please come on Coffee with CRE Closers or follow everything. We're doing it creprocourse.com. I really appreciate your time today, Sam.
Sam Wilson 21:21
Thank you. Yeah, we'll certainly make sure put that in the show notes creprocourse.com. Thank you, Zach. Appreciate it.
Zach Roesinger 21:27
Yeah, man. Thank you. Thank you to audience.
Sam Wilson 21:55
Hey, thanks for listening to the How to Scale Commercial Real Estate Podcast. If you can do me a favor and subscribe and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, whatever platform it is you use to listen, if you can do that for us, that would be a fantastic help to the show. It helps us both attract new listeners as well as rank higher on those directories so appreciate you listening. Thanks so much and hope to catch you on the next episode.