Three, two, one. Good morning, good evening, good afternoon.
Paul Andrigo here, realestatepodcastshow.com. Today I've got one of my favorite
segments that I've been doing for a couple of years now,
which is just, I'm a voracious reader, so I love reading everything to do with
real estate, sales, music documentaries,
biographies, you name it.
I'm all over the map with that kind of stuff, but I got to read,
recently got to read a business book and it's way more than that.
So you're going to be hearing not just about that book, but you're also going
to be hearing from the author himself.
So I just wanted to take a moment to welcome you, Alan, to the show.
So do a little bit of an elevator pitch, if you wouldn't mind,
about who you are and where you're from and we'll get started from there.
Well, thank you so much. I really enjoy listening to your podcast.
You do an amazing job of dialing down into that market and I've enjoyed the
interviews that you've had. And I'm just honored to be a guest today.
And yeah, just a little bit about me. I'm a Southern born guy that moved to
California in his early 20s.
And people say, gee, you're not from California. I say, no, I'm not.
But I got here as quickly as I can.
So a commercial real estate broker by trade. Many of our clients are family-owned,
family-operated manufacturing and logistics businesses, and we find that they're
experiencing some sort of transition, which is maybe they've sold their company
and there's a real estate requirement.
You know, we're brought in to kind of help ease that transition,
and I am a husband of 46 years.
I am the father of three and the grandfather of six and really enjoying life
these days. So I'm looking forward to our conversation.
Awesome, my friend. Awesome. Again, obviously that's, that's sort of the,
uh, that's the kind of introduction that I love to hear.
And, and I'll, and I'll sort of just throw in just useless trivia as we go.
You say that you're a Southern, Southern guy that was brought up in California.
Is that what you said? Yeah.
Born and raised in the South, moved to California in my 20s, yeah.
And then you moved to California, and I don't know if you're a fan of the band CCR or John Fogarty.
Oh, yeah, absolutely. Okay, so if you are, then you may know the story already,
but again, I'm a huge music trivia nerd, and I remember almost every story I
hear, and John Fogarty had a great story about when they started recording.
Obviously the the guys in the record business were
like what the hell do you guys from and and they're the
opposite they were born in california singing about
born on the bayou and all this other stuff so it
was almost like an opposite to you but the the the songs obviously were so authentic
that no one was going to question that you know oh they i'm sure those guys
were all born in the the depths of the south and they were just you know born
in california but they could sing and of course tell stories so convincingly
that no one was doubting i mean And you hear that music now,
it's still just as good. It's still just as powerful.
And John's still out there touring, singing those songs. So clearly he's got a good connection to it.
So hearing about your story, and that's kind of what I want to build from.
We'll start with that sort of thing is obviously the idea of growing up in the
South and how that sort of life and how those experiences got you to the point
where you decided one day.
Which, you know, anyone who's listening, who's in real estate,
we all sort of had either a spark or a moment where it happened,
where you decided that, you know, real estate was going to be your thing.
And I know you talk about it in your
book, and I want to make sure we make references to the book as we go.
So maybe we'll start off with just sort of that at whatever point that,
you know, you growing up where you were and how the, how the interest and how
the passion for real estate started. Yeah, great. Right.
So my granddad founded a company in 1930.
And think about that timing, right? We're in the depths of the depression.
And my granddad migrated to
Texarkana, Texas from a little place in South Texas called Bryan, Texas.
And there was a product that had been formulated called Dr.
Pepper, which is obviously everyone knows Dr.
Pepper these days, but growing up in my family business in the 1960s and 70s, and no one knew Dr.
Pepper, and it was quite a task to convince people to buy it.
So I always figured, Paul, that I would be running the family business at some point.
I worked there in the summers. I really enjoyed it.
I was close with my dad, and so I went to school in anticipation of coming back
and running the family business with the University of Arkansas.
About six months before graduation, I sat down with my dad and I said,
hey, I'm going to be graduating.
What will be my first test for the family business? And he said,
well, he said, here's the sad news.
He says, I'm not going to hire you because I don't really believe that you understand what we do.
Now, mind you, I'd spent every summer as soon as I could working in the family
business. So I knew premix, postmix. I knew route deliveries.
I knew distribution. I felt like I had a really good background.
He said, you don't know anything.
Go get a job with someone and figure that out and then come back and maybe we'll talk.
Yeah. And so that's what led me to California, frankly, is I got a job with
a Procter & Gamble distributing company and I did well, but as I grew, so did my territory.
And what I found myself, Paul, is I was on an airplane three nights a week and
small young family and it just wasn't working.
And so I knew I needed to make a change. And fortunately, I met a gentleman
that my dad had known through his soft drink bottling days.
And his name was Jack Atwood. He was the president of Coca-Cola Los Angeles.
And I sat down with him. I said, here's what I'm trying to achieve.
I want no cap on my income. I want to be able to be the master of my own time.
I'm not really interested in having a bunch of employees. I really don't want inventory.
And he said, well, gosh, have you ever thought about commercial real estate?
And I said, I don't even know what that is, frankly.
And he explained it to me and I thought, wow, that sounds very, very interesting.
So that's frankly what started my journey.
And I look at it as very providential because it really hit the mark in terms
of what I was trying to achieve.
Well, you know what? Lots to dig into with that first reply.
And again, And I love the fact that our podcast started with a reference to Dr. Pepper.
That is my wife's favorite pop. That's the one, my daughter too.
That's the one they asked me to get. I don't drink it. I've had my share of
pop for my life. I think I'm done with it, but they love that Dr. Pepper stuff.
And Coca-Cola is one of my sponsors here. So obviously I've got no problem shouting
out to Coca-Cola saying, thanks so much for supporting the podcast.
And of course, at some point or another, you know, that was something important to you.
But as you mentioned, obviously, and this is one of the first notes that I took
from your book, which is page 14, you mentioned that one of the paragraphs that
I, that I highlighted was that at first it felt like a burden.
I was managing my own feelings. Plus I manage, I was managing the emotional
atmosphere for everyone around me.
But over time I realized something else. I was developing the skill set I would
later rely on to close complex real estate deals.
So one of those, one of those, the comment that you made there,
obviously sort of learning the skills and of course the life skills,
the negotiating skills that you didn't know you were learning,
literally that kind of puts you into a.
Commercial real estate. Well, maybe that's what, you know, that's what I've
been sort of learning along the way.
And I think it's important for people to talk about this because when you're
in school, when you're a teenager and when you're in your twenties,
even, because for me, nothing clicked.
I had no idea I even liked sales until almost to the point where it was sort
of just introduced to me as an investor.
So for me, anyways, I jumped into real estate investing in my early twenties
and decided I loved it. I could do this job.
I could do way better than the guy who was helping me, you know, buy properties.
I was doing way more research than him.
And I think he was getting frustrated with me for that matter.
So I knew right away that that was my thing.
So it's kind of interesting for you to have gone through the,
that cycle that you did and then get yourself from, you know,
doing what you were doing in that world to jumping into commercial real estate.
And how long from that point, Alan, how long from the point where you were,
you know, you moved to California, you discovered commercial real estate.
So how long did it take you to sort of jump into that world?
Was it like year one, year two?
Yeah. So the story you reference is a story that I share, which was a very pivotal moment growing up.
And that's when my parents told us they were getting divorced. I was 14 years old.
And I ended up being a, It was a devastating time because to have a separation at any stage, frankly,
but at that stage in your life, when you're trying to figure out who you are
and who your parents are, who your friends are, what your future looks like,
et cetera, it was just a devastating, devastating time for me.
And I became a mediator between dad and mom who had very differing ideas as
to what the world was about, younger brother, younger sister.
And it just seemed like everyone was at odds. So I learned to be a mediator,
which as you know, Paul, is an incredible skill set to have as any sales professional,
but especially in what we do.
Because we end up being part counselor, part magician, part tactician, part strategist.
We wear a lot of hats as commercial real estate brokers.
But yeah, so moving to California, that was the summer of 1979.
I got into the real estate business in about the same time in 1984.
So five years, spent three years with Procter & Gamble and spent two years with
a national wine company, which everyone would understand.
And that's when I made the decision that, look, I've got to do something else
because at the rate I'm going, I'm not going to last another five years.
So made the jump. Walked into my boss one Saturday morning and I said,
here's the keys to the company car.
He said, what are you going to do? I said, I don't know, frankly,
but I'm not doing this anymore. So peace out.
Yeah. Good for you. And that's, I think the reason I highlighted it,
and I didn't reference it properly, but the reason I think I highlighted that
was that literally mirrored my own story.
My parents, they were done with each other by the time I was 11 and it was not pretty.
And we're talking about very sort of two very, what do you call that?
Two very A-level people, like both wanting to control everything about everything
was not good. And basically sort of made me figure out, okay,
well, how do I, you know, how do I.
How do I have a better life than, than I have right now? And how do I get out of it?
For me, weirdly enough, it was, thank God it happened two years later.
It was discovering rugby and just having a, literally a new family,
having an outlet for anger.
Cause it was, it wasn't good. And literally I told my dad one day,
I said, you can either drop me off at the gym and, and, and,
and let me get a membership here, or you can pick me up from jail.
I basically, I basically just gave him two options.
And I guess I was selling at that time. I didn't even think about it,
but I gave him a pretty good selling proposition.
So the easy choice was, ah, okay, I'll send you to the gym and let you get your,
you know, your, your anger out.
And I just, I just knew I needed to. And of course that was sort of the catalyst for me.
I was in the gym business for a decade before I got into real estate,
but of course, uh, you know, you mingle with different people and this is,
this is basically what happened was, uh.
You know, you just meet enough people and you hear about stories and you hear
enough people doing well in real estate, I just decided at that point,
that's what I was going to be, you know, that's what I was going to be pursuing.
And of course, being able to, you know, expand it into these moments with you
guys and having, you know, great podcast storytelling is important to me too.
But yeah, so you basically went from your, your move from California,
you got into real estate at that point.
So I guess, cause people are listening that might be in the early stages or,
or it might be in the sort of the, the relearning stages. Cause I feel like
I've been doing that a few times in my career lifetime.
At what point did you feel, Alan, that real estate was the thing,
the commercial real estate was going to be your thing.
How, how sort of, how far in how, or how long did it take you to get from,
you know, from, from, from, you know, from a, from a sort of a rookie to sort
of, you know, feeling like, okay, this is it for me.
Believe it or not, Paul, day one, believe it or not, day one,
I was, I was fortunate because my wife was very gainfully employed.
She was selling radio advertising, was doing well. We had managed to save a little bit of money.
And so when I quit on that Saturday morning, my wife said, look,
I want you to spend some time and I want you to, to figure out what the next step is.
Because I don't, we were dating at the time I accepted the original job.
We, we, we weren't planning to get married at that point. but she said,
I don't know that you really did that with the first job.
She says, you took the first job in anticipation of working for your dad.
So spend some time and figure out what it is that you want to do.
And so I looked at wealth management. I looked at commercial insurance.
I looked at commercial real estate.
I looked at, in the early 80s, I looked into computer-aided design sales.
I looked at advertising if I didn't mention that. So there were several areas
that I looked at that would have provided a professional sales career.
And I just really loved real estate. I loved the fact that it was tangible.
I loved the fact that you can kind of pick and choose the genre,
although I didn't really understand the genres at that time.
But when I accepted the position with my company, Lean Associates,
I showed up day one ready to go.
And I felt very fortunate that there was not a learning curve in terms of,
is this the right move? I knew that it was.
And I went in, it's funny, I was talking to a young producer earlier this morning,
and I didn't have a license to sell real estate when I started.
I had to earn that while I was at the company.
And I figured, you know, I've got a year to get this thing figured out.
If it doesn't work for some reason, I can always do something else.
But two months after I started, we discovered that Carla was pregnant with our second son.
And so now all of a sudden our sole source of income was going to be sort of
sidelined because we wanted her to stay home with our two at that point.
So I had to get busy, and that was really what propelled me into making sure
I was going to be successful.
Because there was no, at that point, after, you know, there was no,
hey, if this doesn't work out in a year, at that point, it was, I got to make this work.
There's no plan B. So...
Funny how that changes the motivation for all of us, because it was almost the
same thing for me, getting licensed in 2000 and being with my girlfriend,
now wife at the time, but no kids.
But something in my head, because of my own childhood, and maybe some of this
might relate to you as well, just because I wanted to be a different parent.
I wanted to be like, almost like just sort of not a stay at home dad,
but the next best thing I needed to be in a job where I could actually be around
for important moments and actually, you know, be part of my kid's life.
And that was just something I thought about before they came along.
So I felt like that clock was ticking for me too, which is the first five years
I figured, okay, let's see how, you know, how I did.
But right away, I, I, I, again, and that's why both you and I are still doing this after, you know,
the, you know, the, the, the, I guess, whatever it is, the, the trial period,
the, I don't know what it is in real estate, but I know it's something between
three months and five years about, you know, for some people doing this and
realizing, wait, you know, this isn't at all what I thought.
How come there's no paycheck every other Friday?
All this, all this kind of stuff that, you know, you really have to get used to early on.
And of course, you know, that's, that's what we get used to.
And you bring up, you bring up a good point. If I can, if I can interrupt.
Please do, please do. You know, what you're, what you're talking about in my
way of thinking is, is, is the why, why are you doing this career?
Because Paul, let's face it.
Commercial real estate brokerage is a very, very difficult business.
There's a ton of rejection.
Your own boss, great, but that means you start at zero every single year.
And you better really have a deep understanding of your why.
Barbara Corcoran says she can tell within the first 20 seconds of an interview
whether someone's going to be successful in real estate or not.
And she ties it all back to the why.
If you can't clearly articulate why it is that you're doing what you're doing,
your chances of succeeding in commercial real estate are really going to diminish.
I have the privilege of training our new associates and we're on week three
of our training program.
And the first session, we spent almost the entirety discussing the why.
And you go around the room and you talk to young people that have started in
this business and you can just spot them.
You can say, yes, that one's going to be successful. No, that one doesn't have a prayer.
That one's in it because father's in it or grandfather was in it.
That one's in it because they have pie in the sky ideas about how much money
they're going to make, et cetera.
And you can really dial into this person gets it.
They have the correct why and so critically important.
You know what? That training that you're talking about doing for me,
it was absolutely, it was pivotal.
And the fact that I had this really great trainer, again, someone that I think
basically whether it's in working out and exercising, if you can be working
out with a partner who's stronger than you.
You literally, and you want to be able to keep up.
It literally makes you want to be able to say, okay, I want to be able to lift
a bit more. And that's sort of, for me, how I started.
I was just like, I was, I was jealous of people, you know, my size being able
to lift more weights than me.
So I just try to, you know, not just get to that point, but get beyond where they were.
And same thing goes with business. I think the skill is, is interchangeable
as far as if you want to improve yourself on a sports field or physically fit
or fitness or whatever it is, mind, whatever it is, having a good trainer.
So the fact that you're talking about that you guys do this,
I don't think people understand the importance of that first,
you know, that first trainer that you have.
So the fact that again, having, again, having read your book and really only
knowing you from that, I can already tell that whoever's, you know,
sort of under your tutelage is definitely in a better place than other people are going to be.
And I'll put a quick shout out to him because he's still out there.
Guy named David French. He's a, he's a, he's a real estate trainer here in Toronto
and was definitely the best possible source that I could have had to get me started.
I still have all my notes that I took from those days and I'm still sort of
referring back to things and still working on those basics.
And the one thing I was doing, this was my, my sort of the thing I have to remind
myself to do every week is just to sit in front of my CRM and just literally
like boringly move data around, put, put new emails in,
take the unsubscribes out, make notes on things and make sure that,
and I'm saying this because of, you know, maybe someone listening might,
might understand this, but a lot of people for me in the first few, few years,
no one told me a word about CRMs.
It was not mentioned. It was not discussed.
And what I realized very quickly is that if you go and if you're really trying
to build your business up, you know, and you're really, you've got leads coming in, like by the,
you know, like just piles of leads every week by the end of week one or two,
you might not be able to catch up.
And I might be exaggerating, but if you get like, let's say you do a really
good ad or a really good post or, or, or something like that,
and you get like a hundred or 200 names that you have to follow up on,
and you just sort of leave them behind.
You just sort of, you say hello once, but you don't, you know, you don't do follow-up.
You don't do the six-time, you knowâ.
Stay in touch routine, whatever it might be six or eight times before they ever
even respond or know your name.
It literally can be, you know, it can be a huge game changer for people.
So it's one of the things that when I'm doing podcasts and I've had people who
were rookies and especially in commercial real estate, you know,
what do you think that I should do that, you know, that, that you wish you would have done.
And that's one of the things I tell people is that literally be like religious
about it. And it's not just being on social media.
And I think we can talk about this because I know that you're active enough
on there. And yes, you're having a bunch of conversations with people every day.
But my theory is if you don't have the emails of those people,
you can't really take it any further.
It can be a conversation. And yes, of course, you can have regular conversations,
but it's going to be hard for you to really keep up.
And I'm talking about, you know, potential prospects and leads,
uh, not just people that you talk to online and that kind of stuff.
So, you know, I think that's something that obviously I think people are,
you know, you know, people should know about the process again,
probably you're, I'm sure discussing it on some level for, you know,
for the people you're training.
Yeah. And you bring up an interesting point, you know, in my way of thinking,
and I've learned this over the years, but in my way of thinking.
Success really, I call it the success triad.
And I did a little video on this last week.
The success triad in my mind is once you know the why, regardless of how deeply
ingrained that why is, you really need to be trained.
But then the two more important elements after training are mentoring and coaching.
I was fortunate that I had great mentors at every stage of my early career.
And I talk about those in my book.
I really wasn't trained in the commercial real estate field.
I was trained by the Procter & Gamble Distributing Company, which is frankly
one of the best sales trainers in the world.
So I felt like my training in terms of sales training was as good as I was going to get.
I needed to learn how to swap out Crisco shortening with Doc High Door,
right? But I understood how to set objectives. I understood how to show up early
for meetings, how to prepare. I knew how to make a sales presentation.
I was a very skilled sales professional at five years in.
The mentoring was critical at early stages because regardless of how good your
training has been, a good mentor can show you the way.
He's been there. I kind of look at it like a guide in the old west.
You know, they've, they've blazed the trail.
They know where the bodies are buried, so to speak.
But something I didn't learn until later in my career was the coaching aspect
and how critically important coaching is to success.
And I was fortunate to find the Mossimo Group in 2018.
And by that time, I'd been in the business for 36 years. I was successful.
I was a good producer, consistently in the top five, but never was able to achieve
that quote-unquote elite status.
And I realize elite means different things to different people.
But frankly, it was the coaching that propelled me to that elite production status.
So those three formed the triad. Yeah, you got to be trained,
but you absolutely positively have to be mentored and you absolutely positively have to be coached.
Because what you were talking about with the weightlifting, that's part mentoring,
but that's also part coaching because with coaching comes accountability.
And if you're meeting someone at the gym at 6 a.m and
you're going alone and you
don't feel like going to the gym that day maybe you sleep in but
if you know someone's waiting at that gym to train
with you at 6 a.m who's going to hold you accountable by George you're going
to show up oh yeah yeah I can't stress those three enough and we really are
we're really keen on on all three I do the training but then I hand off the
mentoring and I try to do a little bit of coaching not on a professional basis,
but coaching in terms of, did you understand what I ask you to accomplish this
week? Do you have questions?
What challenges are you facing? That's where the real success starts to occur.
Yeah, I agree. And again, referring back to something that you said about,
again, having learned some of your sales skills with Procter & Gamble,
I would say a lot of my sales skills and literally everything I learned about
sales up until real estate was all from the fitness world.
And you might not be aware of it if you're not in that business,
but for, for those of us who were in the fitness world in the nineties anyways,
in the, in the early 2000 and the late nineties, there was a very,
very strong emphasis on training you to be able to, you know,
sell a membership, training you to be able to retain memberships.
And that's one of the things that I was in charge of for some weird reason.
They gave me the, the phone book, which is basically the membership book.
So I had the names and addresses and emails and everything about like something
like three to 5,000 different members. Yeah.
So I'm the one calling them to check in with their progress,
ask if they need any free passes and all that kind of stuff.
So it was this strange sort of thing. And it's not even strange anymore because,
again, back to a musical reference, whether you're a fan or not of the Eagles,
one of my favorite music documentaries was the Eagles documentary that came
out maybe about a year or two ago.
I think it's going to be on Netflix in the U.S. as well.
Really great watch. And Joe Walsh, one of my favorite guitar players,
I play guitar, so he's one of my idols.
One of the things he said, and he was, he was probably one of the wildest rock stars.
It was basically him and Keith Moon. If you know Keith Moon, what his name is for.
Joe Walsh said, once he met Keith Moon, he goes, that's it.
You know, I've, I found my, uh, I found my, my inspiration. And of course,
that isn't a good idea because the way Keith, you know, partied and lived his
life was very much over the top.
So what Joe Walsh said, I'm getting to the quote, is that he goes,
he realizes now that when he looks back at his life and you see all these random
events happening, everything sort of bumping into each other and nothing seems to make sense.
But when you look back, it actually looks like a finely crafted novel.
And it's the strangest thing. And I don't know if everybody at every age is going to get it.
I think you have to cross a certain line of experience and just life lived to
be able to, you know, truly appreciate it.
But all those things that you and I learned, whether we were kids.
Whether we were learning, you know, skills about, again, in your case,
you're talking about mediation skills. Like you would not have imagined that
would possibly come into play.
And now when I do help clients of mine who are going through divorces and they're
going through sometimes very painful ones,
I sort of have this strange advantage because I was this, you know,
11 year old kid looking up at two adults and just wanting,
you know, wanting them to not fight.
And explaining to them and explaining to people sort of in a,
you have to do it professionally.
I can't, I don't necessarily tell everybody the same story, but for the most
part, helping people understand this process and say, listen.
There's all, there's a lot of emotions going around.
Of course, everybody wants, you know, to, to be able to, you know,
to, to, to, to make this thing, you know, to, to not prolong this thing.
But at the same time, I always tell people that are going through that divorce,
which is again, one of the toughest things to deal with is that I want both
of you to be able to move on to better things together and to have better lives after this is over.
Because of course, this moment is not, you know, it's not forever.
This, this is a painful moment.
And you know, the last thing you want to do is like live in it.
But if you, if you, you know.
If you, if you both want to be able to move on and move forward,
it's just going to be, you know, even better for me to be able to help you guys do that.
Cause the more money I sell your house for, the more you're each going to have
to, you know, start, start another chapter.
So it's just really strange, Alan. And this, this is just sort of relating to,
again, trying to refer back to some of your stories that are in the book.
Again, that's why I recommend everybody read this book.
And again, it's called the sequence and it's got, again, a lot of references
again for, for business people, for, for, for people in commercial real estate.
But again, just for me, again, just, and I always try to think of things like,
you know, how is this, you know, is, is, is there anything in this book that I can learn from?
And again, I'll just sort of jump into a couple of more notes,
page 18, I believe it was the deal ain't done until the broker's been paid.
I know I've said that before. I didn't, I didn't say it with a Southern accent,
but I, but I know I've said that before.
Page 84, you actually say, the deal you just closed is the best marketing tool you'll ever have.
Definitely, that's tweet or quote worthy for sure.
Referrals, and this is, again, just important for people to know,
referrals from business bankers, wealth advisors, M&A consultants,
CPAs, and other professionals that have built a pipeline that keeps paying dividends.
So just talking about, again, just how deals close.
And again, I've said it my way before, the deal isn't closed.
Even that sold sign, yes, it's up, it looks great.
The deal is not done until, for me anyways, the day after closing.
And that's when I take my family out and we'll go have lunch somewhere.
We just did that this week at Dairy Queen.
Again, I'm not talking about going all out. This is what my kids like to do.
That's where we go. It's, it's, it's, it's their decision, not mine,
but that's how it works in my family. And it still works.
You know, those principles still work for me, but I appreciate you putting that
in the book as well, because people should know, you know, don't spend it before
you, you know, don't spend it before you've actually made it. So.
Absolutely. And that, one of my very favorite mentors of all time,
his name was John Earnhardt. And unfortunately, John's no longer with us,
but yeah, John was my early mentor with his brother, Paul.
And so they were the two gentlemen I worked with, Lee & Associates initially,
and John was a sage. He had that saying.
And the other thing that John was incredible at was solving problems.
I remember walking into his office one day, Paul, and I had failed to make a deal.
And I thought, I'm going to walk in and kind of get patted on the back.
And yeah, that happens to all of this kid and what have you.
I got an entirely different reaction from John. He said, you know,
our job is to solve the problems.
And he says, clearly, you didn't
solve the problems. Maybe you didn't understand what the problems were.
But you needed to figure out how to solve any problem that comes your way in
a real estate deal or you're not going to be terribly sick.
So basically I got a wrist slap for failing to close a deal.
And I'll tell you, I never had that conversation with him again.
I, by George, I either solved the problem or I died trying.
So he was, he was an incredible, incredible mentor, No doubt.
Well, you know what? And that's actually sort of a good way to wrap things up
today as far as, you know, understanding the skills of this business.
And again, of real estate, commercial, residential, sales for the most part.
But the whole idea of problem solving and being good at problem solving,
it's something that, again, we're not taught, you know, in grade school,
not even in high school, as it discussed, the importance of being a good problem solver.
But the fact that, again, you bring it up in the book, obviously,
a couple of different ways, you know, add some really great stories about things.
But I think for people that are listening, being, you know, being the best problem
solver you can be and trying to basically, I guess,
trying to take that pain away from people, I think is one of the most important
skills that all of us can build on. And it is a muscle.
There's a, there's a part of us where if we constantly do this,
if we're constantly dealing with, and of course there's, you know,
there's that, there's the, there's the famous list.
I'm not sure if you're familiar with the, the real estate trainer, Joe Stumpf.
With him, but to him and a couple other guys, I've got, again,
I've, I've got the, I've got what I call the world's largest collection of sales
training books in one of my closets down here.
And it has to literally be in its own room. So it's pretty impressive.
And I've got Joe Stumpf and I've got another guy who was actually my unofficial
real estate coach, a guy named Walter Sanford.
I don't know if you ever remember that name again, big real estate trainer,
literally like to describe him, and this is just the best way I can describe
him, a football coach, a football coach that became a real estate coach.
And literally he was like, he literally talked. And if you, if you even pull
up a video of him talking, he was literally as animated, like probably would
have been a social media sensation if he was doing it now, just the way he talked.
And he'd actually do his training, his seminars with a towel around his neck
because he would sweat so much from how powerful he was.
So I'm suggesting you or anybody who's listening, if you want sort of a look
at someone who was really animated and it just got to me because he reminded
me of my football coach and my football coach was basically this guy who was like,
maybe like five, five, but literally.
Way he spoke and the way he gave coaching, it was like he was seven, five.
So he was one of those guys and that kind of energy. And this is why from your,
again, I would not have finished reading the book if it wasn't good.
Just so you know, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I, I, I basically sort of use the,
the book review as like, okay, if, if, if I can't finish reading it,
I'm not going to tell anybody else to, it just, it's just not fair.
And it's just, again, I'm not making any money from this and you aren't.
So why not be just brutally honest and tell people, yeah, I read it from front to back.
It took me a couple of days just because I had work in between, but it was a great read.
And I want to make sure that everybody knows, of course, how to get a copy of the book from you.
And what's the best way for them to, you know, reach out to you if they've got
any future questions or comments to make.
Yeah appreciate that very much and
i i truly do because i i wrote
the book the way i like to
read books i am as you are a voracious reader
i probably listen to or read two books
a week believe it or not yeah so that's a hundred a year and the ones that i
thoroughly enjoy are the ones that are story-based yeah there's some tactical
in there but there's there's story-based and I get to know the author.
I want to make sure that author is authentic. And I think you and I talked about
this before we hit record.
But that authenticity is so incredibly important. So you're getting Ellen Buchanan.
You're getting me unvarnished. You're getting all my warts. You're getting all my successes.
You're getting, this is the way I've done it. I'm not saying this is the only
way. I'm saying this is my way.
And I do believe there's some validity in the way I've done it,
the way the decisions I've made, the career, et cetera.
So you're very, very kind. The name of the book is The Sequence,
and it's a double entendre.
It is The Sequence, The Steps of a Deal, the S-E-Q-U-E-N-C-E,
Steps of a Commercial Real Estate, or any deal for that matter.
And then it's also The Steps of Your Career. So those are the two main names.
You can find it on Amazon, The Sequence.
And in terms of getting in touch with me, you see my mobile number down there
at the bottom of the screen.
Feel free to call me there. You can, you can email me if you like a Buchanan
at Lee hyphen associates.com.
And then I'm very active on social media. You know, let's connect on LinkedIn.
Let's connect on Twitter. Paul, that's how you and I met.
We met the old fashioned way, right? Via social media.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The conversations led to, uh, yeah. Conversations led to where
we are now. Absolutely. Yeah.
Absolutely. Right. So those are the ways that you can get me and yeah,
this is, this is the real me. So.
Well, not an avatar, right? No, no, no. This was definitely not AI.
There was no AI involved in this podcast whatsoever.
Even though I do dabble in AI with podcasting, just because it's something that's interesting to me.
I just, I just, I don't shut any doors. I'm just like, okay,
I'm going to try this, see if it works and see if it doesn't and all that.
So again, thanks so much for your time today, Alan. I really appreciate you
joining me on the show and definitely look forward to having you back again.
And perhaps either discussing, you know, new, uh, new adventures,
new books, or just, you know, things that are happening in the market that are
of interest to you. Uh, for me, anything goes.
There's really, again, there's no script. There's no plots. Uh,
it's just about sharing some great conversations.
So thanks again, Alan. Really appreciate your time. My pleasure.
Thanks for having me, Paul. I really appreciate it. My pleasure, sir.