WS1097: The Keys to Lead Generation with Nick Keys

EPISODE 1097

[INTRODUCTION]

0:00:00.0 ANNOUNCER Welcome to the Real Estate Syndication Show. Whether you are a seasoned investor or building a new real estate business, this is the show for you. Whitney Sewell talks to top experts in the business. Our goal is to help you master real estate syndication. 

And now your host, Whitney Sewell.

00:00:24.000

Whitney Sewell: This is your daily real estate syndication show. I’m your host, Whitney Sewell. Today our guest is Nick Keys.

Nick is a commercial real estate broker and investor based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He specializes in industrial real estate, specifically manufacturing, distribution, and flex-style properties. He’s been in the commercial real estate brokerage industry since 2013, and an active investor in syndicators since 2015. 

Nick lays out today some things about how you are going to find some off-market deals. I mean how you’re going to start generating your own leads to finding projects, finding deals. I mean, he lays that out in three steps or three different ways, I think and he goes into detail about how he does it as a broker so I think it’s neat. Sometimes you wonder how these brokers develop these relationships and find these projects, and he goes into detail about that today, even to the number of calls that maybe you should be making and how to find the right people to call. So, I hope you enjoy the show and learn a lot. I hope it leads you to your next lead, something that you’re going to close. 

Quickly, I want to share with you a sponsor of the show. This business has helped us personally to build credibility and build loyalty with our investors and that is lifelonggifts.com. They can send out gifts that have your investor’s name on it. I mean, think about that, if you send it out right now before the holidays and, you know, you send them a nice knife set that they’re enjoying with their entire family around the table with their family name on it and they’re going to be thinking about you even at that time, right? It’s just a great way to say thank you, make that connection, build that loyalty component, and it’s just something I love doing with our investors and other people that just helped us, helped me in different ways. It’s just lifelonggifts.com, I encourage you to look them up.

[INTERVIEW]

Nick, welcome to the show. It’s an honor to meet you and to have you on the show. You have some skill sets that are going to help our listeners today to say the least just from your background and being in commercial real estate, it’s just going to be so helpful. Tell the listeners a little more about what you do right now and let’s jump right in.

00:02:25.000

Nick Keys: Sure. Well, thanks for having me, Whitney. Pleasure to be here. A little bit about myself, I’m a Wisconsin native. I was born and raised in northern Wisconsin and eventually moved south to the Milwaukee area about 15 years ago. My background has always been in sales. One of my first jobs in high school was actually telemarketing, so this was before robo calls but people despise doing just the same. 

After I graduated college I worked for a home improvement company, I was doing in-home sales for kitchen and bathroom models. And it was one call appointment, one call close, so the expectation is, and show up, demo the products and then try to close the customer sitting at the kitchen table. So, you don’t know what you’re made of until you’re, you know, at somebody’s table at 8:30 at night asking them to buy a $30,000 kitchen. So, I learned a lot to say the least, but a short time later, I decided to get more serious in real estate and construction on a larger level. I got my real estate license and I joined The Dickman Company in 2013 as a sales agent. I continued to educate myself and then became a broker in 2015, and two years later I eventually made partner in the firm in 2017.

00:03:38.000

WS: Nice. Now that’s an interesting background. That’s funny ’til you say you don’t know what you’re made of until you’re sitting at someone’s table at 8:30 at night trying to sell a $30,000 kitchen, no that’s definitely a learning experience to say the least. And I think that’s a good lead into some skill sets that you have, you know, just being a broker and how you can help the listeners today and generate leads, right. I think that’s a skill set that most people who are listening, if they are an operator, trying to become an operator that they need to work on. But let’s jump right into that and get us started a little bit with some things around thinking through generating leads and how you can help us do that.

00:04:14.000

NK: Sure. So, before we dive in, I do want to know when it comes to brokerage, we are an industrial real estate brokerage firm. So our niche is manufacturing, warehouse, distribution facilities so you’ll hear me talk about a couple of different things here today. Most of what I say will translate to multifamily, self-storage, mobile home parks, whatever it may be, but my specialty is industrial real estate. So, if I’m successful here today, listeners will learn, kind of a step by step approach to find off-market opportunities. The market is extremely competitive, everyone is looking for that advantage, you want to find a deal that hasn’t been seen by everybody yet and this will hopefully help them do that. I don’t want to talk myself out of a job, right? I am a broker but I want to give people some tools that they can use and implement to go out in the market and find success.

So as we dive in here, the first thing that I would encourage people to do is identify the type of deal that you’re looking for. This seems super simple, right but it’s incredibly important. If you’re a new investor this may take you a while to figure out. You’re going to need to underwrite multiple deals or research multiple asset types to really figure out what’s best for you and your market specifically. If you’ve done your research, ask yourself “Is what I’m looking for based on market reality?” And what I mean by that is, can you really find a Class B property, fully stabilized at a 10 cap? Probably not, you know, but you’re not going to understand the market and you’re not going to know that unless you really do a deep dive into what’s available and what’s possible.

00:05:54.000

WS: Appreciate how you said to do some underwriting there, I just think that’s going to teach you a lot about that market where you know you’re going to figure out that 10 caps is not realistic.

00:06:02.000

NK: Yeah, exactly. So once you do identify that asset, and I’m a big believer in visualization, write it down right like you want to put this somewhere that you can see it – through a post it note, on your computer screen, you’re going to look at this every day. One of the hardest parts of lead generation or brokerage or sales in general is staying focused and being intentional with your time. It’s super easy to get distracted in today’s day and age. 

So now you’ve written it down and identified what it is you’re looking for. Step two would be to broadcast. This is basically sharing with others what it is that you’re looking to do. The first place I tell people to start or that I have even started is within your inner circle, so start with your friends and family. This is where you want to get comfortable discussing and sharing exactly what you intend to do, and that way everybody knows what you’re looking for. This will help you gain confidence and kind of help you hone your pitch before you start sharing it more broadly. 

One thing I would be ready for though is recoil. Your inner circle may post tough questions or they might press you to provide some additional detail. Not everybody is always supportive, especially when you get out, you start a new venture, you’re kind of reaching for bigger and better things, there may be some pushback. So it’s one thing to be prepared for it but, once you get through your friends and family the next step is to literally move on to just about everybody else.

00:07:24.000

WS: I think it’s neat you say “I’d ready for some pushback, some recoil there,” it’s a new thing, right. I mean this is a new thing that most people haven’t heard you talk about before, they haven’t seen you in that light yet and so there’s going to be questions. I think even with those questions, you may not have good answers for them, right? But it’s going to help you be better prepared for when you get those answers in the future.

00:07:44.000

NK: Absolutely. You’ll be, hopefully more comfortable with those closest to you and you can kind of stumble through all of that before you, you know, get out into the big world. 

00:07:54.000

WS: Hopefully they’re the nicest, right?

00:07:56.000

NK: Yeah, exactly. And the most forgiving. So the second way to kind of broadcast or intentionally share would be with just about every other person you know, this is your neighbor, your insurance agents, Uber driver, the guy sitting next to you at your kids soccer game, right, I mean like literally everybody is a possible lead source. 

So, the key with this is to direct your conversation towards the lead you’re trying to generate. Now, what you don’t want to do is blurt out “Hi, I’m Nick. I’m looking for a deal to buy” when somebody asks if you’re standing in line at the grocery store, right, but you want to try to mention it as part of your elevator pitch or bring it up if somebody asks, you know, what are you interested in. 

So I can tell you, when I meet somebody in a business setting, I’ll usually say something to the effect of “Hi, my name is Nick Keys. I’m a commercial real estate broker, specializing in industrial real estate. I help users and investors buy and sell manufacturing, warehouse, distribution facilities,” at this point, most people will not and be like “Okay, sure” they have no idea what I’m talking about, right. So, what I do in real estate, you know, commercial real estate brokerage is common, my focus is very specific, it’s industrial so I engage them further, I’ll follow up to their response and I’ll say “Oh, cool. Are you familiar with the industry? and they’ll either say yes or no, so if they say yes, great, that’s awesome. Are you in manufacturing? Are you an investor yourself? You know, tell me more. If they say “No, I have no idea what that is,” I’ll dive deeper, right. I’ll explain to the clients I deal with the geographic area, that I cover any unique nuance of my industry that they might align with. So either way, they’re going to get to know me a little bit better, we’re going to engage in a conversation, and my goal is to share and make that connection with somebody because at the end of the day, you know, they could end up being a referral source for you in the future.

00:09:59.000

WS: I love that. And there’ve been a few shows that talked about how you just never know who you’re speaking to, right? You just never know who that person is, you can’t judge a book by its cover. I’ve learned that so many times, it doesn’t matter what somebody is wearing. You know, all those things that made you want to prejudge someone, but I liked how you said like everybody’s a possible lead source. They may not have the actual deal but hey, they may know the person that does.

00:10:21.000

NK: Right, absolutely. The third way that you can broadcast, and this is what a lot of people jump to, social media. It may sound simple because everyone’s familiar with it, in my opinion this is the easiest to fail at. So we can use LinkedIn for example, I’m sure listeners have seen this, I’ve seen it countless times, somebody will hop on LinkedIn and they post “Attention network. I’m looking for a real estate investment,” and that’s it. Right, they get a couple of likes or a comment from their uncle, it’s like “Good job. Go get them” but that’s it, so if you’re going to use social media or going to use LinkedIn for lead generation, you really have to have a plan and take it seriously. There’s tons of content out there, writers, influencers, they specialize in how to drive traffic, right how to generate leads on a specific medium. A person to highlight that I think does a great job on LinkedIn, you know, other than you Whitney would be Gary Vee. A lot of people have seen his short videos, they’re high impact, you’ve got captions, it works awesome for that medium. 

So you could start following somebody like him today for a crash course and, you know, social media engagement, be a great place to start. If you do want to dive into LinkedIn, a good starting point is to connect, right so you want to seek out like minded individuals, start following influential people within the industry you’re looking to find deals then. LinkedIn algorithm, they’ll put you in connection with different people based on their likes and interests, and the more people that you’re connected with the larger your network is and your reach is, so if you share something it’ll pop up on their timeline, and vice versa. So it’s a great way to reach scale quickly based on the number of people that you’re connected to.

00:12:10.000

WS: I like that. I love it. You said it’s easiest to fail at as well. And following people like Gary Vee, I mean you’re going to get some great ideas, right, it’s gonna be hard to keep up with somebody like Gary Vee but I think he posts like 77 times a day or something, or has that much content anyway. But man, you can learn a lot just by watching somebody like that, it’s almost like you have mastered the art of social media, right?

00:12:32.000

NK: Absolutely. Yeah, it’s a great way to educate yourself on what’s possible on social media. So now, step three in finding a deal or generating a lead, and this is going to make the hair on the back of some people’s neck stand up, it’s cold calling. 

Okay, and this is something that might sound like nails on a chalkboard to you, I’ve talked to countless people over the years and they refuse to cold call. They say they don’t like the rejection, it’s not worth their time, it’s hard to prioritize. Whatever the excuses, in my opinion, these people are leaving money on the table. Okay, I won’t sit here and preach to you that the rejection of cold calling is easy to deal with but it absolutely works. Okay, I’m speaking from experience here. It’s one thing you could literally start doing right now, it will have a massive impact on your business. When he is…you’ll probably agree being successful in real estate, this isn’t rocket science, right, you need to find a solid deal and execute. Fifty percent of that equation is finding the deal, so when people are stuck behind the screen, right there sitting at their computer, they’re on loop net, or they’re on the MLS, or maybe they talked to a couple of brokers casually to source their leads. By doing that they’re putting 50% of their success into the hands of somebody else. Wouldn’t you rather have control? Right I mean, once you rather have influence over where your deals are coming from. 

So, in getting started cold calling can take multiple forms, there’s three main methods that I focused on and I use in my day-to-day business, they’re dialing for dollars, knocking on doors and networking. I’m sure listeners have heard a number of them but I do mind just a little bit different. The first one to start with would be dialing for dollars. A lot of people call that cold calling. It’s fairly typical. What’s unique about what I do is how I generate my list of prospects to call. A lot of people will buy a list, right? Or they’ll go online and they’ll search a record database of foreclosed properties or no will do one way or another to pull it. I typically generate my list based on the door knocking that I’ve been doing and I’ll get to that in a second what exactly that is but, let’s say you don’t have a list, right I need to generate one. I’ll go through a mix of different resources that aren’t necessarily me buying a list online. I may find leads through the Business Journal, most municipalities have a local business journal, you have death notices, you have tax liens and foreclosures at the back of the paper or available online. 

You may also read an article regarding a business that’s closing, right, they just let go of a bunch of employees, or maybe they’re expanding, right and they just acquired another company. You may see posts on social media about companies announcing they just purchased a new equipment line, or they’re doing a huge hiring of a bunch of new employees. Any of these are possible resources, right you need to dig a little bit deeper. Okay, what’s the question behind the question? Why are they doing that? Is it because business is great, or are they in a bad state and perhaps they need to do something to help them with that? The last way to potentially generate some prospects would be Google Maps. Now this is going to sound crazy to some of you but it is a way to do a quick look at a targeted area for example, Business Park, you can see that a building has deferred maintenance or the parking lot is overflowing, any of these things could indicate the health of the business that’s inside. So, once I have my list of properties, it’s time to start dialing. I start making calls, turn off notifications on my phone, close out of the email on my desktop, I try to be as focused as I can with the person on the other end of the call. 

A live call with the prospect is a high pressure game, and it’s winner takes all. If you miss a detail because you’re reading, you know, a text message or you don’t hear the inflection in their voice because you’re flipping through your email, you’re missing very important information about that prospect. So to give you an example, I pick up the phone and make a call, I let the person on the other end know who I am. Most of the time the response I get is “Don’t call me again. Bye,” or “We have absolutely no interest in selling,” right. This is brutal. I’m not going to sugarcoat it but sometimes you do get people to engage, you know,they might say, “Wow, we’re not going to sell now, but who knows what will happen in six months right here,” boom, light bulb goes off and you think, “Okay, what if I press them a little bit more?” So, if the situation is right I’ll say “Well, is the business not doing very well?” Questions like that get people talking right that will get their attention and they immediately jump into defense. They start, don’t start telling me about how good the business is, they just hired a bunch of employees, things are rocking and rolling for. Now I have a conversation going, right and now I can develop a little bit of a relationship, it doesn’t always go somewhere right but I’ve at least made a new connection. 

I can wrap that conversation off if it’s not going to take me to a deal on that phone call, and I’ll log that person into my CRM. Making these calls will feel like a hamster wheel, right, especially if you sit down and you’re like, “Okay, I’m going to find a deal this week,” you’re going to go round and round and you might not make very much progress but on one of these calls inevitably, you’ll hear “I can’t believe you just called. Your timing is great,” to the person on the other end of the phone, I just dropped out of the sky. I’m calling to talk about exactly what’s on their mind but for me, this is the 80th cold call I’ve made in the last two weeks. Right, so the point to highlight is that you have to put in wraps, you have to be focused and intentional with your calls. This is really a game of persistence and in real estate persistence pays.

00:18:31.000

WS: That’s such good information right there, I mean thinking about cold calling. I know a lot of people would be nervous around that and you were highlighting things to think about. You have to be on the call, like you have to be paying attention. You have to be listening to all those little details that can seem intimidating. I bet too many of the listeners are thinking through that but, it’s so crucial and I think you just got to get in there and get started, right? It’s like podcasting, right, the first 20 may be horrible or the first 100, maybe in my case but, hey, you’re never going to get to the hundredth show if you don’t get started, right and I feel like in this case you’re never going to get better at that conversation on the phone if you never get started, right. 

And so, you mentioned like 80th call and a couple weeks, how many calls should we be trying to make…what’s even possible? What’s a good target? And maybe even a percentage of close closings for the number of calls.

00:19:18.000

NK: That’s a great question. If you are going to get into brokerage for example, like what I do, new hires will start out making 100 calls, 200 calls a day, I mean it’s a tremendous amount of calling. I can tell you that my weekly goals are about 50 calls. Now these are targeted at their quality, their people that I’ve either researched or businesses that I’ve seen, you know, within the news in the last couple of weeks, but I’ll make 50 calls. Of those 50, I usually talk to about 15 people, of those 15 people I usually generate like two to three leads, and I usually set one appointment. So, if you look at the whole timeline number going from 50 prospects down to one meeting so there’s an adage you make 100 calls to set 10 meetings to make one sale. I wouldn’t say it’s exact but it’s not too far off. For listeners that are out there, if you could designate even an hour a week where you sit down, you get ready, maybe you’ve done some homework leading up to that our but you have 10 people, and as I’m going to cold call these 10 people you might breeze through them in 15 minutes, right and then you’re ready for more like okay, where you might not have any success and it’s like “Okay, I’m going to shelf that until next week and I’m going to come back and I’m going to hit it again.”

00:20:36.000

WS: That’s great advice and, you know, I wanted to speak to or have you speak to, in generating that list right it’s so important like 200 calls a day, I mean wow what an accomplishment to be able to get done through that many calls. You’re going to learn so much so fast, right having repetitive conversations like that and trying to guide that conversation. 

But you talked about 50 calls a week and obviously it’s more targeted and that takes me back to like generating that list, so important, right, I mean where you got the list from and how you’re focusing that list, any more tips around like focusing that list, maybe you’re going to get there in a minute, if you are let’s do that but I just didn’t want to forget to like thinking a little more…have you speak a little more to like generating that list so that’s more focused on “Hey, you know exactly what you’re targeting,” like the first thing you said was identify the type of deal you’re looking for, right? Are there ways around targeting that list towards that type of project or towards somebody that’s more motivated or anything like that?

00:21:31.000

NK: Absolutely. So the way that I typically generate the list and, again, this won’t translate to every product type, it won’t translate to every market but I found that in Wisconsin, specifically southeastern Wisconsin, this is the best way to find a prospect organically. And if you do translate this to your industry or niche, I’m going to go out on a limb here, it’s going to 10 x, the leads that you’re seeing sound so silly. Knocking on doors, a lot of people are going to be like, “Well, what do you mean? You mean like actually knocking on a door? I mean yeah, I want you to get in the car, I want you to go for a drive. If you’re looking for self-storage facilities, I want you to go and drive around every single self-storage facilities that’s within 10 miles of where you want to wind up, and what you’re looking for is the condition of the building, other cars parked in front of it, you know, how is it maintained, is it staffed? There’s so much that you can learn just by taking a drive past the building. 

So, going back to what I do, industrial, it looks like this when I go out knocking on doors, I drive to one of the industrial parks of the business park that’s within our geographic area, I take a lap up and down the street, and I’m on the hunt. Okay, I’m looking for a few key indicators, I’m looking for overgrown landscaping, right, if somebody’s not mowing their lawn it’s either because they don’t care about the quality of their product or their property, or they can’t afford to pay somebody else to do it, so that’s the key indicator. I look at the condition and if the parking lot is full or not. 

This may seem like an odd thing but if there’s no cars parked in front of a warehouse facility, probably means that there’s nobody inside working, right, or if the parking lot is basically turned to gravel, is because somebody doesn’t want to spend the money on making that large capital improvement, right so another key indicator. The last one is something where you just know what when you see it. The building’s run down right and needs paint, it needs gutters and downspouts, there’s a tree growing out of the gutter on the roof right like it just, it looks like it needs a hot shower and a shave – this is another key indicator. Okay, so you have this list of items that checks all these boxes, you think to yourself “This is great.” I gotta leave, right I write down the address and your first instinct or what a lot of people want to do is drive home, they’re going to hop online, they’re going to see what I can pull is there, an old tax bill or you know was an article about the building, going back into something like that stuff where everybody leaves money on the table as they drive away. Instead of going home and hopping on your computer, driving in the parking lot, parking the car, go inside, ask if anyone’s around to talk to you, right. The doors are not always going to be open but if it is, go inside right, see if there’s a receptionist there, see if somebody is willing to talk to you. 

A lot of the time there won’t be anybody there, you know, and then you write down the address and you go home but every once in a while, there’ll be somebody sitting there, and you just introduce yourself, you know, “Hi, my name is Nick, a real estate broker. I have somebody that wants to buy a building in the area, is anybody around to chat?” you never know who’s going to be standing there when you walk in. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve walked in and I said that in school, it’s the business owner, right, and he’s standing there talking to the receptionist and we’ll dive right into a conversation. Doesn’t always lead to the deal but I just went from driving around to identifying a property to talking face to face with a decision maker. And in my opinion, there’s no way you can prospect more efficiently than that.

00:25:12.000

WS: Great advice. And I think so many things are going to come out of that, right you’re going to learn so much more about your market and driving around and seeing different buildings and I think to as you’re in a market over a long period of time, especially if you continue doing that, like, you’re going to know that building, that property and a year later something’s going to come up, right you’re going to remember a conversation you had about it, you know year before, two years before. 

And I don’t want us to run out of time, I wanted you to be able to keep going on cold calling and in dialing for dollars, knocking on doors, networking and we’re talking about those different things that but I wanted you to be able to keep going on some of that because that was really good info.

00:25:45.000

NK: Yeah, so the last kind of piece to finding the deal would be networking and, I don’t want this to be like a dirty word, right like a lot of people they hear networking and they think of that random sales rep that hit me up on LinkedIn and they’re like, “Hey, we should network” and you’re like “Hit the bricks, buddy,” right, like, that’s not what I’m talking about here. I want you to think of networking as building relationships within your community. This isn’t something that happens overnight, it’s something that needs to occur organically. It’s going to take a year or two years or three years but, again, this is a long game. Real estate is something that you have to commit time today, and be prepared to not see a result for years to come. So, as you get involved with networking, a great avenue to pursue is being involved with charities, or community groups. 

I know, Whitney, you do an awesome job and you have your foundation and you’re incredibly involved with that and I’m sure it’s open some doors and help you create some connections through what you do. So, this could be something like you’re helping out at the local food pantry or you’re involved in your neighborhood HOA or if you like playing sports maybe you organize a weekend or rec league or something like that.

But why these are awesome places to network is because most people attending these groups are there for a cause. So, it removes that layer of self-interest, right it’s not like you’re standing at a business cocktail hour hosted by the Rotary Club and everyone’s there flipping business cards, right. I mean you’re in a space where you’re able to give back to the community while still building those relationships. So, I found a lot of success with that, again it’s one of those things where it kind of removes the pressure and, it almost feels like a space where not there to do business right you’re just there to help out.

00:27:33.000

WS: Oh, that’s awesome, another great tip. I’ve heard different people talk about getting involved with nonprofits and in adding value, right helping out, getting involved in other things that are happening like that but man, it’s a great way to network with other people that are like-minded that are behind that cause that you’re passionate about as well. 

Well Nick, changing gears a little bit here just a few final questions and just want to draw from your experience and expertise as well, thinking through obviously just the current market situation and where we’re headed and, I like to ask guests like yourself how do we prepare for a downturn? We’re considering a potential downturn in the next year or so or six months or whatever it may be, you know, how do you like to see operators being prepared? Maybe as you being an investor or just as you’re a broker, you know, working with different operators, how do you see different operators just be prepared for the unknown?

00:28:25.000

NK: I would say don’t let the appeal of a 1031 skew your decision-making. So, we’ve seen just a flood of money come in chasing these deals and industrials really become a popular product class to diversify a little bit from, you know, multifamily and office and retail and, you know, one piece of advice I give a lot of investors that come to this market is we are in the Midwest, you do need to be conservative, right. We don’t necessarily see the levels of appreciation that east coast and west coast on so conservative underwriting hold your reserves and, be diverse, right so whether that’s where you’re going to source your deals from or the type of assets that you own, you need to make sure that you’re spreading some of that risk out over multiple asset classes.

00:29:12.000

WS: No doubt about it, that’s for sure. What about, you know, you talked about just giving back in that way being connected in the community whatnot, but any other ways that you are connecting with investors or ways that you found beneficial to network?

00:29:26.000

NK: Yes. A couple of organizations I’m involved in. One is the UW Milwaukee Alumni Association. So I’ve sat on the board for a couple of years there and it’s a great opportunity to, you know, engage with people in the community as well as students coming out of school and they’re working to broaden their network and make those connections so that’s been a great opportunity. Beyond that, my wife and I do volunteer work with a charity out by us. It’s called Blessings in a Backpack, and they provide school children with meals to take home with them on Friday afternoons, they go home for the weekend, and we have a terrible problem here with kids going hungry and not having food outside of what they’re surfing school. So giving back through that foundation has helped us come out in the community and make some deeper connections with people.

00:30:15.000

WS: Nick, do you have any daily habits that you are disciplined about that have helped you achieve success?

00:30:20.000

NK: I am not a morning person but I wake up at 4:45 every morning and, I get right into the day, I start working out, I exercise my mind, I read my 10 pages. A lot of the stuff that, you know, you can pick up from Hal Elrod’s book of Miracle Morning. I’ve applied and it’s been great, but the one thing with the sales and with real estate specifically, you have to be persistent, right. So if you have one trade, one thing that you’re doing every day, you got to get in the repetition, you got to be persistent in what you do because at the end of the day, persistence pays.

00:30:55.000

WS: No, that’s awesome. It’s interesting you say you’re not a morning person but you’re up at 4:45 every morning. 

00:31:00.000

NK: Yeah, it’s tough but, you know, you gotta do it.

00:31:03.000

WS: Yeah. People say “I can’t do that, I’m just not a morning person” I’m like, you’re tricking yourself, right, you can do it, right? You can do it. What about the number one thing that’s contributed to your success?

00:31:13.000

NK: I would say continually learning. I will be the first one to say I wasn’t the smartest student, you know, growing up in school but it is something that I actively seek out, right. I’m always listening to webinars and I’m attending conferences and reading books on real estate and doing anything that I can to help broaden my understanding of the industry and help meet new people, right? I mean you never know where that connection or that next deal is going to come from. 

00:31:40.000

WS: And I know that you shared a little bit about you and your wife and how you all help in the community earlier but I always like to ask how do you like to give back?

00:31:48.000

NK: So, the work that we do with Blessings in a Backpack is kind of the main thing for us. Over the last couple of years we’ve become more involved with that foundation and we try to, you know, dedicate as much as our time that we can to that group.

00:32:02.000

WS: Yeah. Nick, grateful for that. Just sharing that I think it’s always great to raise awareness for groups like that that are doing great things in the communities, but grateful for your time today. Pleasure to meet you, get to know you better. And, I often wondered you how them brokers finding those deals, right, how are they getting all those connections and I just appreciate you going through some of those steps today that you take and I know it was very valuable to many people that are looking for those projects, looking for those deals and, man, he even said that if you got an hour a week, hey, you can be making some calls, right, or you can be going to that property like you’re talking about and knocking on the door and talking to people. And so I just appreciate you breaking it down, identifying the deal and how to broadcast it and, even the cold calling in the fear around that, that it doesn’t have to be that fearful. And so, grateful for your time Nick. How can the listeners get in touch with you and learn more about you?

00:32:50.000

NK: You can find me on LinkedIn under my name Nick Keys or, shoot me an email – [email protected], or do you really want to find me, come in Milwaukee where the City of Music festivals and with the home to Miller Brewing, so we’ll show you a great time if you come to town.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[OUTRO]

0:33:06.0 ANNOUNCER: Thank you for listening to the Real Estate Syndication Show, brought to you by Life Bridge Capital. Life Bridge Capital works with investors nationwide to invest in real estate while also donating 50% of its profits to assist parents who are committing to adoption. Life Bridge Capital, making a difference one investor and one child at a time. Connect online at www.LifeBridgeCapital.com for free material and videos to further your success.

[END]