How to Scale Commercial Real Estate: How to Unlock Your Own Experiences to Become a Thought Leader

How to Unlock Your Own Experiences to Become a Thought Leader

Sep 27, 2022

Today in How To Scale Commercial Real Estate Podcasts we are joined by Brent Williams. Brent discusses the importance of being a thought leader and how to unlock your potential by doing so.

Brent works and plays in the apartment industry through Multifamily Insiders, the largest online social networking group for apartment professionals. Multifamily Insiders hosts blogs and discussions on a variety of topics, such as apartment marketing, apartment maintenance, resident retention, property management, apartment investment, multifamily development, and apartment jobs.

Through Multifamily Insiders' sister site, Resident Events, the community shares apartment party ideas, to help create a strong sense of community at their properties

[00:00 - 05:53] Opening Segment

Brent Williams is the chief insider of the largest online professional network for multi-family professionals and he shares how he got there.
He started out as a resident retention program designer but realized that social networking was a better way to connect property managers and residents.
He launched a social network for the multifamily industry called MultifamilyInsiders.com

[05:53 - 11:36] How to Map a Career in Multi-Family Housing

Being a part of a local apartment association can be beneficial for both residents and onsite team members.
There is a trend of taking certain functions or people offsite to centralized locations or centralizing the task for wor those who work remotely.
The multifamily industry is experiencing a lot of turnover and people are looking for ways to make their employment experience more gratifying.

[11:36 - 17:22] LinkedIn New Path to Becoming an Industry Thought Leader

The goal of the thought leadership content on the site is to help owners and investors become more successful in their careers
The site strives to be open and inclusive, allowing everyone to share their valuable insights
Career development is key for those who want to produce thought leadership content, as they need to think through what they are saying and refine it to be as valuable as possible.
The biggest key to success in multi-family ownership is networking and building relationships with other experts.
It's important to have a timeline and a regular schedule for sharing your knowledge so that you remain consistent and credible.
Having a long list of ideas is essential, as is having a system for tracking and organizing them.

[17:23 - 21:15] Closing Segment

Reach out to Brent Williams
- Links Below

Final Words

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Tweetable Quotes:
“When we think about thought leadership, People don't wanna follow somebody. Who's a flash in the pan, right? They wanna follow somebody who is with them. Who's growing with them? Who's who that they feel is part of the community? So having that established presence is a huge difference.” - Brent Williams

Connect with Brent Williams by visiting www.multifamilyinsiders.com or joining their community on Linkedin

Connect with me:

I love helping others place money outside of traditional investments that both diversify a strategy and provide solid predictable returns.

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Want to read the full show notes of the episode? Check it out below:

[00:00:00] Brent Williams: In multifamily, a lot of people, they started off , in a very similar spot it's they started off as a leasing consultants.

They moved up into management from there. So you'll see people from, Vast majority of C-suites at one point started off as a leasing consultant, right? And we're seeing a breakdown in that chain of chain from one point to the next point. So it was before it was leasing consultants as said property manager regional.

So, and now we're seeing a spider web of career growth. Where you don't necessarily have to go in that path. You don't have to go from a sales role, which is more like leasing into more of a management role because you're forced into that cause of the way the industry works. So things are definitely changed in that fron

[00:00:56] Sam wilson: Brent Williams is the chief insider of the largest online professional network for multi-family professionals. Brent, welcome to the show.

[00:01:03] Brent Williams: Thank you,

[00:01:04] Sam wilson: Sam. Glad to be here, man. The pleasure's mine, there are three questions. I ask every guest who comes with the show in 90 seconds or last, can you tell me, where did you start?

Where are you now? And how

[00:01:11] Brent Williams: did you get there? Yeah, nine seconds could be hard, but yeah, I started in multifamily cuz I actually jumped into multifamily, which is a little different than most people. I usually like stumble into it somehow, but for me I jumped into it. I was a big proponent of resident retention, how to get people to be connected with their communities.

So I went with a social network for partner communities when I first jumped in and that failed miserably. And we realized that we were a little too early to the game, as far as. MySpace was the big thing. So we decided to step back and show the industry what social networking was and then how to apply it to their communities.

So we launched a social network for the multifamily industry and so that they could share best practices, trends and that sort of thing. And so then we're going to actually circle back around and say, okay, now let's apply that to your communities. But once we launched it, It was amazing. And we got such , a huge turnout that we said, you know what, this isn't where we need to be.

So we've been facilitating conversations in multi-family ever since.

[00:02:16] Sam wilson: So if you can, and maybe I missed this or maybe I'm just slow, probably both is. Can you tell me in one sentence what it is that you guys do

[00:02:25] Brent Williams: today? Yeah. So we have a social network for multifamilies called multifamily insiders.com.

It's a lot like, LinkedIn, but for multifamily. Very cool. So yeah, we do the same types of things. People want to share memes. They can do that. People wanna talk about in depth discussions about. How to run properties, how to acquire properties. We handle that as well. It, so outs people sharing knowledge with

[00:02:48] Sam wilson: each other.

That's really cool. I love that. And so just to get your story clear in my own mind, you had a resident retention program that you were running, and yet said you were early to the game. Yeah. And that's what kind of inspired the idea of, Hey, instead of maybe running resident retention, we should run a networking site for people that are looking to acquire and own multifamily

[00:03:11] Brent Williams: properties.

Right? So in general, we always hear the story about. , if we can retain this residence, we're gonna save four grand or something like that right. On that turnover cost. Sure. And so if we can, there's a big financial aspect to that. And so I've lived in a lot of apartment communities in the past.

And I kept hopping from concession to concession. And I think a lot of people do that because we don't fundamentally have any ties to that property. Right. So if my thought was, well, shoot, if we can establish those ties, if I knew just one person in a fairly deep way, I'd be much more likely to stay.

And so I technically actually started another company before that, which was kind of a event planning company. For multifamily. And that was a lot of fun. We through a lot of events, but it wasn't scalable. And so, as like I said, as my space was the big dog and it was social networking was becoming a thing.

I thought, well, why don't we apply this concept to apartment communities? But the problem was that I didn't realize that, and this may still be true to some degree, but especially back then, property managers didn't want the residents actually talking to each other. , they have summer parties and that sort of thing.

If they're not there like chaperoning, they're terrified of this idea of, talking about, the increase in rents or talking about the car that broke, got broken into those types of things. They don't want those conversations happening sincerely. So they don't really wanna have this open social network where the residents could actually discuss.

So. Now that's changed over the years. Cause I think that those conversations are happening regardless. And so it's better to kind of be in charge of that. But back then it was terrifying. So we had to help educate the industry on what social networking was. And that was a pretty big task in itself. Man that's

[00:05:06] Sam wilson: that's cool.

Tell me, I guess, when it comes to what you guys are doing today, an idea is one thing, getting it launched and scaling, it is an entirely different thing. How did you guys do

[00:05:18] Brent Williams: it? A lot of TLC. When you launch a social network, You have to make sure that every single person's question is answered.

They need to feel like they're heard. So I spent so much time at the beginning of taking individual questions, sharing them with somebody I knew that might have an answer and saying, will you please take a moment and answer this question. So it was a lot of that in the beginning. But even then people really, at the time there was nothing like it.

And so if you wanted to network and. You had to go to the apartment association, which is fine. And I'm a huge proponent of being a part of a local apartment association, but people still wanna do that kind of self serve, knowledge sharing. And so, it was easy that for them on a daily basis to jump on a site and share their ideas , and interact in that way and not necessarily have to wait for the next.

To connect with somebody else.

[00:06:14] Sam wilson: Absolutely. And I think it's unique to have it focused. I mean, there's lots of, focus or there's lots of groups and things like that. I think you can join around really any industry. But for you to have it specifically, focused around the multi-family industry, how to get involved, how to get started.

All those things is really cool. What are some common, I guess, pain points that you feel like people come to you with either they're new or they learn to scale or learn to grow their portfolio. And they say, man, Brent is this something that I can learn from and really sharpen my skills on with your group?

[00:06:46] Brent Williams: I think the biggest, I dunno if it. Pain point as much as where the industry is trending. I think that, and this will apply both from the onsite person all the way up to the owner and how they're positioning their properties. Is this question of centralization. And so, historically with multifamily, you have, a lot of the functions done on site.

You have your, your bookkeeping, you have your collections, you have all of these vendor interactions. And some of 'em need to stay on site, but we're seeing more of a trend of. Taking these functions or these people, it could be a mix of both and taking them offsite to a centralized location or centralizing the task if there happen to be remote.

So, there doesn't necessarily need to be somebody on site doing collections. They could take that function off fairly easily. So, and what it does is it changes the roles of people who work in the industry. You become either much more specialized in sales on getting new leases or you become much more specialized in the resident experience.

And then you have, then from a structural perspective, you have a whole new minutely office, maybe of people who are working in a centralized way to support a whole portfolio of properties. Yeah.

[00:08:04] Sam wilson: That's a, that, that is a really interesting shift, certainly we've seen across a variety of industries but this one as well, where a lot of those, and I'm not gonna call 'em lower level tasks, but they're tasks that can be batched across multiple assets, like, oh, okay.

Well, you don't have to be on site. Like you said, doing collections and things like that. That's a really cool problem that people solve. Do you guys handle. Like, let's say I came to you and I said, Brent, man, I don't know anything about multifamily and I wanna learn where do I start?

[00:08:32] Brent Williams: So I think there's a couple different things. It really depends on, what type of view you're looking for. So, we have a Facebook group called multifamily share space. I think that's, even if. Whether it's somebody coming into the industry or somebody who's been in the industry a long time and they wanna get a pulse on what their teams are thinking that they may not be hearing, going to a place like that.

You could hear just unfiltered comments about their pain points with their job or with the industry. It is eye opening to see what struggles that they're facing. I think frankly, every person and I know your audience is probably more higher level, so they should be on there looking and seeing what their teams are probably thinking about.

But may not be passing along to upper management to saying here, I'm struggling with, the residents are so much more difficult these days, or the challenge we're facing with, especially when it went through COVID that was, I mean, it was incredibly difficult. We have so many more tasks and function.

For the onsite team. Now, granted some of that's going to be changing with centralization, but as of right now, they are asked to juggle so many things. So getting that, that deep view from what people are talking about and complain about, or it's all complaining sometimes it's really positive too. That's really eye opening for a lot of people.

Well, on,

[00:09:50] Sam wilson: on that note, what are some things, I guess, as you look at these forms and you have access to those, what are some things that you feel like people are con some consistent themes maybe that you're hearing right now that are some risks and, or some opportunities in the multifamily space?

[00:10:05] Brent Williams: So I think in general and a lot of our conversations do come from the operations side. So some of that's gonna be a little more heavily leaning towards. But I think it's echoing a lot of the wider market where you have, the great resignation is hitting multifamily, especially hard.

So I think we're struggling through that. I think that people want to work towards their passions. And so we're seeing more need for how do you Make the employment experience gratifying, and they don't wanna just get a paycheck anymore. They want to do something that makes it makes a difference.

That's always, we always hear that for years, but I feel like it's even more so, right now. So I, I say those are two of the bigger things that are happening at least on, on a lot of the conversations that we're seeing. Well, what

[00:10:51] Sam wilson: I, when you say that, what are some things that come to mind as it pertains to opportunity?

I think

[00:10:57] Brent Williams: one of the sessions that we've been having within a training group is a greater emphasis on career mapping to understand what does that look like going from a to Z? In multifamily, a lot of people, they started off in a very similar spot it's they started off as a leasing consultants.

[00:11:51] Sam wilson: That's really interesting. And you said you spend time in people inside of your group spend time doing career mapping.

[00:11:57] Brent Williams: What does that mean? It's identifying what these skills are for some, an individual and creating a path for them specifically. And I mentioned sales because one of the.

The worst way to ruin somebody's career is to go from somebody who is absolutely phenomenal selling and then turning them into a bookkeeper. Right. It doesn't make any sense whatsoever, but that's what we do all the time is we say, okay, you need to move into this next role. And what we're finding is that both on the leasing side, also on the maintenance tech side, We're seeing this progression that grows within the leasing bowl.

So you have a leasing, one leasing, two leasing three, and you grow within that same thing with maintenance as well. Giving them those opportunities within their primary skill set. I think it's a

[00:12:43] Sam wilson: really cool what you guys are doing is really cool because it, it sounds like you get really into the nitty gritty.

It's not just a high level. Hey, here's how to buy apartments. Hey, here's a underwrite and evaluate them. It is really this sounds much more operationally intensive than a lot of other things we see out there.

[00:13:02] Brent Williams: So it's really a mix of both, but what, the way our community works is in the same way.

As you'd imagine with LinkedIn is driven by the community. Yeah. So what happens is when people want to share in a certain path, Then more people end up sharing that path because people, they tend to follow a bit as far as like, I heard a great idea here and now I'm gonna add my 2 cents in.

Right. So my, one of my roles is to make sure that we're expanding our net. We have a lot of owners and investors and trying to show them, Hey, you can be a thought leader in this space and it's gonna add value to your world. Then suddenly we can expand that communication we have, Our site reaches over 200,000, multifamily professionals all across the board over the course of the year.

So it's a matter of what people wanna do. Do they wanna be a thought leader and kind of expand from that way? And that sense we're always looking for new voices from the owner's side of the investor side.

[00:13:59] Sam wilson: So let's talk about that for a minute. Cause I think this is maybe gonna be the title of the show is something along the lines of, taking someone and having them become an industry thought leader.

Where does someone start that has no idea how to share their experiences and share their knowledge with other people?

[00:14:17] Brent Williams: Yeah. I think the first thing is that people underestimate what they. And they all, they assume that every, since they know it themselves, that everybody must already know it and I guarantee you, that's not true.

Everybody has their own unique perspective. Even if it's something that's widely known, the way they approach it in their own perspective, adding their own background in life and their own background in their career is going to give a different spin to something that people may already know, or it could be completely different.

, we went through this when we first started off, we have an open platform. Some people didn't like that because they wanted to say, you need to be vetted in a certain way. Now through our editorial process, we still say we're only going to really push out the most valuable pieces of content.

But our theory was that everybody has something worthwhile to share. Even if it's just like once a month, you have something that you think, okay, I need to share this. That's worth sharing and we don't wanna lock people out. I also think that when we think about thought leadership, people underestimate the value of their own career development when they are producing thought leadership pieces, because you have to go through the process of thinking through it, refining it, and really digging into your own knowledge to understand it because you want to be to, you wanna be.

As polished and and as valuable to the readers or to the viewers as you can. So that process of becoming a thought leader elevates your game because then you really have to analyze your own thoughts.

[00:15:50] Sam wilson: I love the idea that, where you said that people under underestimate or undervalue what it is that, that we know, because it is, it's funny when you start getting, especially into nuanced topics, multifamily ownership.

Yeah. It's nuanced and it's like, oh wait, I actually have a great wealth of information here to share. We just don't necessarily. How to bring it out or what to share at the right time. Is there a specific kind of map that you guys use or maybe that even you have used? I mean, cuz again, even your platform itself was kind of a do what you're telling other people to do is just a reiteration of what you've already done here on building this platform.

So is yeah.

[00:16:27] Brent Williams: I think the biggest thing is to, In your career, everybody must identify where they're gonna place focus and make sure that they make a consistent priority. A lot of people, they will say, Hey, I'm gonna do this and they do it once or twice. And then they kind of lose focus. And so, I think that saying, setting up a timeline saying I'm going to do this on a, this periodic basis and sticking to that because when we think about thought leadership, People don't wanna follow somebody.

Who's a flash in the pan, right? They wanna follow somebody who is with them. Who's growing with them. Who's who they feel like is part of the community. So having that established presence is a huge difference. And we have seen this multiple times where people have grown their career, like grown their business by being a constant presence and sharing their knowledge and people start subscribing to them.

And then, and it's funny, I hear these stories from them. They're saying I was at the airport and we're going to a conference. There are some people, in, in the same vein in the airport at the same time and they get recognized and go, I love. I love your blogs cause they're amazing. And they made an impact and they're finally seen it firsthand . About how it impacts them.

And then the other thing I think is I always have an idea list. And so even if I can't write down that blog or do that video at that moment, I have a long list of things that I have in the queue so that I never have to worry about going through that drought. Right. Cause sometimes I'll have a ton of ideas right.

At the same time and other times. Maybe I don't have something to say at that moment, and so always having that log will keep me going. So I always have something to. I

[00:18:08] Sam wilson: love that. I certainly love that. And yeah, that's something I try to keep keep myself either on a phone or on a task list or something somewhere where it's like, and I failed this the other day, cuz I had this idea.

I'm like, oh man, that's a really, I haven't thought about that. I need to, and I didn't write it down now. I can't tell you what it is. It does happen. Let's talk about best practices for a minute. Tell me what as it pertains to multi-family acquiring, owning, operating, selling. What do you feel like are maybe the top two or three best practices that people need to have in their toolkit right now?

[00:18:40] Brent Williams: I think that probably the biggest one and it kind of comes back to the networking side of things. I think that people, sometimes when they start going into investing they kind of, They read a lot, but then they re you know, meeting somebody and talking with them is going to be a wealth of knowledge, much greater than trying to figure things out on their own, building your team and having your, your quality piece at every single spot is going to give you more knowledge than you'd ever need.

So I think that the big thing is building our team and built and going to networking events and going networking online and kind of. Finding others that are gonna be the silver spot that have already been through that. So you're not reinventing the wheel,

[00:19:17] Sam wilson: man. That's so true. That is so true. Certainly have acquired a lot of assets just by doing exactly.

What it is that you talked about right there, going and doing networking, talking to people and team members it's an overlooked, I think Not skillset, but it's just something that, that if you don't do it, then, it's gonna leave a lot of opportunity there on the table that we don't certainly wanna do that.

So that's that's really cool. I love that. I love what you guys are doing. I love the way that you guys have plugged in, found a way to niche down into the multifamily space, present training and best practices, opportunities for those that join your group. Just the way that you can share. And like you said, for the most part, I think you said you catch flack for having it too open.

Was that right? Something, right. Something to that effect where it's, Hey you're too open, but I really like that certainly. Certainly that's the way we can learn and all grow together. Brent, if our listeners want to get in touch with you or learn more about you or your group, what is the best way to do that?

[00:20:09] Brent Williams: So I think there's a couple different ways you can go to multifamily insiders.com, which is our primary site. I think for your listeners though, I would go to the multifamily . Insiders group , on LinkedIn. So every one of our little areas has a different demographic mix. And I think that in general, our LinkedIn group has a lot more of.

Owners, investors, brokers, we see a lot of conversations there mm-hmm so I would check that out. We have a company and a group, so make sure to look up the group on LinkedIn called multifamily insiders.

[00:20:39] Sam wilson: Fantastic. Brent, thank you again for taking the time to come on the show today.

I certainly appreciate it. We'll look forward to connecting again here soon. All

[00:20:45] Brent Williams: right. Thanks a lot.