My First Commercial Real Estate Mentor Experience (or Lack Thereof)
I started my commercial real estate career in December 2019, having moved from Atlanta to West Palm Beach just three months before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. The move was a big shift; after two decades of owning an IT company, I was burned out and ready for a change.
I joined a residential team—a couple—whose husband claimed prior commercial experience and promised to teach me the ropes. He assured me their busy residential business would generate a steady flow of commercial spin-off leads. My role was simple: open a commercial division for them.
It quickly became clear that his commercial experience was lacking, if not non-existent. Any time I asked for advice, he would refer me to someone else within the brokerage. I realized I was going to have to be self-taught. While I was used to this from the IT industry, I wasn’t thrilled at the prospect of doing it again in a brand new field. I poured myself into commercial real estate books, podcasts, and online videos. I collected terms from all over the internet and created a stack of over 500 flashcards just so I could learn to speak the language of the industry.
Over the next two years, I received maybe five referrals—at most—and zero training or mentoring. To add insult to injury, this couple bought an RV to travel cross-country and effectively abdicated the running of their entire real estate team to me for months at a time. I was suddenly helping team members with residential transactions, a class of real estate I had no interest in learning, all while having practically zero experience myself.
Taking Matters into My Own Hands
The pressure of the pandemic, combined with my mounting frustrations, strained my long-time friendship with that couple. My wife was telling me to find an exit after just one year, but I kept making excuses for them, giving them “hall passes” because of the pandemic’s unique pressures.
But halfway into my third year, I realized enough was enough. I left that team and brokerage and moved over to eXp Commercial, where I have been ever since.
The results were immediate and astounding: I did four deals in total my first two years with the old team. My first year at eXp, I did 15. It’s truly amazing what happens when you deliberately choose to surround yourself with successful people who know what they’re doing.
eXp, in the beginning, was far from perfect. I voluntarily went through their Commercial Academy training, even though I qualified under their standards as an experienced agent. As I sat through the four-week virtual training, a clear trend disturbed me: the program taught the basics but stopped short of what to do next. It didn’t cover how to actually prospect for business—which is what new agents spend 90-100% of their time doing—or how to leverage modern technology to create efficiencies.
The trainers consistently ignored clarifying questions in the chat. In many cases, I knew the answers, so I would answer them myself. Questions on how to use Reonomy, how to get that data into a CRM, how to utilize CoStar, and more. Over time, the trainers got frustrated and sarcastically asked, “Would you like to come train the class?” I never replied.
The Birth of a Mentor
Instead of replying, I started creating a series of instructional “how-to” videos that I would post within Workplace (Facebook’s internal network for business, which has since been shut down). This was a true passion project for me because I genuinely didn’t want anybody else to have to go through what I went through during my first two years. This business is hard enough, especially without a salary, to be left out in the cold with no direction or help. I wanted to do my part to change that reality.
Within 18 months of being at eXp, and with only about 30 deals under my belt, I was named the National Mentor of the Year. This recognition, I suspect, was largely due to the instructional channel I created and gave access to for free… with hundreds of instructional videos.
There are Mentors & Then There are TorMentors
Word spread quickly about my videos, and over time, I’ve had many mentees come under my care. In some cases, these are newly licensed agents seeking their first mentor. However, in other cases, they are mentees escaping a bad mentor—or what I call a TorMentor.
Here are a few real-life examples of TorMentors that I have encountered in my industry:
- The Absent Professional: One of my current mentees, Fallyn, was mentored by a licensed agent who was also a CPA. Because he was buried in tax work, he had no time for her or any of his other mentees. She was about to quit the business altogether out of sheer frustration. I was heartbroken and angry about her situation. I firmly believe that anyone who is a mentor in this business must be doing it full-time. I took her on, and I’m happy to report that she has since graduated the mentorship program and is successfully continuing her commercial real estate career.
- The Frustrated Ignorer: TorMentors often make unfounded assumptions about their mentees’ backgrounds and experience, not realizing that much more hand-holding is required in the beginning. This usually results in the mentor being frustrated and eventually ignoring their mentee until they quit.
- The “Old School” Guru: Have you ever heard the phrase, “When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail?” Well, that’s these guys. They usually distill tired and obsolete advice to newly licensed agents—advice that worked for them 20 or 30 years ago before the internet was even a mainstream thing.
You can identify these types by the advice they give. If the first two, or the only two, pieces of advice they offer are “it’s all about cold calling” and/or “it’s all about relationships,” run as fast and as far away as you can. Cold calling is just one of many forms of lead generation, and saying “it’s all about relationships” is one of the most useless, commoditized common-sense statements any business mentor can make. You mean to tell me the key to running a good business is repeat customers? How novel.
My Advice for Selecting the Right Mentor
If you are seeking a mentor, interview them rigorously. Here are the non-negotiable questions you must ask:
- Lead Generation Systems: Ask them what systems they use for lead generation. If the only answers are “cold calling” and “postcards” (or some other 19th-century method), walk away. Actually, RUN.
- Ongoing Training: What ongoing training do they provide, and how often? What subjects are covered? (For example, I frequently bring in guest speakers to educate my mentees on topics like commercial insurance, 1031 exchanges, and property tax laws.)
- Support Tools: What other training tools do they provide? (For example, I provide my mentees with multiple decks of flashcards on the Quizlet app for commercial real estate terms, as well as a library of hundreds of “how-to” videos.)
- Transaction Experience: Ask how many transactions (and/or sales volume) they have done over the past five years. Also, ask them about an especially challenging transaction and how they handled it.
- Scope of Practice: Do they do leasing only, sales transactions only, or both? (In commercial, “Lease to Live” can be very important for some early wins for new agents and puts money in the bank faster.)
- Availability: When are they available to talk or meet? My mentees know they can reach out to me 24/7/365. If I’m awake, I’ll answer.
Remember, your mentor should be actively invested in your success, not just collecting a mentorship fee. Choose wisely.
