The Secret to Success in Commercial Real Estate with Nick Sansone

This is Wake Up to Wealth, a podcast dedicated to helping you change the way you think about wealth.

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Hey, everybody.

We are back again.

Thank you guys so much.

Another episode of Wake Up to Wealth.

And I can't thank you guys enough.

We're north of a million plus downloads in a very short period of time.

Because of your guys' support, we are averaging 60 to 70,000 downloads per episode.

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number one to number five consistently on the investing side of Apple.

So I really appreciate all of the listeners and everything that you guys do to continue to help this show grow.

And I get to have really cool people come on the show like our guests today.

And it's because of the support that you guys consistently have with this show.

Thank you guys so much.

Never dreamed I'd have a top five podcast in investing in the United States.

And I never thought I'd get to number one.

And guys, when we get every time we get number one, we leapfrog.

Dave Ramsey.

So really appreciate that.

And thank you guys again.

Moving on today, we have a guest today that I'm super excited about.

And,

you know, you guys know I don't believe in coincidences and it's really cool, the network that you have.

I've heard this guy's name from two people that I really respect and have a lot of respect for and have done a lot of business with.

And that's John Cheplak and Devin Denofa.

So on the show today, we've got Nick Sanson.

And Nick has got a pretty cool story.

I do my research on everybody before I get them on here, right?

And got to hear from both Devin and John.

I'm going to let you tell the story today, but you've got a really

cool story and you do a lot of cool things.

But one thing that I just picked up for from looking at all of your stuff, and again, thanks for being here today is

you are our top five in the nation in commercial real estate development.

Yes, we are based on

the amount of square feet that you have under construction.

So that's how it's measured.

And so we're trying to get to number one.

I think

last year we were at four.

And I think this year we're at three.

Yeah.

I mean, that is no small feat.

I've done development myself and involved in a ton of different facets of real estate.

Like, how?

How does that happen?

How do you get there?

That's a loaded question.

That is a loaded question, man.

You know, you touched on it, you know, relationships and proximity.

It's real estate.

And I think like many businesses, it's a relationship business.

And so

you have to get people to trust you and people to like you

in order to produce and to

have opportunities presented in front of you.

And so for us, it's just networking.

You know, we've been in the business a long time, 68 years now.

So fortunately, we have a good name in the business and a good reputation, and we plan to keep it that way.

And so it's networking, creating relationships with brokers, development partners around the country, and sticking to your values, being a good person as you do deals.

And

then you get repeat opportunities.

So, you know, did you ever,

you know, was it on the vision board?

I mean, did it exist in your mind?

I mean, did you ever think you guys would be where you are today?

Yeah, you know, it's a good question.

Our business, I have to say it because it's everything to our company, was started by our father.

My dad passed in 2020, and he was a man that came from very humble beginnings.

So he's the guy.

It's not myself.

It's not my brothers.

He's the guy that...

that came from essentially nothing.

I don't like to say came from nothing because he always attributes his success to the love that he had by his parents.

But he came from very humble economic conditions and very little education and worked his way up really based on keeping his word and outworking his competition.

And so

I'm going to answer your question indirectly.

I would ask my father, you know, dad, how did you come from nothing?

Yeah.

Do what you did, you know, build up a business with a great reputation.

And

his answer was the love that he had from his father

gave him the belief that he needed in himself, that no matter what, he was going to be successful.

And so our father raised us.

I'm one of eight kids, youngest of eight.

And I work with two of my brothers.

At one time, there was five of us, a couple of them have retired in that, but it's myself and two brothers, equal owners in the firm.

And, you know, our father raised us with the mentality of there's nothing wrong with going into a business that was started by somebody.

But if you don't take that opportunity and grow it 10fold, 20-fold, 30-fold, then you're going to have a problem looking yourself in the mirror.

And so for us, I think we've always had a belief that we'll succeed.

We did not have it like up on a vision board.

Hey, we're going to be the number one developer.

We had a belief in ourselves.

And I'll tell you, what we did is we took some chances because we pivoted from retail, which is what my father primarily developed, retail shopping centers.

And we pivoted because we saw what was going on with e-commerce, all the online shopping back 10 years ago.

We're like, man, we got to get into industrial.

And so we took a shot, we pivoted on that, didn't know much about industrial, but we knew that we'd succeed.

It's just, you got to have a

no quit mentality that when you go in to start something no matter how many bumps no no matter how many obstacles come your way they're just learning lessons and then you you redirect and so along the path as we started doing it we started saying man we're we're ramping up holy crap we're we're top you know top 15 this article came out we were feet we were top 15 or something we couldn't believe it so that's when we said hey heck heck with it let's go for number one

so that is um

and there's so much gold in that answer so one of the things long

no it was no it's great it's it's uh

i mean that the the there's so much to unpack there right when you're when you are a entrepreneur no matter let's say you're very successful like you guys were

what i see entrepreneurs get stuck is that that their identity is so tied to the thing that made them successful And then that gets tied to their ego.

And then they don't pivot like you guys did, right?

Because, which I've had this challenge myself at times of pivoting into, right?

I was the number one real estate agent, right, in my state and, you know,

top five in the U.S.

And then I was like, hey, man, I don't want to go out and sell 400 houses.

And there's nothing wrong with this, but I don't want to go out and sell 400 houses for the rest of my life.

But my identity and ego was so tied to that, it was hard for me to pivot.

So you guys saw something, right?

Like, if you wouldn't mind, like

think about that back in, in that decision-making process.

Like,

cause I think you said no quit mentality, which is another thing, right?

You had fear, you probably had doubt, you're going into something that's uncomfortable.

Like, what helped you establish, and it's worked out, but what helped you kind of establish that?

What was the mindset around that?

Yeah, it's a great question.

And

I totally relate to what you're talking about.

You succeeded in an industry.

and your ego was tied to that and it's tough to shift you know and again though

I give credit back to how we were raised.

And our dad would always talk about in the real estate business, and I think this is for any business, that you can't get complacent, that it's a thinking man's business.

So

right now we're succeeding in industrial, correct?

Yeah.

In our minds, we're looking ahead at what's the next trend.

What happens when distribution slows down?

So you've always got to be thinking about reinventing and recreating.

And if you stop, you're going to get passed up.

And some people might be like, well, gosh, I mean, when do you just sit back and relax and enjoy the moment?

It is enjoying the moment.

That's part up, you know, that's living and learning and recreating is one of the most enjoyable things that you can do in life.

Frankly, I think it's the whole reason we're here is to live, learn, and recreate.

So for us,

when you asked about the mindset, it's a personal ethos on literally how we were raised.

And we're still doing it today.

You know, industrial is a great business.

But look, everything that's happening with AI and meta, right?

Well, those are data centers.

Those are power sources.

So we're getting into the data center business.

You know, we always have to be looking at what's coming next so you can stay ahead.

And if you don't do it, you're going to get passed out.

Yeah.

That's a great answer.

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So you pivoted to industrial.

Aside from relationships and the things you talked about, right?

There's you guys have got to be just monster operators.

I mean, you just can't get to the level you're at without being that, right?

What do you think?

And it could be a core value.

It could be how you guys run your companies.

Like, what do you think has helped you kind of, I mean, because it's got to be operational excellence.

You don't get to the level you guys are at without some level of operational excellence.

What do you think is one or two things that's running in the background that you could give advice to people listening of like, hey, besides the relationship, besides the lineage, you know, here's in the trenches day to day that I know makes us successful.

This is why we run the way we run.

Yeah.

You know, I think it's,

it's a good question.

I think it's a few things.

Obviously, if you're in the real estate business and you want to do anything, frankly, in any industry, whatever you want to do, you got to know your skill set, right?

There's a lot of people, though, out there that are good at something or know a skill set.

You can go to school and learn about real estate and do a few deals and start to collect a skill set.

But for us,

whenever we are underwriting an opportunity or looking at a real estate deal, And it's a deal that we want to go out and get partners on or we want to go to a lender and get lending on.

You have to know your opportunity inside and out.

You have to have studied that.

You've got to roll up your sleeves and really understand the numbers.

In real estate, you've got to understand the market that you're in.

You've got to understand the supply and demand, the demographics, the trends, the consumer spending in the area, why you like it, the problems about the deal that you already are thinking about solving.

So you really have to look at the opportunity, not just from the four corners, but all angles that you can think of and then some.

Okay,

that's the nitty-gritty.

Beyond that,

from the standpoint of personalization and core values, you know, we

very much pride ourselves on keeping things old school with the personal touch.

It's a family business.

Now, we've got a large, you know, 250 plus associates and offices around the country in that.

But to maintain that personalization, I'll give you an example.

We don't close on on any piece of real estate unless somebody on our team has gone there, seen it, and touched it.

You know,

we're old school with that.

We grew up where after church on a Sunday, we'd go drive the shopping centers with our dad.

He'd drive them.

And we'd get out of the car and pick up cigarette butts and trash and everything else and watch him doing it when he was in his 60s.

And so

it's that old school mentality.

It's that personal touch.

It's there's no substitute for the hard work.

And the last thing I'll tell you is leaving, you mentioned it earlier, leaving the egos at the door and teamwork.

There's no I.

Collectively, we are a team and the collective is bigger than any one individual.

So what we are trying to do is we are trying to get a successful development, not just for us, but for the community that we're in, for the jobs that we're going to be supporting.

So our reason is outside ourselves.

And the purpose of what we're doing is bigger.

than any one individual.

I love that.

One of the things you said in there, which I think was great.

So number one, if you guys didn't catch this, he just literally gave you his, uh, how he, how he underwrites a deal, which was gold.

But one of the things you said, um, outside, I always say to people, real estate, the underwriting is all math, right?

Like it's, it's math.

It's a math equation.

But the one thing you said that I don't hear a lot of people say enough is, what are the problems with the deal?

Right.

And, you know, we, I don't know about you, but I'm a deal junkie.

I love deals.

I love being in the middle of deals.

I love the hunt of the deal.

I love the underwriting of the deal.

I love everything.

And I can tell you, there's been times when I let emotion get in the way and ignored the problems.

Thankfully, it was stuff I could recover from, but I learned a hard lesson.

You just mentioned,

and I'd love for you just to dig in on that a little bit because I don't think it gets talked about enough of, hey, what are the problems of the deal like are we looking at this are we paying attention to this

well

you hit on frankly the key piece of everything i said because that piece that you're talking about is the piece we focus on the most when it comes to an opportunity when you think about

most people

when an opportunity is presented to them Usually the person presenting it is going to tell you all the reasons why they should do it and why it's great.

know, hey,

I got to say a sidebar on this, commercial brokers, I'm going to take a shot at you.

You love to tell me what it can be, not what it is today.

Right.

And so, you know,

look,

I totally understand having a great opportunity and being fired up for.

But I talked about,

or I don't know if I talked about it earlier, but trust is so critical in this business.

And so,

one,

when you address the issues with your opportunity, because every single deal has risk.

So when you dive into that risk and you lead with that and you talk about, hey, I just want you to know, these are some of the concerns that I have.

You know, there's, there's some concerns with the soil.

There could be some deep minds in there.

But let me tell you what we're doing about it to mitigate that.

And so first of all, when you do that, the person on the other end is going to be like, man, I trust these guys.

But secondly, you're going to show credibility.

It's It's like our dad used to always say, my brother Jim always tells the story.

He went to my dad with a problem.

My father said, okay, got the problem.

Now, what's the solution?

He didn't have one.

And in not so many, not so nice words, he got kicked out of my father's office.

So the idea of that is whenever you've got a problem, have a solution with it.

And it builds trust.

People like it.

But as important,

you're going to mitigate the risk of your real estate deal because real estate is hedging your risk.

It's a risky business from interest rates to things that you think are going to happen that end up not happening, which happens most of the time.

The stuff you don't think is going to happen that ends up happening.

So, you got to account for that.

So, when you focus on the problems and then focus on the solutions of those problems, and then do everything you can to avoid those problems from actually happening, you're starting in the right place with your deal.

Um, another thing that I love to talk about on this show with high-level entrepreneurs like yourself is

on social media and just in general, we all see the highlight reel.

And

rarely does someone come on social media or anything and say,

hey, this is the stuff that went wrong, right?

If you wouldn't mind,

if you could just share, it could be one situation, one lesson, anything.

Something went wrong and it was like, damn, that was a good lesson.

And here is the lesson.

Here's what I learned.

And because

I think we learn way more in in the losses than the wins.

Well, I can give you a couple, but one quick one is

we can, it's human nature to get complacent when things are going really well.

And the advice that I would give to other people based on our own experience is if you're running a company or you're running your own real estate deal, or you're running your own bank account is watch those numbers.

When money's coming in and revenue's coming in and everything's going great, man, it is easy to take your eye off the ball.

And we had a situation with our company where we had a

gentleman that was keeping track of our numbers

and

profits looked incredible.

We had developments.

going all over the country things were rolling this was uh pre

this was uh no i'm sorry this was this is post-COVID because things really exploded post-COVID.

Yeah.

And

to say a mistake was made in the bookkeeping is an understatement.

We're talking about millions of dollars off.

And we realized the mistake late into the year.

And we went from thinking that our operating business was just going to crush it

to

literally overnight,

seeing that we actually might not have enough cash and operations to support overhead.

And the reason that happened is we took our eye off the ball and we stopped paying attention to the numbers.

And we were out there doing development deals all over the place.

Now, our development business is separate from our operating company.

Our operating company is a service business.

But the lesson, now we ended up, we ended up working out of it.

But you know what we did?

we started having a weekly meeting on the cash in the bank and on the projected revenue coming in and so to anybody that's out there from a lesson learned is don't get complacent with your numbers and especially when things are going great i don't mean to sound like a customer i agree with you you got to be looking around the corner for the next issue that's going to be coming because that's the way the world works.

When things are really smooth and you're in a nice valley, there's a mountain coming again.

And it's just how it is.

It's peaks and valleys.

And that was a big deal for us.

The second one, very quickly for anyone, it's real estate, make sure to check your soil.

We thought we were geniuses.

We found a half a million square foot industrial building that was off market, brand new.

We're like, oh my God, brand new in a park where it was the whole park was 100% leased, but for this building.

Like, my God, there's tenants everywhere wanting to get in this park.

I have no idea why these developers developed this and now they want to get out of it.

Hell, we're going to step in.

We get under contract.

We didn't do the proper soil testing, which is geotech environmental reports.

After we closed on it, we realized the entire floor of the warehouse is cracking and moving.

Okay.

Not going to get a tenant.

Yeah.

And when you have soil issues, especially in a building that's already built

and your floor is cracking, the remediation for that is crazy expense.

So we ended up

actually coming out all right because our underwriting on the deal was so doggone conservative we we we got out of it okay

but um if you're in the development business man

spend the money to get a geotech report an environmental report talk to your symbol and just do it because man if you find out soil issues down the road you're you're

it's an expensive problem to correct yeah yeah that's uh

man what a what a good,

a good lesson to go through.

Not a fun lesson, but, but a couple of good lessons that you went through.

Yeah, that was early on with us.

I think that was our second industrial deal.

We really thought we were brilliant until we got humbled and realized we didn't know what we were doing.

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So I, every show, I always ask the same question at the end, which I'll ask you.

And it can be

whatever you want it to be, right?

It's your version of this.

So I created this show.

You know, we grow up a lot of times.

Maybe in your situation, it was a little bit different, but

in a lot of situations, we're taught wrong about money, right?

And so I created this show, Wake Up to Wealth, because I wanted people to understand investing in money differently.

And that, and a lot of times, we've been taught wrong about it.

So, one thing that I would ask you, which I ask every guest at the end, is what does waking up to wealth mean to you?

And it can be anything.

It's your virgin.

Quickly, when you say they think wrong on it, how soak?

Sum that up for me in a few seconds.

Yeah.

So, for instance, what I was told,

and

digressing a little bit, my grandparents to me were, was your father to you, right?

Yeah.

Instilling the belief in me of I could be anything.

I could be an entrepreneur.

I could be successful.

And, but the one thing that they taught me about money was go make money, save money.

That's how you're going to get ahead.

And the first time I got in a room with really wealthy people, the first thing they told me is you will not save your way to wealth.

You need to learn how to invest.

You need to understand money.

You need to understand how to move money.

You need to understand how to make money work for you when you're sleeping.

And

that was, thankfully, I was taught that young, but not, in my opinion, young enough.

So that's one of my missions in life is to teach people how to get wealthy and make them understand money.

Yeah.

Well, you know, money to me, it's an exchange of energy.

You know, a person is offering a service and someone else is offering it by way of value through dollars.

And so

in our history, we have learned that you've got to spend it to make it.

You've got to take the chances and go for it.

And some people say, well, why do you do all of that?

And why is it,

thank you, why is it

so important?

And I can tell you that

financial abundance opens so many opportunities for one to have a fulfilled life.

And when I mean fulfilled, I'm not talking about cars and boats and planes and all of that.

I'm talking about the impact one can make.

Certainly any individual at any time, regardless of their economic status, can make an impact.

But if you're abundant and you've got finances coming in, there's a lot you can do with that.

And so I like to shift the psychology around money, because sometimes it can be associated with negative.

I think money is a beautiful thing.

It opens up doors, it creates relationships, and it allows you to make change in the world if that's something you're motivated for.

And if you've got a family, it allows you to provide for them, to provide for an education, to provide a life without so many stresses.

And so I think with money, the attitude needs to shift for those that are struggling with it.

and realize it's a wonderful, beautiful thing.

Look, you're not going to attract something that you have a negative viewpoint on.

And so

that would be my thoughts around the dollar.

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Tell them I sent you.

Man, that was powerful stuff.

Man, it's always,

it's always a pleasure when I get somebody.

to come share into my audience that is has done things that you've done and experienced the level of success you've had, but also is willing to share

the good, the bad, and the ugly.

So I really want to say thank you.

I appreciate you being on the show today.

How can people find you on social media or anything like that?

Yeah, it's just my name, Nick G.

Sandstone.

So you can find me on social under that.

you know it's easy way to find me but uh i appreciate you having me on brandon And congratulations to your success, man, with your podcast when you were talking about those stats at the beginning.

That's that's really impressive.

And I love how you keep it lean and mean and you get right to the heart of issues.

You know, that's a skill too, to be able to ask the questions that gets right to the meat of it for your viewers.

So, no surprise, you've got the momentum that you have.

Congratulations.

Thank you, Billy.

Well, I appreciate you being here.

And listeners,

if you find Nick on social media and thank him for his time.

And thank you so much for being with us today.

Appreciate you, my man.

Thanks so much for tuning into this episode of Wake Up to Wealth.

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