Episode 6: How to Approach Commercial Brokerage with Ali Nadimi

On Episode 6 of Durable Value, Joe talks w/ Ali Nadimi, Managing Director at Newmark Knight Frank in Sacramento. Ali talks about how his family fled Iran during its revolution and how his unique background influenced his approach to Commercial Real Estate Brokerage.

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Joe Muratore:

So, how do you channel Michael Jordan in your piece of the world?

Ali Nadimi:

Well, I think it starts for the love of what we do. I really do love what I do, not in that I don't love real estate so much as I love problem-solving. We're engineering new deals. We're trying to figure out ways that others have been unsuccessful in achieving and that love and drive is a hunger that every day you wake up to want to get better. That's one of Jordan's best things is he's always getting better. Jordan never stayed the same. He got bigger. He got stronger as defenses honed in on him, he learned how to adjust.

Ali Nadimi:

So, the mindset is you never get comfortable. Yesterday's behind us. Tomorrow we get better in any aspect of life from how you respond to an email, how do you address someone? How do you show space? How you communicate difficult things?

Ali Nadimi:

Every day is an opportunity to get better and if you approach it that way, there's always so much because what you learn is how much we don't know, how much better we can get. Failure's our best friend. Right? The closer we get to failure, the closer we are to figuring out what doesn't work. So from that aspect, it just every day that the sun... you know that you're above ground, you have a new opportunity.

Narrator:

From Graceada Partners, this is Durable Value, an investor's podcast, where hosts Joe Muratore and Ryan Swehla demystify commercial real estate with safe, sound investment strategies to help you balance your portfolio.

Joe Muratore:

It's great to be here today with Ali Nadimi.

Ali Nadimi:

Thank you for having me.

Joe Muratore:

The managing director with Newmark Knight Frank.

Ali Nadimi:

Yeah.

Joe Muratore:

Ali and I have been working together quite a bit. The best I can tell we're on track to do about $50 million in business this year and best I can tell...

Ali Nadimi:

If not more, if not more, you're quite aggressive. So it's been...

Joe Muratore:

Best I can tell we're just one of your clients. Maybe it's a small fish in the Ali pond. So I'm kind of thinking you're a big deal and...

Ali Nadimi:

People know about me.

Joe Muratore:

People know about you.

Ali Nadimi:

I mean, I think in order to provide the level of service, unless you have great bandwidth, you're probably selecting only a handful of people to work with in this manner and that's essentially what we've created.

Joe Muratore:

So tell me about your business like how do you think about your year? How do you-

Ali Nadimi:

Yeah, so I'm an office, leasing and sales specialist at Newmark. I've been there for... I've been in the business for about 15 years, started at CVRE for 10 years, made the transition about five years ago with a specialty in landlord advisory work. And then there was a slight focus in government work, working with the County and the State of California since they're our largest occupier in the area and over the last several years I've transitioned over to doing a lot of government tenancy work.

Ali Nadimi:

So representing the state of California, working with the County of Sacramento, although they don't have a contract, we've established a relationship with them and then in our relationship, we've been working on some leasing for a family that we've also been doing dispositions.

Joe Muratore:

Yeah.

Ali Nadimi:

So as a result we've been able to do some leasing, do some advisory work, some disposition work and acquisition work.

Joe Muratore:

Give us a little background on who you are too. I've gotten to know you a little bit. Tell us your story like...

Ali Nadimi:

So just briefly, I was born in Iran during the revolution in '82. So getting to the United States was a very big challenge for my family. Mom, sister and I slept in one bed for years, kind of what most people have endured in this country. The first house we moved out into, it was during the Iran/Iraq war, we were evicted because we were Iranian. So there's a little hardship that you, like most people, you overcome-

Joe Muratore:

That's here in Sacramento?

Ali Nadimi:

Just here in Sacramento. They're not bad people, it's just some people are uneducated. So, that happens in third grade. So you go through life and you kind of learn, all right, not everything is stacked your way. You get into brokerage. And as I was a promising intern, but the moment you get into the brokerage side of the world, you have competitors, so you're back to facing adversity.

Ali Nadimi:

And it all depends if you want it or not. It's up to you.

Joe Muratore:

Circling back, you mentioned something about high school and how that sort of framed your psychology. We all have our psychology. This is a show about investing and that means it's a show about people and you're an important person in Sacramento for that. Tell us about what informs your psychology. What motivates you and drives you?

Ali Nadimi:

I think, okay, going a step further, so very simple elementary school career, very simple, no fights, best kids. I grew up with all these kids from kindergarten til sixth grade. Then you go to a junior high that is an urban city junior high. So you're now dealing with adversities and challenges that aren't day to day for you and your family but you see your friends, your colleagues, your teammates on basketball teams. So you start experiencing and understanding, maybe being a little compassionate to other scenarios and how just getting to school isn't, getting to school for some people is a huge challenge where for us, how difficult it is.

Ali Nadimi:

So you start putting in perspective how fortunate you really are. So, your eyes kind of open and then high school transition. Instead of going to the high school, my mom had me go to a specific high school that the kids there were not busting. They were coming from very affluent families. So I went from inner city junior high to feeling very compassionate and "Aw man, this is tough for some people," to now the flip side and to some degree, I am the complete outsider and so you're back a fish out of water to some degree, trying to figure out how to, I don't want to use the word assimilate, but how do you fit in and high school is a very difficult time.

Ali Nadimi:

Kids are going through their transition. So kids are who they are. They're finding out who they are. So therefore you're the brunt of probably jokes. So high school was a difficult time like for many people you struggle and you're trying to figure out where do you fit in. So it helps you self reflect on who are you and you've had this experience in junior high. Now you're at this experience in high school.

Ali Nadimi:

I don't believe I really found who I was or the confidence to find who I was until after high school.

Joe Muratore:

And now you're in the brokerage business, which is-

Ali Nadimi:

I'm now in the brokerage business.

Joe Muratore:

Which is a bit of a fish out of water business.

Ali Nadimi:

Entirely.

Joe Muratore:

It's a business where you can have tremendous success, but you have to earn every piece of-

Ali Nadimi:

Every piece of it and that's from the ground level up. So no special circumstances, just my approach to it was what are people that are making these decisions looking for in their broker. So learn it from the ground up, don't feel special. Don't feel that you need to take a shortcut, learn it from the ground level up. So at any given juncture, they ask you a question. You've endured it.

Narrator:

You're listening to Durable Value, an investors podcast. We understand the world of commercial real estate can be daunting, but we want to make it as simple as possible for you. Get the free 56 point checklist for evaluating investment properties that Graceada Partners uses every day at graceadapartners.com/guides.

Ali Nadimi:

I've knocked on every single door in this marketplace. Why? Because I could confidently look at you in the eye and say, "I've walked these buildings. I can tell you how that lobby looks." That's just hard work. That's a choice that people make and I think from that aspect, you just learn to, it's a process. Step by step, you'll build it up. The longterm approach was always to be hopefully an advisor to people making big decisions and that just comes through repetition, hard work and to some degree, like a relationship, vulnerability because it's selfless, right?

Ali Nadimi:

Oftentimes we talk about this. Of brokers, all you have is your time and your information, and you can sink a lot of time i with somebody, with nothing to show for at the end of it and that's the risk we run.

Joe Muratore:

But we're in a trust-based business.

Ali Nadimi:

Yeah, absolutely.

Joe Muratore:

This is a business built on believing in people and believing that they'll do what they say they'll do.

Ali Nadimi:

Right.

Joe Muratore:

Being able to count on people and one reason I wanted to interview you is I've worked with dozens of brokers over the years. You're that idea of a trusted advisor. You're the best I've ever met at it.

Ali Nadimi:

That's an honor.

Joe Muratore:

I don't say that lightly.

Ali Nadimi:

I appreciate it.

Joe Muratore:

It's rare in this business to meet people that you feel like are really on your team and I've enjoyed that piece of [crosstalk 00:08:22].

Ali Nadimi:

Likewise. I mean, it honestly is the dream of all dreams when you get into this business because there's so much fight and struggle to compete, to carve out who you are. In the end, if you're yourself and you commit yourself to people and ask the questions that are important, not to make a transaction, but to really fulfill what's the strategy here, let's go steps deeper. What are we really trying to accomplish? In the short term, in the medium and then in the longterm.

Ali Nadimi:

What's beautiful about real estate is we're all here for a reason. We all have similar desires and goals. There's a concentric circle and I've always felt if we just spend our time focusing there, there's a lot of noise, but there's a reason why we're here together and if we have similar values and similar work ethic, I think good things could come and I mean, as a result, I mean, in a short amount of time, we've got $50 million worth of deals that were not on the market. So, and I don't think I have any special sauce other than honest and hard work and the information and your trust. Right? And collectively we've been able to put things together, but it's a two prong process.

Joe Muratore:

The result of that trust is, well, for example, I'd say every week I get five deals emailed to me by various brokers, which I look at, but when you send me a deal, because there's that trust piece, I take it extremely seriously and that's a wonderful advantage for both you and for me.

Ali Nadimi:

I mean, if you think about it, my job is to help you do your job better. If I take the time to ask you questions and better understand what is going to work and what's not going to work. What doesn't work is imperative so we can better understand what do we actually present because you're going to take that information that you trust that I gave you in good faith to then take it to your group to socialize. How are you going to be deemed if I gave you something that was inaccurate or didn't fit the criteria? That's a waste of your time. That's a waste of your board's time or your investors time and I mean, that's poorly reflective of what I've been doing with my time.

Ali Nadimi:

So most importantly is don't worry and service yourself, service your clients. Put yourself aside and just do the job that they're looking for. If you cannot, be open about it and move on and I think in that vein, it's worked out and 15 years in a market, it's a 60 million square foot market. We've spent time taking pride in learning the market.

Ali Nadimi:

Hopefully you understand the psychology behind every owner because when you're on the landlord side, you have to understand who you're competing with. If we're sitting in this 4,000 square foot space, I have to know every other 4,000 square foot space within a certain area that we're competing with and how does our building stack up versus theirs and how does that owner's position of holding this asset compare to ours? Are they desperate for a deal? Are they able to reach certain passage? And it takes that information to then give you the right advice, so you can feel calm about going to make that next step.

Joe Muratore:

We were reflecting before this and I know you and Ryan worked together on a deal 15 years ago or 12 years ago.

Ali Nadimi:

It started 15 years ago and I think only four years ago, I actually got the deal done which is another kind of, you got to have a longterm approach in focus or else. You've already invested that time. Are you going to let it go? After five, six years of you've invested in working for someone, you have to make the determination, do you cut bait or can you see this through. Unfortunately, Ryan decided to move on and left me there to deal with it but somehow, some way.

Joe Muratore:

You got paid.

Ali Nadimi:

I got paid. Believe it or not.

Joe Muratore:

On the deals we're working on now, you've been working on for many years as well.

Ali Nadimi:

Yeah. I started about 10 years ago, which is.

Joe Muratore:

I'm thankful that we get to be the buyers on.

Ali Nadimi:

I'm thankful that you're a buyer in this market that is open to dealing with the challenges I've presented you, which with all big deals, what I'm finding is they're extremely complicated and that's where the trust I think comes into play is.

Joe Muratore:

Absolutely.

Ali Nadimi:

We have to understand that when we get to these very sticky situations that we can trust that what we're sharing is actually real because it's a gut and we know that time is limited. Time kills deals.

Joe Muratore:

So time kills deals, I love it.

Ali Nadimi:

Right? We've had our back against the wall and we sit here smiling today. We've had a good week.

Joe Muratore:

As you look back at your career in your life, who are some of the heroes you've had along the way? Who are some people that some way altered the course of your life, especially as you think of investing or your career?

Ali Nadimi:

I think, I mean early on my family, my parents, my uncle, my mom for pulling my sister and I out of the country, going through a revolution, my dad for stomaching and getting over here and joining us, my uncle for kind of leading from a family standpoint. Those are difficult times and to have that leadership is huge.

Ali Nadimi:

Professionally, well, I guess starting as a kid, Michael Jordan has always been the gold standard in my life. Only because where he was one of the most talented people, he was the hardest working person and every summer, all you would hear is how he would come to reinvent himself to challenge himself because the concept is progress to continually get better. I think in the business, we've had some, Todd Ushelman in our office is one of the Kings of his coin. His coined term is play the game, PTG, and that's something we pride ourselves in because just play after play, don't get caught up. Don't celebrate too much. Don't get too down. Just keep playing the game. Randy Gets AKA the Messiah. He's always given me very sound advice. You've probably spoken-

Joe Muratore:

He's wonderful. He's Sage.

Ali Nadimi:

You just don't meet people like that often. Just wonderful human beings that are extremely talented, that have provided sound advice for years and years and highly regarded. John Frish in our office, who in my belief has helped create a lot of Sacramento brokerage and laid the foundation.

Ali Nadimi:

So these are people who have made huge, in my opinion, they've made big strides to allow me to be able to do what I do and I think a big part of it is gratitude and paying your respect to those who have come before you, have created this environment, who have shed this light on you because a great degree of brokerage is other people sharing their experiences. You being in their presence and hearing how they've adjusted it and they've acclimated and they've handled conversations and tough deals and without that, we don't have the ability to then share it with you. So just a few people. I know, I'm sure I'm missing-

Joe Muratore:

Well, let me zero in for a second on Michael Jordan. We all grew up watching Michael Jordan and how do you channel Michael Jordan in your piece of the world?

Ali Nadimi:

Joe Muratore:

One thing I've enjoyed about working with you is when I... We've had plenty of ups and downs in the deals we've worked on but every time I call you, I never get, "Hey," it's always, "Hey, Joe."

Joe Muratore:

I mean, it's just like it doesn't matter if you hit a roadblock, something went wrong.

Ali Nadimi:

Right. We're going to hit roadblocks.

Joe Muratore:

You're positive and you make positive things happen and I've appreciated that and think you channel that a little bit in my own life.

Ali Nadimi:

It's easy to be negative and the problem with negative is it breeds negativity and it's so easy to fall in because things are generally stacked against us but if you focus on that positive and only stay focused on the positive, well, you might open yourself up to a whole bunch of other things that are great. There's bad all the time. It doesn't mean you have to tune into it.

Joe Muratore:

How do you see Sacramento shifting? And let's talk about coronavirus. The world's a little bit different now. How do you see these next four or five years playing out?

Ali Nadimi:

I think it's going to be interesting. I don't think we have seen a market. I don't think any market has been hit like this. We knew there should be some sort of real estate correction at some point. We didn't know it'd be the hands of a pandemic. I think what's interesting about Sacramento is how government heavy focused we are and government has already kind of implemented that, "Hey, maybe we can do some more teleworking." So them being about 50% of the market or creating that market, I think we'll still see what's going to come about. How does this lag?

Ali Nadimi:

I think what we'll see is some people try to correct right size as we heard in the last downturn. However, I think there's a component of culture that people still want to be in offices and still want to work collaborative together. So I think we'll have a slow little mix up. I think we've seen a lot of great development over the last five years. We've seen a very good run. We might have to start seeing that slow down a little bit to make sure we can fully absorb all that but I think overall Sacramento is on the right track. I think people recognize the quality of life you can live here. The accessibility, you got mountains, Tahoe, you got Napa, you got Modesto. So I mean, you're an hour away from everything.

Joe Muratore:

Ali, thanks so much. I really appreciate it.

Ali Nadimi:

Thanks so much. I appreciate it.

Joe Muratore:

And look forward to working with you for decades to come I hope.

Ali Nadimi:

Thank you.

Narrator:

Thank you for listening to Durable Value, an investors podcast, where we demystify commercial real estate with safe, sound investment strategies to help you balance your portfolio. If you enjoyed this podcast, be sure to rate it on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. To learn more, visit graceadapartners.com where you'll find more information, investors, tools, case studies and more. This podcast is hosted by Joe Muratore and Ryan Suela. It's produced, edited and mixed by Melodic with intro music by Ian Post. Thanks again for listening and we'll see you next time.

PodcastClark BeggsAugust 10, 2020investing, ali nadimi, newmark knight frank