Industrial Insights Podcast

Growing in Charlotte with Travis Wood

With Travis Wood - Lee & Associates Charlotte  |  Hosted by Justin Smith, SIOR · Lee & Associates

Episode summary

Travis Wood spent six years at Prologis, working his way up from property management to leasing in the Baltimore and DC market, then left a salaried seat for straight commission to help open Lee & Associates in Charlotte. He and Justin talk about what the owner side teaches you about brokers, how the JGPT team formed, four hours a day of prospecting, why he skips the voicemail on the first call, and the Charlotte industrial market, from the flight to quality to how industrial outdoor storage gets priced.

Full transcript

Justin Smith 00:01

Good morning everybody. Welcome to the Industrial Insights Podcast. Have Travis Wood in our Charlotte office with us today. And excited to learn more about Travis, who comes recommended to me from Greg Pieratt, who runs our Charlotte office as one of our up and comers, and excited to get you know to know you better, Travis, and hear a little bit more about your trajectory and your experience at the firm.

Travis Wood 00:26

Yeah, thanks for having me. look forward to it. and happy Friday out there. I don't know when this is gonna be posted but always good hopping on a podcast on a Friday.

Justin Smith 00:35

Yeah, tell me about these maps. this is about as cool as you can make a map, I think.

Travis Wood 00:39

Yeah, so Greg in our office, he's got a vision, he's very creative and you know, he's like, We need a map wall and so we're sitting here just looking at Charlotte. This is, you know, the greater Charlotte area and then you've got pockets of different neighborhoods within. So yeah, he had these custom made and they kind of fit the Lee branding and vibe and they go really well in our conference room here, so

Justin Smith 01:05

They'd Yeah, they would match the shoes if you got the shoes that are yeah embroidered.

Travis Wood 01:12

I I'd pull 'em over here but they're you know, they're kinda sacred. But yeah, the shoes, everything. it's a vibe in our office, for sure. Got it gotta rep the Lee stuff.

Justin Smith 01:23

Yeah. where shall we start? I figure Prologis is the name that is a interesting background that you got that like most brokers that grow up at Lee, like don't have. They usually come out of college or come from another firm. So I imagine with our time today that's probably a good start because that's a group we all know and love and all work with and it's always fun to see people who've learned different skills from the other side of the table. And then found a way to apply them when they're in the brokerage game.

Travis Wood 01:54

Yeah, definitely. I think, you know, most people go the opposite route or they their brokerage and then they hop on to, you know, an institutional group or something. But yeah, Prologis is super grateful to you know, have almost fell into that position and that opportunity and you know, it's obviously you know it's a great company and I learned from the best up in the Baltimore DC office. shout out to them because, you know it they're honestly some of the best i in the industry and yeah so started with prologis and was really on the property management side so I like to think about learning it from the ground up and starting with property management and understanding hey what is a pit leveler and all the little just basic stuff from the early on. Yeah, things that can break, how CAM works, what the reconciliations look like and everything in between and then gradually kinda worked my way up there and moved over to leasing.

Justin Smith 02:43

Things that could break. aah

Travis Wood 02:56

So ha got the foundation of industrial what's industrial and then moved to leasing and started to understand the deals and how it all works. so spent about six years, a little over six years there and again super grateful for that time and the people.

Justin Smith 03:12

How big's the team over there?

Travis Wood 03:14

We were the leasing team was pretty small. So we were three people really, four people, kind of covering fifteen, sixteen th million square feet. So i it was just it was pretty lean, but obviously we rely a lot on the brokers and their expertise and bringing in customers as they say. I can't say tenants, you know, but bringing in the customers and yeah, it's just it's a relationship business as you know and I think looking back at in my resume, you know, all my roles have been people, you know, facing and that's the name of the game for real estate and for us. So yeah.

Justin Smith 03:53

It must have been interesting having your introduction to the industry on the principal side and your initial impression of brokers before you became one of like who are these guys? What are they all about? What's their style? And being like, Look at this guy, or like, Hey, I talked with so and like he's the funniest guy ever, or they do a great job, they do like there's room for improvement over there and seeing the difference between them. So I'm sure you had a it's a funny way to get to know the brokerage community, perhaps.

Travis Wood 04:21

Yeah, and I I'd say transitioning into brokerage and just bringing that to the table, it's like, you know, Prologis works with all the shops, right? and they have to just to understand the Tim's list and who's in the you know, the data from every shop. And one thing I learned there is, you know, every shop's got a different approach, maybe a different, you know, on the creativity side of things, a little bit different angle and through my years there it was great to kind of absorb all that and now bring it to the brokerage side and I'm on a four person team here in Charlotte and just thinking back to some of those pitches, thinking back to some of those, you know, create creative moments and just kind of, you know, picking and choosing what applies to what we're doing here and I'd say that experience is helped me a lot. early on. Yeah.

Justin Smith 05:16

Yeah, and it how do you run a tight ship in like a large institution and a well known, reputable brand and what is like best practices and taking care of assets, taking care of people, taking care of customers? I feel like that's such a great spot to begin.

Travis Wood 05:32

Yeah, and it's you know, thinking about Lee and how every office is, you know, privately owned and we have the name but every office is run a little bit different and when I came down to help open this office, you know, we had not yeah, we had nothing essentially and we had to build the tracks from day one. and I use that analogy often, you know, it we're we were laying down the tracks and now we're rolling pretty hard but Yeah, it's the little things of even just certain documents and Yeah, hey, you know,

Justin Smith 06:02

Now you're like a bullet train. Yeah.

Travis Wood 06:06

Maglev, but so yeah, it just taking all that as well and applying it to the new office here is the I'm grateful for the experience and Prologis obviously great company. So yeah.

Justin Smith 06:17

Yeah, and you moving to Charlotte and Charlotte linking up with Greg and opening that like I didn't know that was all same time or in sync like the boy band. How did like how'd that come together? How'd you guys link up and how'd you make the move in a new city, new people or did you already have people here?

Travis Wood 06:36

Yeah, so a little bit of everything. I you know, at Prologis, knowing all the brokers up there, just caught wind that Lee was planting a flag here in Charlotte. obviously we have it surrounded, but Greg Pieratt, you know, heard he was some cool guy from San Diego moving to Charlotte to open something up and that really

Justin Smith 06:55

Everyone in San Diego's cool, like that's in the water. Yeah.

Travis Wood 06:59

Yeah. But it piqued my interest 'cause I'm like, this guy's moving from like San Diego, That's like everyone's a dream to live there and he's moving over here to Charlotte. There must be something there. And just connecting with him, we hit it off and so that was how I got connected. It was basically through the brokerage community. and then we hit it off and my wife and I looked at each other and said, If we're gonna do anything crazy, we don't have any kids, you know, if we're gonna do anything crazy and move, it's now. And one thing that I keep going back to is if you think about any very highly successful person, you know, billionaires, you eve Tony Robb, like if you listen to these guys and women, you know, one thing that sticks out is they all came to this inflection point where they had to take a risk and do something. And that's how they got to the next step. So, You know, to me it was a risky I'm going from a salary position at Prologis and jumping over to the dark side and brokerage and add a new office,

Justin Smith 08:02

Add a new office and starting a new office. Yeah.

Travis Wood 08:05

New city, all of it. So we went, you know, head first and it it's been great. And I'd say thinking about, hey, you have to take risks in life to get to the next level. it it's certainly helped me through it and again it's not all easy, obviously. It's not all sunshines and rainbows. But I think me personally doing going through that has made me a stronger person and everything personally and professionally. So

Justin Smith 08:35

Yeah,

Travis Wood 08:35

Yeah, it's it was a risk but Charlotte's a great spot. You know, a hundred and thirty five people a day are moving to Charlotte and I'd say one in fifteen are actually from Charlotte. So no one's from here and everyone's kind of in the same boat and it's a great spot. and the growth is insane, which is also part of the reason why you know, we made the jump down here. So yeah, it's

Justin Smith 09:01

New coffee shops, new places to live or build new homes, plus some new industrial.

Travis Wood 09:04

Well, hey, that's yeah, that's the other part of it. It's you're exploring a new city and that's always fun and exciting. You know, we're where the new restaurants like we can go to and you know, we were in I've been in Baltimore my whole life and love Baltimore, but we've my wife and I essentially exhausted all the restaurants and stuff there and it going to a new city and exploring is there's a lot of fun involved with that. so Yeah, it's been great. We do have some family here which was part of the calculus and yeah, it's just it's a cool spot. They call it clean and green. so it's a very clean city. There's a lot of parks, so there's a lot of you know, a lot of greenery and greenways and again I don't wanna sound like the EDC here and just, you know, talking up Charlotte, but it it's a great spot. And there's a reason why, you know, that hundred and thirty five plus or minus people are moving here every day. it's a great place to be.

Justin Smith 10:01

Can you just point us in the right direction between uptown and downtown? What's the deal?

Travis Wood 10:09

Hey, what is uptown, right? I thought we were going downtown. No. so really, you know, back in the day, I guess, before there was cars and whatnot, every direction, north, south, east, west, if you're going downtown, it was up hill in every direction. So the city's built on this hill, every direction is up, hence uptown. And that's why they call it Uptown. But that is the downtown and yeah, it's a great spot. A lot of the banks are headquartered here. huge all the banks are here and most are headquartered here, the corporate headquarters. So it's a vibrant city and you know, you drive through there around lunchtime during the week. it's busy. There's a lot of people walking around and it it's great to see.

Justin Smith 10:58

So before I screw it up, they're the same thing.

Travis Wood 11:02

Same thing. Yes sir. Yeah. Uptown is downtown and the reason for the name is because of the elevation. Yeah.

Justin Smith 11:04

Okay, cool. Just wanna make sure I got it straight. and then did you guys go team straight up off the bat for like a brokerage in this classic name that you guys have created?

Travis Wood 11:20

Yeah, no. that just kinda happened organically. I guess after the first year, you know, me, Jack McDermott, Philip Mugrage and Greg, we teamed up just you know, it was a better way to kind of divide and conquer and get to the next level quicker versus everyone being siloed and yeah, the name JGPT obviously, it's all of our first initials, but it was a little bit of a play on the GPT AI kind of wave and you know we get that question a lot. You know, we have an email, it's JGPT at Lee & Associates and you know people are like, is there AI on our email thread? Like what is that? What is this GPT? So it's a no, it's HI. We got a lot of human intelligence on it. But no, it there's it's a great conversation starter. And you know, I think the branding is getting better. and we're getting our JGPT name out there. So

Justin Smith 12:18

Yeah. we are a team of three producers. We have intern and then we have admin that does a lot of our support work. And so I'm always deep in the like what makes the team work? And then like, okay, so you got a good team, you got good people, like a good vibes, everybody contributes and all is rowing in the same direction. Cool. Now, like what does team growth look like as opposed to like individual growth? So every week and every month or quarter we'll have our get together and be like, Okay, what is our what's working, what's not, or what's like our new bright idea, or what's like is something that's changing that we can adopt. And so it's always fun of like you do accelerate faster because you all pick up different nuance and you all have different experience every day, every conversation, every relationship. And so it is super fun to think through of like how do we do this better? And Yeah, excited that you linked up with good people.

Travis Wood 13:16

No, it's great and we all get along on and off the field, which is great and from what I hear rare somewhat rare. But no, I think you're right. it's the different perspectives, experience, you know, a lot of times we'll be siloed and we have the blinders on of how we're looking at something and you know, a teammate can come in with a totally different kind of perspective that you didn't think about and that can change the entire dynamic of how you're looking at a deal or how you're working with the tenant. so yeah, it's teamwork makes the dream work. I know it's cliche, but it's true.

Justin Smith 13:51

Yeah. You all cover the same territory, the same line of business, the same clients. How do you where do you overlap? Where do you divide and conquer? What's kind of the makeup?

Travis Wood 14:05

Yeah, I think dividing and conquering is geographical. So, you know, we're all kind of hunting in different areas. Obviously you don't wanna trip over each other too much, but all hunting a in different areas and trying to drum up some business and once we get a hold of something, yeah, we're all working together on it and trying to collaborate as best as possible. But yeah, I'd say the big difference is just geographical. That's it really. So yeah. But we're all doing, you know.

Justin Smith 14:34

Landlord, tenant, buyer, seller, how would you say you mix that up in your hundred percent book of business?

Travis Wood 14:40

Yeah, I'd say it's all of it. It's everything industrial is what I say, but I think primarily we've focused on you know, sales and talking to owners. You know, being new to the market, I think it's important for us to, you know, get into get with owners as opposed to in and smaller owner. I think our buy box is a little smaller than say institutional, but it it's a lot of on the owner side, so whether that's, you know, listing something or trying to work something off market. and again my background prologis is I'm always thinking about the customer and that has helped on the tenor rep side. So we're doing that as well. but it's everything, Justin. So it's like I sa always say, it's everything industrial. But

Justin Smith 15:27

Yeah.

Travis Wood 15:27

Yeah, I think what's interesting for us is You know, Greg is also a very tenant rep focused background and you know, it's what we love the most is learning about these customers, these users, what they're doing inside the warehouse and it always amazes me. There's a million ways to make money in this world and

Justin Smith 15:48

What are you doing in there? Okay. That's cool.

Travis Wood 15:50

Yeah. and you're paying a hundred thousand dollars in rent to store stuffed animals. Like that's the cool stuff and that's where we geek out and

Justin Smith 15:57

And you're killing it. Yeah.

Travis Wood 15:59

Yeah, and that's where we kind of geek out on the stuff and really love the business for that reason and just seeing the user light up about explaining how their operation works is it's awesome. So, yeah.

Justin Smith 16:14

Yeah, you know, it's funny, I when I think of the mix of like where we put in the effort, like who we're keeping in touch with as our like our primary like a business development calls and relationship building. And then when you look back every year at like, okay, so where did it all shake out? Like each year is different of like, was it the sales that hit? Was it the tenants that hit? Was it the landlord leasing that hit? Was it some buy big buy we did that hit? And then each year is kind of different. And even though we may continue at the same amount of like outbound effort and like inputs into the business, but where it shakes out every year is different. And sometimes it's the trend of the market, sometimes it's just the serendipity of just like what happened to come together like a despite adversity, and that changes every year. So I feel like like Craig Coppola, I always remember some of his talks of like, I'm in it for the long haul and I want to be able to be successful in every cycle. And then like knowing that like in every cycle that like having you can have the mix that you can like adjust in the cycle and have that be something that like has stayed with me like fifteen years ago that like that I appreciate just as you think through of like where am I spending my next bucket of time. And like effort to build.

Travis Wood 17:39

No, I think being agile you have to be, right? That's why I say everything industrial. if I'm just an investment sales guy, you know, and the ten year goes the five and a half, god forbid, you know, and you know, things get harder and you know, I think you have to be able to you know, you have to be on your toes and be open to doing different things. And again, if your a if my area of expertise is industrial, you know, everything industrial I keep saying it, but you know, you can provide a solution to the tenant, to the owner, to whoever, it doesn't have to be kind of one sided. So yeah, that's why we focus on we focus on it all and yeah.

Justin Smith 18:21

How many people in the office now?

Travis Wood 18:24

We have I seventeen, I believe, is the number now. And yeah, so we're on a four person team. and we're doing everything from self storage to medical. obviously very heavy on the industrial side, but we have retail brokers.

Justin Smith 18:39

Wait, and you got Eric Powers in your office?

Travis Wood 18:42

Yes, Eric is yep, he's an honorary member of the office. He's out here in Charlotte.

Justin Smith 18:47

I got to do my first deal with him this last year and get to know him. and at first I was like, it took me a minute to get to know his style and then like through the fire, like now we are homies and it's awesome. But it was so cool to get to work with him and like he's had so much experience and so much like a knowledge to share and like he's so great about that. I learned a lot working with him.

Travis Wood 19:11

Yeah, I was just gonna say the experience he has is unbelievable and he talks about some of the previous deals he's done and you know, I he's done it all you know, which is hard to do in this business, but he he's had a scenario very close to, you know, present day situations and he can talk to him really well and yeah, he's he he's great to have here in Charlotte.

Justin Smith 19:34

Yeah. So you said seventeen, maybe eighteen people in the office now.

Travis Wood 19:39

Yeah, self storage, medical, retail, industrial, office. So yeah, we're hitting all the asset classes and we've grown pretty quickly here in two and a half years. It's it's flown by.

Justin Smith 19:51

Yeah. how about a quick things about like brokerage mechanics or growth? Like if you think of like what you tell yourself and then like what you tell the young guys in terms of like prospecting. So how do you think about prospecting? Like how much, how what's your style, what do you find works? Like what's your present met like style that you found works for you?

Travis Wood 20:14

Yeah, and well in terms of prospecting generally, I mean it's you have to do it, right? It's you know, you can have the biggest pipeline in the world, but not all those deals are gonna go through and you have to continuously fill the pipeline. So, you know, we make it an effort on our team to at least, you know, four hours a day we're cold calling, texting, emailing. I'd say it's harder and harder with all the spam calls to start making a bunch of cold calls, but you

Justin Smith 20:44

Hey, announce who you are before I connect you to the phone. And you're like, Okay.

Travis Wood 20:48

Right. So yeah, so i my approach and everyone's got a different style, my approach has been a lot more casual and not, hey, this is Travis Wood, how are you today? Like that to me, I can't you know, put yourself on the receiving end of that. And as soon as you hear yeah, how are you doing today or whatever, it's sa it's too salesy for me. So I've always been a lot more, you know, casual and more direct and that's worked and we talk about this all the time. There's been owners where or tenants that I've called and they're not picking up the phone or they don't like the tone of my voice or how casual I am but my partner can be a little bit more prof professional and polished and that gets through. So you gotta think about who's receiving the call too and they may not vibe with you as well as someone else or it's the little things in human psychology that, you know that work or don't work. And so it's all about timing and kind of meshing two personalities together really. So I I'd say there's no right way but just whatever works for you and you just gotta try it all because, you know, someday it might something might not work and the next day it might and so yeah I think you know, one you gotta prospect. Two you gotta set time to do it and three, you gotta kinda find your personality on the phone or whatnot.

Justin Smith 22:16

Four hours is no joke. I mean that's like half the day you're putting it out there.

Travis Wood 22:20

Well, I'd love to do eight hours but then, you know, once you start doing deals and having to do a lot of transaction management, it that eats your time. So you really have to find the time to prospect or, you know, it's you start getting nervous, you know, when stuff falls through and you don't have anything to fill it.

Justin Smith 22:41

You like this one, Travis. Sometimes we'll go buddy system where like we'll have two people on an account that we're prospecting and then you'll see it come up on your list and then you kind of see like how's the other person's progress coming in along and sometimes it's hitting, sometimes like there's crickets. And then like you just use your best judgment of like when you hop in, when you sprinkle in like a some touch points. Or like when you take over and say, like, I got this one, or when you get traction, it's been a fun one of like on one hand, like keeping us accountable. A second one, like keeping you like making sure you're contributing. Not that like we you wouldn't, but like intrinsically like it gives you a little bit extra like a drive of like I wanna carry my part of the weight. And that's been a fun one that like even sometimes on some accounts you like you never make the call or the email, but you're just like, Oh, I'm co responsible for trying to create opportunity from this one and then you're like, Oh dude, you're you got this and then you just like reschedule it for three months or six months or whatever. We've been trying that out for a little while and it's been interesting to see like what you learn from that approach.

Travis Wood 23:46

Yeah, definitely. and we had Lip come in and give us the whole spiel. you know, and we have our accountability kind of metrics and stuff like that. But and you need those, right?

Justin Smith 23:56

Oh, you got the spreadsheet?

Travis Wood 23:58

Oh yeah. but you yeah, you kinda need those, right? To yeah, to stay on task on the prospecting because one thing I've learned is I love doing the deals and you can your mind can really go to, okay, let's I wanna work on this deal. I wanna work on this survey. I wanna like really get into the deep the details of this pitch when, you know, that's not necessarily making you the money versus prospecting. And obviously there's a balance of everything, but you know, if you have an hour scheduled of calling and you've got this big pitch on your mind, your mind is going to go, I wanna work on this pitch versus cold call. So you're constantly fighting that. And I think the accountability is key to keep you on track on it.

Justin Smith 24:42

Voicemails, thumbs up, thumbs down.

Travis Wood 24:45

So I've been doing something recently where I don't leave a voicemail on the first go. I'll call, no voicemail. I'll typically send a text right after. Say, hey, just try to, you know, give me a call back when you can. I had a few questions about your property here. Keep it vague, you know, and just try to get them to call back on the phone. and I think being vague at first is good to try to get them on the line and then really go to work. But yeah, I voicemails are no on the first one, but if I call 'em back a day or two days later, yeah, I might leave one. But I think texting is has has helped a lot and you're not necessarily revealing everything on your text. it's more so, hey, just try to call you know, give me a call back when you can. And I think that's important nowadays.

Justin Smith 25:36

The asynchronous part is what I love about that is like you are now interrupting less or perhaps like they can respond in kind when they have the time and when it's a good time and then they're like, Okay, I did get it and so on and so forth rather than like I'm in the car, I'm with my kids, I'm in a meeting or whatever.

Travis Wood 25:55

Right, and in the day of AI, like they know you're real. You know? It's not some automated system or text, it's

Justin Smith 26:02

Have you gotten some of that? I wanted to make sure you're a real person and you're like, dude, this is real as it gets.

Travis Wood 26:08

Exactly. So that's another element of the text as well. And again when you get very tight and scripted and stuff and that works for some people, but for me it feels especially in this AI age and a lot of the spam calls, it just feels like another one of those. And it's all about how do you differentiate yourself, how do you get them on the phone and texting and being a little bit more casual for lack of a better term is how I've approached it and been successful. So but again, and it's sorry to keep going here, but it's you know, this game is a lot of timing and it's a lot of luck. And you know, how do you get lucky more? It's you put yourself in a position to be lucky and you give yourself more chances. So a lot of it's the timing and a little bit of luck and you've gotta do it consistently and then, you know, more will hit.

Justin Smith 27:04

The increase the surface area for luck was the one that like for me captured it a little bit where you're like, Yes, that is what I'm trying to do.

Travis Wood 27:14

Yeah. A hundred percent. Yeah, that's it.

Justin Smith 27:17

Yeah. you putting stuff in the mail? are you using snail mail? Are people calling to get it? They're like, I got your thing and

Travis Wood 27:24

No. it's my last ditch effort if I if I'm not reaching 'em, you know, if or if I can't find the right number or whatever and, yeah, I'm sending some handwritten notes. I haven't had any success with it. Yeah. Well actually I take that back. I've had one that I've gotten a call back from a letter and I suspected

Justin Smith 27:44

Okay?

Travis Wood 27:45

She was over the age of 80. so she appreciated it. But you know, I it's yeah, you gotta try it every you gotta try everything. You gotta have as many lines in the water as you can. And if sending a handwritten note is one, I'll do it. My handwriting's not very good, but you know, that's alright. That's all.

Justin Smith 28:06

How many have to hit for it to have been worth it? Which is our usual like things you can talk yourself into, which is like if it made a deal or two deals or whatever in a year, you're like, gosh, that was worth it. And then you're like, that's a pretty thin line between worth it and not worth it being one deal and a whole year's worth of effort.

Travis Wood 28:25

Right, yeah.

Justin Smith 28:27

S yeah, the whole like a keeping track of everybody in CRM, database, spreadsheet, all that, you do it helps you, that works for you.

Travis Wood 28:36

Yeah, we're using Unreal, which is it's a newer one and I think with the AI these days, all these platforms just they keep evolving and evolving rapidly. So we've gone from one to the next and we're just trying to CRM I think in our industry is one of the hardest things to you know, find one that you like.

Justin Smith 28:54

It almost hurts me to ask you just 'cause I feel like it's a topic that like everybody's got their thing and like there's no real everybody like consensus that they like.

Travis Wood 29:02

Well, yeah. And I think being on a team, you know, you wanna have one, but everyone's brain works differently. Everyone looks at a CRM a little differently and some people like more fields and more analytics and I'm the opposite. You know, I like it's simple speed. I want the main points, I wanna be able to see it all in one place and Unreal does a good job of that. yeah. So and CRE OneSource. shout out to Craig. You know, that's a great one as well. unfortunately I got voted off the island for that one with the rest of the team. But, you know, we're a democratic team here, so you know, we vote on things and yeah, I love CRE OneSource, so I recommend that one. but Unreal has been good and does a good job, so yeah. That's how we're doing it.

Justin Smith 29:51

Yeah. Anything you've tried recently that you dropped that you felt weren't working or you see people do and you're like, I don't know about that, or in the ever like never ending quest of like trying new stuff. Any duds?

Travis Wood 30:04

I don't know, I'm a little more old school, so I'm doing it the old fashioned way typically and you know a lot there's a lot of people not just in our but you know they're looking for how do we use AI and everything else which is great and you have to stay ahead of the curve but I'm definitely more of your old school approach and more manual and you know, again, everyone's got their own style. My style is very much I wanna know who I'm calling, what the play is before I'm calling. And some people like to just go through a list and hammer it and they can figure it out on the phone, but, you know, again, everyone's got a different thing. I like to know every little detail and that's just how my brain works and it takes longer to prospect, but I you feel like it's more quality than quantity and that's important to me. But again, everyone's different. So what about you? What what's your style?

Justin Smith 30:59

Yeah. I love seeing the the young guns come in and then who's like super techie nerd and who's like super old school and like a technology, like I don't trust it or do doesn't like implement it as much. And to see like there's still a pretty big mix. Like it's not like you were native to the internet and now you're a digital everything type of person. Like it is a total mixed bag. And to your question, something that didn't work that was super funny I tried like a two years ago was one of these power dialers where it dials. And if anything, like it'll dial like more than one number at a time so that like you just keep getting connected and it's supposed to be like, Okay, if you're optimizing for like trying to get connected on the most amount of calls in a day versus like hearing the dial tone and I tried it for like an hour or two and I felt like I had to put on like a hard helmet and like a seat belt because you were like you're locked in and it was like it's clearly too much. And like then you had to be quick to have like the record will pop up when someone picks up and then you like scan it. But of course, like how present are you in the moment with that person in that conversation if you're like scrambling to try to

Travis Wood 31:57

Yeah, here. You're locked in. Yeah.

Justin Smith 32:17

Like a recall, who is it, where are they, and like what's the actual context of like what they do, what they have, or what they might need. So that was a

Travis Wood 32:24

Right. And they can pick up on that. So, you know, I people can pick up on that and that's why I like to have a little bit of intel and a good broker from CBRE, great broker from CBRE told me, you know, always call with a piece of information, you know. And that helps. It's it warms up the call. It's not necessarily a cold call, but it's maybe it's lukewarm, you know. So you gotta get those you gotta have lukewarm calls. As I say.

Justin Smith 32:52

Yeah, I'm coming to you with something that I thought would be helpful for you that you may not have asked for, but based on my like professional opinion like this, if I were you, this is what I wish I knew and I already got it ready for you. Yeah. It's good. It's the best. There's no like a replacing that. If that's all you had, that would be a great start.

Travis Wood 33:15

For sure. And, you know, I'm no veteran in the game, and always learning every day. So, you know, that's another great aspect with the team stuff. So, yeah.

Justin Smith 33:25

Yeah. awesome. That's good stuff. Like everybody's gotta figure that out right now. And it's not easy and there are so many new things to keep trying out and figure out like which ones you adopt and which ones work. The AI part, I've really enjoyed kind of to answer your question a little bit more of like how it can help you in researching the accounts that you're gonna call and then like a look for M and A activity. Maybe a company like raised funds, anything that's like the loan maturity and debt related, people getting promoted, new CEO, new private equity company, new parent company, like when you just think of like the signals as like inflection points or reasons why there's friction that might be like relationship transition time, because for us obviously like people who have established relationships usually keep them. And 'cause everyone's trying hard to do good work for good people. So those moments when there's someone new in the hot seat who needs to find their trusted person, like looking for those, I have found that's something you can buy, you can build, and all of those you can connect to your CRM and then that can just help you keep up on stuff that's almost like impossible to manually keep up with. Or like it's just time consuming. So to the extent you could say, For all my calls today, by eight o'clock, make sure you've looked for any of those types of signals before I make the call. Some version of that is something I've been noodling on and like a trying out and finding that to be helpful. And as I think you pointed out, like you need a lot of lines in the water. I just take that as like a one more line, basically. And then like It hits on occasion, and when it does, you're thankful for it. And then the other times you're like, should I really be spending time and effort on this?

Travis Wood 35:16

Yeah, but I think also too like to that point there's so many avenues that you can use AI for and you know, it doesn't have to be solely you know, real estate fo you know, you can there's other ways you can use it to kinda help your business and help the prospecting. So yeah, that that's actually really cool and yeah, we're gonna look into that over here too.

Justin Smith 35:37

Yeah. other thing I would think of is just things you'd like about Lee. I gotta imagine you have had a good experience and then B like you get to know other people in other offices. There's quite a few other offices that aren't like a super close but like not too far away. So I'd love to hear a little bit more about like you chose that when you could have chosen like any firm and now you've built a team and you're growing the office. So I imagine you've you appreciate some of the aspects of the company and like how it helps you grow.

Travis Wood 36:10

Yeah, no, it's an I've definitely had my fair share of Lee Kool-Aid, but no, it's an awesome place. You know, we have I think we're over ninety offices now. it keeps growing. But it you have, you know, this kind of global national reach but the local expertise and that's you know, really important and every office is owned by the brokers in the office and run a little bit different and you know, i it's it's that aspect of it and bringing a different kind of creativity to the game. but also the connectivity with the offices. Everyone wants the other office to do well, obviously if they're invested or not, but the synergies between the offices while also having this autonomy and of creativeness and whatever is is awesome. And you know, I think you can do different things than these other shops, right? Like you can think about a pitch a little bit different. You can th because you have this autonomy to kind of do it how you want. and that's helped us here in Charlotte and just thinking outside the box and not being so, you know, rigid like some of these other firms are and kind of here's how we do it, this is the box that we need to stay in and, you know, Lee we can go in a lot of different directions. so I think it's all of those things, but more importantly it's the people and Lee hires does a great job of recruiting and hiring, you know, great people that are super smart and again, you know, not edgy, that's not the right word, but just they have a little bit of this entrepreneurial kind of spirit that you know enables a lot just I keep going back to creative, but this the creativity and I think it takes creativity to do deals and to really help clients these days, you know. And you can't be a one trick pony. You gotta you know, be able to bring a unique element to the table.

Justin Smith 38:18

Yeah. I'd connect the entrepreneurial vibe a little bit to how you started with the risk taking and the ability to like see an opportunity and recognize like you have to like make that happen, you have to create it, you have to like understand it, and then you have to like step out there and like see what you can do to be a positive influence to make it happen. And the freedom to do that's pretty cool, no doubt.

Travis Wood 38:45

Yeah. No. So it's a great place to be.

Justin Smith 38:47

And then I think wrapping up, Travis, if you wouldn't mind, for anyone who's not like a pro in the Charlotte world, I know when I dropped in and ha was able to work on my first thing there, it was cool to get to know the different parts and I basically would just ended up in like the southwest near the airport and that was the part of the market that I got to know. And I was a little surprised to find that like A lot of new product had more office build out than I was expecting. Where like here we have the urbine spectrum where there's a lot of flex and there can be a lot of this industrial that has a lot of office build out as opposed to like distribution oriented markets that have like very little office and it's all like crosstalks everywhere. Would you mind like give us a flavor for like how big's the Charlotte industrial market? What are the like the main areas? What's the general vibe these days of like landlord tenant? vacancy or like rents going up or down or concessions up or down, like what's the give us a little bit of the lay of the land so that people leave with a little more Charlotte knowledge and aware

Travis Wood 39:51

I think here in Charlotte in the southeast it's this it's the G word and that's growth. there's been a ton of growth here and I think since COVID, you know, everyone and their mom has tried to build an industrial building here and you know, we have a ton of new supply and stuff, yet because of the growth and the demand the net absorption is still positive and you know we're certainly growing and growing. I think Right now it's pretty unique for the time of a tenant. So the tenants and the customers have kind of the upper hand right now, if you will, just because of all the new supply and the delta between a class building with twenty four clear and a brand new building, thirty two clear, you know, ESFR, all that, the delta is not as wide as you would think. And these new buildings are incentivizing kind of tenants to move into the new nice and shiny thing and the math isn't as bad as you would expect. so there is this flight to quality here in Charlotte and yeah again po you know net absorption is has is positive and strong. I'd say it we're in a healthy place right now and usually when someone says healthy about a market, that means there's something that's not You know, it's not great but it's healthy, you know, so there's something that is in there and I'd say that's just the supply coming online and yeah, I think yeah, it it's we're stable and again the absorption and the growth is kind of just percolating everything. and it's not gonna stop any time soon. and to your question or your point about there's more office and you know it's maybe it's less distribution. you know, we have a ton of trades here. Think about all the rooftops that are going up with that growth and you know, your HVAC plumber construction supplies, you know, a lot of those customers and users are building out a little bit more office to house their you know, their employees versus having you know, it it's a post COVID world, so you don't have an office in a warehouse. You know, you now there's a lot more synergy and in putting it into one and building you can build a really nice office in an industrial building and the rent is cheaper and you might have a little bit more of a remote work dynamic in a post Covid world as well. So all of that has happened and also there's a huge kind of European influence here of European manufacturers coming to Charlotte. We have a great airport. I think it's the sixth bid sixth busiest based on takeoffs and landings in the world, which is a crazy stat. In the world. I mean Charlotte, North Carolina, baby. so yeah, it's it that's based on take Atlanta's up there. But no, take offs and landings, six in the world.

Justin Smith 42:41

Atlanta's all right, but you know, that's cool.

Travis Wood 42:48

And yeah, it's We have a great airport and if you look at Charlotte on a map and you start connecting, okay, where are the thoroughfares, where are the interstates, we've got it all covered. You know, we've got eighty Route forty to the north, eighty one to the north, which gets you all the way up to Canada. We've got ninety five, towards Raleigh that we can get to pretty easily. Obviously the eighty five corridor, that you know, runs basically from Atlanta all the way up and seventy seven as well that kind of connect. So we have a lot of connecti connectivity here in Charlotte and it's just driving the demand and the growth here. especially for distribution manufacturers and and all your users alike. So yeah, no it's great. Rents I'd say on the rent piece is, you know, they've definitely flattened off a little bit with the construction and they're pretty Pretty flat. I'd say we're two percent rent growth year every year. and obviously we're talking high level, but as you know, everything is size dependent and it depends on size and the flex stuff here is going crazy. you know, seventeen dollar rents for, you know, five to ten thousand square feet and stuff like that, which I don't know what it is in California. You're kinda laughing, but that's getting up there, here and you think about what a company and what their pro forma is and what they can pencil and rent and you know, it's getting up there and it's all supply and demand. so it's all a supply and demand dynamic and the flex stuff is super tight here. I think Charlotte's bread and butter has typically been twenty thousand square feet, fifty thousand square feet and that's the stuff that's really super tight. and then obviously COVID happens. Everyone builds these big buildings and big bombers and that's kind of more of the stuff that's taking a little bit longer but taking longer but happening. So yeah it it's a very healthy market, long story long.

Justin Smith 44:51

Yeah, I'd find that my experience has been like that would tell you maybe that like the twenty to fifties and you're trying to find like owner user sales for companies to buy is probably stays pretty tight then.

Travis Wood 45:02

Very tight and you know, with the rents on the lower ends, let's call it ten to twenty, you know, where those rents are, it does pencil in terms of occupancy costs to maybe look at something to buy if you've got the capital for the down payment. So yeah, we there's a ton of users out here that are looking to buy and you know, we're kinda two hundred a foot is our default number on what would it cost for a user to take something down. that's kind of the user pricing, obviously flex flexes from there, but yeah, two hundred a foot is kind of the user pricing on a purchase

Justin Smith 45:39

Yeah. A and I say the hardest for last. IOS. You dabble in the iOS space here. And for me that's been the final like one for me to learn and feel like I'm competent in when it comes to pricing, either for lease or for sale and like knowing why I'm pricing it the way that I am. where oftentimes you have like you're going out of pricing it by the building, starting to price it by the land foot. And then the land, like it comes in all different shapes and sizes and levels of finish. And CoStar doesn't have all of this in there for some reason, which is slightly peculiar. So I imagine there's everybody in every firm and every market that like when you are in that space, like it's a bit challenging, or you use like other MLSs. There's a lot of just what are people willing to pay? And you just can like have a gut feel for it. But that's challenging. Do you guys have a lot of IOS out there?

Travis Wood 46:36

We do and IOS is a unique asset class that you know, they're not making more of it. Municipalities don't necessarily love it, right? there's no building, it doesn't necessarily mean employment and jobs, you know, it's you know, so they're not making more of it and it's getting tighter and tighter. Yes, we have a ton of IOS, whether that's equipment rental or construction supplies that can live outside. and to your point about how do you calculate what is the rent and yet there's a million ways to skin it. It's, you know, price per square foot on a building plus the per the usable per acre. Yeah. And so there's I think there's five different ways that you can go about it and you can play with the numbers to get to the same point. So I think it's good to kinda do them all, right? You know, the per acre for everything or then the take the building, like okay, what would this building be on a per square foot basis. Okay, we know per acre we're like, you know, six thousand, seven thousand an acre and then plugging that so you kinda look at it from every angle and try to get to the same approach. But you also have to have your finger on the pulse and talk

Justin Smith 47:09

Let's do a net rent on a land foot.

Travis Wood 47:42

To tenants and talk to users. Like you know, what can they pay? And I think one thing unique here that we're doing is and it's another way to prospect is we're going after Not going after but we're calling tenants and users less with like, Hey, how can I help you know, with your real estate? More of like, Hey, why are you in this sub market? What you know, why you know, what why does this building work for you? Like just kind of doing a survey, you know, and just get them talking, Oh, we love Indian Trail or whatever because, you know, we our employees are here, we live here and that can kinda open the door as well, but Doing that with the IOS groups as well is important and they spill the beans on why it works for them and you know, i yes, seven thousand per usable acre sounds like a lot of money per month, but you know, if if you think about it and you do the math on okay, if this product is living inside a building, it's gonna cost you, say, twelve bucks per square foot, but you can house that thing outside, you know, just I'm not the pulling numbers out, but it's a dollar per square foot, right? and that delta is where the value is and why they can pay what they can pay. Because the alternative is having it in a building and paying triple, quadruple, you know, five hundred percent of what that is. So that's how the IOS stuff is penciling and I think with the growth here and whether it's construction supplies and equipment rentals and that's all helping it and Yeah, IOS is super strong right now here in Charlotte and a across the country and again it's only gonna get stronger because of how tight it's getting. so yeah. love IOS. falls under industrial. So going back to everything industrial, that's what we do.

Justin Smith 49:31

Yeah, that fits in there. Nice. Well we dusted our whole hour, Travis. I appreciate you being here and being open and having Greg volunteer you and have you say, like, yeah, that would be fun. I am down. I would like to open up and share and help us all learn how to do better.

Travis Wood 49:50

For sure. Yeah, no, thanks for having me and I was just getting warmed up, so you know, we could talk forever. But no, Greg is great and always pushes me and again, thanks for having me on and look forward to staying in touch with you and maybe getting maybe getting your book or something and giving that a dabble. So yeah.

Justin Smith 50:08

Yes. if you have trouble sleeping, that is what you use and it will work for you, I promise.

Travis Wood 50:14

Got it. Well thanks, Justin. Really appreciate it.

Justin Smith 50:17

Yeah, of course. We'll catch you later. Have a good one.

Travis Wood 50:19

Yes, sir. Have a great weekend. Bye.