Commercial Real Estate Coaching: Rod Santomassimo on Building Systems, Offers, and Success

Rod Santomassimo (00:00)
So how does JLL pitch, CBRE pitch, and investors know these names, or how’s a local firm pitch, right? So Michelle, not your surprise, they’re all the same. They’re all exactly the same. Take out the colors, the green, the blues, the reds, the blacks, it’s the same. So what I would share is from look at what you’re pitching and truly what matters more than your pitch is your offer. And most folks don’t think about their offer.

What are you offering? What makes that investor, know, the investor thinks in two ways. What’s the risk and what’s the reward? How do we maximize the reward yet minimize the risk? It’s all about the offer. I think that’s one thing you should take away.

Michelle Kesil (02:11)
Hey everybody, welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m your host, Michelle Kesil and today I’m joined by someone I’m looking forward to chatting with, Rod Santomassimo who is the founder of the Massimo Group, a coaching organization for commercial real estate brokers worldwide. So excited to have you here today, Rod.

Rod Santomassimo (02:33)
Michelle, thank you very much for having me. Excited to be here.

Michelle Kesil (02:35)
Perfect, let’s dive in. So yeah, first off, for those not familiar with your world, can you share what your main focus is?

Rod Santomassimo (02:37)
Dive in.

Sure, my background before I started the Mossmo Group almost 20 years ago was in a variety of industries, but also commercial real estate brokerage. And I recognize that from a broker perspective, most independent contractor brokers were chasing deals versus building a business where they can attract deals, attract investors. So that’s what we do at Mossmo. We help our clients build businesses.

that attract clients and the result is our clients out earn their peers by 7x. And that’s been the same way about the last 15 years.

Michelle Kesil (03:16)
Awesome. And what do you feel are some of the main keys that have allowed your business to be able to grow and run successfully?

Rod Santomassimo (03:18)
Yeah.

Well, I think any business, even investment business, you have to have, for our perspective, we have to have the right processes in place. And we talk about that with our clients as well. Even investors, what’s your due diligence process? What’s your investigation process? What’s the closing process? All those things, what’s the filter process? You need processes in place, which is a generic answer, but that’s true. We believe you need a good platform. And so for us, platforms can mean…

They used to mean CRMs and databases, but today they mean potentially AI platforms as well. But most importantly, what makes us so successful, without a doubt, is ⁓ the people part. We have aligned with 35 coaches across the globe who help our clients out and have a very talented management team. And no doubt as an investor, would think you have to align yourself with the right team and they’re not full-time employees.

the right team, the right vendors, if you want to call them the partners to help you move to that next level of success.

Michelle Kesil (04:25)
Yeah, absolutely. And where you’re at now with like the coaching portion, what are most of your clients needing support with?

Rod Santomassimo (05:23)
Every client is different, Michelle. Every client, and we’ve coached, we actually coached two of the top brokers in the world, and we coach folks that are just starting out. So, depending on where they are in their career, their journey, where they’re stuck, every broker has a bottleneck. As like every investor has a bottleneck. So, it could be from the five basic elements of running any company, right? It could be a sales issue, it could be a marketing issue, it could be an operations issue, it could be a teams issue.

could be now lately a tech issue. So we see a lot of clients having tech issues and not really integrating and understanding the power of artificial intelligence.

Michelle Kesil (05:59)
and how do you use AI to leverage your business?

Rod Santomassimo (06:02)
Yeah, we use AI in every facet of our business, from the sales process to the marketing process and for our clients. So for example, Michelle, if you ask a broker in the United States, know, how long does my listing agreement need to be? If you’re an investor, they’re going to share with you, Michelle, look, I need to at least six months to a year to control the property, right? And before AI, that made perfect sense. It took a long time to reach out and touch every potential

buyer of an asset or investor of an asset and to market the properties particularly. But today with AI, brokers don’t need to ask for six months to type a property or 12 months. They can ask for as little as a month or two months. And as an investor, look, what you want more than getting a price and getting a qualified buyer, you want all that, but you want it now, right? Cause the market’s going to change in two months, six months, 12 months. So.

That speed is how we use AI, using AI bots, using call bots, text bots, automations to get a property out to the market as soon as possible.

Michelle Kesil (07:07)
Yeah, absolutely. And what opportunities or goals are you currently working towards?

Rod Santomassimo (07:16)
Yeah. So because of that, well, right now we’re the process of writing my sixth book. So we’re looking forward to that one. And so that’s the big project. But the biggest project we have right now is I understand where the market’s going and I recognize that AI will replace not all, but a lot of things that humans do right now. So we’re looking at launching our first AI specific coach for the industry.

so we can coach everyone across the world in any language. So that’s the big thing we’re working on right now.

Michelle Kesil (07:48)
Awesome and what are your books about?

Rod Santomassimo (07:52)
⁓ Most of my books have been, well, that’s not true. After the five books, three of were based just on brokerage, without a doubt. My best book, I believe, to date was a book called Knowing is in Doing, became the number one book in the country in sales. And it was all about any industry, how you go out and build a business. That was called Knowing is in Doing. But my last book was co-written with one of the top brokers on the globe, Mr. Bob Nackle.

and that was called Selling Buildings. And for your investor audience, that book breaks down the lessons for an investor on what it means to sell an asset. So that was an exciting project as well.

Michelle Kesil (08:31)
And what is the book that you’re currently working on?

Rod Santomassimo (08:33)
This one will be, I’m going back to the brokerage and I’m gonna, I think this will be the first one, Michelle, that we actually, haven’t figured it out yet, but we actually just might give away because I’ve been doing this so long. I’ve been blessed. So we’re gonna talk about how brokers can maximize their commissions, which most brokers wanna do. So that’s what I’m working on right now. And I think I can get that out maybe this year.

Michelle Kesil (08:56)
Yeah, and what is like one tip or framework from the book that you can share?

Rod Santomassimo (09:35)
Sure, there’s so many. There’s so many. But I think one thing that stands out from finding an opportunity to winning the opportunity to fulfilling the opportunity. The one thing we’ve known is look, we’re honored and yes blessed to work with individuals in every major brokerage firm on the planet, regional firms. And because of that, Michelle, I get to see their pitch books.

So how does JLL pitch, CBRE pitch, and investors know these names, or how’s a local firm pitch, right? So Michelle, not your surprise, they’re all the same. They’re all exactly the same. Take out the colors, the green, the blues, the reds, the blacks, it’s the same. So what I would share is from look at what you’re pitching and truly what matters more than your pitch is your offer. And most folks don’t think about their offer.

What are you offering? What makes that investor, know, the investor thinks in two ways. What’s the risk and what’s the reward? How do we maximize the reward yet minimize the risk? It’s all about the offer. I think that’s one thing you should take away.

Michelle Kesil (10:40)
Absolutely. And when you’re talking about the offer, can you explain a little bit more on like what that means and how to maximize it?

Rod Santomassimo (10:49)
Sure, so if you look at an offer, look at last thing you purchased, Michelle, there was an offer and why you purchased it, right? There’s a reason you bought it. It could be the price, so let’s talk about the fee. So how do you structure your fee that the investor is gonna be attracted to? It could be the guarantee. So yeah, brokers can offer a guarantee all the time. No one does, but they should. How do you guarantee to minimize the risk?

How do you look at urgency and scarcity and timing with regard to the offer itself? What’s your promise? Every offer needs to have a promise. What’s your commitment? Brokers don’t do a great job sharing their promise. They don’t. And then finally, what’s the structure of the offer? Not every offer has to be a flat fee of 5%, 4%, 1%. We can structure the offer that’s advantageous to the investor as is to the broker.

Michelle Kesil (11:39)
Yeah, absolutely. And what are some of the biggest obstacles or challenges that you’ve overcome and learned from in your career?

Rod Santomassimo (11:51)
Oh, I’ve made so many mistakes.

I’ve made more mistakes than probably most. I will share this one quick story. So when I first launched the company, and I guess been a little over 18 years now, this is a true story. When I first launched the company, Michelle was just me and my wife, right? And was it versus the 40, 50 folks we have today. But so I was so excited. I took one brokerage firm and I said, I’m gonna write an email to all these brokers.

and I create this flyer, this is before AI, this is me creating a flyer in PowerPoint. And I said, look, hire the Massimo Group and your business will soar, right? And a big arrow going up, your business will soar. Michelle, I sent it out and my late father called me immediately, because I was so proud, I put him on the email campaign. He called me immediately and said, hey, Rod, and back then he called me Rocket, you may want to check that email you sent out.

Now, Michelle, I’m launching the company. So I said, dad, it’s perfect. What’s wrong with it? goes, just read it one more time. So Michelle, this is the true story. I sent it out and I wrote, hire the Massimo Group and your business will soar. And I wrote, soar, S-O-U-R. So it actually read, hire the Massimo Group and your business will sour. So that’s how I launched the company.

⁓ But the lesson I learned from that was, and the crazy thing is, Michelle, people called me and told me I was an idiot. Yeah, I had people calling me, emailing me, saying it was a joke, I didn’t know what I was doing. It happened, right? People could be really mean. But I also had people call me and go, tell me more, right? They read what I, they read what I meant to write. ⁓ So, and look, I made a mistake the other day. I made an error the other day.

Michelle Kesil (13:26)
Yeah

Rod Santomassimo (13:34)
I handle something incorrectly that I should, I should something different. So every day I’m making mistakes, but that means is every day I’m trying. And if I’m trying, we’re going to be okay. And so I think that’s the takeaway from everything else.

Michelle Kesil (13:46)
Yeah, definitely that’s important. And what advice would you give to someone that’s newer or looking to get started in real estate?

Rod Santomassimo (14:38)
Yeah, you know, look, the number one reason, even investors, the number one reason people get involved in real estate, whether you’re a broker, investor, what is it, Michelle? What’s the number one reason people get involved in real estate? What is it? Money. I want to make as much money as I can. Now, it’s true. You can make, there is no cap on your income in commercial real estate. There’s none. We work with brokers that, I’ve worked with a broker that made, one year made $18 million.

Michelle Kesil (14:48)
money.

Rod Santomassimo (15:04)
my goodness, $18 million, right? But that’s not the norm. But the reason he made $18 million is because he worked his butt off for many years, yet in the position that had that happen, right? Right now there’s a disconnect between outcome and income or inputs and outputs, right? It just is. So my advice to anyone starting out is, yeah, real estate is a fabulous

industry and a great career. And it still be here regardless of what AI may be doing. But if you’re not willing to really dedicate, and the word I always use is commit to the craft of commercial real estate, go get a job. You get paid more, you will. You get paid more than a job and you won’t work as hard. You won’t. So real estate’s for those who ready to put the grind and do the grit.

Michelle Kesil (15:50)
Yeah, absolutely. And how can someone get started and learn the tools that they need for success?

Rod Santomassimo (15:58)
Yeah, get a mentor, right? know, while we do hire new to business clients, and we have program just for them and for the top clients in the world, ⁓ get a mentor. That’s what I did. When I started my commercialistic career, I got a broker who mentored me, showed me the ropes, just didn’t say, go make calls. I asked him questions. I was curious. Be curious. Be curious and get a mentor. Watch YouTube videos. They’re free, right?

Just immerse yourself in the craft. Study the craft. You’ll be in an advantageous position from the start.

Michelle Kesil (16:33)
And what are you most focused on solving or scaling to next?

Rod Santomassimo (16:39)
Yeah, you know, it’s time for me to step back a little bit. I’ll be next month in a couple of weeks. I’ll actually be 63 years old. So I’m really focused on finding the right individual to help me run the company. And it’s gonna take a while, but that’s a big initiative for me. So, Michelle, you’re way too young, but I recommend to everyone, regardless of age, read the book, die with zero. It’s not a morbid book. It’s not, it’s a business book.

but die with zero and then you recognize things you could be doing and things you should be doing to live life to the fullest. So that’s what I’m working on right now.

Michelle Kesil (17:12)
Yeah, amazing.

And is there anything that you wish that you knew when you were earlier on in your career?

Rod Santomassimo (17:21)
Yeah, absolutely. Steve, Michelle, we all live in a world where we have three intellects. We’re all ignorant. We all don’t know what we don’t know. You don’t know what you don’t know. I don’t know what I don’t know. Right? So ignorance is just a fact. It’s not a negative. We’re ignorant to some point. We are. But then you have a choice, right? You could go to the road of arrogance and say, I don’t need help. Right? Or go on the road of curiosity and say, Hey, tell me more. What’s next? How can you help? So, um,

I wish early on in Massimo, the first five years, I didn’t have a coach. It was just hypocritical, because I ran a coaching company. I was trying to build a coaching company. I didn’t even have a coach. I wish I had done that earlier. we would have been, even today, we would have been much higher in revenue and success potentially, right? We’re happy. We’re more than happy. But I wish I had help early on. I asked for it early on versus I got it and put my head in the sand and just worked my ass off. Okay, that helped, but…

having more knowledge and more, someone that’s been there already and helping them away, that would help me accelerate a lot quicker.

Michelle Kesil (18:20)
Yeah, absolutely. And where do you recommend people go about finding like a mentor or a coach or knowing who’s right for them?

Rod Santomassimo (18:26)
It depends on what you’re focused on. Investors, there’s so many investor groups, communities that you can go leverage and see how people are investing and what they’re doing and forums online. Those are great places just to start. Eventually you’re going to create a relationship with someone and it’s easy to say, if you can bring value, can you mentor me and potentially I could bring you deals or bring you something. I think that’s the first place you should start.

Michelle Kesil (18:52)
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for sharing all of that.

Rod Santomassimo (18:55)
Okay.

Michelle Kesil (18:56)
Well, before we wrap up here, someone wants to reach out, connect and learn more, where can people find you?

Rod Santomassimo (19:02)
Well, thank you for that, Michelle. If they want to learn more about us, go to Massimo.coach. Massimo.coach. Learn about me, the company, and how we help folks build significantly ⁓ more productive businesses, a lot more money, a lot less time.

Michelle Kesil (19:18)
Perfect, well, appreciate your time and your story. Thank you so much for being here.

Rod Santomassimo (19:23)
Michelle, my pleasure. Thank you and the best to you for the rest of the year. Take care now.

Michelle Kesil (19:27)
Thank you. And for the listeners that are tuning in, if you got value, make sure you have subscribed. We have more conversations with operators like Rod who are building real businesses and see you on the next episode.