How AI Is Changing Commercial Real Estate Marketing and Lead Generation

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Show Summary

In this episode of the Real Estate Pros podcast, host Michelle Kesil welcomes Joe Killinger, a seasoned real estate professional with over 30 years of experience. Joe shares insights into his diverse ventures in the real estate industry, including his roles as an agent, investor, and founder of multiple companies. He discusses the challenges and successes he faced while launching and operating various real estate brands, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. Joe emphasizes the importance of having a strong team and adapting to market changes, especially with the rise of AI in real estate marketing.

Resources and Links from this show:

• • • Investor Fuel Real Estate Mastermind
    • Investor Machine Real Estate Lead Generation
    • Mike on Facebook
    • Mike on Instagram
    • Mike on LinkedIn
    • Joe Killinger’s Website
    • Joe Killinger on Youtube
    • Joe Killinger’s Email Address: [email protected]
    • Joe Killinger on Instagram
    • Joe Killinger on Facebook
    • Joe Killinger on LinkedIn
    • Joe Killinger on Tiktok
    • Joe Killinger on X

  Listen to the Audio Version of this Episode

  Investor Fuel Show Transcript:

  Joe Killinger (00:00)
  AI. is something that is going to, you know, and here’s the thing, if you’ve been in the business a while, you can go, I don’t need it. Trust me, you’re going to want it because when somebody puts a search in AI, it’s, you it goes out there and it’s looking for something, you know, they’re looking for an authority figure in a marketplace and you know, it’s searching until it needs to find you, you know, and how do you get it to find you?

  Michelle Kesil (01:56)
  Hey everybody, welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m your host, Michelle Kesil Today I’m joined by someone that I’m looking forward to chatting with, Joe Killinger, who is an active member in the real estate industry for over 30 years. He has been an agent, investor, syndicator, founder and operator of companies as well as properties that he invests in. So excited to have you here today, Joe.

  Joe Killinger (02:21)
  Michelle, thank you for having me on. I really look forward to this.

  Michelle Kesil (02:26)
  Yeah, excited for our listeners to hear about the real estate brands that you’ve built and are working with. So let’s dive in. For those who are not familiar with you and your work, can you share what your main focus is these days?

  Joe Killinger (02:41)
  You bet. we do. We got a couple of things going that we’re working on. So I invest in real estate brands. Mostly when I say invest in, we start them and then we operate them. Now, in some cases we have sold. ⁓ We had a real estate tech company that we based out of Dallas, Texas. So I spent time living in Texas ⁓ and we ended up selling a portion of that company off. We made some mistakes there. Really never been in tech before and we grew the company incredibly.

  But one of our biggest competitors ⁓ just went to our clients and gave them a year. It was a background check, ⁓ screening companies, what it was, for property management companies and real estate agents. And our biggest competitor went out and offered everybody a free year if they dropped us for a client. And so that made it kind of tough, but we sold another piece of that company off, a division off, and made a little bit of money, not much.

  ⁓ And then we have had a property management company we launched that we ended up selling right before COVID. And so when we got into COVID, we weren’t really sure how ⁓ things were going to play out. know, commercial brokerage, our commercial company, actually, I’m sitting in their offices right now, Commercial Brokers International is a company that we own. It’s an incredible brokerage firm that we have. And we had the property management with it. And so it was called LLC Property Management.

  And right when COVID was starting, we weren’t really sure what’s going to happen. The brokerage was paying the bills. Property management was making money, but nothing like the brokerage. So we decided to sell the property management division off. And we found a buyer that would take all the employees as well. So we ended up selling that company off. Other than that, I’ve got companies that I’m invested in. Commercial Brokers International, like I spoke of. We’ve got Icon Capital Advisors. It’s a commercial real estate mortgage company.

  And which there’s a funny story there about our launch date. And then we have commercial real estate affiliate network. All are real estate brands that I’m currently invested in right now.

  Michelle Kesil (04:45)
  Awesome. So you have these multiple brands. What kind of differentiates them and kind of like, how do you service each of them?

  Joe Killinger (05:45)
  Good team members is a huge thing for me. It sounds like a lot, but it’s not if you have the right team. Commercial real estate affiliate network was born out of frustration because with our commercial real estate brokerage company, we were one of the first ones to jump on SEO, really marketing our company on social media. And now we’re really focused on AI. We’re really leading the way with the way we’re advertising on AI because I think it’s…

  If you want to be found in a marketplace, AI is really the way to go if you’re in real estate, well, any industry. ⁓ So we had a client that reached out to us from Australia. They were coming over to the United States. They wanted to work with our brokerage. We were happy to have them. We put them in several locations for retail in LA. We put them in several ⁓ discount malls as well. We helped them find financing here and we also helped them house all their employees they were bringing over.

  We did all that and then they came to us and said, well, we want to move across the United States now. And we only had one office. And so we’re like, well, we’re in trouble now. So we ended up losing them as a client. And so it was kind of a shot to the heart, right? Cause that was so much work and we’d done well with them, but we just couldn’t service them anymore. So we helped them find a broker that could help them. But this isn’t going to happen to me again. So I started calling around to affiliate networks for commercial real estate brokerage companies. And then I found out what they charged.

  And I’ve thought, well, that’s we can’t afford to do that because there’s not just an annual fee. There’s transaction fees. There’s there’s all kinds of fees. And that was keeping the smaller boutique commercial real estate firms or, you know, if you have one office or two offices, you just really couldn’t afford to belong to them. So I decided to create the commercial real estate affiliate network. And it’s ⁓ all for independent commercial real estate brokerages around the company, our country. And actually, we have four.

  affiliates outside of the US now too. And it’s working very well. And our fee structure is very simple. It’s free for you to use the system. But ⁓ if you do a deal within the system, then you owe a referral fee to whoever sent it to you, sent you the deal, the lead. so it’s just very, it works so well. And I just was able to find so many great brokers that just had no access to affiliate network before. And

  It’s working beautifully. And then we have Icon Capital Mortgage or Capital Advisors. It’s a commercial real estate mortgage company. ⁓ We’re partners with BMC Capital on that. We really believe in service. So we really pride ourselves in the service we offer because we do a lot of deals in commercial real estate. lot of our agents are always complaining about the service they get from their mortgage broker. Well, now they can come to me and I can take care of it because it’s part of our team. And then Commercial Brokers International is a commercial real estate brokerage firm that we own here in Los Angeles.

  Full service brokerage my partner George Pino is a CEO of that company and we’ve got 21 agents right now I’m growing hoping to open an office in Orange County later this year So in a nutshell, that’s what we’ve got going then. We’ve got the Joe Killinger CEO brand That’s where I run everything through it’s my home company and ⁓ Parent company and then I invest in everything through that

  Michelle Kesil (09:05)
  Awesome. Yeah, there’s a lot of moving parts it sounds like.

  Joe Killinger (09:10)
  Yeah,

  it sounds like, but the companies are pretty similar. mean, they’re different, but it’s something I’m working in every day. So it’s pretty easy. just having, you don’t need a big team these days. That’s the thing is I don’t need a big team. I just need highly efficient people. They get the job done.

  Michelle Kesil (09:19)
  chart.

  Absolutely. So what are you most focusing now, whether it’s on solving some of these aspects of your business that you’ve already built or scaling to the next thing?

  Joe Killinger (10:18)
  Yeah, so we’re doing, yeah, it’s scaling. It’s scaling the companies. Commercial Real Estate Affiliate Network, we’ve added five new affiliates in the last month. ⁓ Icon Capital, the story I was going to tell you about Icon Capital is when we came up with the idea for the company, we decided to set a date that we’re going to launch the company. And so that date came, we launched the company. It was the very next day that they raised interest rates for the first time. So the mortgage industry,

  really slowed from that day forward. And so we’ve kind of been working on, we’ve had activity, but nothing like we’ve got more in the pipeline right now than we had for the last few years. so focusing on the growth of the companies, you know, I’m a big ⁓ proponent of commercial real estate brokers being trained. And that’s really another thing on the website that I have is if you’re getting into real estate, I wrote a booklet called

  your first 90 days in CRE and it’s free, go on the website, go to learning and you’ll see your first 90 days in commercial real estate. Get that study. There’s a bunch of free stuff on there for real estate agents, but I’m a really big promoter of agents getting trained in the commercial real estate brokerage industry because our turnover rate for brokers in the industry is 87 to 92%. And what other industry has that kind of turnover?

  because we’re not doing training, we’re not doing mentoring. So I’m really trying to work with a lot of people around the country to really get people educated and understanding that the market, that’s a great industry, but you’ve got to teach these younger people who are getting into the industry how it actually works. we’re no, you don’t want to bring young people in and just have them be lead generators anymore. And a lot of brokerages still do that. You want to teach them how to operate a business.

  because that’s really what they’re doing. And you as the owner of the company, the brokerage, are actually in partnership with that person. So give them the tools to go out and be successful. In turn, that’s going to help your brokerage to be more successful. The younger people are going to stay at your company longer. And I mean, we hired four people a year around last October, October, November, 2024.

  and only one of them left and that’s only because and I tried to talk her out of coming on board but she lives about 20 miles away in LA that might as well be in Nebraska because it’s a long drive to get here and she’d spend an hour and half each way and she burned out and I you know I knew she was going to but we tried to do as much as we could with her but so yeah that’s really my focus is you know growing our brands.

  and helping these people that are in the commercial real estate brokerage industry ⁓ find success. And the booklet is a big, big help for them. So I hope that people will go on and grab that booklet. Again, it is free. Everything on that joekillinger.co site is free.

  Michelle Kesil (13:26)
  Amazing. What are maybe some things going on in the commercial real estate market right now that you’re kind of tapping into in terms of opportunities?

  Joe Killinger (13:36)
  AI. is something that is going to, you know, and here’s the thing, if you’ve been in the business a while, you can go, I don’t need it. Trust me, you’re going to want it because when somebody puts a search in AI, it’s, you it goes out there and it’s looking for something, you know, they’re looking for an authority figure in a marketplace and you know, it’s searching until it needs to find you, you know, and how do you get it to find you?

  And that is by putting content out.

  about that marketplace, about you working in that marketplace, about what I call proof stacking. There’s a great article. It’s actually on my book that’s on my website. You can go into learning and then go down to all the books and it’s called proof stacking. And it’s really just a white paper of a transaction that you’ve done in that marketplace. So write a ⁓ complete white paper of how you met this client, ⁓ how you service their needs, how you overcame all their pain points.

  and then the result of that working together, post those out there. You’d be surprised. get that up on as a blog on your website. You put that on your LinkedIn as an article, or if you go to medium.com and post it there, just make sure you’re getting that content out and then write, make sure you’re writing blogs, ⁓ doing whatever you can to get attention about you being an authority figure in a marketplace. Those calls will start coming to you. We get them on a regular basis because we focus on it.

  with our brokerage company and our well all of our companies on a regular basis. So AI is really transitioning or making it helping us transition into being more efficient ⁓ and better at marketing.

  Michelle Kesil (15:15)
  Yeah, absolutely.

  Joe Killinger (15:15)
  that I think everybody has to

  focus on. You’ll get left behind if you don’t.

  Michelle Kesil (16:01)
  Right? What advice would you have for those that are newer in this space?

  Joe Killinger (16:07)
  ⁓ This is ⁓ find when you’re going out if you’re new and you haven’t got your haven’t found your brokerage yet make sure when you go to a brokerage that it’s one that’s going to offer you ⁓ classes to get educated or a really solid mentoring program. A problem that we have in our industry is so many young people go out there interviewing they go to these firms and they don’t ask enough questions.

  When you go on these interviews with these brokerage firm, ask a lot of questions. What’s the success of the agents in your company? What’s your turnover rate of the agents in your company? What kind of services do I get? Obviously, you want to ask about commission splits too, right? But you want to know about mentoring. You want to know all about the company before you sign up to it, because you’re starting a career. And this is your life. A brokerage, they’re

  don’t lose as much as you do if they bring you on and they don’t give you the services and you stay there. If you’re not getting what you want or you’re not happy, find a brokerage that’s going to give you stuff because this is your life, this is your career, you have to go out and give it your best shot because doing it for six and eight months and losing your savings, now what? Now you’ve got to get a job somewhere that’s paying you. So really make sure you’re interviewing with the right companies.

  Make sure you’re getting the training. There’s so many places that you can get trained. ⁓ I have a YouTube channel under my name, Joe Killinger. You can go see a ton of educational videos. You can go see that. There’s great people, Bob Nackel. You should be following him to really learn about investment sales. He does New York, but you can kind of get the gist of it. Follow these people that are really good in the industry. when you take advice from people, this is the part that really gets me.

  Take advice from people that are where you want to be, not people that are at your same level or just a little bit above you. Go to the people that are where you want to be and take the advice from them. I get so many young people that I’m giving advice to and then all of a sudden they quit doing what I’m doing and they’ve talked to somebody and said, well, that doesn’t work. So they quit doing it. And don’t be that person. If you’ve got somebody that’s had success and

  and is giving you, taking the time to give you advice, listen to them. You and then you might have to tweak it for your personality or what you’re doing, but listen to them. That’s the best advice I can give somebody starting out because it’s tough when you get into commercial real estate brokerage, you’re immediately competition with people that have been in the business for two, four, 10, maybe 20 years. And so for you to compete in that side of it, you need to really be able to…

  Understand the marketplace and you know get educated on the marketplace get educated on ⁓ The transactions that are going on in the marketplace before you get on the phones and you know It’s it’s It’s you’re building a business. That’s why you’ve got to understand that you’re you’re not a lead generator You’re not chasing leads you’re building a business and that’s where I think our industry really needs to changes We need to bring them in town to this younger generation. That’s exactly what they’re doing building a business

  Michelle Kesil (19:28)
  Absolutely, that’s an important thing to differentiate.

  Joe Killinger (19:31)
  Mm-hmm. Yeah, it’s something that when I got into it, we were lead generator, right? We would just roll calls and mostly because there was no, I didn’t have the internet when I started. ⁓ So I didn’t have a choice. I had to cold call and you know, but I was smart enough to make sure that every time I got a lead, I made sure I made notes on it. Obviously I had to do pen and paper.

  You made all the notes and you followed up with them with those notes. And that really put us ahead. We took our first company within first 18 months. was a real estate auction company years ago. I wasn’t ownership in that. I was 20 years, 20 something years old. I had no idea how it really worked, but, ⁓ but we became the number two real estate auction company in the Western region within the first 18 months. And it was, it was a few hundred phone calls a day, but it was our followup.

  and market knowledge, follow up and market knowledge were the key. you know, and because I’d asked clients after we do some business with them, goes, man, you would follow up constantly. And he goes, you never missed a beat. And he goes, and the way you guys knew the marketplace, not just myself, but our team knew the marketplace. So very key, very key to what you’re trying to do.

  Michelle Kesil (20:49)
  Absolutely. And do you have any like foresight for where you feel like the market’s heading for this upcoming year?

  Joe Killinger (20:57)
  Yeah, it’s you know what? It’s really opened up. So we’ve had more leads come in in the last few weeks than we did the last few months of 2025. Now, give it the holidays or it’s going to slow down a little bit. But even during the holidays, I was getting leads were coming in to our commercial brokers international, which was amazing to me. And so I think 2026, 2027.

  again, unless something happens around the globe, ⁓ is going to be very, very strong. I think it’s a great time for somebody getting into commercial real estate to get in and really help and find success, if they find the right brokerage.

  Michelle Kesil (21:43)
  Yeah, amazing. Thank you for sharing that insight.

  Joe Killinger (21:48)
  Yeah, yeah, it’s a lot of the industry. I love building businesses. I love, you know, I love seeing a business grow. And we’re always looking for other opportunities. You know, we’re always looking at other ⁓ other companies we might consider investing in. But as of right now, we’ve mostly just been focused on growing our own stuff because we’ve got the team in place right now.

  I get a little lazy sometimes when I look at a new project coming on, that’s kind of big, that’s going to take a lot of time. And I don’t want to lose focus of what we’re doing here because I’ve got such incredible people that we’re really fortunate to be able to work.

  Michelle Kesil (22:29)
  Thank you for sharing that.

  Joe Killinger (22:30)
  Mm-hmm. Yeah.

  Michelle Kesil (22:33)
  So before we wrap up here, if somebody wants to reach out, connect, learn more about what you’re up to, where can people find you and connect with you?

  Joe Killinger (22:43)
  You can do it on the website behind me here, or ⁓ you could just email me at joe joekillinger.co and check out the YouTube channel under my name, Joe Killinger. And if you ever have questions about real estate, ⁓ investing in a real estate brand or starting a real estate company or ⁓ investing or being a broker, happy to help you in any way, in anything in real estate.

  We’ve got somebody, if it’s not me, I can usually point you to somebody that can really help you get some good advice.

  Michelle Kesil (23:17)
  Perfect. appreciate your time and your story. Thank you for being here.

  Joe Killinger (23:22)
  Thank you for having me on, Michelle.

  Michelle Kesil (23:25)
  And for the listeners tuning in, if you got value, make sure that you have subscribed. We’ve got more conversations with operators like Joe who are building real businesses. We will see you on the next episode.