How Commercial Real Estate Pros Build Trust and Win More Deals with Proof Stacking

Edward Winslow (00:00)
right. And it’s the same. It’s the human story of human nature is that, you know, people forget people. That’s why you need to be marketing yourself over and over because just because you get featured in the New York Times one time doesn’t mean that you’ve got that credibility forever. You got to keep doing it. And so really, I mean, I think anybody that’s listening to this, I mean, this is

This is my firsthand experience because you may wonder like, how the heck does marketing really work?

Cody Crabb (02:00)
Hello and welcome back to the Real Estate Pros podcast by Investor Fuel. I’m your host, Cody Crabb. And today I’ve got Edward Winslow, founder of CRE Press Releases and creator of Proof Stacking, helping commercial real estate pros turn credibility into trust and real business. That’s the exciting part. Thanks so much for joining today, I can tell this is going to be a good one.

Edward Winslow (02:20)
Thanks Cody. is, mean, we’ve got a lot of fun things to talk about. We can go forever, but you tell me, let’s just dive in.

Cody Crabb (02:28)
Yeah, I mean, real quick, let’s get a little bit of a background on you and kind of how you got in the industry and why you how you got to the point you’re at today. And I know we actually already kind of did this in the pre podcast. So if we can get like a little an abbreviated version because it was a great story. like, man, we got we got a lot of got a lot of ground to cover.

Edward Winslow (02:50)
Yeah, so I’ll give you the quick background. Started at CBRE and I was there for a year. I didn’t know anything right out of school. And they had a little training program I started in New Jersey. And I wanted to be in sales of property, like investment sales, and not leasing, which is what everybody did in that office. And I heard about a broker.

in New York, who’s pretty young at the time. I think he was 25 or 26. And I heard about his name. His name is Bob Nackel. ⁓ He is recognized as a legend in the commercial real estate industry today. And so I called Bob and I said, you know, I see that you’re having great success. I want to do what you’re doing out here. And he said, well, why don’t you come on in on a Saturday and we’ll talk. So.

I started to go in, I went in on that first Saturday and we just sort of rolled up the sleeves. Bob and I sort of really connected. And I started working with him on development of his market. And we started to create newsletters and we started to analyze property values and all that kind of stuff. Like how do we build this business generation machine? And it was very, very, it was very interesting ⁓ story what he had done. He and a partner,

Originally, we’re going to try and cover all of the Upper East Side of Manhattan and be the building specialists, building sales specialists up there. And they realized very quickly that that’s too big of a market to cover. So they turned it around the other way, and they focused on a small market, 42nd Street to 66th Street. One worked Fifth Avenue to Lexington Avenue, the other Lexington Avenue to the river. And so it was a small little market. And what they did was they focused on market

reports, newsletters, calling the owners over and over and over, very, very specialized, which is really interesting because it became a formula. when you look at any business out there, it’s all based on that same concept. It’s like when you start to become recognized as an expert in your market, it doesn’t matter what you do. Whether you’re a real estate investor or you’re a broker or a financier, it doesn’t matter.

Even as even Starbucks, you know, it’s the same model. And the hardest thing, you know, we were talking about this earlier, the hardest thing is sticking with that focus. And instead of deviating, it’s so it’s so tempting to chase the shiny object when you get it. You know, a deal comes along and it’s like, ⁓ man, this is what I’ve been waiting for. I’m going to chase this. And you chase it and you think it’s going to work. But then you realize.

man, I’ve spent all this time, it didn’t really work out, it sounded really good, I should have stuck with continuing to build what I was building. And that’s really the essence of the whole model.

Cody Crabb (05:47)
Yeah.

Yeah. I think, you know, I think the small market specialist idea, it gets a little overlooked. I mean, and that applies kind of across the board. Like people think, oh, I’m available to do anything. And people think that will get them more business because it’s like you’re.

Edward Winslow (06:59)
You know, the key thing is in marketing. I was talking to a guy this morning who, you know, reached out to me looking for the help. And, you know, he he said. I do sales, I do leasing, I do office, I do retail. And I’m like, whoa. And I’m like, now you’re just sounding like every other broker. You’ll do anything.

Cody Crabb (07:21)
That’s three too many, yeah.

Edward Winslow (07:28)
And I said, to make this whole model work, because what we do is market reports, which is what I did. This is what I learned how to do from the very beginning. Market reports, success stories. Success stories are magic, magic when you set them up the right way. There’s a structure to them. And then it’s the press release part, which is my CRE press releases part. That’s what gives your content that authority, that these, the Google, Claude.

ChatGPT, Grok, that’s what they’re looking for. Like when they’re measuring content to rank, they’re looking at it and saying, OK, you’re all over the place. You have no authority. You’re on page 50. You’re not on our radar. But the one who’s focused and is providing deep data.

good numeric data and geographic information and has got the credibility that they can measure because you’ve got press releases from top tier sites like Business Insider. Now, I happen to be a press release PR company today. So I have access to at a nominal cost, really. And that’s the formula that works. But anyway, that my background.

You know, I was very fortunate to learn this model based on, you know, local penetration, how to, you know, demonstrate your expertise. And, we talked about this earlier, but, know, when I was getting started, you know, in real estate, you know, it was really the early nineties when we were going through that SNL crisis. It was really, really hard to get business because the people that either people were getting foreclosed on.

or they didn’t have to sell because they had the money. And so there was nothing selling. You might pick up a random thing where maybe somebody had a low enough debt and they needed some money so they would sell a property. And it was really, really hard. There was just no volume until it worked through that whole foreclosure system. I got a, I happen to be in the real estate business and I’m in New York now and I get

This owner who reached out to me needs to sell his building and I ended up selling it. And it was like a million five deal. It was a direct deal. was a 6 % fee. Back then you could get 6 % fees and I got it. And I’m like, wow, this is great. I’m at the closing with two lawyers. I’m walking back to the office and I’m pretty jazzed because I’ve got this big fat commission check in my pocket.

And I’m like, nobody knows me. You know, I’m walking up like Madison Avenue and I’m like all these people getting out of cabs and they’re all decked out and they’re going into fancy restaurants. And I’m like, I’m like one of you, but they don’t know that I’m like, I might as well be invisible. And that’s what

Cody Crabb (11:00)
didn’t tell anybody, they would never know.

Edward Winslow (11:02)
how would anybody know? So what am I going to do? What am I going to do? I can go back to cold calling and stuff in envelopes and trying to convince people to hire me. And that’s when I came up with the idea of writing a short human interest article about the sale, not promoting me, but about the history of the building and the sale. I sent that into the New York Times. And I got

The New York Times published it on the front page of the Sunday real estate section, which was wild.

Cody Crabb (11:35)
I love that story because I just love the idea of you going like, well, obviously that’s not going to work. then you just kind of, you know what I mean? Look up from your, look up from your, your paper or whatever and go, on, wait, what did did you just say it’s in the, on the front page? Like, it’s not just in there. It’s like on the front page of the real estate section. I mean, that’s amazing.

Edward Winslow (11:54)
It was back, that was I think it was, you back then there was no internet. You know, you want information, you go to the New York Times, everybody in New York Times, you know, in New York would get the big thick Sunday Times. And they would look at sports and fashion and new politics and real estate. You know, I mean, they’re, looking at the top things and they’re going right to the front page and there I am. got a quarter page on the front page with my name. And it was interesting because it was,

It was, you know, I wrote it in a way that there was no, I took the self interest out. Like, you know, it was not the brokery stuff. was the history of the building. You know, it was built in 1892. The first owner was Samuel Barlow, who was a famous composer and you know, how he used to, you know, have this Juilliard string quartet would play there in his, you know, in his parlor on Wednesday nights. It was like that.

I told this whole story in 200 words. And it was a human interest story. And the New York Times published that. They never called me to verify that I was real. it was amazing. That became the model for what I call proof stacking. And what’s really interesting is we didn’t really get into this before this call.

Cody Crabb (13:04)
and a mystery story.

Edward Winslow (13:17)
You know, and it really applies to everybody’s business here, right? We were talking about, you know, when you focus on a very specific thing and your message is very, very clear, people start to identify with who you are and what you do. And what what I found was, you know, I was telling you earlier that, you know, when I saw, you know, I got this phone call. Hey, did you see the Sunday Times today?

And I run out and I get the paper and it’s like, oh my gosh, I’m there. I’m like, I’m going to be rich. This is everybody in New York is going to call me to sell their building. And I went in on Monday morning and I’m like, all right, all right, this is it. I’m a different person today. And I didn’t get one phone call and I still remember it like it was yesterday. And I’m thinking, Oh, well, maybe everybody’s busy on Monday.

Cody Crabb (14:06)
Yeah, Mondays everyone slammed. Yeah, it’s got their weight until Tuesday. Yeah, I got all the rest realization. Yeah.

Edward Winslow (14:12)
And Tuesday, Wednesday, the end of the week came and I’m like, nobody’s going to remember this. And the following week, nothing, nothing. So I’m back to doing my digging around, to trying to find, squeeze water out of a rock. then what happened was the way we focus on markets, we would call the owners in our market.

you know, to talk about the market, you know, it was never a cold call like, Hey, do you want to sell your building? You know, we’d call and say, Hey, there’s a building down the street for sale. You’re looking to buy another building. What we were really after is the owners would say, you know, typically they’d say, well, I’m not looking to buy another building. I’m looking to sell mine. ⁓ okay. I’d love to come see it. Exactly. That’s how it worked. Right. And cause they’re hearing it the other way from every other.

Cody Crabb (14:59)
should mention that. exactly.

Right, yeah. It’s not them instead of, well, I mean, even just that is a really good little glimpse of how it seems like you’ve been thinking differently about kind of making it, I mean, no one wants to be served an ad. No one in the world wants to look at ads. I mean, even if you’re looking, even if you want to look at an ad for something, you’re not going to look at an ad, you’re going to go find it yourself. So the fact that like you recognize that and you’re like, well, then don’t make it an ad, like actually, you know, give someone some information that’s helpful and are interesting and then.

Edward Winslow (16:16)
Yeah.

Cody Crabb (16:17)
Well, then.

Edward Winslow (16:18)
Here’s the thing that sort of like blew my mind. It was about two months later. Let’s say it was two months later. There was a guy that in the market that I focused on on the Upper East Side that I called numerous times over a couple of years. And, you know, I had nice conversations with him. He actually listened to me.

And I was, he was the one guy that I thought, wow, you know, of all these people that are hanging up the phone on me, here’s the one guy that’s actually taken an interest in listening to me. And I got a call from him and he called me up. can’t remember his name. And I remember his, where his building was on 73rd street. And he calls me up and he said, Hey, you know, this is so-and-so and I own a building on such and such. I’m thinking, yeah, this is a little weird, right? Like he didn’t acknowledge.

that not like, Ed, you know, you remember me, you know, we talk all the time. No, it was like, I know exactly. He had no idea who it was. And I’d spoken to him numerous times. I’d sent him things in the mail. We had had numerous conversations and he called me and he said, this is so and so I’ve got this building. I was told by so and so that you’re the guy to talk to to sell my building. And I’m thinking, you have no idea who I am.

Cody Crabb (17:13)
Remembered him?

you

Edward Winslow (17:36)
I’ve spoken to you numerous times. got somebody recommending me who I’ve never even heard of. And, and nobody ever said to me, Hey, I saw you in the New York times. You celebrity you, you know, nobody ever said that. And so what happened was I went up, met with the guy and he hired me to sell the building. The easiest project that I had before that it was like,

Cody Crabb (17:43)
Yeah.

Edward Winslow (18:05)
So difficult to get business. was so difficult. And this was like, I’m resold easy. I get the listing. I’m marketing the property for sale. I think it was like maybe a 10 unit apartment building or something like that. anyways, I sell the building. then somewhere along the way, somebody else called me. And then somebody else called me.

And these calls started to come in out of the blue and they were all sort of the same. And, you know, like I heard, you know, I heard you’re the guy to talk to, you know, all of a sudden. I’m just all I’m thinking is before the New York Times article, I was just another broker. But after I was this individual that had credibility and trust. And the only way you can get that is by repetition. It’s not like.

You know, like I do these, you know, we do a lot of press releases and it’s, it’s, it’s not like you can run a press release and magic. Oh my gosh. I got this amazing piece of business. Now, sometimes it happens. We had one guy, I was telling you that, you know, we did one a week ago for a guy down in Dallas who did 115,000 square foot industrial lease. And he got it. We published this article, a pic gets picked up by business insider USA today.

And he gets a phone call from an owner who says, hey, I read your article. I got 90,000 square feet. got a lease. Can I talk to you? But usually what it is is it’s the process of filling your funnel. So you want to fill your funnel. And everybody’s going to be in a different level of awareness on that. They’re going through different processes in their mind. And what they’re doing

And this is in the proof stacking is I talk about the consumers. I call them doubters. I call them doubters and a doubter like you can like I got that out of the Polar Express, right? The Polar Express is a whole movie about the kid, the doubter and you know how he saw proof after proof after proof on his way to, you know, to Santa and he didn’t believe anything. And, you know, like it’s, you know, Moses and the Ten Commandments, it’s the same story.

Cody Crabb (20:28)
Look at the brass serpent and you’ll get healed and then no one did it.

Edward Winslow (20:34)
You know,

right. And it’s the same. It’s the human story of human nature is that, you know, people forget people. That’s why you need to be marketing yourself over and over because just because you get featured in the New York Times one time doesn’t mean that you’ve got that credibility forever. You got to keep doing it. And so really, I mean, I think anybody that’s listening to this, I mean, this is

This is my firsthand experience because you may wonder like, how the heck does marketing really work?

You you try, you try different things. You know, you try Facebook ads, you try YouTube ads, try SEO, you try posting on social media. And it’s like, this doesn’t work and this doesn’t work. And what happens is you quit. But the reality is, it does work. And the biggest mistake that I think we all make is that, you know, you’re moving people through these steps.

of awareness from, you know, least aware or least trust. You know, they trust you the least and you’re moving in through these steps. And as soon as you sit there and say, you know what, I’m. ⁓ You know, this is just not working. I’m going to chase this shiny object over here. Boom. You’ve moved all these people up to like level four before they make that. You’re starting over.

Cody Crabb (21:54)
Yeah.

Edward Winslow (21:58)
Because you’ve got that’s the way people work. I don’t care what you do. This is what I’ve learned the hard way is that this is what it takes to succeed is doing the same thing over and over. And the other thing I was talking about, we were talking about earlier is it is the shiny object system. But when you have your focus, let’s say you’re a real estate investor, right? You’re buying, let’s say you’re buying and rehabbing single family homes or

you know, strip centers or little multifamily properties or, know, whatever you’re doing. You know, it’s so easy to think, my gosh, you know, there’s I got this opportunity to do something big. That big thing could crush your business if it doesn’t work for you, because you’ve got it. They take longer. They require more capital. And you look at it and say, my gosh, this is my opportunity. Well,

maybe you’re better to stick with, you know, maybe you’re better to stick with, you know, just hitting singles every day than trying to go for that triple, you know.

Cody Crabb (23:06)
Yeah, yeah. Well, this has been really enlightening. really like your philosophy on kind of just business in general. But I also find the proof stacking concept really interesting. If somebody is listening to this and they would love to kind of get started on something like this, how would you where where should they find you online? Where can they get in touch?

Edward Winslow (23:26)
I’m pretty

easy to find and I’m always available.

Cody Crabb (23:29)
I would hope so based on our conversation that you’d be easy to find online because otherwise,

Edward Winslow (23:35)
LinkedIn

is a good place. LinkedIn is a good place because I’m always posting things. so you can read my post. You can see what I do. You can reach out to me directly. I’ve got CREPressReleases.com, which is you can go take a look at that site. ⁓ You can go on to do a search for proof stacking. There’s a whole bunch of information on Google. And you can actually pick up a copy of the book.

I think it’s $24 or something like that on Amazon. And I have a school group where I teach brokers and investors, all this stuff. But yeah, works. mean, there’s so many ways today that we can use information the right way.

Cody Crabb (24:26)
So true. So when people are kind of willing to provide some stuff for maybe not free, but like to kind of just give back, they’re not like extorting people to get some good information.

Edward Winslow (24:27)
And you know, one of the.

mean, one of the things that I’ve been doing is I work with this woman down in Dallas who’s a developer. And she works in, you know, she owns properties in downtown Dallas. And what we’ve been working on is building her online reputation, you know, creating content about her, you know, the way she thinks and about her properties and the way she approaches things and her market knowledge. And what I started to do is I would take my phone and I would get on and I, there’s a little record.

feature on the iPhone. I started, would just hit the record button and I would say, all right, tell me about, you know, the farmer’s market. That was like, she was, that’s a big section of Dallas. And she was like an early investor, you know, going back 20 years ago. And she, I said, tell me, why did you buy a property in the farmer’s market? And when it was just a nothing area. And she said, I bought this and this is what I saw and the local people didn’t see it.

And I thought this was the way the, you know, and she told this whole story and I said, okay, that’s great. So what, was the next building you bought? Well, I bought this building. so she told me this story in 25 minutes and I had it all recorded with her voice. And then what I did was I said, okay, that’s pretty good. You know, we’ve been on for 25 minutes here. I said, let’s write an article about this. We’re going to put this on your, you know, this little website called tanyaoutloud.com.

And we’re going to create a press release to promote this so that people in your market see, you they they learn about your inside knowledge about Dallas and your expertise. Yeah. I click the transcript button. I email it over to my email. So I’ve got it on my desktop. I grab this big, long run on paragraph. I pop it into chat. GPT. And I say, break this down into bullet points. And now.

Cody Crabb (26:28)
Yeah.

The possibilities now, right?

Edward Winslow (26:32)
So now I’ve got it in bullet point format. And then I take the content and I said, I want this. And it came in her voice. So now I was able to really create some amazingly insightful content out of her voice with whatever theme that I wanted. Now there’s another layer to this whole conversation. could go, we could have another 10 podcasts on this about how to create this content that speaks to people.

It’s a really, really great way of communicating with people today that you can, you’ve got these low cost, inexpensive tools. You already have some of these tools. can use the AI to create amazing content today that will convey your expertise so that the, online stuff is doing a lot of the heavy lifting for you because you know, we only, you know, somebody meets with us and they see us and they hear us, but they don’t know what’s really between our ears.

Well, you can take all that knowledge and you can put it on a website and social media so that people can check you out. Because that’s what people are going to do. They’re going to go check you out. No matter who you are, they’re going to go online. They’re going to check you out. going to search Google. They’re going to search the AIs. They’re going to look on social media. And they’re going to try and figure out who you are before they decide, do I want to do business with this person?

So there’s a lot of things, but it all comes down to this whole thing that if you want business, people got to trust you. How do you create trust? Market information, success stories, build your brand with in the media, which is today. did, you today, you know, back when I got featured in the New York Times, that was so unique. But today we have these online press releases.

that can get your name out there and put a spotlight on your business that anybody has access to. So it’s really, we’ve.

Cody Crabb (28:32)
I mean, there’s no delay either. It’s just a wild time to be alive doing this kind of stuff because it’s just everything is connected.

Edward Winslow (28:41)
You can get instant results. Like I could do a press release on what you and I are talking about today. And I could find, OK, what is the right keyword phrase that somebody might search? And I can promote a press release. I could have it ranking number one on Google tomorrow morning. I could take a screenshot of that. And I can use that as part of my inventory of assets that I can use in meetings. Hey, you want to know who I am?

half a dozen press releases that I was featured in.

Cody Crabb (29:13)
to say anything. also like even if they don’t find anything new about you, that’s like, wow. Like that’s, you know, it’s just the visual of it is very impressive too. So, well, Ed, thank you so much for all this time. This has been amazing. I think our audience has gotten a lot out of that. go make sure to go reach out to him. If you have questions or you want to, want to work with them, I think this is a really interesting perspective. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard of, kind of using the press release before, I guess that I suppose that’s why you have a business.

But thanks so much for sharing that with us. And thank you audience for giving us some of your time too. If you liked what you heard today, go ahead and give us a like, subscribe, all the things, so you don’t miss another great episode like this one. It’s been a real pleasure and thanks so much for hanging out with us today.

Edward Winslow (29:55)
Thanks, Cody. Appreciate it. All see you.

Cody Crabb (29:57)
Yeah, have a good one.