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Show Summary
In this conversation, Tony Hardy shares his extensive experience in the real estate industry, discussing his journey from commercial to multifamily real estate. He emphasizes the importance of collaboration, building relationships, and problem-solving in achieving success. Tony also introduces his concept of ‘ResiMershal,’ aimed at bridging the gap between residential and commercial real estate agents. He shares personal anecdotes of overcoming adversity and highlights the significance of serving clients beyond transactions.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Tony Hardy – Chicago (00:00)
and assembly line, they’re ready to go. They got all this material. And I said, all right, I want to set up a meeting and I just put two of them in a room together. Right. And before I know it, they’re going to put some houses on his land. They’re going to figure out a way to divide up the profits and we’re going to figure it out. And so it’s really just trying to, and we got to find a residential agent to sell them because I focus on commercial, but that’s the, that’s the, the situation where⁓ It’s really troubleshooting and trying to figure out how to solve challenges.
Quentin (02:07)
Hello everyone. Welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I am your host, Q Edmonds. And you know, I’ma say, I’m excited to be here today, excited for another guest. This is gonna bring us so much value. You get a chance to peek at things through his lens. You know, I say that quite often. That really would get to me going, just to see different people’s perspective as we do this thing called Real Estate. And so…This gentleman made broker
trade, but also an investor. Specialization has took this gentleman all over the US. And I’m excited about the way that he serves his clients. He’s a server at heart. And I just want to introduce you guys to Mr. Tony Hardy. Mr. Tony, how you doing today,
Tony Hardy – Chicago (02:53)
Hey, doing awesome.for having me.
Quentin (02:54)
okay.All right. So y’all, he got that smooth, velvet voice. Let me lower my voice a little bit, because you ain’t gonna out-smooth me on here, Mr. Tony. No, man, I’m super excited to have you here today, sir. Listen, I’ll be honest, man. I wanna dive right into it. I would love for you just to kind of take us into your world. Tell us what you’re mainly focused on these days.
Tony Hardy – Chicago (03:02)
I love it.Quentin (03:21)
If you want to give us a little bit of an origin story of how you got started, how you got into real estate, we love origin stories. And also man, tell us what market you’re operating in,Tony Hardy – Chicago (03:31)
Awesome. Yeah. So actually I got into real estate 25 years ago, right out of college. ⁓ and it was actually at a college fair. And some of the people that know methis story, but, and I got a job offer at the college fair and I was asked, I got to a second interview and they said, Hey, here’s the job. Here’s the salary. It was a trans Western, a commercial real estate company. And, I was in interview asking, okay, this is wonderful.
How do I get a raise? And they said, hey, you want a raise, you got to get on the fast track. Typical day is nine to five. You need to get here at seven, you leave at seven. You do that for two and a half, three years, you probably could get a three to $4,000 raise. And one of the classes I took in college gave me a certificate which would allow me to sit for the real estate exam. And it was at that career fair.
Quentin (04:02)
YouMm. Yeah.
Tony Hardy – Chicago (04:27)
In my senior year of college that I decided I was gonna take that certificate and work for myself from 7 a.m. To 7 p.m. For two and a half years and see what that got me and it got me a lot further corporate corporate route YeahQuentin (04:39)
Mmm, come on.Yeah.
I love it, man. So that’s the origin. Tell me about where you are now. Like, what are you mainly focused on these days,
Tony Hardy – Chicago (04:53)
Yeah, so I do a healthy amount of multifamily, affordable housing and market rateand just really servicing the client is where I spend my time. I started in commercial 16 years ago at one of the older investment companies. And ⁓ what we did is you specialize on a neighborhood and a product type. My neighborhood was the South side of Chicago. My product was multifamily. ⁓
Most real estate agents want to do everything everywhere. And don’t tell me I can’t sell in downstate or upstate or downtown or uptown. My license is good all over the state. What I learned through specialization is that specialization allowed me to own a market, allowed me to market to everybody in that market. And also it took me all over the United States eventually because my clients were bigger than that market. Some guy may own a property here in Chicago.
and own, actually that happened. I’m one of my first outside of the state deals. I sold an indiscreet six unit apartment building for a guy on the South side of Chicago. And after the closing, he called me up and said, hey, thank you very much. We also have a retail CVS center in the state of Georgia. And I would like you to be the point of contact. I’d like you to take the lead and help me.
to figure out how we can sell that deal. And we did. And that same model, stick into the specialization stick, and it’s done. And now I am doing ⁓ supply chain and manufacturing. I’m the Illinois market vice president for supply chain manufacturing and also ⁓ senior housing division. I’m the market VP for the senior housing division. We’re doing that. Still multifamily.
affordable market rate is probably 75 % of my business and probably 75 % of that is still in that Southside of Chicago market, but we’re doing deals all over Mid-America. I’m the Mid-America regional director for KW Commercial, which is about 42 offices I’m responsible for.
Quentin (07:48)
Amen.Yes, sir. Yes, sir. I love it, man. I love it. So, man, you found success. You found your stride. You was able to go from commercial now to these multifamily, affordable housing, that specialization took you all around the world, well, all around the US. What are some of the key strategies that you use business-wise and actually even personally to keep you kind of running smoothly, to keep you on track, to keep you reaching your goals?
What are some of the strategies that you use, Ms. Tony?
Tony Hardy – Chicago (08:24)
Two things one one is look for opportunities to collaborate look for opportunities where I don’t have to do everything and I find that I get a lot more done When I can spread it out we get a real estate deal If this guy has market share and does a lot of deals in that market I’ll call them up and have a conversation with them and see if we can figure out a way to work together to do more ⁓ which iscounterintuitive for real estate agents. want it all. We want a hundred percent. And if I got to share it, then I’m losing business. If I flip that and we really try to collaborate. And the other thing is servicing the client, going after client perspective and trying to understand their business and how we can impact it in a way to help them make more informed decisions, but also to add to their bottom line. ⁓
not in the real estate is kind of just incidental to the to to everything else and some of my clients have become good friends. Go to their weddings and ⁓ you know we take trips together things like that where ⁓ because it becomes more than just transactional we really understand that they have they have this they’re buying and selling one percent at a time.
The other 99 % of the time they’re trying to problem solve. They’re trying to figure out how to get out of this three. I got a 3 % interest rate
years ago. I got a balloon payment. Now I got to refinance it, but rates are six or seven. What do I do? Um, and all of the other things that happen in between those cycles help them feel back, feel vacancies and things like that. And really look at the, the advise them. I’ve become more, more, less of a broker and more advising across the.
entire portfolio and coming up with strategies to help them win, create win-wins for the client.
Quentin (10:59)
Absolutely. Well, listen, I’m going to pull on that strategic mind. I’m going pull on that helping mind because I know you have walked people through different scenarios, right? And so I always get to a point in the podcast where I bring up adversity, right? Because we show people the success a lot. We show people the shiny object. But sometimes we don’t show them how the shiny object is built, right? We don’t show them the journey to success.And so I know there’s been moments in your career where things have got real, where deals have went sideways, times when you had to pivot fast, even maybe even walk your clients through times like that. And I was just wondering, maybe you could share a story like that, because we got people that’s listening, there are different parts of their journey. They could be stuck. And I think sometimes getting people’s perspective of how they got unstuck can help somebody else get unstuck, if you know what I mean.
Tony Hardy – Chicago (11:56)
Yeah, yeah, this happened just last week. Actually, I had a client that he has a bunch of land and he wants to sell it. But his price is a little bit more than market. He’s like a little bit higher than he needs to be to sell it. So I’m like, what happened? He bought all this land and he really wanted to develop it. And now he’s starting to develop and build gas stations and car washes. So all the land that isn’t a gas station,Quentin (12:20)
Mmm, yep.Tony Hardy – Chicago (12:23)
fit or car wash fit, we’re starting to put on the market and it’s a lot. It’s a hundred, 200 lots, right? And so when I got to the core that he really wanted to develop it, I met with another group that just purchased a modular development company that went out of business. They bought the company out of bankruptcy. So they got this big factory full of employees, full of houses.Quentin (12:51)
AllTony Hardy – Chicago (12:53)
and assembly line, they’re ready to go. They got all this material. And I said, all right, I want to set up a meeting and I just put two of them in a room together. Right. And before I know it, they’re going to put some houses on his land. They’re going to figure out a way to divide up the profits and we’re going to figure it out. And so it’s really just trying to, and we got to find a residential agent to sell them because I focus on commercial, but that’s the, that’s the, the situation where⁓ It’s really troubleshooting and trying to figure out how to solve challenges.
Quentin (13:27)
Yeah. Now again, man, that you, are very consistent even before we got the tape in this been very consistent about serving your clients. You’ve been very consistent about collaboration over competition. And to me, it sounds like you are a connector. You like to connect people together. You like to find how one person can help another and be that bridge that connect people together. AndThat’s what I hear when I hear you talk. That comes through very clearly to me.
Tony Hardy – Chicago (14:00)
Yeah, I’m a team player. Yeah.Quentin (14:01)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.Yeah. So listen, let me ask you this, man. What are you looking to solve or scale next? Like what’s the next real goal for you,
Tony Hardy – Chicago (14:12)
Yeah, so one of the challenges I’ve been seeing since I’ve been in the industry is, and now with the legislation that’s been coming out lately, it’s really forcing residential agents to behave more like commercial brokers. Commercial brokers, every time we do a deal, we gotta call the other guy and say, hey, are you giving me a commission on this if I bring you a buyer or bring a tenant to that building, or do I gotta figure something out, right? And we just have to have that real conversation. Recently, the laws have changed whereResidential agents can’t advertise that. They gotta call in and do that negotiation, do that dance, so to speak, to make it happen. Also, when I moved into KW Commercial, which is a division of Keller
Keller Williams, which has massive offices, they do a million transactions a year, they got a thousand offices. One of the things was, you hear residential agents can’t do commercial, or residential agents are getting in the way, or.
or the residential agents are saying the commercial agents aren’t returning my calls or they don’t want to do business or they want to take my client but they don’t want me to be involved. And so really trying to figure that out and one of the things was there is a path. Every developer that I’ve ever met, every investor that I’ve ever met, I don’t care how big you are. I don’t care if you’re a billionaire. Guess what? You probably live in a house.
and that house was sold to you probably by a residential agent who was invited to the housewarming party, who probably came and met your kids, went to the bar mitzvah, came to the dance and things like that. That relationship is more important than the real estate. Cause it’s the relationship that helps you to navigate that when it gets tricky, this is always going to be price discovery. The buyer wants to pay less than the seller needs to get. And it’s
that relationship that bridges that gap is if you could just push a button and do that on a computer, they wouldn’t need brokers, right? So that’s where we come in and really trying to solve for X and show the residential agents a direct path to how they can do commercial real estate. And it doesn’t mean you got to learn everything that it took me two years in commercial real estate to learn how much I didn’t know about the business. Right. and, ⁓
Quentin (17:14)
Yeah. Yeah. ⁓Tony Hardy – Chicago (17:18)
to do it if you partner with the right team of commercial agents. And same thing with the commercial brokers, right? If you’re advising your clients, right? My client will sell an apartment building and buy a house to flip. I’m not gonna go in there and fail at trying to sell his house. I’ll try to find somebody that’s got market share in that market to do that. And if you look at that path and that bridge and connect those dots, there is a path for us to all do better.Quentin (17:31)
Yeah.Tony Hardy – Chicago (17:47)
And that path is what I call ResiMercial. And I recently wrote a book about ResiMercial to really solve for that, to help commercial brokers that are in that seesaw effect. You get a great month and then you go two, three months with nothing. Then you get an excellent month and really to help to smooth that out. And some of that is really collab through collaboration. And also for the…Quentin (17:50)
Hmm.Tony Hardy – Chicago (18:14)
residential agents that are trying to work with the commercial brokers on getting deals done doesn’t mean that you got to learn everything to do it. We got a 192 checklist just from contract to close. By the time I’m filled in offers, I’m on the 30 yard line. I got 70 yards to go. All of that, we need to maneuver this and get the client to the goal line. And you’re going to learn just by figuring out how to do more deals. We’re going to do deals and you’re going to learn on each one.Quentin (18:40)
Yeah. Listen, I hear you, man. You keep talking about collaboration. You keep talking about relationships. I want to double down because it seems like relationships is very, important to you. Right. And so I really when it comes to relationships and like growing your network. Right. What’s made the biggest difference for you?Tony Hardy – Chicago (18:52)
Yes.⁓ really when I stopped being transactional, ⁓ we used to, when I was at the investment, we just did investment sales. We call every owner up and say, Hey, I want to build a relationship with you. I want to, are you ready to sell? They’re like, no, I’m not selling. All right. I’ll call you back in a year. See if you’re ready to sell what happened to the relationship. Right. But when you find out, Hey, the guy really has problems that he’s trying his, his, his, his furnace just went out.
Quentin (19:08)
Hmm.Tony Hardy – Chicago (19:32)
Right? And if you could make a connection or make a referral or send an interview over there, he’s trying to, his property manager’s not doing the right thing right now. He’s looking for another company. Right? And if you get in the middle of that and figure out how to do something else to help them over the entire whole period, you are building that relationship and you are helping to add to that bottom line. And when it is time for them to sell, who they’re to remember, right? I had a client.Recently, we sold a 22 unit apartment building for, and he asked me how much you gonna charge me to do it, Tony. But I was like, oh, I’m gonna charge you X. And he’s like, no, you’re gonna charge me, I’m gonna pay you this. And it was a percent more than I asked for. And he said, remember when we going through COVID and you told me to fill out this application because the government had a grant program. I filled out that application and guess what? I got $30,000 to help out with my utility costs.
because we were going through that challenge. And first of all, you gotta be my broker on this deal. And second of all, I wanna pay you handsomely to do this transaction. Ended up being a million, 750 we sold that property for. So that is that part of it. And also I do give, I do work, give or share with them. I work on a nonprofits, right? I volunteer.
Quentin (20:56)
Yeah. ⁓Tony Hardy – Chicago (20:58)
This is the first year that I’m not a member of on the board of the Chicago Association of Realtors, which has like 92 events a year. And that takes a lot, but it did give me the time where I could focus and get this out. And it’s more of a project that are for the book was really to help the industry. It’s a give back.Also sit on the board of the Neighborhood Building Owners Alliance, which is a consortium of property owners throughout the city of Chicago. They’re at nine or 10 different neighborhoods where each group of property owners get together every month or every couple weeks, have dinner and change ideas, share business practices, talk about the latest legislation that rolled out of City Hall and how we can navigate those. And then…
we all get together as president or leadership of each of the individual groups with the larger organization and kind of crown each other’s shoulders and figure it out together so that we can figure out how to move things along. And it can be something as simple as, hey, I got this guy, he did a really good job on my boiler, or he fixed my roof for really good price. And we’re sharing that kind of data to help the cause. The other one is the Greater Chatham Initiative, which does…
projects on the South Side to help local businesses on the business side of their business. And we have worked with about 40 plus restaurants that great food, great chefs, great people, great human beings, but sometimes the business ended at, right? The books might not be as straight as they need to be. We’ll come in and we’ll volunteer and account services for them for a year or so and help them to get that straight or get their…
Quentin (22:50)
youTony Hardy – Chicago (22:51)
restaurant consultant in and help them get their point of sale or their triangle, so to speak, in order. ⁓ And that is rewarding because we’re creating legacy all around, through real estate and through small businesses.Quentin (23:05)
See man, so again, you not just talking to talk, you walking this walk when you talk about collaboration, servitude, relationships. I hear it loud and clear, man. And so thank you, man. Thank you for being that person that’s just not talking it, but that’s walking it when it comes to relationships. see it is working. The story that you told when he said, no, I’m going to pay you this percentage, a percentage higher. I mean, that is a testament.to just you build relationships and keeping those connections and collaborations going. And so, Mr. Tony, listen, I know you’ve mentioned the book. Listen, before we wrap, if someone else wanted to reach out to you and connect with you, collaborate with you, learn more about what you’re doing, man, give us all of it. Tell us more about the book. Tell us more about where we can get in contact with you. I want people to be to reach out to you.
Tony Hardy – Chicago (23:56)
yeah, so the book has been out for three weeks. I recently got a note from my publisher email saying that they’re going to have to update the cover. It’s called Resimercial Revolution, a broker’s playbook for commercial real estate mastery. It’s available on Amazon. They have to update the cover because they have to put an emblem on here that says number one bestseller. It’s been well received by the industry. It’s doing what it’s supposed to do. I’m getting messages from real estate agents around the country saying, Hey,I’m reading and I’m learning. Thank you for putting this out. I’m also getting some hate mail from some commercial brokers for spilling the Kool-Aid. Right? But that’s okay. But yeah, so that’s available on Amazon. Thebrokersplaybook.com is the website, but you could go to Amazon.
Quentin (24:41)
Listen, it’s, yeah.Got you.
Got you. Any other way you want to tell people how to get in contact with you if they’re looking to do business with you, collaborate with you, any other information you want to drop?
Tony Hardy – Chicago (24:59)
I’m easy to find. Tony Hardy, LinkedIn, Instagram, all of those places, you’ll be able to find me. yeah, ⁓ thank you for having me here. This was a great opportunity and I really appreciate the conversation.Quentin (25:17)
Well, listen, man, thank you, sir. Thank you for coming through with your stories. Thank you for coming through with your perspective. Definitely thank you for giving us the gift of your time. This has been great. And I know people want to get some really, really good value out of this conversation,Tony Hardy – Chicago (25:33)
Thank you.Quentin (25:34)
Absolutely. But listen, you heard Mr. Tony. Y’all got the value. He didn’t tell you about the book. He give you the plays. He got people banging down his door like, why are you telling them the secrets? But listen, he didn’t came. He didn’t gave us the value. And so please, please reach out to him. But then also make sure you’re subscribed. You do not want to miss out on this amazing content. And so Mr. Tony, I thank you again, sir. And to everyone else, we will see you on the next time.
