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Show Summary
In this episode of the Real Estate Pros Podcast, host Micah Johnson interviews Paul Frank, a seasoned professional in the commercial real estate sector. Paul shares his journey from a young age, influenced by his father’s experiences in real estate, to becoming a successful developer and broker. He emphasizes the importance of education, empathy, and a unique perspective gained from his diverse experiences in the industry. The conversation delves into the concept of ‘disruptive discipline’ and how it can lead to success in real estate, as well as defining success in terms of the impact one has on others rather than just financial metrics.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Paul Frank (00:00)
We left thatmeeting and he’s holding my hand and he looks down at me and he says, never do a deal for the sake of doing a deal. And fast forward to 2006, 2007, he passed away in the nineties, but that quote when I was seven years old is the reason I’m still sitting here today. Otherwise I could have made some pretty bad decisions without that advice when I was seven.
Micah Johnson (02:01)
Hey everyone, welcome to the Real Estate Pros Podcast. I’m your host, Micah Johnson. And today I’m joined by Paul Frank, who’s been making serious moves in the commercial real estate space for quite some time now. Paul, welcome in, man. Glad to have you.Paul Frank (02:14)
Great to be here, thank you.Micah Johnson (02:16)
Absolutely, I’m excited to dig in on what we have to talk about today. Our pre-recording call, I could have went for hours on what we were talking about. So I think our listeners are really gonna take something away from really how you approach it is what you do, the mentality behind it and what it’s allowed you to do throughout your career. You got 40 years of experience here. So let’s dive in on that. So for people who may not know you yet, what’s your main focus right now and what markets do you operate in?Paul Frank (02:44)
⁓ main focus, I, you know, I summarize it with Jack of all trades, master of none, ⁓ over my career. And currently I developing and brokering deals all over the country and a little bit of international stuff, all product classes. ⁓ just not, not a focus as you would normally see in traditional commercial real estate. My position has always been that.regardless of class or project type, they’re all boxes
to create income. And whether somebody sleeps in it or builds widgets or sells widgets, it doesn’t change the specifics too much.
Micah Johnson (03:25)
Interesting. It’s a great way to look at it. So let’s take a step back real quick. What led you to get into real estate and where you are today? Give us a little taste of that journey.Paul Frank (03:34)
Yeah, that’s a, that’s a deep question. I’ll give you the short version. was born at South Lake Tahoe, um, in California, and that was a gambling hub on the Nevada side. Um, you know, back, especially the 50s, 60s, seventies, my dad was a pit boss. My mom was a cocktail waitress and my dad decided that he didn’t want to raise a family in the, in the gambling industry. So he started dabbling.with real estate and I was blessed to have a father that literally took me everywhere from an absurdly young age, four or five years old, I had a little pin on tie and I was his mini me. Unfortunately, the time I spent with my dad was during some pretty dire economic times. Fortunately, the time I got to spend with my dad was during some very dire.
economic time. I got a taste of what it was like mentally and physically for him to face 21 % interest rate loans and some pretty dismal times, which in hindsight really helped me, you know, decades later navigate some difficult times myself.
Micah Johnson (04:53)
Man, that is powerful and it is lucky too. Not everybody gets that chance. Not everybody has someone that’ll do that. It’s one of the things I’ve actually been encouraged to do in my life.Let your kids see what you do. Let them see you in the meeting. Let them be there. They absorb way more than you could imagine and it creates a normalcy for them to operate in these kinds of environments.
Paul Frank (06:03)
Yep, absolutely. In fact, one of the most critical moments of my entire life, I was seven years old in San Francisco. I was with my dad at a meeting South side of Golden Gate Park and the meeting did not go well. That’s all I remember as a kid, but the park was out there and I was looking at it and my dad, six, five, two 65, tight end big guy.Micah Johnson (06:29)
Yeah.Paul Frank (06:29)
We left thatmeeting and he’s holding my hand and he looks down at me and he says, never do a deal for the sake of doing a deal. And fast forward to 2006, 2007, he passed away in the nineties, but that quote when I was seven years old is the reason I’m still sitting here today. Otherwise I could have made some pretty bad decisions without that advice when I was seven.
Micah Johnson (06:58)
Man, I mean, that, I think about my own friends that have gone through that same, made those mistakes, doing deals just for the sake of doing deals, how easy it is to kind of feel bored and need to go take action and do things that could be ultimately detrimental to what it is you’re trying to do. I try to encourage people, in real estate, real estate’s a get rich, slow scheme.Paul Frank (07:15)
Yep.Micah Johnson (07:24)
There’s nothing to hurry about. There’s you can’t get in a rush. If you, another good quote I like is we’re not, we’re deal finders. We’re not deal manufacturers. The more things that you have to make go right to win. Now you’re exponentially facing failure. Every little piece is you’re just introducing more chances for it to fall apart. So you were blessed man, drug around and giving million dollar advice at age seven that stuck. That’s killer.Paul Frank (07:49)
yeah.Yeah, absolutely.
Micah Johnson (07:57)
So let’s dig into your unique one that we were talking about because you don’t just have development experience, you have the brokerage experience as well. You see this from multiple angles. So tell us a little about that version of you and how that’s allowed you to keep operating consistently in your market.Paul Frank (08:15)
Yeah. Andagain, I owe a lot of this to my father. ⁓ He had me get my real estate license and my contractor’s license when I was 18, 19 years old. ⁓ So my experience, unlike as it relates specifically to the brokerage world, you know, have decades of development experience. So I’m living the debt structures. I’m signing the loan papers.
I’m responsible for this stuff. So as it relates to the brokerage world, I understand those loan covenants and all of the stuff that we, that a investor deals with in real time. It’s intimate situations for me. And also to the construction side, you know, not a lot of developers are also general contractors. I don’t build anything that I do anymore because it’s too complex, but you know, having decades.
as a general contractor makes it a little more difficult for people to kind of pull the wool over your eyes. So that breadth of experience is definitely unusual in the marketplace.
Micah Johnson (09:27)
And it is because you get a lot of times folks that don’t know that talk or can’t relate and it’s easy to get in that Senate, that state transactional where you’re just trying to get a deal done. You just you don’t really understand, but knowing for your position, you know exactly what anybody you’re fixing to work with is going to walk through. You know the exact document they’re fixing to sign. You’ve signed it. You’ve you’ve walked through that path. You can identify things that most can’t identify.And that becomes invaluable in this industry. Education is the number one thing you need to have no matter what asset class you’re in because knowledge is power.
Paul Frank (10:40)
Yeah, that ex experience side of it, you know, off topic, but a great example of that is my wife. I met her at the title company. She was in title and escrow for 25 years. And she put, as she puts it, it was not until she bought her first house and had to sign those documents that she had people sign every day that she really understood.what that all meant, what those loan documents meant because now it was her ink on that paper as opposed to just a client. So being, having that empathy from actually being in the position of having commercial debts and covenants and annual reviews and understanding personally what clients are going through from a brokerage perspective is a differentiator for sure.
Micah Johnson (11:37)
And you bring a unique lens to it too, because there’s an extra side of you we haven’t talked about yet where most folks might not, there’s some folks that don’t know you by Paul Frank, they might refer to you as coach. So with that whole other side where you’ve coached sports for years, that’s a, coaches are unique. There’s a unique way they do things. I value the ones I’ve had in my life. There’s a way you go about showing someone what they’re going through. So it’s not just the knowledge and know how.you hit it with the term empathy. You have this way of making it understandable and connect so that they do actually pull off their goal. It clicks, we’re gonna get there, here’s how we’re gonna do it.
Paul Frank (12:17)
Yep,yep, absolutely.
Micah Johnson (12:21)
So what are you looking at for 2026? What are your big opportunities this year?Paul Frank (12:26)
We’re still involved a bit in the development arena. We’ve got anything from, you know, million square foot logistics. We do a lot of ⁓ work for Dutch Bros coffee, for example, on build the suit, phasing out of that development world to some degree and focusing more on the brokerage side.I moved my brokerage company into a new platform about four years ago and it’s been the best four years of my career and really growing it. I’ve got team members all over the country as well as Mexico, Canada, India, Europe, and just doing things today that I never thought I would have. If somebody mentioned it five, six years ago, it would have been science fiction.
And then we’re also doing some work in the, in the data storage and compute, ⁓ arena that is fascinating to me. Cause in a way data storage, not, not just the physical structure of data storage, but getting down to the nodes and the use of the actual equipment. It’s sort of like a, a mini storage on steroids was my epiphany that you have these racks that are like little storage,
spaces only you can come to market in a lot quicker timeframe than you can with trying to build a storage facility or any project these days.
Micah Johnson (13:57)
Interesting. What, how’d you get into that space? What led to that door opening?Paul Frank (14:02)
it’s a really interesting, one of my buddies, that works for me now, he was the head of real estate for in and out burger for 25 years. And he ran into a network that, and some people that were engaged in that side of the business. And, ⁓ it was phenomenal because as I sat down with these people, I felt like a fish out of water. am not a tech guy, ⁓ but.As we’re going through it, I realized over the decades, how many people I had talked to that were engaged in that or using data storage or compute. And then that connection between those, ⁓ that infrastructure and how it’s, it’s almost like a Horton hears a who was my analogy of the Dr. Seuss with the, with the little world on the end of his, his
That’s all of sudden I realized that that’s what all this data storage and compute is. It’s just a different form of space being ⁓ leased out and used.
Micah Johnson (15:54)
Now, let me ask you this, you said a really interesting quote or phrase during our pre-call recording, and does this line up with that? Is that where the term disruptive discipline started to come in?Paul Frank (16:07)
Yeah, I’ve it’s you know, it’s Tony Robbins, I think that says he’s quoted as saying hunger is the the key factor in highly successful people. And ⁓ I hate to disagree with with Tony, but hunger without discipline is ⁓ sort of useless. ⁓ Discipline is absolute key, whether you’re digging ditches or whatever you’re doing, showing up and grinding.every day ⁓ is absolutely necessary. The force multiplier that I found both in sports and in business is disruptive discipline. If you can take a different angle, find a different audience, just find your own way to approach something combined with that discipline. That’s in my opinion, when you see, you know, those 10 X moves and ⁓ success stories.
Micah Johnson (17:06)
You got a good example that you could share with the audience about where you applied that in your own life.Paul Frank (17:12)
Um, well, I’ll give you a, uh, uh, an interesting one, for example, residential arm. I, uh, one of my kids that I coach, um, sells houses and you know, they do open houses and I had him team up with Cinnabon. Um, and what he did was he had 14 foot flags.⁓ made and they say open house with Cinnabon and a Cinnabon and he gets a package of Cinnabons for every open house. And I think last, the last open house he had, he had like 82 or 83 people show up. That’s in a market that if you polled people, you would probably get maybe four or five on average showing up to an open house.
And then the witness that that provided to the neighbors of this open house he’s sitting on is, okay, this guy’s doing something different. Look at this traffic. Now that’s disruptive discipline. Going out and doing the open houses and showing up. And I’m not a house sale guy. I’ve never sold a house in my life. I’m a commercial real estate, but the disruption and different approach stands on its own. But that just… ⁓
He had multiple conversations with the neighbors about what are you doing here? And that led to more referrals because of that different approach. Whereas the norm would be get a little couple A-frame signs and put them on the corner and hope people show up. You and I, if we drive by an open house and it says open house and it’s got a Cinnabon, ⁓ especially if the kids are with you, they may want to stop, right?
Micah Johnson (19:01)
Right, right, a little more incentive to go in.Paul Frank (19:02)
So that’s a real timeexample of ⁓ using that theory, I think.
Micah Johnson (19:10)
I like that because that’s how I got into real estate was as a retail realtor at first and then moved over to the investment side about three or four years in, I met my first investor and I had my mind just blown wide open about what was really possible out there. But yeah, it does, it makes sense. Like how are you going to, how are you going to set yourself apart beyond just working hard? Cause there was, there was actually, it’s funny. There was a, um, was a podcast I was watching a while back and it was Johnny Manziel actually said this.Talking about, he was talking about that dedication and work and he was referencing Tim Tebow where he’s like, if work was all it took, if just showing up and doing all the hard work meant you got it done, then he would be a starting quarterback in the NFL. So it’s not that it’s there’s this other factor to it that you have to have where that disruptive part really starts to make sense. So how do I take this thing I’m already really good at and taking the time and will continue and then angle the slightly different way to get an exponential impact? Cause
Paul Frank (20:08)
Yeah. And I’ll give you another quick example of that is that in commercial real estate, the accepted approach or paradigm is residential agents bad, don’t return their phone calls, don’t cooperate with them. Any of the globals, and if you pulled a thousand residential agents, their opinion of commercial agents, 900 and something are going to be at best unfavorable.I realized long ago that virtually everybody I’ve ever dealt with in commercial real estate lives in a house. And by virtue of that knows a residential agent and that residential agent, that relationship is usually a lot more personal than what we achieve. They get invited to the weddings and the baby showers, not us. So from a disruption standpoint for, you know, the last five, 10 years, my audience.
for lead generation is bringing in, loving on, and educating residential agents on how to find commercial leads within their own pool of deals, making them more valuable and basically doubling their business in some cases by cooperating and working with me.
Micah Johnson (21:28)
That’s a group. You’re finding the spider web is how I say it. Like if this is the thing we’re doing, what all touches it? What is out there where you can go connect? That’s how I thought about it when I first got in. There’s movers, there’s roofers, there’s, because home touches everybody. It touches everybody. So what relationships can you build where people are touching home? Where they’re already involved, where you can start having that and.Paul Frank (21:48)
Yeah.Micah Johnson (21:56)
It is all a sudden your business changes exponentially because a new customer is always the most expensive, but if you can get more out of the same customer, now you’re, now you’re doing something like you’re, you’re doing a real business. You’re making it somewhere and then being able to do that together. That’s what I like about that. Cause you’re right. Right. Retail and commercial, they do not have a lot of to say about each other. And it’s kind of trained from the beginning. So by thinking outside that box and saying, you know what, wait a second.Paul Frank (22:22)
yeah.Micah Johnson (22:26)
You just sold a house to the guy that I can sell commercial property to or sell it for, because he needs to live somewhere too. Hold on. This has a bigger connection. thought I love that man. All right. Disruptive discipline stolen, but now I’m going to backbite.Paul Frank (22:39)
Yeah, yeah, and it’son the ⁓ residential side. The ⁓ I equate it to if you are fishing in a boat and you’re allowed to fish with two poles, it is like leaving one pole baited in the boat and not putting it in the water. I advocate for every residential agent to team up with somebody like. ⁓
me a commercial agent and with every interaction with a current past future client asks a question, are there any commercial needs that we can help you with to not ask that question is a fool’s errand. In my opinion, it’s just, it’s silly. ⁓ and it’s been proven objectively, you know, I was the number one agent in the country for our brokerage that I’m under and
Probably 80 % of my transactions are coming from what I just described, the loving on and teaching commercial agents. And it’s a mutually beneficial symbiotic relationship. They win, I win.
Micah Johnson (23:40)
Wow.Yeah. The rising tides raise all ships. It’s, and it’s one of those ways where everybody can truly win. And that’s where, you know, real estate can start to feel transactional after a while. Like we’ve talked about before, where it’s, you kind of get siloed into your own little space, but you’re taking it a whole new way. And what’s unique, we’re talking about this pre-call. You didn’t just win. You weren’t just the highest or the number one agent in the brokerage. was another factor that you were at the top of too, which normally doesn’t mix. Which one was that?
Paul Frank (23:51)
Yeah.Yeah, I was a mentor of the year, which I didn’t really think of much, but it’s been really interesting the response to that. So again, I was the number one agent in the platform and I was mentor of the year. And apparently there’s not a lot of people that do and teach or coach at the same time. They usually pick a lane. So. ⁓
It’s, it’s been interesting. That just happened, ⁓ late last year when, when that was announced and the response has been interesting for sure. I never really thought about much about it.
Micah Johnson (24:56)
Well, and it lines up with, there was a quote you said beforehand too, of what success means, what success truly means, and what was really with your life that you shared with your dad, it all lines up because of what you saw personally and you live it out. So for those that are listening, what is that definition of success that you give?Paul Frank (25:15)
Yeah, I, and both in sports and coaching and business, I get this question a lot. It’s interesting. How do you define success? And it’s always come pretty easy to me to define it, especially after my father passed away in the nineties. And that is I define success by how many people show up to your funeral and what they have to say, because that is an indication.of the impact you made with the time God gave you on this planet and the lives that you actually touched. Nobody’s gonna look at your balance sheet or your bank account, but if you’re filling a stadium and people are there to sing your praises, that’s your legacy, not that bank account in my opinion.
Micah Johnson (26:02)
Agreed, agreed, man, because that bank account just goes to the next person, where the people you actually impacted, the individuals take that forever. You have no idea what it’s going to do, even for their own kids. That’s the powerful part. Taking that time for empathy, it’s amazing what one kind act will do. It’s amazing what just spending an extra second, and I just say actually caring. That is the secret sauce I found in life. Just actually care. And if you can’t actually care, don’t do it.Paul Frank (26:06)
Yeah.Micah Johnson (26:31)
It is a big sign. Don’t participate. Your real you is not going to show up. This is going to feel like it’s taking from you. I promise. Because if you can’t actually do that part, and you said this in the pre-call too, the number one thing in real estate is it’s a people business. The number two thing is this real estate. And if to get those backwards, that’s a side, that’s a, that’s a road to failure, honestly.Paul Frank (26:56)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That people side of, I have people that I help that have advanced degrees in real estate and probably could just blow doors on me on analysis, financial analysis, but they don’t have the people skills. They didn’t take the time to build those relationships. And in many cases they’re starving. And then I have other people that have those people skills and they’ve refined them and they read the books that I tell them to read.And, ⁓ we can prosecute any transaction anywhere. The real estate part is academic. The people part of it is where it all starts.
Micah Johnson (27:38)
for that real skillset live. So a little bonus, what’s a book you would recommend for someone to read that they’re listening to take a, know, start studying more about that.Paul Frank (27:48)
Gosh, actually on my website, I actually have a whole book review section because I got that question so much, but I’m a, I’ve got a whole stack of them here. could go for, ⁓ on forever, but, ⁓ number one reading, I spent a large portion of my life, not really engaged in reading that that is so important, especially the, some of the stuff that’s out there has just been a game changer in the lastMicah Johnson (27:53)
Nice.Paul Frank (28:17)
five, six, eight years for me. But if I had to pick one, Chris Voss would never split the difference. Chris actually worked with a guy that I know very well at the FBI for 25 years. So he was exposed to Chris for years and years ago, but never split the difference. And then I didn’t even know this until recently, but there’s another book that he co-authored, isthe full fee agent, which is much smaller. it is a, it goes over the applicable parts of his philosophies to the real estate game. But that’s a, that is a powerful tool-filled real ⁓ advantage book content right there.
Micah Johnson (29:07)
couldn’t agree more. That is one of my favorites. I remember the when I first got it. I was so enthralled by the story of it. I had to read it again right when it was over to get like what he was actually saying to see the nuts and bolts of it because you’re just listening and the what he’s talking about and how he’s doing it and hostage negotiations and that even how his story of how he got the job where it’s like it reminds me honestly of disruptive discipline where it’s like, okay, I don’t have the qualifications. I don’t have these things. ButI went and talked to this lady and she said, if I get this job, then I got a chance. And then I turned out to be the first one to ever do it. And then it’s just like, wow, wow, this is, it’s so powerful. So I definitely highly recommend that one. Well, you mentioned it just a second ago that there’s a website folks can find you on. So if somebody wanted to learn more from you, find out more about you, where’s the best place so they can go find you.
Paul Frank (29:45)
Yeah.The website is ⁓ PDF like the Adobe file ⁓ stands for Paul Daniel Frank. And I was actually around before Adobe, which is a little embarrassing, but PDF hyphen, which is a minus symbol, USA.com. So pdf-usa.com. then Instagram and LinkedIn is Paul Frank. F R A N K.
PDF. So Paul Frank PDF are both of those.
Micah Johnson (30:33)
Excellent, man. Well, I really appreciate your time today, your story, just walking us through even from a young age to what the lessons that really stuck the way you go about business. I really appreciate that. The change is bringing again, those two, you don’t become the number one agent, number one mentor by accident. That’s powerful. So thanks for the way you approach business. I think we need more folks out there doing it that way, leading with people first, actually caring. I just love that. So thank you so much for being with us today. For those of you tuning in.If you got value out of this episode, please like this podcast or like this episode, share this one, subscribe to the podcast. We’ve got more conversations coming up with operators just like Paul who are out there doing it the right way, building a real lasting legacy in the business. So thanks for being with us today. We’ll see you on the next episode.
