The Power of Relationships in Real Estate: Stash Geleszinski’s Secrets

Quentin Edmonds(01:31)

Hey everyone, welcome to the Investor Field podcast. I’m your host Quentin Edmonds, you know, better known as Q. And today I’m joined by someone I’ve been looking forward to chatting with, my friend Stash Geleszinski. Geleszinski . See, I didn’t mess it up already. Geleszinski . Who is making serious moves in the, I don’t want to give it away, but he got, ⁓

something that can track a little data, maybe help you out, ⁓ maybe get to some transactions before they kind of go to the market. So I just, I don’t want to give it to too much away because I my man to be able to teleport to himself or itself, but I’m just glad to have him here. And Stash, I think our listeners are really going to take something away from your approach, your approach to this technology, your approach to building a platform that’s really going to help people. And so, man, listen, I just want to dive in.

So first off, for people who may not be familiar with you and your world, give us a short version of what’s your main focus these days.

Stash Geleszinski (02:38)

Yeah, so Q, thank you so much for having me. ⁓ My name is Stash Geleszinski. ⁓ I’ve been in commercial real estate and brokerage predominantly the majority of my career. ⁓ And I’m a partner and a founder of a firm called Needle. And you can find it at Nedle.us, N-E-D-L.us. And the hypothesis behind that is what if you could use data and analytics to predict real estate transactions? And it really came out of a need for that I had.

⁓ being a broker, you know, I, I met all my friends through cold calls, essentially, you know, burning up the phones and, know, what I found was that, you know, Q, if you have 20 properties and I say, Hey, you’ve got 20 properties. you want to sell any of them? It’s a blanket now because no, immediately now, but if, if I can call you and get in front of you at the right time, at the right place, about the right property, ⁓ you’re going to be much more inclined to be like, huh.

Yeah, no, we were actually just thinking about that. We’re actually just evaluating that. So that’s the path that my partners and I ⁓ started walking down a few years ago. And we found that our models are up to 80 % accurate in identifying transactions ⁓ before they either go to market. So within six months. then we also, for the brokerage community, we have a buyer matching ⁓ algorithm that is about 70 % accurate in identifying buyers.

Quentin Edmonds (04:05)

Mm. Mm. Yeah, man. I love it. I really, really love it. What caught my attention that you said up to 80 % accuracy. Yeah. That’s what I’m talking about, And I’m sure within this climate, sometimes it can’t be easy. I would imagine sometimes it get people to really buy in to that 80 % accuracy. Because I don’t know. Have they ever heard of anything like that? Have you ever heard of anything like that? 80 % accuracy?

Stash Geleszinski(04:35)

Yeah, I mean, there’s ⁓ the typical broker, you know, model is, you know, you’ve got a one to 3 % conversion rate. So if you’re making a hundred calls a day, maybe you’re going to have 10, 15 conversations a day. But out of that, you’re going to have, you know, maybe 3 % of those that are actually going to turn into an interested or motivated seller. Cause you’re just kind of doing blanket cold calling. ⁓ And so have I.

There’s not really any other solution out there. There’s a couple of other products that maybe have some degree of, ⁓ it’s essentially lead scoring for commercial real estate, for properties. ⁓ But the difference is that we have the contact information. We know who the owner is. We know who the true owner is, who the person behind the LLC is. And that’s what some of our competitors don’t have. So ⁓ no, I mean, it kind of sounds too good to be true, but it’s true.

It’s there. It works. I’ve gotten listings and closings directly from the platform.

Quentin Edmonds (05:39)

I love it, man. I love it, man. So let me ask you this. What’s been the key to keeping that machine running smoothly?

**Speaker 2** (05:47)

You know, it’s, it’s, ⁓ you still gotta go out there and sweet talk the princess. You know, you can’t just call somebody and be like, Hey Q, I know you’re going to sell this property because that’s an immediate turnoff. So you still have to go out there and be providing value, ⁓ to the person on the other end of the phone. But the best way to do that is to help fill a need that they have when you call them.

And that’s what we’re helping, ⁓ you know, our, users do is be.

efficient with their time. know, because early brokers, I’ve seen it time and again, and I almost fell victim to it myself is, you know, you feel like you want to know everything about a given owner, all their properties, everything so that when you get them on the phone, you can be on top of the game. So what you do is you spend, you know, 15 to 30 minutes researching the prospect and then you you’re like, Okay, I’m ready to go. And then you pick up the phone, you make the call, and it goes to voicemail.

and then you’ve got to do it again and again and again. Whereas what we’re saying is we can show you their whole portfolio, but more importantly, we can give you the talking points and the deals that you want to have a conversation with them about here, now, today. ⁓ So that’s what we’re trying to do.

Quentin Edmonds (07:57)

No, absolutely. The part I love what you said is feeling a need, right? I think when people understand that this is something that they need and you can feel it, I think that is the key to success. That is key to something arriving, but also the key to getting people to buy in when they can see, yeah, like I need this. This can actually change everything.

Stash Geleszinski(08:27)

I’ve had a number of demos with property owners showing them the solution and well, let’s see what you have. And it’s great when, you know, the properties that we’ve identified, they’re like, huh, yeah, we’re, ⁓ I’m not going to confirm or deny, but ⁓ we may have been thinking about selling those.

Quentin Edmonds (08:42)

Right by that part! ⁓

Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely, absolutely. I get it, man. Now listen, Mr. Stash, now every operator I know, they have a moment where things, you know, they get real, right? Maybe a deal that went sideways or a time maybe that you had to pivot. You mind sharing one of those moments within, you know, your journey?

Stash Geleszinski (09:12)

And the whole startup industry, the whole startup game is a challenge in and of itself. Cause what you’re trying to do is create, a, a solution out of nothing. ⁓ it was literally just an idea I had, and I had a friend come to me. He’s like, Hey, my partners and I have a background in software. We want to buy value, add real estate. And I was like, my God, like I’ve been thinking about this for years now.

And so, you know, that was kind of the challenge is getting, cause what’s interesting is I had some partners in my brokerage practice and I was like, what if we could do this? And they’re like, nah, that’ll never work. And, and, you know, it’s just kind of that. You got to have that belief in yourself. Cause if you don’t believe in yourself, nobody else is going to. you know, I think one of the hardest parts is just getting started and walking down that path. ⁓

You know, pivots, I think it’s, we haven’t necessarily had to pivot necessarily, ⁓ but I think being open to adapting. So we’ve had some conversations with some other ⁓ technology companies and ⁓ there’s one in particular that they do essentially smart monitoring for utilities, ⁓ know, boilers, ⁓ chillers, cooling towers, things like that. And

You know, I was having a conversation with them and I was like, you know, we could, we could not only partner on data sharing, but we could just tweak our, our, algorithm for you and create a set of hot leads for you based on a number of different data points that are readily available out there. It just takes, ⁓ you know, an understanding of, how to be able to, capture that data.

what’s important to you because what’s important to an investment sale broker is going to be different than what’s important to somebody selling ⁓ utility monitoring. So I think, again, it’s not necessarily a pivot, but it’s. ⁓

persevering and then being open to other opportunities as they present themselves.

Quentin Edmonds(12:06)

Absolutely, absolutely. Nope. That’s the kind of stuff people really don’t talk about enough and and honestly It’s kind of what separates the folks who kind of dabble from those who stay kind of in it the long game And so man, it’s not like you got something figured out there. So let me ask you this What are you focused? What are you most focused on? Like like what are you focusing on like scaling or problem that you’re looking to solve? Like what’s the goal? What’s next for you?

Stash Geleszinski (12:34)

So what we’ve done with the platform is we bootstrapped it for the initial way. Then we did a friends and family capital raise. ⁓ We’re probably half a million dollars into it. And now we’re in the midst of our seed capital raise round. it’s perseverance. It’s going out there getting your teeth kicked in by VCs for various reasons. just, all right, well, one down.

Uh, or 700 down, we got onto the next one. And you know, it’s just, it’s similar in my brokerage practice. I remember, you know, I would get a no. Um, I remember my, had a guy, um, he was my partner ended up being my partner for 10 years. Um, and we went and did a proposal on like a 700 unit deal. And at the time we were mostly hustling like 30 unit deals, but I’d been sticking with this owner for a while. And we went to, did the proposal.

⁓ we didn’t end up getting the transaction, but you know, just for me being at the table and even when I got the no, ⁓ from the owner, Hey, we’re going to go with, you know, this much more established, competitor. All right. That’s great. And I just picked up the phone and kept, kept on prospecting. You know, that’s the name of the game. So it’s just, ⁓ perseverance in the face of adversity.

Quentin Edmonds (14:01)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Nope, that’s big. That’s big the perseverance aspect of it Especially, you know, you already got things in place that’s moving and then now you’re trying to get people to buy into This new idea this this new tool I mean what he called it I did because you you’re proving it right so this new tool and so what I do understand is that the next move It can either compound things

Or it can create chaos depending on how you play it. Now I know a lot of people they listening and they’re either early in their journey or they’re looking to level up. And I think they’ll benefit from hearing this. So when it comes to building relationships and growing your network, what’s made the biggest difference for you.

Stash Geleszinski (14:50)

That’s a great question. ⁓ So when I first started, I was all about, you know, transactions deals, because as a broker, like that’s your value. But, that’s what you think your value is, what your value is, is ⁓ coming to each conversation and providing value, adding value to each conversation. So

You know, the most blatant way to do it is to come with a deal, but maybe there’s, you know, a new job announcement, or maybe, know, some market Intel about a competitor or a recent trade or something like that.

So, you know, making sure that you’re, ⁓ having, ⁓ insightful, intelligent conversations, so that when you do get somebody on the phone, because as you keep calling to, as you build your practice,

people are going to, they’re going to see your phone. They’re going to see your number on the phone and they’re going to say, do I want to have a conversation with this person or not? And you only get like three at bats before they will just ignore your call forever. So you want to make sure that when you are calling, you have something of value.

Quentin Edmonds (16:48)

Mm-hmm. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Like you can’t fake that like relationships are everything in this space. And so yeah, so yeah Yeah, yeah when you when you got them, you got to make sure you land this thing So now I definitely understand that man. Yeah, talk about that more yeah, you definitely have the nurse room for sure. Yeah

Stash Geleszinski(17:06)

And you have to be centering them too.

Yeah, so, you know, the way to think about building relationships is it’s an ongoing conversation, you know, and it may be a conversation that you just have once a year. But, you know, and you don’t necessarily need to know everything about how’s your wife or how’s your kids or how’s your dog or how’s your vacation that those things actually don’t add value. And in fact, I hate it when a salesperson calls me and tries to like dig into my personal because like, that’s not why we’re here to talk.

We’re here to talk about this. Let’s get to it. And so I think it’s knowing your audience too. Like some people, you can have those with it and, you can’t fake it too. You can’t ⁓ pretend to care about somebody’s dog if you’re allergic to dogs and don’t actually like dogs.

Quentin Edmonds (17:50)

That part

Stash Geleszinski(18:02)

But there are some guys that I have genuine connections with and it’s like, man, how are you? What’s up? How you doing? And, but that comes over time and building trust. ⁓ So that’s what I would say about that.

Quentin Edmonds (18:15)

Yeah,

man. No, you are definitely right. That’s personal and professional. So you are absolutely, absolutely correct. So listen, man, before we wrap up, if someone wanted to reach out to you, connect with you, maybe collaborate with you, or learn more about what you’re doing, what’s the best way for them to reach out to you?

Stash Geleszinski (18:37)

Yeah, so if you’re interested in a demo or I mean, we have a free trial built right into the website, but the website is nedl.us and e-d-l.us. My email address is [email protected]. And if you want to call, call me. I would welcome that. My number is 513-417-5588. Bring it on.

I’m a warrior. ⁓

Quentin Edmonds (19:14)

Absolutely, man, absolutely But perfect. Well, listen, man, I appreciate your time. I appreciate your story your perspective We need more people like you in this space who’s doing it the right way man So thanks again for being here and for those tuning in if you got value from this make sure you subscribe Make sure you subscribe. We got more conversations coming with operators just like my man stash

GILESLISIS

Stash Geleszinski (19:42)

Thank you.

Quentin Edmonds (19:44)

Sir, I appreciate you man. So listen to the next time everyone and tune in and we look forward to seeing you on the next time Have a great one.