Self Storage Advisor. I broker, manage, and invest in self storage.
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Joined December 2011
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Tom Flannigan retweeted
A bit of business etiquette:
Before sending any document for e-signing, send an email explaining what the document is, why you need it signed, & attaching the document itself as a pdf.
Tom Flannigan retweeted
The difference between the top real estate owners in the world and everyone else?
Speed
Earlier this year I sent a perfect deal to a client that owns 300+ properties and is busy beyond belief
Thirty minutes later they emailed back with an offer
Recently I found a similar opportunity for a smaller owner I work with that only has a couple buildings
I sent it over, and explained why it was perfect for them
Then we spent the next month going back and forth over email
By the time they made a decision, a larger group had already bought it
Speed wins
Tom Flannigan retweeted
The most valuable trait of an entrepreneur:
A sense of urgency.
Most people walk slow, think slow, move slow, make decisions slow.
They lolly gag around life.
No energy. No excitement.
Those people never end up making it happen.
They end up working for the man, clocking in at 9am and clocking out at 5pm.
Doing the absolute bare minimum to get paid next Friday and not get fired.
Never making moves to chase additional opportunities and never taking a stab at entrepreneurship.
Tom Flannigan retweeted
Want to crush it in brokerage? Here’s the magic formula:
Make 100 calls.
Do it again tomorrow.
Repeat for 10 years.
Tom Flannigan retweeted
The uglier the problem, the bigger the payday.
Everybody wants to chase “fun” careers—music, art, sports, entertainment.
Problem is, those lanes are overcrowded with people willing to grind for free just to get a chance. More fun = more competition = less money.
Now think about pest control. Nobody’s out here saying, “I just love crawling under houses and killing roaches, I’ll do it for free.” Exactly. It sucks.
Which is why those guys make solid money while most “passion chasers” struggle to get paid.
The less glamorous the work, the fatter the paycheck.
Chase problems, not passions
Tom Flannigan retweeted
You don’t need a genius IQ to dominate this industry. You need grit, preparation, and relentless follow-through. Most brokers fail because they stop trying.
Tom Flannigan retweeted
It's Blackstone, not BlackRock, and they don't own many homes. 🫡🇺🇸
Charlie Kirk on @foxandfriends: “One out of four of all home purchases in the last year were out of these firms like BlackRock that come in and are bidding out first time home buyers.”
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
Blackrock does not buy individual houses.
blackrock.com/corporate/news…
Also this claim is completely false and been debunked many times over
finance.yahoo.com/news/no-wall-s…
Tom Flannigan retweeted
Take 4 mins today to watch Reagan's last speech as president, one of the best ever.
He talks about what makes America great- immigrants.
It’s so good
🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
Tom Flannigan retweeted
Predictor for how much a new CRE broker will make:
Are you local? (Add $20,000)
Family in the industry? (Add $15,000)
Graduate from a top school? (Add $20,000)
Work for an elite brokerage? (Add $10,000)
Smarter than your peers? (Add $75,000)
Total it and multiply by zero.
Tom Flannigan retweeted
Many people live like this:
They try to get a credit by telling the hotel how upset they are about the water pressure.
They ask for discounts from their friend the auto-mechanic, and negotiate even with their barber and their dentist.
It's an all-out relentless effort to save a few bucks here and there, but at what cost?
They dedicate themselves to obsessively saving every penny they can, even if they make millions.
They can't help it. It's an addiction. They have to win.
They never consider how much better off they'd be if they put all that energy to better use, or saved themselves the trouble.
You saved $80, but what about the conflict, stress, and time it took to do it?
What a crazy blind spot.
Tom Flannigan retweeted
The more control you have over your attention, the more control you have over your future. And it starts with having enough courage to protect your time.
It's so easy to say yes. We want to be agreeable, helpful, liked. That's how time disappears and attention becomes fragmented: not in big chunks, but in a thousand small concessions.
What you trade your attention for is what your life becomes.
Tom Flannigan retweeted
You either:
Want to get ahead of your peers, grow your professional life quickly, do big things, and make a ton of money.
OR
You want to work remote
Tom Flannigan retweeted
If you are just starting out, you need to realize one thing:
Your job is to make a company more money than they pay you.
It is up to you to build skills that can create profit for your employer.
The most basic ones:
- Become proficient at Microsoft Excel.
- Be a short and succinct communicator.
- Be eager to learn and demand more work when you're finished with what you're working on.
- Respond to emails and Slack messages QUICKLY.
- Never say "no" to a task that needs to be done.
Harder ones:
- Learn how to solve problems without asking your boss for help.
- Figure out where the leverage is and which 20% of activities drive 80% of the results. Do more of the 20%.
- Proactively pitch and implement new ideas that can make the company more money. These could be new ideas for marketing, sales, technology, etc.
- Work to create or refine repeatable processes and playbooks inside the business.
- Learn to manage and build a team so your department's productivity can improve.
- Think 3-6 months ahead and plan and build for the future state of the business.
Take it upon yourself to learn these things and practice them over and over again or you will experience a lot of mediocrity in your career.
Tom Flannigan retweeted
You can get pretty damn far in life by just being someone people can count on to show up and do the work. Reliability is the cheat code. Stop overcomplicating success. Show up, do the work, repeat. That’s it.
Tom Flannigan retweeted
David Kelly of JPMorgan, $JPM: "The trouble with tariffs, to be succinct, is that they raise prices, slow economic growth, cut profits, increase unemployment, worsen inequality, diminish productivity and increase global tensions. Other than that, they’re fine."
