13. 4th QTR 2024 Economy, Beth Azor, The Canvassing Queen, and Holiday Retail Forcasting

Speaker A: The economy continues to take interesting twists and turns as we enter fourth quarter of 2024. Garrick Brown interviews Beth Azor on the nuances of retail real estate management. And Garrick provides his outlook on the, uh, shopping and holiday season of 2024. This is the retail grind. And welcome to the retail grind as we are entering the last few months of 2024. I'm here with my partner in crime, Garrick Brown. Garrick, welcome back to the end of 2024 on the retail grind. Bill.

Speaker B: Wow. So we're recording this November 1st, which used to be the beginning of the holiday shopping season. I, uh, it clearly no longer is, although you've probably heard spirit, spirit. Halloween is going to start doing spirit Christmas stores. Uh, that's, you know, because you gotta have more outlets for cheap plastic junk. But hey, you know, it's good news for landlords considering, you know, that's a chain that does about 6 to 700 stores every year that basically are only open for about six weeks. Um, their initial plans are like 20 to 25, but I figure that'll take off. Um, it's a weird thing though, you know, the whole seasonal holiday shopping, uh, the Christmas themed stores, they, um, have really been kind of going by the wayside. There's still some mom and pops out there, you know, the year round seasonal stores. It, especially at tourism related centers. But, but it's kind of an interesting move. Um, we're going to talk about what, what I think is going to happen with the holiday shopping season. But, you know, there was a bit of a bombshell report this morning, um, you know, for the better part of.

Speaker A: And before we do that, though, at the risk of alienating the Yankees fans out there, I saw a great meme with the spirit of Halloween sign on Yankee Stadium. Uh, the quote was, that happened fast. And so. All right, all right, all right, we'll, we'll go there. Going to talk the economy. Well, definitely some good stuff with the stock market, some other stuff with jobs numbers. So, Garrick, why don't you take it away and, uh, talk about where we're at here as we enter November of 2024.

Speaker B: Well, you know, the market's freaking out a little bit this morning. Of course it's still reached record highs, but the reason is, is that the latest jobs report, you know, better part of two years now. The job reports have usually been surprising. On the upside, uh, the job report today, while unemployment stayed the Same at about 4.1%. Job creation, 12,000 jobs. That is the lowest amount we have had since 2020, since we were first coming back out of the pandemic. Well, technically we were still in it, uh, but people were getting back to work. And, um, you know, economists thought It'd be about 125,000 now. Now last month those, uh, numbers got revised a little bit, so. So it was 223,000 jobs created. Really, for an economy our size, I mean, you know, first off, we're at 4.1 unemployment. Anything under 5% is typically viewed by economists as being full employment. You know, that, that under five is really difficult. That's, you know, that's why we've had so many members of connects, so many listeners and folks in the real estate world that I deal with. Um, you know, while commercial real estate hasn't been hiring much since, uh, since 2020, the reality, the, the big challenge facing most people was finding talent. Um, you know, you get to the tech industry, and that's been the big driver of remote or hybrid work, is those workers have a ton of leverage. You know, if we're at 4.1% unemployment, that's everything. You, you take that down to just those of us who have a degree or highly skilled, it cuts it in half. And if it's really highly skilled, well, now you're talking one and a half, one percent unemployment.

Speaker A: Wow.

Speaker B: So if, if I am happy working in Oakland because I don't want to spend too much two hours a day on the Bay Bridge to go into a tech headquarters in San Francisco, I could tell my employers to pound sand and I could field a lot of job offers. I can't tell you. That's been one of the big things, although we've seen a lot of movement on that front, too. Starbucks, uh, the other day told their employees, their corporate employees in Seattle, if you're not in the office a minimum of three days a week, you're fired. Wow. Starting immediately. So, um, you know, I kind of thought this was eventually going to happen, that we would see kind of a, not, not a complete return to work habits of 2019. But we'd move closer just because human psychology is anything goes wrong. And if you're not there all the time, um, you know, it's easy to put blame on, well, it must be because you're not working here. Uh, but that said, let's, let's talk about this job, these job numbers, because, uh, they really did come back to earth. And what's interesting, though, uh, we're still seeing wage growth way above inflation. The, the latest wage growth numbers are 4.7% year over year. If you compare that to inflation, which was 2.4%, uh, you know, not everyone's feeling it clearly. And a lot of these, these are based on hourly wages. So you know, some people are getting raises, but usually what drives this is job churn, people moving around. You know that that's one of the sad ironies is situations like this when you have these really outsized, uh, wage growth numbers. Those of you who are loyal employees who sit around and, and, and aren't, you know, looking for a better job or leveraging your workplace, you're the ones that lose. Um, which is why as an employer you should pay attention to this because this is, sooner or later you're going to start losing talent if these numbers persist. But this is really, you know, I look at this and I'm like, well, if you go back, ever since March, uh, no, I'm sorry, February of 2023, wage growth has outpaced inflation. Inflation's continued to go down. Wage growth has just been hovering in these 4, 4, 4.5% range. You know, that was certainly not the case for about two years in a row was the opposite. Um, all of these are great things for the economy. But then the real question is now we're in the holiday season, how do you think it's going to play out? First off, Bill, what's your take? What do you think? How do you think retailer is going to do this holiday season? Just, just an educated guesstimate, I would

Speaker A: say it's not going to be a home run holiday season by any stretch. You're seeing sort of a middle of the road approach. There are a few huge winners there. But even from our membership at Connects fm, you hear that? Um, well one, as, as you alluded to the bang of the holiday season, it's stretched out now. There is the Black Friday. Isn't the Black Friday it used to be. Um, and the holiday season is. It used to be and it spread out more. So I mean, uh, to, to uh, I guess give you a non answer. It's not going to be maybe a good strong double as we end up baseball season here and not necessarily a home run. What are your thoughts?

Speaker B: Am I think you just nailed it. I think you just nailed it. So last year we are our year over year change according to national retail federation was 3.9%. Uh, year before that was 3.7. But then you get down, you get back to 2021 and we had, you know, the best numbers in 50 years where it was 12.4%. But of course that was a whole lot of people with stimulus money, ah, who were not spending a penny on travel or services. Now going into this year, the NRF is predicting 3.5%. I, I don't think I buy it. Uh, so the latest retail sales numbers for September, um, we were up year over year 1.7%. So I think. And that's the weakest reading we've had in a while. Um, you know, it's been just slowly kind of trending downwards with the occasional blip up, but we've been heading down for a while and I think that's, that's really, uh, indicates the amount of consumer debt that's out there. Uh, Deloitte is, I got to give this to Deloitte. They kind of hedge their bets. They're saying 2.3 to 3.3, which, you know, uh, I love that. That's kind of like if I was

Speaker A: betting on one hand, on the other hand.

Speaker B: Yeah, Economist. Right. If I had a point spread where it was, you're. They're going to win by two and a half to five. I mean, I don't know how you bet that, but I suspect it's going to be closer to 2.3. And clearly retailers think that. Uh, so here's what's kind of crazy. Holiday hiring is down pretty substantially. Uh, you know, we, if you go back to 1999. So this is really. Internet's in its infancy. This is an E commerce holiday. Hiring then was dominated by in store retail associates, a little bit of a spike from the delivery services, UPS of the world. Uh, it was 850,000 people that year. Uh, last year we were at about 575,000 and it's looking like it'll be like 525,000 of which half of that's Amazon alone. Um, everyone's pulled back, everyone's expecting it. I hope that everyone's pleasantly surprised and says, wow, we should have hired more people. But at the end of the day when I, when I look at these numbers and I'm, you know, and clearly I think the big, the big tell here is going to be in a couple of weeks or about 10 days when we get the October sales numbers. Because our holiday season, you know, these, these numbers, these comparative numbers are important, but they're not as important as they used to be. Just like Black Fridays. No longer as important as it used to be. It, it matters, but not as much because October is really the beginning. And uh, if those October numbers are strong, maybe we'll hit the 3% mark. I have a bad feeling that we might be the high twos, uh, maybe low threes, but I don't see 3.5. That's my take and I hope I'm wrong.

Speaker A: Well, we'll leave it at that. And a great 50,000 foot view of the economy again as we enter November here. Um, and we're going to take a pause here. And you had a great interview, uh, recently with Beth Azor. And can you tee it up before we take a break on, on who Beth is and, and what you're going to talk to her about?

Speaker B: You know, before we start, started, uh, rolling the tape here. We, we were, we were talking sports and we were talking superpowers, right? Uh, yeah. And what's scary about Patrick Mahomes if, you know, if you guys don't know, Bill lives, uh, in Lawrence, Kansas and then works during the week in Dallas. So he's a big Chiefs fan.

Speaker A: Yep.

Speaker B: Mahomes is having his worst year ever. Okay. He's leading the league at interceptions, yet they are the only undefeated team. And the scary thing about Mahomes is his superpower. You know, there used to be a kind of party, uh, gag where you'd ask someone, you know, if you could choose a superpower, it would, between flying or being invisible, it would give you some personality insights as to what motivates people. The thing is Mahomes, Mahomes is superpower is to get his stuff together and will himself to do so when it matters. And uh, Beth, I would say her superpower is sales. Sales prospecting and tactics to be front of mind for clients. Uh, and, and laying the groundwork for that so that you're the person that when they finally decide they need some services or they want to do business, you're the first one of all your competitors that they call. So she's really fascinating. Uh, she spent some time, uh, talking to us. I, I saw her speak in Houston a few weeks ago and it just, you know, it's a good presentation when you're 50 minutes into it and you got a room of 500 people and no one is looking at their phones. And uh, people are wishing that it could go longer. So that doesn't happen very often. It never happens with me, Bill. Ever. Ever.

Speaker A: Well, I'm looking forward to this interview. You're setting the bar high, right? Because, uh, I'm about as biased as they come about Patrick Mahomes. And you're comparing Beth to, to, to Patrick. That's great stuff. So let's take a Quick break here and we'll be right back with Garrick and.

Speaker B: Ah, and we're back on, uh, the Retail Grind. And today, you know, Bill and I have this really great guest that I had the privilege of meeting for the first time a couple of weeks ago at a big event in Houston. But I've been following for a while. If you're on the brokerage side of the retail, uh, and real estate business, you may know her. If you don't, you Auto. Beth Azor, welcome to the Retail Grind. Thanks for joining us today.

Speaker C: Thank you, Garrick and Bill, I'm so happy to be here.

Speaker B: Well, what I really loved, we were at, uh, an event held by Realty Resources for their member companies a few weeks ago, and they brought a bunch of different speakers. But you just really blew me away. The focus of your discussion, really, and you're known as the canvassing queen. Uh, but really I just thought your tips, uh, and tricks, I guess you could say, on canvassing and sales and how to be more productive. I thought they had resonance far beyond just the, ah, that we'd see for retail real estate brokers. Um, how did, first of all, what do we get in? How did you get into this business?

Speaker C: So I had my license since I was 18 because my parents were in residential. And after college I got a job for a not for profit, making a whopping $11,000 a year. This is back in 1983. But I loved my job. I was a special events director of the Heart association of Miami. Loved my job, but obviously couldn't live on that. So I started sitting open homes, open houses for a residential developer on the weekends. And after two years of working seven days straight, my weekend job, I was making more money than my not for profit. So I jumped ship and with the blessing of my executive director of the charity, and I started doing real estate full time. But I instantly hated it because I went from working seven days a week to now I'm working five days a week, but I'm sitting in a trailer reading People magazines. And so I met a person who was in retail leasing, shopping center leasing. And she said, you should come into commercial real estate. And I said, commercial? That's more boring than this because I thought what that meant was selling land. And she said, no, no, there's this thing where people build shopping centers and developers put in grocery stores and then you fill in all of the vacancies around it and you're helping local mom and pops achieve their American dream. And I said, where do I sign up for that. And she said, there's a company in Miami called Terra Nova. They have a training program. And Garrick, I went down there. I joined Terra nova. I stayed 18 years. I went from the training program to the president over 18 years. The last six years there, I was the president. And then, um, I left when my son was 4 because I was a single mom raising my son, and I didn't have. I thought I didn't have a kid at 40 to have my nanny raising him. So I left the big job and opened my own company with the intention of buying real estate. And the phone started ringing from big companies like you and I know, Kimco, Philips, Edison, Brixmore. And they were like, will you come train our leasing agents? Because I'd been Training people for 18 years at Terra Nova.

Speaker B: Well, and that's where, I mean, I was so blown away. In fact, you know, one of the things that really impressed me, you knew more about how to brand yourself with social media than most of the Gen Z people I know out there. And I thought, if you're up for it, I would love to get into some of what you discussed. I know, um, I think that there was a phrase you had said that really kind of I thought was really important. It's not who you know, it's who knows you.

Speaker C: Right. Well, attention. So attention today is the new currency, because we don't have a lot of secrets, right? Uh, every. All of our clients that we want to get business from has access to all of the information through the Internet. So you really have to be spreading the word, um, and sharing what your expertise is and how you help your clients overcome obstacles and how can you add value? And if you do that, then. But. But it's. If you just sit in your office and you don't spread the word of who you are and what you can achieve, then it's going to be much harder to get business. So for retail brokers out there, we may know the 300 retailers, but if they don't know who we are, we're dead on the spot. Right? They have to know who we are. And because our business, most of our business, is built around leverage, what better leverage is social media. First of all, it's free. Second of all. So retail brokers and leasing agents and landscapers and facility people, you can post on LinkedIn or Twitter and you can say, hey, I had a client with this problem. Like, they needed to open three stores. By year end, it was Q4, and I was able to do it by having these relationships. And so if you post things like that, like, say, what is my client's problem and what have I done in my past? Like, what's the case study? And then put that on Social. Garrick. It's crazy. I posted a story about canvassing a, uh, bridal store in Cleveland, Ohio. I got, huh, 265,000 views on that story. That's like filling, you know, Madison Square Garden four times. Like, there's, I can't fill, I can't speak to that many audiences, but I can sit watching Netflix on my bed at night and type in Twitter this story about how I canvassed this bridal store and ended up doing a 17,000 square foot deal. So what I'm trying to communicate to our industry is if, look, we all know that in the 1960s, we all should have bought real estate in Malibu, right? Well, that's what social media is today. It's Malibu real estate. There's this thing, it's free. It does take time, and time is obviously money. But if you can sit down for 15, 20 minutes a day, three days a week and post stories of how you have not flyers of your listings, like, who cares about that? But true stories of, hey, I had this client, you know, they had, uh, all their landscaping was dying. You know, I went in and I showed them how to plant flowers, uh, that weren't going to die because it was such a dry area in Phoenix or what, you know, whatever the landscaper's story is that he solved a problem for his client and he posts that on, you know, Twitter or LinkedIn are where I think that most of the B2B business happens. And then you can, and you're consistently doing it. People will share it, they'll view it. You're gonna get thousands of views. And then all of a sudden people go, oh, you're the landscape guy that posts all the time on Twitter. You have now stepped into. It's not who you know, it's who knows you.

Speaker B: Well, I have to say, when I used to work for a very large multinational firm, one of the things I was charged with was trying to get our retail brokers to do case studies. My challenge, and I wish I had seen your, ah, your session back in those days was that just the word case studies seemed to turn off a lot of people. And, and really it's a, it's about telling the story of why and how you add value. Um, right. And, and, and for me, it's always kind of amazing because I'm very active on LinkedIn as you are, and that's how I first came across you. Um, but I see so many brokers, and I know so many brokers that feel like it's more important to put their property flyer up.

Speaker C: Yes.

Speaker B: And who looks at any of that?

Speaker C: And that's awful. Who cares about. No one even opens it. You know, um, I like to say best known beats best. Best known beats best. And you're not gonna become the best known retail broker in Omaha, Nebraska if you're posting flyers of listings now, you know, now, uh, if you post a story about how you got the listing, I'm interested.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker C: If you want to post a story of how you close. You know, you're an investment sale broker and three years ago, and you don't have to even say this, you can say, I once had this situation where, you know, blah, blah, blah, I didn't think the deal was closed. This is how. And you don't have to name names. I mean brokers, they say to me, well, I can't talk about this because of my clients. I don't talk about the clients names. I didn't, you know, I said a bridal store in Cleveland, you don't know who my client is. You don't know who the bridal. And if you don't want to say the use. Maybe you don't want to say bridal salon. You can say, you know, uh, children's learning store. And you can say names will, shall remain nameless or something. But that's what's adding value. You know, we talked about also in Houston about following up and I love saying, and this is probably one of my biggest LinkedIn and Twitter, um, posts ever. But I said following up, circling back and checking in is not following. It's not a proper way to follow up. Right. And I say that my brokers that I coach, I say, look, if you sent out information and you're now reaching out for the fifth time, hey, checking in, have you made a decision yet? If they, if, if you've been followed up consistently and you're not adding any additional value, that's on you. Like every time that you follow up, you should add value. And if they're not, if they're radio silenced on you, it's because you have not given them enough adequate information for them to make a decision and it's on you. So you should Google alert your clients. And when they, when they're, they're in the media, like if I'm trying to do a deal with Ulta, let's say, and I read in, you know, Some shopping center periodical that the real estate manager got promoted. I'm, you know, I'm texting her congratulations on the promotion. Or if I hear that they posted quarterly earnings that beat the street, I'm going to text her and say, hey, just. You have to stay in front of people and not just say hey. Checking in, circling back, following up. Did you make a decision on my site yet? Boring.

Speaker B: Your Google alert? Um, now I'm a. I've done a newsletter for a long time, so I've used Google alerts for years really to track down, you know, retail news, restaurant news and so forth. I just thought it was brilliant. I mean, I know you in Houston. You did share that tip, you know, put in Google alerts for the people that you're trying to do business with, all of that. But one of the stories I really loved, and I was hoping you could tell, was about a shopping center that you ended up hiring a broker to sell. And I was wondering if you could kind of, I thought, really illustrated some really great points that are important beyond brokerage, but every sales professional.

Speaker C: Absolutely, absolutely. So it's basically, I call it my top of mind story. And, um, I bought a shopping center in 2008 and the investment sale broker was a guy by the name of Barry Wolf with Marcus and millichap. And for 10 years, every quarter, never missed a quarter. Every quarter, Barry Wolf reached out to me and he did it like he would say he'd text me or email me, hey, I drove by Shops of Arrowhead, saw that you signed a lease with Mission Barbecue. Congratulations. That was it. Then the next quarter in the mail, you know, at my office. Hey, just Marcus, uh, and Millichev did a cap rate report on food and beverage Fast casual. Thought you'd be interested. You know, especially page 33 where it talks about Chick Fil A. I saw that you, you know, just did a Chick Fil A deal like, like super detailed. And then next quarter, hey, I, um, I was on Facebook. I saw that your son just moved to la. Congratulations to Alex. So he just stayed. He was the top of mind guy. 10 years, 10m years of this, and

Speaker B: this is 10 years without him actually doing business with.

Speaker C: You never asked me for business, which I teased him at. Ah. So, uh, I'll finish that. I'll tell you that later. So 10 years goes by and I decide I'm going to sell my shopping center. There isn't even a question who I'm going to hire. Because I'm thinking if Barry Wolf has done this with me, he's done it with another 300 people, right? So he's the guy. He's got a list. I don't have a list. I'm a leasing agent. I'm not an investment sale broker. I'm not going to go sell my own shopping center. It's like, if I sold my house, I wouldn't sell my own house. I'd hire a realtor. So I call him up and, um, I hire him. And I said to him, you know, you probably should ask me for business about six years in. But he was shocked. And he said, why me? And I said, why you? You've never missed. And so I calculated it. I said, okay, five minutes times four quarters, right? Four times a year, five minutes, 20 minutes times 10 years, 200 minutes. And we ended up, unfortunately, a major tenant moved out. So we took it off the market. We didn't sell it. I've given him business since. But that commission on, uh, that deal would have been $300,000. So had we gone forward and had I sold it, and he certainly would have sold it, it would have been sold. Would you spend 200 minutes over 10 years to make $300,000? Heck, yeah.

Speaker B: Well, especially when it's five minutes at a time that you might be twiddling your thumbs, checking your fantasy football stuff, whatever, right?

Speaker C: You know, but no one, but, uh, you know, very few people. I just. I've been wanting to buy a center in my market. It was between two centers that I owned. I after this, to buy this center for. I met the guy when he was 76. The owner, he just turned 91. And a year ago, I was finally able to buy into his partnership. And I had some folks come up to me at the recent ICSE saying, I can't believe you got that deal. We've been after that guy forever. I go, really? How long is forever? Three or four years. And I'm like, okay, 14. 14 years. And I tell young people, I say, um, I was just having this conversation with someone. I said, how old are you? He goes, 39. I go, okay, I'm 64. And that reminds me, I didn't start social media. I started it eight years ago. So when I hear people say, I'm too old, I'll let my niece do it, or an intern do it. You have to do it. And unless you're retiring next year, you need to be on it. If you're going to be in this business for the next three to five years, it will change. It will increase your business significantly. But, um, But I said to the 39 year old, everybody you meet with and every person you prospect and every person you follow up with and add value, you're going to be in this business probably for 20 more years. These are seeds you're planting. So it didn't matter to me that I spent 14 years following up with this guy. And what I learned is I would call him and go, hey, do you want to sell to me yet? Hey, do you want to sell to me yet? Hey, do you want to sell to me yet? And you know, hey. He finally started picking over the phone, hi, Beth. No, I don't wanna sell to you yet. And then I realized, okay, this is not working. What is gonna work? I need to add value. I need to do what I preach. So I started calling them, saying, hey, um, I just used this painter, I really love him. Um, if you need a painter, call this guy. Or, hey, I just used this stripe and seal guy. He was awful. Don't use him. So I started adding value. And then that created the relationship that then allowed me to. When, when he had a partner that wanted to buy out, he, he asked his existing partnership, which is what was called for in the documents. But when none of them wanted to buy that partner's share, I was the first call. Top of mind.

Speaker B: I love it. I love it. Now, one of the things, uh, you know, you've got a couple of, um, well, you've got your Rockstar development series, the Azore Academy. I'd like, you know, because I thought you were just so compelling and. But for me, you know, I, I go to a lot of these things and usually you can tell 35 minutes in. You know, there's certain breaks where, you know, people have just been sitting there for a while and you can look around the room and you can see the heads are tilted down slightly because they're looking at their phone, they're catching up on email, whatever. Uh, sometimes they're trying to multitask and they're trying to listen and they're not being completely rude. But the reality is that's, that's, you know, people are sitting in a room two days straight, one speaker after the next. It takes a lot. We were the second day and you were later in the day than me. And nobody's eyes left you or the stage for an hour straight. And you could have gone another half hour and kept that audience. Uh, and I just thought it was really great and compelling. So could you tell us about the work that you do in training and things like the Azore Academy.

Speaker A: Sure.

Speaker C: So, um, I do a lot of different things. So I coach people individually, like, for career growth and, like, education. Um, But I have 500, over 500 free videos on YouTube. So if a junior agent, a newbie calls me and says, I heard that you do coaching or training. That's not really, uh, what I do is I say, either I'll send them my two books for free. So I have a retail Leasing playbook A to Z. So I send them that. It's $49. But if someone told them to call me and if any of your audience, just tell them to reach out to me. A lot of times they don't, Garrick. But if they do, I'm happy to send them a book. I also have a free podcast that literally goes chapter by chapter of the book. So they don't even need to buy the book. They can just listen to the retail leasing playbook podcast where basically I say, okay, chapter one, this is what you should have gotten out of it. Chapter two, they're like four minutes, because sometimes you can't even afford the book. And I understand. I was there. I was making 11 grand a year. Right? Um, but when Kimco or Brixmore or Philip set us in, um, or if they call and say, we want you to teach our eight leasing agents and go canvassing, we want you to give them a workshop about following up qualifying, tenant mix, social media, and then we want you to take them canvassing in the market. I charge for that, right? Um, if someone comes and asks me to fly to Texas to do a breakout session and a keynote, I charge for that. So I try to balance between putting as much information on social. So I do a leasing tip of the day so everyone, all the leasing agents can watch that. I have a new podcast called, um, because I'm really trying to get women to invest. Of all of the investors in commercial real estate, Garrick, only 3% are women. And of that 3%, half is inherited or women who are signing on their, um, spouse's guarantees. So that means I'm part of 1.5. That's deplorable. So I'm trying to get women to invest, and I have a conference where I put women on stage who are investors to get the women in the audience to say, if she can do it, so can I. So I have a women Investor Wednesday podcast, and I'm interviewing women so that women can learn and meet other women. But I have a new podcast called called I own a shopping center now.

Speaker B: What?

Speaker C: Because I get a lot of Calls from people that own. They heard about me or they've seen me on social and they say, I just bought. Like I had a doctor call me last week and she said, I bought a shopping center. The broker told me the leases were triple net. I just found out they're all gross leases and three tenants are moving out. And you know, it might be a good property, I don't know. But she didn't do her proper due diligence. So I am using the I own a shopping center now what? Podcast to educate. Because I can't do 40 coaching sessions a month. There's not enough time in the day. So whatever I find that the people are asking me a lot about, I, uh, create something for free that I can just shove information out into the world. And then when they email me or text me, I say, you should listen to this or you should go to do this. But if someone calls and says, I have a team that I want you to coach or educate or I want you to motivate, then that is something I can charge for.

Speaker B: Well, I know you've got a, uh, I was checking out your website earlier. I know you've got a big event coming up next March. Uh, yes, tell us about that.

Speaker C: So that's the Women Investor Summit. And what we do is it's a two day event and I put eight to 10 women on stage that have invested in student housing, retail, self storage, multifamily. And these are women that maybe own 5,000 units, 10,000 units, or three shopping centers. It runs the gamut. Because I really want to represent early birds in this. And then experts and vets, and it's 250 women. I try to keep it as intimate as possible. And after the women, I interview the women and then they go off stage and they go into a breakout session. So the women in the audience can say, I like multifamily and self storage. And they go into those speakers breakouts where then those speakers are with a room of maybe 30 people and they show them the underwriting of the deal. They go into a deep dive on how they raised the money, how they got the mortgage, all of that. It's, it's fabulous. And then the next day we do a little more of that and then we get on a bus and there's a bus tour for 40 people and we drive through my assets and then some multifamily assets that I'm a limited partner in. And in March, I'm excited because I'm doing a $3 million renovation on the deal that I was after the guy for 14 years. We're going to be knee deep in a huge facade redevelopment. So I'm going to have my GC there. I'm going to walk through the plans. So they're really going to feel like, wow, they're going to walk away after two days and go, I learned so much. And hopefully they will start thinking about maybe investing as an LP with some of the women in the room, which that's happened. I had a woman that I invest with in multifamily in Miami. And, uh, I think her, uh, investment two or three investments ago were all women and, and all that she met with at the conference.

Speaker B: I think, you know, it's. That's fantastic. You know, it's one of the things that I've got to say. Sadly, our business, you know, our business has really lagged behind in, you know, I mean, if you look around, uh, you know, I've got a mailing list of about 10,000 active retail brokers. Maybe 20% or what. Right.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: And, uh, then you get to ownership and it's. It's even worse. So, I mean, it is something that, uh, I mean, I love to see you part you doing stuff like this and, and you know, I mean, I'm sure crew loves when you come, uh, as well. Um, where are you off next? What's your next, uh, your next engagement? Anything where our audience can come and see you speak ICSC or.

Speaker C: I'm speaking at the Massimo Con. Uh, Rod Santomssimo has a broker event in November in Dallas. I'm speaking there. And the last three or four years I've spoken at New York icse. I haven't been asked yet, but I'm hoping. But, um, I have the last three or four years spoken at the New York icse, so. Oh, oh, I am doing a webinar the day after the election or the day of the election? The day after. It's like November 5th or 6th for ICSE. And it's called from agent to owner. Talking of, and it's me and Carly Iacona from CB and Aaron Zucker who has Zucker Investment Group. So we're going to talk about how do you go from being a broker to an owner? So that's going to be great. So if you just went to icsc.com and looked for webinars, they can register and it's free.

Speaker B: And how else can people get ahold of you? Beth?

Speaker C: Any social media platform just under Beth Azor, probably LinkedIn and, um, uh, Twitter are the best Bets and folks.

Speaker B: Uh, I just want to put this out there too. Check out Beth's website. Not just if you're a commercial real estate broker, but if you're in sales at all. She's got some fantastic stuff at Beth Azor a Z-O-R.com online and webinars. Materials. Uh, just a fantastic wealth of information there. Beth, so much. Thank you so much for joining us today. It was so great connecting with you in Houston, finally in person. We've kind of exchanged notes here and there over the years, but, uh, our first time get to really hang out a bit. But, uh, thanks for joining us on the retail grind and I'm.

Speaker C: Thank you for having me. And my one last note to everyone is regarding social media. Garrick, I want them, I want to ask them, do you want to be reluctant or relevant?

Speaker B: Great way to end it. Thanks so much, Beth.

Speaker C: Thanks, Garrick.

Speaker A: And we're back. Great interview with Beth Garrick. Uh, really appreciate you doing that and interesting discussion. Any final thoughts, uh, with what we learned from Beth or some, uh, yeah, final thoughts on the interview?

Speaker B: Well, one, one thing that I love about Beth is especially, uh, one thing. And, and I don't think she got to it in the interview, but one of the big parts of her philosophy is that unless you're retiring next year, it's never too late to learn the new tips and tricks. It's never too late to get savvy with social media. It's never too late to figure out LinkedIn, uh, and all of those things if you use it properly, if you know who the audiences are. You know, she, she's a hip lady. I mean, she's, she works Instagram when it comes to the types of clients that are going to be on Instagram. She works LinkedIn when it's the type of clients are going to there. Uh, she works X when it's X type clients. And she actually breaks the world down into those buckets. So really interesting, interesting take and pretty savvy. Um, so, but, uh, you know, that, that said, I hate to say, ah, you know, one of the things, you know, she, she's about sales in general and a lot of her lessons apply well outside of, uh, real estate brokerage, but for retail brokers, we've just had just a really lousy couple of weeks of more and more bad news. Um, TGI Fridays will almost certainly declare bankruptcy within the next week or two. Um, they, they closed suddenly 100 units. Their, their British unit went bankrupt a couple of weeks ago. Uh, you know, they They've been struggling for a while. I mean consumer tastes have changed and I'm not saying that they'll go away completely, but a lot of their restaurants are corporately owned. And one thing you might not know, uh, out there is that when you see a restaurant chain go bankrupt, whether uh, or not it disappears completely or whether or not it sticks around usually has to do with whether or not what's the level of franchises. That's also why, you know, we've had some uh, in this past week we've, we had a, ah, large last few weeks, we've had a large Burger King franchisee go belly up. We've had a large Pizza Hut franchisee a couple months back. Um, when it's corporately owned concept, it's much more likely that you're going to see closures and that you're going to see it go out of business than otherwise. And the reason is, is that if I'm a franchise restaurant operator, all those franchisees have to pay me each month.

Speaker C: Mhm.

Speaker B: Right. They're paying for the franchise rights, for the goods I supply them with, for the marketing and all that. Um, so those usually get bought out of bankruptcy. Even even though there's some companies that specialize in, in you know, if they buy it cheap enough, they never grow it again. Uh, there's a lot of concepts that you might think of that you go, I remember when there were 50 of those or 150 all over. Now there's just three and they're plugging along and they never expand anymore. Well that's usually because there's collectors of dying brands that if you buy them cheap enough you can do that and make a profit. Uh, I don't want to be too harsh and name names, but there's been some recent bankruptcies. Buca di Beppo got bought by a new company, new players, uh, roadie, Mediterranean concept. All of those are sticking around. All of them have been bought at substantial discounts by players that may or may not grow them ever again. Um, so that's kind of the way it works in the restaurant world. But, but, but something else that's disturbing. And you know, the, the furniture sector's woes continue for now. Um, in their shareholder meeting. Uh, and technically I consider them in furniture furnishings. Uh, the Container Store issued a going, uh, concern warning, which basically is when their finances are so bad they have to by law tell their shareholders we're concerned as to whether or not we can continue as a going concern business. Basically it means you're broke Unless you get some financing or you're able to sell, you will. My experience with this over 20 years has been 90% of the time you see a going concern warning, you see a bankruptcy within two months. Um, which I hope not. Container Store is a really cool store. Um, but here's the interesting thing. Uh, last month U.S. home sales were about 750,000. Uh, we, we've had really depressed home sales ever since the interest rates went up. Uh, we did have a, you know, nice plus uh, in home transactions, you know, back in 2021 each month heading into early 2022 when the, when the inflation really started to kick up is where that started to uh, nose dive. But one of the challenges of anything that's home related, the do it yourself stores, the hardware stores, which by the way, that's another one True Value franchise operator, they declared bankruptcy about three weeks ago. They were bought by uh, another franchise operator. Do it best M not a lot of closures there because really people pay true value for their advertising, for their buying power that they purchased through them. But all of these concepts have been hurting because where they do best is when the home market for sales is robust. That's when people fix up their homes, is when they're going to sell them or they move in. It's also when they furnish their homes. The sad reality is, is that when we're settled into our house, if we're not going anywhere, we live in the same crappy old dump for years, Bill. And we don't fix it up till we want to sell it.

Speaker A: See that?

Speaker B: Yeah. Uh, and you can look at the revenues now. If we continue without too many disruptions, this lowering of interest rates, I looked back at past cycles, you know, uh, Home Depot, Lowe's and the furniture guys all were doing gangbusters in the early 2000s. And back then the US was averaging about 1.3 million homes being sold per month. So I think here's the question is next year I think there's going to be improvement for all of these guys for home improvement, for furniture, furnishings, uh, because I think home sales are going to kick up. If the Fed, uh, lending rate, their general funds rate, which is, you know, over 5% right now. So that's why interest mortgage rates are 6% plus it gets down to four and a half and we get back to 5% mortgage rates, I think you're going to see a real significant uptick. But I think for any, anyone that's expecting the Fed to go back to 3 to 1% on their their, their rates, I think you're going to be waiting a long time. Uh, there's a really strong argument that they kept rates too long, too low for too long. And uh, you know, the reality is that's, that's one of the few tools they have to juice the economy when it's needed. And you lower interest rates too low when the economy is good. And uh, you, you basically have taken away, uh, your uh, your superpower to uh, kick things into high gear. So, so bad news on those fronts. Uh, the remarkable thing, we still end up third quarter. We sell retail vacancy rates at shopping centers around the US Especially outdoor shopping centers. Your, your grocery anchor community, neighborhood centers, your power centers. With the big box players, we saw the lowest vacancy rates that we've seen in about 17 years. So they're still takers of this space. Uh, it's gonna be a bit of a slog. Getting worse for landlords going into next year though, because we, we've got a lot of drugstores coming back to market. Uh, Walgreens is going to close a quarter of their stores and I suspect we're only a few weeks away from CBS announcing something similar. So it's uh, the party might be over for retail landlords, but, uh, we're certainly not going back to retail apocalypse.

Speaker A: Good stuff. Well, at least. And I like the way you tied it up there with the Superpower and uh, a great episode as we, uh, enter November. And we'll keep an eye on your predictions and whether we hit that double with regard to the shopping season that's already, uh, kicking off. And, and that is fascinating, uh, too. And it makes all the sense in the world that a lot flows from the real estate market, especially residential real estate. When people are moving and fixing up and remodeling. The downstream effects of that on, on all sorts of retail, uh, brands is immense. And it's, uh, we just need to sell more houses.

Speaker B: It's huge. It touches everything. That's why 2008, the housing meltdown. Housing touches everything. So that's why it was so, uh. Well, it was catastrophic. Uh, if we hadn't done anything that, that could have very easily turned into a global depression. And that was the great big fear when all the banks started collapsing. Uh, so. But yeah, no, in general though, uh, look, it might be a little bit tougher as far as if, uh, you're a landlord, uh, for retail shopping center, you got used to really low vacancy. It's going to tick up next year. But I also think at the front end of that, you're going to have consumers picking back up also. So, you know, just, just think in terms of. Once the consumers pick up, it just takes a while for all the other retail concepts to go back into growth mode. So it just, uh, it's that whole phenomenon of leading and lagging indicators, or you got to think of it as a train going through valleys and hills. You know, one thing might be going up or down while something else is going the exact, uh, other way, but it, it all plays out. They're all related.

Speaker A: Great stuff. Well, we'll look forward to talking to you again. We'll be back on here in a few weeks as we'll be in full swing of the holiday season. Maybe not necessarily the shopping season, but holiday season in general. Garrick, thanks again. And thanks to Beth. Uh, Beth Azar, our guest on this episode. It's your retail grind. We'll talk to you again soon. That's a wrap on this episode of the retail grind. Thanks again to our guest, Beth Azor, and of course, Garrick's prognostications on the economy writ large, small and holiday season. This is the retail grind.