The Heart of the Deal

How to Invest and Negotiate like a Real Estate Mogul

Anthony Lolli, Benjamin Platt

• Publisher: Diversion Books
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781682300794
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Real Estate
• Index: Business

The founder and CEO of Rapid Realty, New York City's largest rental-based real estate brokerage, shares his story, his advice, and his tips for building a successful career in the ever-growing and lucrative world of real estate. Anthony Lolli got his real estate license at age nineteen. By twenty-three, he was a millionaire and the head of a swiftly growing company that would become one of the largest real estate brokerages in New York and a national franchise sensation. Now, he's sharing the secrets behind his success. Filled with insights into Lolli's inspirational rags-to-riches rise to the top and bursting with practical advice for real estate newcomers and veterans alike, The Heart of the Deal is essential reading for anyone with big dreams and the drive to make them come true. Learn how to set smart goals, negotiate like a pro, analyze properties and neighborhoods, overcome objections, and much more. Whether you want to become a top-performing broker or a savvy property investor, or simply master real estate management tactics designed to help you achieve your financial goals, Lolli's grounded guidance will put you on the right path. Most importantly, The Heart of the Deal will teach you how to utilize all of these strategies to build a lucrative career without sacrificing your humanity in the process. At all times, Lolli keeps one central premise in mind: that the heart of every deal isn't money—it's people.

PART 1:
The Beginnings of a Businessman

Let’s be honest: no kid ever says they want to be a broker when they grow up, and even fewer say they want to build a portfolio of investment properties. Despite the kind of lifestyle it can provide, no one starts out in life dreaming about real estate. And even among adults, real estate isn’t for everyone. The hustle and grind, the feast or famine, the big risks for big rewards—it takes a certain type of person to forego the cushy comforts of a 9-to-5 and a steady paycheck to build their career around chasing commissions and investment returns.

Everyone who builds a career in real estate has their own unique path that got them there. In a way, my road to real estate actually did begin when I was a little kid. No, I wasn’t running around the house in my dad’s blazer, pretending to obtain imaginary listings. But the story of how I got to where I am today, the story of my rise from nothing to the founder of one of New York City’s largest real estate firms, starts with a promise I made when I was just six years old. But to understand that, you first have to understand the two biggest influences on my life—my parents.

Mom and Dad

My mother, Gladys, immigrated to the United States from Ecuador with forty dollars to her name. She came here to get away from a bad marriage and to provide a better life for her son, my half-brother, whom she had to leave behind in Ecuador, hoping to send for him someday—only to find out later how hard it would be to get through all the red tape and get him out of the country. She spent her first few weeks in this country sleeping in an abandoned building with several other recent immigrants who, like her, had nowhere else to go. Her life in the States was difficult; the only work she could find was in a series of sweatshops. But eventually she made friends, found an apartment, and got work as a home attendant, then used the money she made to put herself through beauty school and become a beautician.

My father, Nicolas, was born to Italian immigrants. When he was seventeen, he lied about his age so he could enlist in the navy during World War II. After the war, he went to college on the GI Bill and ultimately became a New York public school teacher. He taught elementary school, high school, special ed—he even went to Riker’s Island and taught the prisoners, often teaching them life skills like how to tie a tie or how to prepare for a job interview, on top of the academic knowledge he was there to impart. During the summers he sold insurance and taught music out of the back of his office to make a little extra money on the side.

The story of how these two people met, fell in love, and started a family together is the stuff movies are made of. But since you presumably picked up this book for business advice, and not for romance, I’ll skip the sappy stuff and point out the obvious: these are two people who know a thing or two about hard work, and who never flinched from a challenge. They dreamed of a better life because they knew from experience what it meant to have a hard one, and they knew there was no sense sitting around all day waiting for someone to hand them the life they wanted, because no one ever would.

When I was growing up, we lived in Brooklyn Heights—known even then to be one of the most affluent neighborhoods in the city—but while we walked by multimillion-dollar brownstones every day, my parents and I shared a one-bedroom shack. There were times when one or both of my parents would go hungry so that I would always have enough to eat. And yet, I always remember our home being full of warmth, full of family laughing and chatting away in English and Spanish. I never felt like anything was missing. Until one day I did.

When I was a young child, I’d ride the subway with my mother and she’d take me to the big department stores in Manhattan, like Barney’s and Saks. My mother would try on fancy clothes and jewelry, but she would never buy anything. I didn’t think anything was strange about it. At that age, kids think anything their parents do is just the normal way people act. Looking back now, it was obvious what was happening, but at the time it was just the fun way that my mother and I spent time together.

On one of these trips, I saw a waterproof watch on sale for eighteen dollars. I was instantly obsessed, the way that six-year-olds can get obsessed. It was the only thing in the world that mattered. I begged and pleaded with my mother to buy it for me, but she always made some excuse or found some way to distract me. This went on for weeks. Every time we went back, I’d see the watch and beg her to buy it for me. It got to the point where she would avoid that side of the store altogether, but even that only worked for so long. One day, when I asked her to buy me the watch, my mother simply ran out of excuses. She broke down in tears and admitted the real reason why she couldn’t buy it for me—we couldn’t afford it.

I was shocked. My parents worked so hard to provide for me, to make sure I always had everything I needed, that I just assumed we were rich. But when my mother told me that we couldn’t afford an eighteen-dollar watch, things suddenly clicked into place. At six years old, I was seeing things from a different perspective.

Just like that, it dawned on me that when I stayed over at other kids’ houses, their families would always seem to have more than we had. They had more space. They had nicer furniture and decorations in their homes. They had a car, or even two cars, while we always took the train or the bus.

And that was when I understood why Mom loved to go to Saks, and admire all the clothes and jewelry and the perfumes. It was because she could afford to look—but that’s all. It made me sad, and mad, when this sank in. I knew Mom deserved better than that.

Right then and there I made a promise to my mother: one day I would make our family rich so she could have all the nice things she deserved. I would buy her a big, white mansion for her to live in, and a big, white limousine to take her wherever she wanted to go.

Now, most parents, hearing their child make a pledge like that, would probably brush it off. But not my mother. She never let me forget it. Not for a day. And I can’t thank her enough. Because, in time, I made good on that promise—white mansion and all. (Okay, she let me off the hook about the limo, but only because it was impractical. You try finding limo parking in Brooklyn!)

I didn’t realize it at the time (did I mention I was six?), but I learned two incredibly valuable lessons that day:

1. Always have a goal. From that moment on, I had a dream that I was always working toward. I didn’t have a plan, of course, but that would come later. But I had a goal—make my family rich; buy them a big, white mansion—and that would inspire me and keep me going through some of the most grueling, challenging days of my career.
2. Always be as good as your word. My mother could have ignored me. She could have just treated what I said as the sweet but naïve certainty of a child and forgotten about it. But instead, she held me to it, because six years old or not, a promise is a promise.

All these years later, those two rules are just as important to me as they’ve ever been.

• • •

My father, Nicolas, taught me more than a few valuable lessons of his own. When I was a little older, he took a slightly early retirement from his many years of teaching when the city offered him what appeared to be a generous severance package. But when the money started coming in, it was a lot less than what he thought he’d be getting. This pension wasn’t enough to feed his family, so he did what anyone would do—he started wandering the streets, convincing people to pay him to take their picture with a parrot.

Hmm…On second thought, maybe that’s not what anyone would do.

Let me back up for a minute. The first time my father took my mother back to Ecuador to see her family, they visited the jungles of Puyo, where he was introduced to a captive blue-and-gold macaw. My father was so fascinated with the bird that he had it shipped back to New York. Followed by another. And another. At one point he had ten macaws in a New York apartment.

Macaws are beautiful, big, colorful birds. If you walk around with one, people are going to be drawn to you. And they’re smart, too. My father trained them to do all kinds of tricks, from whistling to lying down in people’s arms like a baby, to memorizing a whole list of endearing phrases in English and Spanish, to blowing kisses.

So, when his pension wasn’t enough to support his family, my father became the street entertainer known as the Bird Man. He’d walk around the popular areas of Manhattan with a macaw on his shoulder, sometimes until the middle of the night, and for a few bucks he’d put it on your arm, or your shoulder, or the top of your head, and snap your photo with the Polaroid camera he kept slung around his neck.

People absolutely loved him. Whether he was making the rounds between the nightclubs and restaurants of Little Italy or down at the South Street Seaport, wherever he went, he was a sensation. People would hire him for events, even high-profile functions with New York’s elite. He was so beloved that, years later, when I was starting out in business, I had people who only worked with me or who gave me a special deal because I was the Bird Man’s kid.

When I was old enough, my father would take me out with him some nights. That’s how I got my first hands-on lessons in business. I’d go along with him and hand out cards to his customers with a list of answers to the most common questions he heard all the time (you can only hear “what kind of bird is that?” so many times before you start to plan ahead). Eventually he let me collect money and make change.

He taught me about the value of a dollar by taking me with him to buy film. He was always trying to save money, and sometimes he’d get burned in the effort. For example, he’d buy expired film—film that was past its sell-by date—at a discount, and maybe one out of ten pictures shot with that film would be no good. Sometimes the whole roll was bad, and he’d have wasted his money. I’d watch him buy film when he was broke and I got to see how he’d negotiate and get discounts.

He taught me the power of branding. He was always coming up with new ways to market himself. Those cards we handed out didn’t just have facts about the bird, they also had his contact info so people could hire him for events. He had a shirt made for me to wear when I went out with him that read PHOTO WITH THE PARROT. When he made enough money, he got a little three-wheel vehicle, like the ones cops use to give tickets today, and painted it to look like a macaw, and he decorated it with photos of celebrities getting their picture taken with one of his birds.

He taught me about the value of hard work. He’d be out there all night, pounding the pavement and cajoling tourists until he’d made enough money to take care of his family. By the time he came home, his feet were killing him, his back was killing him, and his clothes were covered in bird crap. And remember, this was supposed to be his retirement. The man was a veteran, he was a teacher for decades—these were supposed to be his golden years. But he went out there again and again, night after night, and I can’t remember ever hearing him complain. Thanks to his dedication, we never had to worry about where our next meal would come from or whether we’d have a roof over our heads.

But the biggest lesson he taught me was the power of charm.

Let’s do an exercise. Picture a swanky Manhattan restaurant, a real hotspot where the elite come to see and be seen. Imagine walking into a place like that and telling the maître d’ that you have no intention of buying anything and, in fact, you would like his permission to walk around the restaurant, asking the customers for money. And imagine you’re doing all this with a huge bird on your shoulder and a line of fresh bird shit on the back of your jacket.

Who do you think they’d call first—the health inspector or the police?

But when my father did it, the response was, “Of course! Come on in!” That’s charm. When a woman would shriek and recoil when she noticed the bird on his shoulder because she was terrified of animals, and within seconds he had her cooing with delight with the bird in her arms—that’s charm. When influential politicians would let the bird crawl all over them at a public event, grinning like a kid the whole time, not caring what they looked like in front of all the cameras—that’s charm. And when things were tight and he had to convince shop owners to act against their own self-interest and give him film for free, just so he could get back out there and try to make a few bucks—you’d better believe that’s charm.

My father taught me a lot of valuable lessons, but none of them were more important, or left a bigger impression, than the power of personality. He taught me that no matter what you’re selling, you’re selling yourself first.

I Get in the Game

How I learned what I wanted, got my real estate license, and ended up working for myself

I didn’t get into real estate right away. First I went through a series of odd jobs that taught me more about what I didn’t want from a career than anything else. If it sounds like I’m knocking these experiences, I’m not. Sometimes learning what you don’t want is a crucial step in figuring out what you do want.

I was a bike messenger, where I learned, well…mostly that I didn’t want to be a bike messenger. And even if I did, that particular job path was cut off for me when I was in a nasty car accident that injured my spine. I actually had to finish my high school education from home, but thanks to the support of my parents and a particularly wonderful teacher who took the time to work with me one-on-one, I still graduated on time.

Later, I sold eyeglasses at a store off Madison Avenue. It was my first experience working in a professional environment, and it showed. I remember on my first day I asked my manager how to do something by starting with, “Yo, how do you…?” He taught me what I wanted to know, but the first thing he told me? “Don’t call me Yo.” Working there taught me about corporate discipline, about how to balance work and friendship, and about how to act in a proper professional manner, but it wasn’t for me. I learned that I wasn’t meant for a typical 9-to-5, and that’s important. I don’t care if you’ve dreamed of being an entrepreneur since you were in diapers—if you’ve never worked in a traditional work environment, you’ll never have the foundation for thriving in a nontraditional one.

Being stuck inside the same four walls every day wasn’t for me. No problem. Next I went to work with my cousin Victor, installing security systems. On paper, this was a great opportunity for me. The work took us to different places every day. I got to work on some pretty impressive homes—including properties owned by big-time celebrities like Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi—as well as some of New York’s most prestigious commercial buildings. I got to meet all kinds of different people. The money was nothing to sneeze at. I even got to work with family—and Victor was a great boss; he really went out of his way to take me under his wing. In theory, it should have all worked out perfectly. In reality…let’s just say there’s a reason this isn’t a book about getting rich through security system installation.

I was a terrible employee and I knew it. My heart just wasn’t in it. I was so bad that when the time came for Victor to give me my first paycheck, I told him not to bother, I wasn’t going to cash it. My cousin didn’t have the heart to fire a member of his own family—which speaks volumes about what a great guy he was, and still is—so I saved him the trouble by quitting.

That experience taught me that I wouldn’t be happy doing something I wasn’t passionate about. It may sound obvious, but that’s actually a critical lesson to learn about yourself. There are a lot of people in this world who are perfectly content doing a job they don’t really care about, so long as it’s not too unpleasant and the pay is good enough for their needs. Well, here the pay was perfectly good for my age, with room to grow, and there wasn’t really anything about the job I actively disliked. But I was never going to be passionate about installing security systems, and because of that, I couldn’t commit to it fully. And without commitment, you’re destined to fail.

All these jobs also taught me that I would never really be happy working for someone else. I needed a job that would let me work on my own terms. In short, I was destined to be an entrepreneur; I just didn’t know it yet.

My first foray into real estate actually came a few years earlier, well before I ever got my salesperson’s license. My father had saved up and purchased a run-down multiunit rental property in Brooklyn’s Park Slope neighborhood. Today Park Slope is one of the most expensive and sought-after neighborhoods in NYC, bu...