Bob Knakal & Rod Santomassimo—Mastering CRE Sales and What It Really Takes to Sell 2,350 Buildings

What separates good brokers from great ones? In this special episode, Martha, Manus, and Dianne chat with two titans of CRE sales—Bob Knakal and Rod Santomassimo— who get real about what it takes to succeed, scale, and stay relevant across decades of market cycles. From the grind of daily prospecting to the power of knowing what the market data means, they break down the 3 characteristics of top producers.

Bob shares how his famed Map Room went from pandemic project to competitive differentiator, and why discipline, obsession, and a highlighter can be the components of long-term success. Rod explains why AI is changing the CRE sales game—but not replacing grit—and how their collaboration on a new book Selling Buildings is part memoir, part masterclass.  If you’re in the CRE capital markets – this is a must-listen with healthy doses of entertainment along the way.

And stick around for the end, when the conversation takes a turn: who would play Bob and Rod in the movie version of their CRE journey?

03:02 What Separates Good Brokers from Great Ones?

07:07 The Map Room Origin Story Redux

12:58 The Mindset of Success in Brokerage

18:16 The Power of Visualization in Real Estate

21:05 Navigating Challenges: Lessons from the Field

24:00 Resilience in Tough Times: Advice for Brokers

26:54 AI and the Future of Real Estate

34:10 Leaving a Legacy: The Importance of Mentorship

Have questions for the pod team? Send them to Podcast@LightBoxRE.com. 

www.lightboxre.com

Transcript

The CRE Weekly Digest by LightBox

Episode 46: Bob Knakal & Rod Santomassimo—Mastering CRE Sales and What It Really Takes to Sell 2,350 Buildings

May 16, 2025

Martha Coacher: This is the CRE Weekly Digest by LightBox, a firm transforming the commercial real estate landscape by connecting every step of the CRE process with comprehensive tools and data. I'm Martha Coacher with Manus Clancy and Dianne Crocker. Today's episode is a masterclass in commercial real estate sales. We're joined by two legends in the industry. Bob Knakal, one of the most prolific investment sales brokers in New York City history and Rod Santomassimo, the premier coach for CRE, professionals and founder of The Massimo Group. They're here to talk about the market, New York City, the future of brokerage, and their new book, Selling Buildings, Maximizing Prices and Profits in Commercial Real Estate. We're excited to have you both join us today. 

Bob Knakal: So great to be with you guys. 

Martha Coacher: So we have a lot to cover. We are very ambitious in the things that we want to talk about. Bob you've brokered over 2,200 buildings, valued at 22 billion in your career and have seen boom and bust cycles. Given that you've seen inflection points before, how do you navigate today's uncertain markets?

Bob Knakal: Well, I think the best way to navigate any market is really to study it and to look at the transactions and try to draw some conclusions based upon how the market is performing. In terms of volume and value, we always say we have to look at the two Vs. On the volume side, we always look at number of properties sold and we look at the dollar volume sales. Is it going up? Is it going down? How much is it going up? How much is it going down? On the value side, the same thing. We disaggregate the market into different property types and look at each of those property types to determine how value fluctuations are performing. It's a very, very unique time in New York City today where product types are performing very, very differently. Normally, in good times, everything is increasing in value just to different degrees and in bad times, everything is going down in value just to different degrees. Today we have different market segments performing very, very differently. Some are going up, some are going down. And it's probably more important than ever before to really study things, almost on a daily basis to try to figure out where it's headed. We try to be as empirical as we possibly can with regard to that and share that information with clients, because at the end of the day, we're just trying to help our clients make the most informed decisions possible. The more informed they are, the better the decisions are they're going to make, the better. Those decisions are. The better their outcomes are going to be. And if we help our clients get great outcomes, they're going to be happy. So that's what we try to do every day. 

Martha Coacher: Rod, you've coached thousands of brokers. What separates the good from the great in commercial real estate, especially in today's market?

Rod Santomassimo: Yeah well before, I've got to give some context to that one because you shared something in passing that I think people need to understand. Bob has sold 2,349 buildings in 41 years. 

Bob Knakal: We closed another one yesterday, sorry to interrupt, but we're up to 2,350. We closed a small building in Brooklyn yesterday.

Rod Santomassimo: There you go. 2,350 buildings in 41 years. If you do the math, that's over one building a week over 41 years. So while we say in passing what makes great brokers, that individual just is closing. Our pace of one building a week for over four decades. So understand the context. I mean, you asked Bob a question or the audiences into this, you say he is legendary. I think that term is you said about me, we're not legends, we're just working hard. But so what makes brokers great? Number one, I, there's so many things. First of all, there's no silver bullet. There is no. Absolutely not any silver bullet in success in commercial real estate brokerage or investing, but there is guaranteed silver buckshot. If you do the right targeting and the right little things in a lot of ways, again and again and again, you'll make massive impact for your clients. And yeah, you'll make a massive amount of money. You will. So what are some of the key things? No doubt from a qualitative standpoint, they are disciplined, they're focused on their client. They are market experts. They have, they navigate their cycles. They understand complete the idea of marketing and presence and social media like Bob recently has exploded on social media. Those brokers get it. They are authorities versus commodities. On the quantitative side, they do the tactics every day consistently, which is hard to do the calls, to have the meetings, to do the post again and again and again. I'm sure Bob will tell you. Any topics will tell you. It's not really complex work. It's not, but it really is the consisting the discipline that most people just don't want to do. 

Bob Knakal: I'd like to add to that also, Martha, if I could, because I, you know, Rod coaches, thousands of brokers across North America, across the world, but you know, in the massing Ale days, and I had my own company for 26 years and saw top brokers from the inside. And also observed a lot of really great brokers here in New York, and all top brokers possess three main characteristics. Number one, expertise. They narrowly define a certain sector of the market that's small enough that they can know every single thing about it, but large enough that you can make a good living doing it. But absolutely a very, very high level of expertise to reach that. Authority threshold that Rod always talks about. Number two, passion. You have to love the business. The business, no matter how good you are. The business always has been is and always will be cyclical. No matter how good you are, you're going to have tough times. You have to love it to keep you yourself going so that you stick around to take advantage of the good times that will inevitably follow. And then number three what Rod alluded to is having the ability to use discipline very well. And I say use discipline as opposed to have discipline because. We all have access to the same level of discipline. We all choose to use that differently. And in the brokerage business, you have to do a lot of things that are not very glamorous or exciting, but you have to do them over and over and over again day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. And if you can't use discipline well, you get a little frustrated and won't be consistent with the way you're implementing those very fundamental things. So those are the three things I see very, very commonplace in the very top producers in the business.

Dianne Crocker: So I'll jump in on the topic of differentiating yourselves. Bob, we cannot have you here without asking you to talk about the map room. So for our listeners, if you think back five years in the early days of Covid, some of us were taking up bread, baking, or painting, or adjusting to having our kids at home trying to learn on Zoom while we did our day jobs. You used that crazy time to do something that made you legendary, both inside and outside of New York City. So I'd love for you to tell us the process that led to the famed map room and what does it signify for you today. 

Bob Knakal: Sure. Dianne, I appreciate you bringing that up. I would say that over the course of my career creating the map room has been the single best thing that I've ever done, and it all started during covid, as you said. You know, I sell a lot of land in New York City, and remarkably, there is not a lot of data available on what the supply pipeline looks like. You know, how can you possibly determine what the value of a piece of land is if you don't know? I. What that to be built building is going to be competing with when it's completed. You need to know how many hotel rooms are popping up in the neighborhood, how many square feet of office space, how many condos, how many rental apartments, how many square feet of educational space or healthcare space. It always frustrated me and for probably 10 years before Covid, I said I have to go out and count buildings. I mean, if you're standing in front of a building and you see a crane lifting concrete up 30 floors, you know, that building's under construction. So I just have to get out and do it. But who the heck has time to do that? So, you know, I, there was a rumor going around right after we had the covid shutdown March 12th. We were told go home for a couple of weeks, let this thing blow over. There was a rumor going around the city was going to be quarantined and they were going to shut the bridges and tunnels down to Manhattan. So I got out of town in a hurry went up to my country house, and it was very clear two weeks later that the, we were not going to be back in the office. So I drove back to my apartment on the east side to get several things that we forgot in the haste that we left the city in. And I got off the FDR drive and it literally was a ghost town. There were no cars moving, there were no stores open, there were no people on the streets. And for whatever reason, the first thing that popped into my head is, Hey, this is a perfect time to go count buildings. So I called up my team. I said, go into the office, make copies of the tax lot map. And over the next four months, I spent 220 hours out in the field walking every street. Of Manhattan, south of 96th on the east side, south of one 10 on the west side. And I decided to color code the map, which I thought would be a lot easier. The intention wasn't to create the map, it was to use pieces of the map and color code it so I wouldn't have to write stuff down. I don't write very neatly. I didn't want to forget what I wrote or not be able to read what I wrote. I color coded it. And I highlighted everything that was under construction or had been demolished in green. Every development site that was built, or every site that had a building that was built to less than 25% of its max density. And we're very lucky in New York that we're in a. And a zoning jurisdiction that is completely as of right. So every site is pre entitled, so you know what you could build there. And then highlighted assemblage sites in yellow where you'd put several buildings together to create a development site. Followed up that 220 hours in the field with about 3000 hours of research. And now since we did that. We have been tracking every demolition permit, every foundation permit, every building permit. So we have the development pipeline nailed down to the square inch for five different buckets, rental apartments, condos, hotels, offices, and a miscellaneous bucket for healthcare and education. I got into the office and started taping some of these pieces of map together to see what was happening in certain neighborhoods. And before I knew it, I had this 24 foot long, 10 foot wide map. Started bringing it around to client's offices which was very cumbersome. I had it rolled up on an eight foot closet, Rod got caught in the rain one day, said, I can't do this anymore. Asked JLL if they could give me 600 square feet so I could display the map, have a map room. They said, Hey Bob, if we do that for you, we have to do that for everybody. And so I went out, rented space outside the office, created map room 1.0. We are now, for about the past eight months, we've had map room 2.0, which is in a real office space. Within the next day or two, we will have our 1000th visitor. To the map room, and it has been an unbelievable resource. Not only do we have the development pipeline nailed down to the square inch, but we also are in the process of completing a three year study of land value. We're calling that the N of land index. We have studied now 2,417 development site transactions, going all the way back to 1984. Disaggregated that data into those five buckets that I mentioned. We're applying AI models to those fluctuations in land value to determine what metric or group of metrics impacts the direction and magnitude of changes in those land values. And it's just been unbelievable. Over the course of my career, I've won 26% of the pitches that I've given to potential sellers in the map room. I'm now 32, outta 32. And I know we're going to lose a pitch in the map room one of these days, but hasn't happened so far. And we currently have a portfolio of about 37 exclusive listings, about two and a half billion dollars worth of stuff, which is mostly land. And like I say, for those reasons, it has been the single best thing that I have ever done in my career to win business and sell properties. So really it's came from, like you say, and we had nothing to do during the pandemic. I said, you know what? Let's make the most of it. Let's go really develop an expertise that no one else has. And like Rod says, anybody could do it. If you want to go do it, go. You know, now it'd probably take a thousand hours of walking around to get it done with the traffic that exists. But we did something that has been very, very accretive to the business. And my only regret is I wish I did it 30 years ago.

Manus Clancy: So, as I'm listening to this, this is the CRE equivalent to me of Michael Jordan in an empty gym taking a thousand shots a day. Right? Anybody could do it. A couple guys do it. Only a couple guys want to take it to that next level. Rod, when you hear stories like this, or when you tell this story to younger brokers, do they ever say, like some young basketball players, I'm not up for a thousand shots a day, do they think, do they look at you in fear and say. That's such a heavy lift. I can't imagine working that hard. How do you come up against a guy like Bob and see the fire in his belly and try to compete with that? 

Rod Santomassimo: Yeah. First of all you know, it's funny how many people call me and go, I want to be Bob Knakal of Detroit, Bob Knakal of Miami, Bob and I tell 'em all. No. Be Joe, be Jane, be Betty. Don't be that right because Bob is in unicorn. Look, Bob's unicorn. You can't say he's a normal broker. He's not. He's a freaking unicorn. He's obsessed. He's just obsessed. Like Jordan, like Kobe, right Tiger. He is obsessed with winning and he's obsessed with excellence. That is not. Normal. Sorry. That's why that's, that defines obsession being abnormal. So it is. So I'm not calling Bob abnormal. I'm saying the man is obsessed. So when kids come to me, I say, look, let's not start with a thousand shots. Let's start with 10. Can we do 10 shots in a week? Can we do 20 by the end of the year? Maybe we're doing a hundred months and whatever it is, let's start with small streaks. Let's build winning streaks. And from that we'll get to the point where we want to grow. Let's not start. And that's the problem. A lot of people, they say, look they set the benchmark at a Knakal or at a, at any other top broker across the world. Sam McVay in Australia is a top broker in Australia. We coach him too. You can't be those guys if he starting out. You can't start where you are. Now, but I want to add one thing though. So when Bob told me this, I was coaching him and he, I'm like, you're going to do what? You're going to spend your time doing what? And the first question I asked is, and Bob, we were human where you go to the bathroom, Bob, because everything's closed.

Bob Knakal: That was a problem. We had to, I drive back to my apartment to go to the bathroom because there was literally nothing open. 

Rod Santomassimo: Look, there's certain things over the 13 years Bob and I have working together that you just know those inflection points. There's no telling Bob no. There's certain they happen sometimes, right? You're not going to tell him no, but if we're going to do it, and you always ask the question, this is true for everything you're going to do, everyone, okay? Then what does success look like? What's the output going to be? We do all this effort, all this work, all these hours, all this money and time. What does success look like? Right? I don't think Bob or I ever thought. That, and maybe Bob, tell me wrong, that we would be going from 26.7% to 100% on pitch listings because of this building of a map room. I don't, Bob, I don't think you thought it'd be a hundred percent. 

Bob Knakal: It wasn't to build a map room. The initial idea was to just get information so we could more accurately value land and Manus. One point I would make as I think for young people especially, don't compare yourself to other people. You're comparing yourself to yourself, what did I do last week and how can I improve this week? That's really where the rubber meets the road. Constantly improve yourself incrementally and don't try to get, I. From zero to a hundred in a second. Do better than you did last week. This week. Do better today than you did yesterday. Do better next month than you did this month. That is how you make progress and how you grow, and eventually you'll get to the place you want to get to, but you have to make your own personal growth and compare yourself to how you are doing, not how others are doing. It's really important I think that, mindset is so important, and it's so important to have an abundance mentality. You know, it's very easy. In New York I hope it's easy in other markets around the country, but in New York, there's just so much. There's 176,000 investment properties. There's enough to go around for everybody. If you have the zero sum game mentality and you say, you know what? A win for you is a loss for me. So I don't want to ever see you win. That's a terrible way to live life. But if you say, Hey, you just won that one. Hey, great. Good for you. I'm going to go get my win now. So you have to compare yourself to yourself. Don't compare yourself to other people, particularly when you're starting out because it could become overwhelming. It could deflate you, compare yourself to yourself and continually make progress, and you'll put yourself in a position to succeed in the long run. 

Martha Coacher: Let's talk a little bit about the book. Selling Buildings, Maximizing Prices and Profits in Commercial Real Estate. What inspired the two of you to collaborate on this, Rob? 

Rod Santomassimo: Well, it this be my fifth book and so, I always thought Bob should write a book, but the man's too damn busy and look the kids today may be writing books with AI. I'm not that guy. Bob's not that guy. So it's now been a two, two, almost two and a half year project. So we're really happy it's finally coming out. But so two and a half years ago, Bob said, and it's time to write a book. And I said, I agree. And then he gave me the honor and said, Hey, I'd love to write one with you, which is awesome. I said, look. I know how to write a book. I know how to do all the things, scenes behind the book, the editing, the printing, the proofing, getting the story right? I have a book writing coach that we brought into the project as well, a gentleman named Wally Bach, who we acknowledge in the book. But the question was and everyone needs to write this question. When you write a book, the first question you need to ask is, what is the objective for me? And what is the objective for my audience? Because if you can't answer that question, you. You just, you can't write a book and you shouldn't write a book. So of course the objective for Bob, I'm sure is to get more listings. Absolutely. For me to get more clients. Absolutely. But also, how do we do that? My favorite books are not business books in the sense of business. Like my, one of my favorite business books is Shoe Dog. I don’t know if you've ever read Shoe Dog, the story of Phil Knight and Nike. It's a story and it captivates, you know, drives you in and you can't put it down. And you think of the struggles and challenges. So I said, we can write that story. And Bob has that story. He does. So we decided let's use Bob's careers 40 year career. The cycles, the ups, the downs. People don't know the struggles Bob's had. They don't know. So we're going to give him an inside look of you want to be Bob Knakal, do this. You know, so that's what we decided to do. So we wrapped this book around. The thread is Bob's journey, but the lessons are, if you're an investor, you got to be thinking about this. If you're a broker, you got to think about this. Imagine if Michael Jordan and Phil Jackson wrote a book on basketball, right? It's like, okay, two totally different perspectives, but two really, really knowledgeable people. So Bob and I said, let's do this. And so that was the concept. And I think we nailed it. I really do. BK? 

Bob Knakal: Yeah. I think it was, first of all, it was just a very cool thing to kind of walk down memory lane and see everything. But to me, I think Rod you hit it on the head. There are tremendous lessons for investors and brokers in this book, and kind of the book follows my journey over 40 years, and we talk a lot about the inflection points. That we all come to at various times in our life where we're at a fork in the road and do we go left or do we go right? And you know, I think there are 10 or 12 major, major inflection points. Do we leave CBRE or do we not leave CBRE to start our own firm? Do we go into massive debt? Do we hire a director of HR after nine 11 and increase the size of the firm when every other firm was downsizing when we had our first territories in Manhattan? Phil, do we. Increase our service lines, or do we get into different geography? Do we hire a CFO when we couldn't afford one? And you know, do we sell in 2007? Do we sell the company or not? We had a great offer at that time. 2014, do we sell or not? 2018? Do I, I'm leaving Cushman. Do I go to another established company or do I start my own company? Same thing in 2024. And so I think what we've done is we've taken a look at each of those inflection points, given some background, tried to explain why we made the decisions we made. Rod looks at everything from 30,000 feet and says, well, here is the circumstances. This is what investors can get out of this. This is what brokers can get out of it. This was the thing that they did right? This was the thing they did wrong. And then along the way, we're telling deal stories, which everybody loves, deal stories. We get really into the granular details of deals that were happening along the way. Those deal stories are indicative of what was happening in the market at that time. Whether the market was really good and things were a little easier or things were really tough and we had to go above and beyond to get things done. But I think there are a lot of lessons that folks can get out of it and you know, if people read the book and say, wow, you know, maybe I can do some of this stuff to improve the way my portfolio is performing, or maybe I could improve the way my brokerage business is going, then I think. Rod and I would consider the book a success. 

Manus Clancy: So Rod talked about people learning from your challenges. Was there ever a time where you said. Man, I should just become a dentist. This is just too damn hard. 

Bob Knakal: No, never. Never, you know, right or wrong. And as you read the book, you'll see, we ran the company on credit cards for many years. I ran my personal life on credit cards for 10 years, 1988. I. To 1998, my net worth fluctuated between zero and minus $180,000. But all the while we had faith in what we were doing we thought we had a good idea and that ultimately it would work. We continued to plow money back into the company rather than take money out of the company. I never wanted to do anything else. I got into real estate completely by accident. I was looking for a summer job that would look good on my resume. Between freshman and sophomore year in college, I was a freshman at Wharton, wanted to be the next Gordon Gecko, like every other Wharton kid, walked into CB thinking Coldwell Banker was a bank, and stumbled into this career. Loved the job from the first day I did it. And feel truly blessed that I found a job that is not only a vocation, but it's my hobby. I never once thought about doing anything else, and I've been asked on several podcasts as well, bk. If you weren't a broker, what would you do? I've never answered that question because I'd never given any thought to what I might do other than sell buildings.

Manus Clancy: You talked about a negative net worth for a long period of time, living on credit cards. You talked before about before we started rolling the tape. Walking around with a roll of quarters in your pocket so you could make payphone calls. What was the moment where you said, this is going to work, right? Where you said, wow, I could now exhale for the first time that we've turned the corner. I could see this thing really becoming a home run. What was that deal or moment or the light bulb moment. 

Bob Knakal: Manus I think that is really hard to, I've never been asked that question, and I think it's really hard to identify the one point where that happened. I mean, our first exclusive listing was a great feeling. Our first sale that we closed was a great feeling. The SNL crisis in the early nineties was brutally hard. One of the things that we got out of it that resonated with us is we had this institutional approach to the business that we brought into the private capital space, and it really resonated with people. It resonated with the banks. We were doing, you know, 1992, '93, '94, the overwhelming majority of the work we were doing were from with banks. The banks loved the approach that we took. So I think along the way we got signs that things were going to work out, but that didn't make it any less difficult. And also when we, you know, we closed a deal and we had an extra couple of hundred thousand dollars. Paul and I could have said, well, hey, let's each take 80 grand and go have some fun. We didn't do that. We took that 160 grand and we got better marketing materials. We did more mailings. We did, we increased the size of our newsletter from what started as four pages to 32 pages. We kept putting money in because we believe that. Someday it would work. And fortunately for us that they did occur. But I can't say there was any one particular moment I remember where we said, Hey, this is going to work. 

Manus Clancy: So Rod, the last couple of years have been challenging for brokers. There must have been some days where the young guys were little like Bob in the late eighties running negative, not seeing a lot of deal flow, wondering if it's going to work out, wonder if they should become a dentist. What would you tell those guys over the last 24 months when times were tough, when deal volume was low? And how do you keep 'em going? 

Rod Santomassimo: Yeah. Well, I guess the first thing is our clients continue to make money. So I, you know, people say things are tough. I'm like are they? Or this you, you know, if that's an excuse, I'm sorry to say this. A lot of times that's an excuse of the, it's the market's fault versus my fault. Right. It just is. But there's no doubt some brokers. Went out to become dentists instead. They did. They do. Right. I can't, you know, so we found during the all cycles we've been involved in that three things happen, right? Either, number one, they're petrified and do nothing. They continue a broker, but they just, they don't know what to do and they're stuck. Second is they become proactive like Bob did when, at nine 11, when he went out and hired more people or other inflection points in his career and they make proactive changes. But the third, and you just mentioned it, Manus, is they panic. And they leave the industry. They just do, we saw a major exodus in 2008. We saw a major exodus in during the pandemic. I mean, and you're talking about 2015 to 20% brokers gone. Right. So I have no problem with that happening. The purge is good. It actually, it's less clients for me maybe. I don't know. But I think purge is good. It is natural. Selection works. It does. You have to have the discipline and consistency and conviction. I. Right to say, regardless to what happens, I'm a commercial real estate broker and this is my life, this is my journey. This, it's not my job, it's my identity. That's what I do. And you get to that point, you won't be purged. 

Dianne Crocker: When you launched your current firm, BK Real Estate Advisors, in 2024, you did so and you leaned specifically into ai, which, everybody in the industry is talking about now. It allows us to do things with data that we couldn't even have envisioned just a few years ago and being able to do it quickly. So I'm curious how you see AI and data analytics. Changing the role of today's broker, do you see it as kind of leveling the playing field a little bit for smaller players? How do you see it changing? Client expectations? 

Bob Knakal: Yeah, that, that's a great, great question Dianne and I will tell you that, you know, you look at how things have changed over the last 40 years. When I started in 1984, no computer on my desk, no fax machine, no cell phone. We carried rolls of quarters around they use in those pay phones that don't even exist anymore. But the world has changed dramatically. But you know, it's one of the great things that I get out of coaching and Rod and I talk every week and years ago he was telling me, Hey bk, you get this AI stuff, you got to be aware of this. This is going to change the world. And I really believe that AI is going to fundamentally change the way things operate and that the change over the next five years. Will blow away the change that we've seen over the last 40. So the first person I hired when I started a new firm, I hired an AI expert. Seth Samowitz, my COO has started AI companies. He worked in driverless cars for six years and I said to myself, this guy could make a car drive itself. He can help me sell buildings. So, you know, being a big fan of Benjamin Hardy and Dan Sullivan's books and particularly who not, how, where. The main thesis is, hey, if you have a good idea and you say to yourself, wow, that's a great idea. How am I going to do that? You're asking the wrong question. It should be, Hey, that's a great idea. Who am I going to get to do that for me? So I got Seth to do that for me. And we're using AI in three ways now. We're using it on the prospecting and deal execution front. Those two processes are nothing more than funneling. And so you go from thousands to hundreds to dozens to a few. AI is great for making those things more efficient and effective. And then we're also using it on the data interpretation front, which has extraordinary potential to be powerful. But you have to have good high integrity data. To make the data interpretation work well most data sets in the real estate industry are not very good. We have data sets that have been using the same methodology for 40 years, so we're very excited about what those algorithms might produce for us. So we're busy working on that. But really going to change the world. And you know, I think Rod is probably one of the top experts in the country on how AI is going to change the real estate market so much. Rather hear what he has to say about it than me. 

Rod Santomassimo: Well look AI does one thing that better than anything else. And that's speed. It's just what it is. If I could sell your building in six months, or I could sell your building in six days, which one would you prefer? The answer's obvious, right? It is the six days, or maybe it's not six days. Maybe it's six weeks, but it's better than six months. And AI today can do that. It can, you can get the message out to the investors, have conversations with bots. We're doing it already. Our clients have conversations and our tech spots have those conversations and our voice spots answer those questions. So you can get market information and market intel in a matter of hours now, or it's a matter of weeks and months. That's just today. That's today. Of course, the next phase of AI is going to be the agents. Right now most companies are developing their agents. We're investing heavily in Mossimo, in agent technology. So not only our sales and our marketing and our operations, and even our coaches, they can compliment everything we do. They can look this, this is a fact in two, if not three years, two if not three years. Bob's going to have a robot in his office doing things that humans are currently doing that it's just where it is. We're all going to have robots in our house doing something that we don't want to do. That these are facts. These aren't theories. This isn't the Jetsons anymore. This is where we are. Right. Technology never, ever loses. It doesn't. So you can be afraid of it, you can be hesitant about it, but my coaching to everyone is. Jump on the bandwagon and get to know it right away. My, my kid, I'm so proud. My son today is graduating from grad school, which I'm thrilled about. And he asked me, Hey, dad, did I waste all those years of college in grad school learning what I learned? My answer was, maybe, maybe you did, but he got down the skills to do something different. So yeah, AI is everywhere and it's just going to get. Sorry. It's going to get just more integrated in everything we do. I'm not scared. I'm not, I know when the robots kill everybody in 200 years. We'll see what happens then. But I'm good right now. 

Manus Clancy: I'm a little scared for Bob. A guy with his, the fire in his belly. Having a little bit of free time as a result of AI makes me a little nervous. I don't know. What would you do with the free time, Bob? 

Bob Knakal: Well, you know, my, like I always say, Manus, my, my life is very simple. I spend as much time as I can with my wife and my 16-year-old daughter, and I go to church, I go to the gym and I sell buildings. So probably would do a little bit more of each of those. 

Martha Coacher: Bob, you've expressed the importance of leaving a legacy for the next generation of professionals. Tell us why that's important to you. 

Bob Knakal: It's always important to realize that none of us do what we do by ourselves. We're part of a society, a real estate community, very dependent upon other people. And so, you know, I look back at the Massey Knakal legacy, and that was a 26 year and 46 day journey, and lots to be proud of there. You know, from 2001. To 2014, when we sold the firm, the number two company in New York City sold about 1300 properties. Massey Knakal sold over 4,000. So we were competing with national giants and global giants, and we lapped the field by more than three x over 14 years in a row. We sold the company for a lot of money. But the thing that I'm the most proud of is that today. If you look at the New York City investment sales market, you see that there are 31 companies or divisions of companies where the folks who own those companies or run those companies, learn the business at Massey Knakal. That's the legacy I'm by far the most proud of. We ran the company with a servant leadership. Approach to management that worked really well. Training our people, encouraging our people, building their self-esteem, making them believe they could do better than their best. And it really produced great results. And so, you know, today I'm doing the same thing with a bunch of new young folks that I just have so excited to work with every day. And I think to the extent that we can profoundly and fundamentally change people's lives for the better. It makes you feel great. And so I think that is, a big part of what I do, why, what I do, how I do it, and why I do what I do. And because it's very, very rewarding to see folks do so well.

Manus Clancy: I'll throw you one curve ball. I want to say congratulations on the book, by the way. I know these things don't just pop out of the ether. It's a lot of work and. A lot of sweat and time that you guys put into this, but I got to throw you the ultimate curve ball, which is if they were to turn your book into a movie, who would. Who would you want to play you, Bob, and who would you want to play you, Rod? 

Bob Knakal: I don't know. You know, I get comparisons often rightly or wrongly to Michael Douglas and Vigo Mortenson. So maybe the young Bob Knakal or the Bob Knakal from 2004 to 2008 when I had the long hair. That would probably be Vigo Mortenson, and maybe today's version would be Michael Douglas. I don't know. I see that. I love that. How about you, Rod? 

Rod Santomassimo: I have never thought about that, I can honestly tell you, but I'll say maybe my son, my, my son will blame me. Nice. That'd be my honor. If my son would blame me, that'd be great. That's awesome. 

Martha Coacher: The book by Bob Knakal and Rod Santomassimo, Selling Buildings, Maximizing Prices and Profits in Commercial Real Estate, comes out on May 20th.

Thank you, Bob and Rod for joining us today on The CRE Weekly Digest. Thanks to our producer Josh Bruyning. Please join us every week as our LightBox team shares CRE News and Data in Context. You can listen and subscribe on any of your favorite podcast channels and send your comments or questions to podcast@lightboxre.com. Thank you for listening and have a great week. 

Manus Clancy: Let's go.