Q&A with Tyler Bindi - From Zero Sales to Top Producer

Five years ago, Tyler Bindi made the career switch from selling season tickets at Coors Field to selling triple net real estate. Soon after he started, he stared at his name at the bottom of his office's agent rankings. DFL.

As of today, he is the #1 investment sales agent in his LA office halfway through the year.

We sat down with Tyler to discuss his journey from rock bottom to the top, how social media transformed his business, and what it takes to scale in the competitive triple net lease space.

Jake: Let's start at the beginning. You recently posted about being dead last in your office rankings during your first year. Take us back to that moment.

Tyler: Five years ago, I became a commercial real estate broker. Towards the end of my first year, my office posted the agent rankings. My eyes went straight to my name - dead last. I hadn't made a sale, hadn't made a dollar, and felt like I was failing professionally and personally.

Seeing those rankings lit a fire in me. I printed out the list and taped it inside my cubicle. I forced myself to stare at it every day as motivation. Yesterday, I was named the #1 investment sales agent in our Los Angeles office halfway through the year.

The message isn't to brag - it's for anyone in the early chapters of their career going through hell right now. Remember why you started, and don't quit. Most people overestimate what they can do in a year and underestimate what they can do in a decade.

Jake: When did social media become part of your strategy?

Tyler: It's really been a few years now. I thought I'd try this out and started posting once or twice a day, just off-the-cuff thoughts. It started adding up - I began seeing interactions and people sending me DMs wanting to talk and meet. So I just kept doing it, and now it's become a pretty big part of my business plan.

Jake: What type of content performs best for you?

Tyler: I split my content between advice to brokers and market insights. About half of it is advice to brokers, and the other half is "here's what I'm seeing in the marketplace." Because of those insights on the deals we're doing and what we're working on, I've gotten a lot of developers to reach out and ask for my opinion on the stuff they're building.

Jake: Was it mainly brokers reaching out initially, or were you finding actual clients?

Tyler: When I first started, the first year was a lot of brokers reaching out - people wanting to get into brokerage or asking for advice. But as my profile grew, it became more of my target demographic: developers, owners, people coming to me saying, "Hey, I just built this property. Can you take a look and give me an opinion on pricing?"

In the past year, I've done so many actual deals from people I've met on LinkedIn and Twitter. Just this Monday, I closed a deal with a guy who DM'd me on Twitter.

Jake: How would your pipeline differ right now if social media wasn't part of your strategy?

Tyler: I have between 45 and 50 listings right now. Without social media, I'd probably have... significantly less.

When I first started, it was all cold calling - 500 cold calls a week to get introduced to prospects and book meetings. But now I'm five years in, managing listings, have a team, and other day-to-day tasks. I can't make as many cold calls anymore.

What I can do is post on social media every day. It takes 15 minutes to put out a post about my thoughts or a deal. That extra 15 minutes a day has replaced those 500 cold calls a week. It's as if I'm making thousands of cold calls weekly based on the number of people seeing my content.

Jake: What's been your biggest challenge as you've scaled?

Tyler: About six months ago, I realized that I have become the bottleneck. I had so many people coming to me asking, "Can you look at this property? Can you help me sell it? Can you help me buy something?" I just didn't have enough time to work on everything at once.

I was sitting in the office with my team and said, "We've got to start hiring more people." So we hired three new people this year.

You don't want to be the bottleneck. Every broker at some point has to make this decision - spend the money to hire more people or stay where you are and not do more deals. For me, the choice was obvious.

Jake: How did you decide what to delegate?

Tyler: We were super strategic about it. What's our highest value when we're on the clock? It's not me reviewing purchase contracts or writing up leases - other people can do that just as well, probably better than me.

My main focus should be getting in front of clients, posting on social media, and filming videos with information my followers find valuable. People are hiring us to sell their properties, so we need to be getting those properties in front of as many people as possible.

Jake: What drew you to the triple net lease space?

Tyler: I got my license in 2020 during peak COVID. At that time, really the only properties selling were recession-proof net lease properties - fast food restaurants with drive-throughs that were staying open.

I thought, "Let me focus on these because people are buying and selling them right now." That was five years ago, and fast food restaurants have stayed a core part of my business because they still have some of the highest cap rates and velocity.

It's not as sexy as selling a high-rise apartment building in Miami Beach, but you have to scale them. My goal every year is to sell 100 of them. To do that, I quickly realized you need a strong team and good systems.

Jake: What's your Mount Rushmore of fast food restaurants?

Tyler: I’ve to go with In-N-Out, McDonald's, Chick-fil-A, and Panda Express.

JC: I’d go Raising Canes, In-N-Out, Chick-fil-A and Southern Classic. IYKYK.

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