How a Single Mom Built an $844M Real Estate Career

0:00Commercial real estate is a great way to make a lot of money and have that type of flexibility. It's been such a gift to me as a single mom all these years. You know, when I was 30 years old, I wrote a list of all these things I wanted to accomplish in a decade and putting my daughter through a four-year university was one of the things on the list. And I got to cross that off. Because of commercial real estate. Lindsay Mingi is a seasoned strategic and accomplished commercial real estate advisor, principal at Lee & Associates, and founder of LM Private Client Advisory Services. With more than 816 million dollars in transactions across Southern California, she advises institutional investors, Fortune 500 companies, and private capital investors. You can't have a conversation about commercial real estate without talking about the extremely high competition that exists for the labor pool, for the best talent. And a lot of companies are looking at the real estate that they occupy, the amenities that are there. And if I can use those amenities to attract the

1:05best talent to come to my company, I win. You're talking about resurgence, right? Yes. Is that surgeon? Resurgence? Is it coming in strong like a tsunami or a little by level? You know, it's market-specific, but something along this conversation about having a workplace that feels like home. I think companies also have to look at... It spans the globe like a super high school. Internet Elvis? Ready? I hope you meet today, Apple. It's going to reinvent the bomb. It's not over until our weird. The Living Your Legacy Podcast for those who live to leave a legacy. It's extremely, very impossible. Oh, that is sensational! Open! She's coming with the latest news and fall is the box is not on the planet. You can live your dream! Hey, welcome back everyone to another episode of Living Your Legacy Podcast. I'm your host again,

2:08Jay Slangen. And thanks for joining us down here in the Miami Beach studios here in our podcast room where we have the privilege to speak to some of the best entrepreneurs from around the country, also the disruptors and experts from all kinds of fields, just like today for our America's top agents series. We have a special guest with us here and she's definitely at the top of her game. And why don't you introduce yourself? What's your name? Where are you from? And what do you do? Hi, I'm Lindsay Mingi. I am a commercial real estate broker in Southern California. My company is LM Private Client Advisory Services and I help people buy and sell buildings. All right, yes. So a lot of agents that we have in here are there, you know, residential real estate, right? Luxury real estate. But you know, you're one of the first people that are commercial real estate, okay? So you help sell buildings you said, right? But I just had the privilege of doing your

3:08of your episode, right? And you do a lot of different things, right? So tell us like who's your target market and who are you, I mean, helping to sell buildings or fill buildings? Most of my clients are family-owned businesses. So the family has maybe built a trucking company over a number of decades or the husband or wife is a dentist or a chiropractor or some other medical print practitioner, a psychologist and the family is building a business around that. Mom and pop shops, restaurants, retailers. And I work with a lot of family businesses. And do you have like a radius from where you live, like how far out some of these buildings are or do you work in major cities as well? Well, I can work anywhere in the US, but my target market is Southern California. If you think of Southern California, you have the ocean on one side, that's Orange County. Then you have LA, then you have San Diego. Everything that's not those places

4:12is inland Southern California. In fact, they call it the inland empire. That's kind of where I base out of, but I get to touch all the markets, the LA market, the Orange County market, and even down into San Diego. Okay. So what kind of buildings and properties are kind of hot right now? Well, in Southern California, especially in the inland empire, we are the largest logistics base in the United States because of our proximity to the port of LA and the port of Long Beach. So people in commercial real estate, they know the inland empire because of industrial real estate. It is so hot. Everybody wants to buy industrial, invest in industrial. Everyone wants to know data on leasing industrial, what the industrial market's doing, all industrial all the time. I actually got into commercial real estate as an office broker, which is no longer sexy. Nobody wants to touch commercial office. I love it because I love architecture and I just, I love staring up at a

5:19high-rise office building and wondering who's in there. Why is that company name on it? How much does it cost to have that corner office? The office real estate game has changed dramatically. You've had, I guess, since there's a there's post-COVID, and then there's almost like the post-we work era, although we works in co-working are still very, very popular. There was a little bit of a collapse of we work. But then you have new spaces just down just this past weekend. It was the launch of Rivani. He's building like this luxury office space where they even have this Japanese bar, but very, very high-end. I believe Damon Johns even has his offices in there. What are you seeing in this kind of the trends and what are you seeing? When everyone emptied out of commercial office buildings and had to work from home, I think we

6:24learned two things. We learned that it's convenient to work from home. It enables us to be more for our families, but it also takes away a lot of those boundaries, those important boundaries that exist between work and home. And so now you're starting to see a resurgence of people coming back to the office, whether that's because executives are mandating that their employees do that, or because people by nature are drawn to work together and realizing that there needs to be some important boundaries that exist between my home life and my work life. That's why you see new product or redeveloped product that is really focusing on the experience. Bars, gyms, pickleball courts on roofs, all of these amenities so that if I have to pull you away from your home to come work for me, I'm creating for you an environment that you really want to be in.

7:26And so if I'm pulling you away from home, I'm going to make sure that you're there for work and then even longer playing pickleball, go into the bar and then so when we send you home, it's like now you only have 30 minutes for your bedtime story for your son. Right, almost like that, but no, I get the experiential, right? So pickleball courts, gyms, I guess eating lunch, right? So tell us about some of these spaces that you've worked with. Well, you can't have a conversation about commercial real estate without talking about the extremely high competition that exists for the labor pool for the best talent. And a lot of companies are looking at the real estate that they occupy, the amenities that are there. And if I can use those amenities to attract the best talent to come to my company, I win. So that's why you see things like that. Same here at Inside Success, right? We're attracting the best of the best here. We have a gym. We have food. We

8:33also, you know, the facilities are beautiful, right? Here at the heart of Miami Beach also, right? So I get what you're saying. Well, until your point, so many of us spend more waking hours in our lifetime at work than we do at home. Now, certainly we're maybe we're sleeping at home, but our awake and our productive hours are often spent at the workplace. So you want people to feel you want it to feel like home. Yeah. I like that there's a gym here. Do I use it? You know, maybe it's not as much as I should, right? But it's there if I need to. Well, and that's so funny. I my real estate clients who are who are owning office assets or redeveloping office assets, we have that same conversation. Well, if I put in the pickleball court, nobody's going to use it. But the fact that you had it there was an attractive reason for a Fortune 500 to come lease from you that at the end, it was worth it, right? Everyone wants to slide that goes into the ball pit.

9:36And no one uses it. It looks really cool. Yeah, yeah. Maybe, I mean, so if we can brainstorm right now because the creative I am, you know, I love those open roofs with like the nets and the big pillows and then you can just pop your laptop in there. That's the fact you maybe use more, right? But if I were to spill my drink on that net and it goes down below, okay, maybe not so much, right? I think that corporate America has a lot to learn from creatives. For reasons just like that, I wish there were more netted hammocks in office spaces. But so you said also you were talking about resurgence, right? Yes. Is that surgeon? Resurgence? Is it coming in strong like a tsunami? Or a little by little? You know, it's market specific, but something along this conversation about having having a workplace that feels like home, I think companies also have to look at the convenience factor, realizing that people do have lives and and our lives require a lot of us,

10:39whether we're taking care of kids or taking care of elderly people in our family or taking care of a partner who may or may not have special circumstances or taking care of our own special circumstances. So you kind of had urban areas where everyone used to have to be because you were forced to be there. We kind of emptied out of that. The suburbs are really having a resurgence, right? If I can place people closer to home, they're going to be happier, they're going to be more productive. No one wants that hour commute and LA traffic into the city and then an hour can move back because they're definitely not going to be using the pickleball courts. If you have to send the car, it's it's so true. And in California, we I mean, it's it's an hour commute just to get across town. Never mind to get to Los Angeles. That's that's two and a half hours back for me. Because the professionals, they're the older people and the older people, they have families, they're not as urban, right? As kind of that younger generation that they do want to live in a city.

11:41So yeah, I mean, I guess they're the suburb resurgence, right? And is that where you're selling a lot of your commercial properties? The suburbs are having a moment. And the inland empire, this inland southern California is the inland empire. And we are an empire. If you take the two counties and combine, I think we're like we're one of the largest in the US. But it's just it is a suburb on steroids. It's where people can afford to live, whether they rent or own. And now that I don't have to do that two and a half hour commute to downtown LA. Two and a half. Oh my god. That's brutal. It's less than 60 miles, but it's more than two and a half hours. So if you do the math, I'm driving zero miles per hour. But if I if I can if I'm corporate America and I can set up office space for my employees in these suburbs where they live, by the way, the rents are cheaper there. And it gives my

12:43people my employees the ability to be more flexible with their work and their life. And yeah, it helps me attract better talent. It helps me retain people. So there definitely you can't have a commercial real estate conversation without having a people conversation. Because also the real estate in in urban areas is started to get astronomical living costs are getting astronomical as well. It's ridiculous. So when you're thinking value for your money. Okay, the office space, you you get a better value for your money also houses, right? You get value for your money. And it's almost like the urban areas because it's so expensive. They're looking like the suburban areas because all those big corporations are the only ones that can afford the real estate for the rents or you know, for the restaurants and all that, right? So I can see why the suburban empire or the inland empire is having kind of that resurgence, right? So what about this great L.A. escape or exit exodus, right? That

13:48they're talking about. How much does that affect you? I think there is, it's an interesting headline when you read about people leaving California. The truth is is that most of my clients who have their family in California and their business in California, they're staying there for the lifestyle. It's gorgeous, right? Yeah, kind of like you're in Miami, which is why we're leaving California, we're coming to Miami because we don't want to lose that lifestyle. But you know, it's the sunshine tax, right? Yeah. We will keep our businesses in California because we love our neighborhoods. We love the schools where our kids go. I have clients who wake up in surf in the morning, come into the office by 10 a.m. You know, maybe hit a jogging path or bike path in the evening. You can do that year round in Southern California. Yeah. So it's true that it's expensive to be there. But yeah, the weather is great. I like the marina. Yeah, I live in Marina Del Rey for

14:52about three years. Yeah. So and the weather is fantastic. The ocean water is cold now, right? Why is our ocean water so much colder than yours? It makes a difference. I hear I swim like, you know, every week, if not a few times a week, right? Over there for three years, I went in the water. I was just a few times. I even did the, what was it? The penguin swim. Okay. Yeah, which was like the January 1st, not the polar bear dip, right? But it's cold enough where, you know, they branded it the penguin swim. Oh, brutal. I got I have goosebumps just thinking about it. Yeah. Yeah. It was freezing. And I saw people in one two. It's an I'm there literally in my shorts. I had a head cap on. But yeah, it was freezing. You're great. I needed that drill. It's an exciting hand, right? Totally. If it cold flinch. Yeah. You were cold plunging me for everyone else. And what about, you know, times, they're always changing, right? And really stay commercial real estate always changes with that, right? So, you know, with, do you do a lot of

15:55stuff in LA like because like Hollywood and, you know, a lot of those major production companies they're slimming down, right? That the whole industry is seeing a vast change, right? Yes. Is that opportunity for you? It's certainly opportunity for somebody. I talk about when I talk about real estate, it's a cycle. People, most people are familiar with real estate, the cycle. It comes up and it goes down and you hope that when it comes up, it comes up higher than it did the last time and when it goes down, it does not go down as far as it did the last time. There's opportunity at every point in the real estate cycle depending on who you are and what you need. So it's finding where is that opportunity? It's been interesting to see what is happening with some of the product in Hollywood and the surrounding markets, some of the products specifically related to the film industry. I've certainly seen a resurgence of talent agencies, law firms,

16:59they are coming back to the office in a big way in West LA trying to be where their clients are. Again, there's this competition for talent and having a location in proximity to your industry is important. Talent is starting to be like professional sports players. Everyone's battling after that same talent. Some of the people that Mark Zuckerberg has hired for AI just astronomical prices. You mentioned Marina Del Rey. In the industry, we call that the South Bay, the resurgence of aerospace in South Bay and advanced manufacturing AI, other tech in South Bay. Again, this competition for talent, the best engineers win. If I want to recruit the best engineers and I can promise them an ocean view every morning or at least every day from peaking

18:03through their cubicle, my company wins. We can end this without talking about that you're also an endurance athlete, same with Rudy, the owner. He's also a training for an Ironman in Mexico soon. If you follow him on Instagram, he's got, he's an LA right now, filming 60-day hustle. He's just just casually doing a 100-mile bike ride before going for filming. We do make it seem so casual, but it is a sport for crazy people. I have friends who always tell me they feel as people. Feel as people. You're talking about the owner of the club. Fearless people for sure. That's what I love about endurance. Sports is constantly every day faced. It's just you on the bike. It's you in your shoes hitting the pavement, hitting the concrete. You talked about a swim.

19:06You and the pool with nothing but your own thoughts. As an entrepreneur, I love the quiet time. I get some of my best ideas when I'm out there without headphones. Fun fact about Ironman, can't wear headphones during an event. A lot of people are like, I can never be on a bike for eight hours without something. But you're constantly proving to yourself every day that you can do something hard. Now, ask someone that, because you have a background being an attorney, is there a way to get around the headphones by wearing those glasses with your pieces? You can wiggle your way through that contract. There are always ways to wiggle the room. It's really for those elite to translate to our competing for. I'm sure it's such a mental game. Totally. But that's amazing. What are you most excited about? I ask everyone on the show.

20:09I'm most excited about getting my message out there. This is way out of my comfort zone. I don't often talk about my success. Next time we'll do it on stationary bikes. Please, perfect. But as a female in commercial real estate, I still, there are very few of us. I feel like putting my story out there that other females who have, first of all, I want females to know that this is that this is a line of business you can get into. It's a way to make a great income and have a huge amount of flexibility for the other things that you may want to spend your time doing a lot of times that's raising a family or helping your family. Commercial real estate is a great way to make a lot of money and have that type of flexibility. It's been such a gift to me as a single mom all these years. I rarely had to miss a school award assembly or a parent teacher conference. When my daughter was

21:15in high school, I got to coach her in lacrosse, which was a whole amazing experience. At the same time, I was able to make an income that opened the opportunities that I wanted for her. She just graduated from University of Arizona, a bear down. That was one of the last things on my list. When I was 30 years old, I wrote a list of all these things I wanted to accomplish in a decade. Putting my daughter through a four-year university was one of the things on the list. I got to cross that off because of commercial real estate. I'm excited that hopefully somebody sees this and they're motivated and encouraged to get in it, stay in it, and make a lot of money doing it. Amazing. How do people find you? I have a website. It's so cal hyphen cire.com. So so cal hyphen cire.com. CRE obviously stands for commercial real estate. I'm in so cal.

22:22I'm on Instagram as she mighty mama. You can follow all my fearless triathlon efforts, successes and failures there. I also have two very old chihuahua's who make an appearance on there from time to time. It's been a pleasure to have you on the show and do your episode. Thank you so much for joining us here. I appreciate you so much. Thank you for making it a great experience. Yeah. For you guys still tuning in, you got to tune into your episode where she talks about her background of trying to become a lawyer but finding real estate but also how her endurance racing and training has helped her through the whole journey. But also how she can make time for her daughter and being the mom and her top agent that she is. So it's a great episode. I just did it. We just got finished. How was your filming? The filming was great. I sucked, but you were great. We'll get a better next time. I really have enjoyed the experience here.

23:26The communication leading into this day was awesome. It was really fun to get my hair and makeup done this morning by someone from your team. Miami Beach is beautiful. I may not ever leave. All right. Well, by saying that she sucked, she was actually really good. Right? But yeah, she just had a little nurse, but we got through it and actually it was quite amazing. So thank you. Thank you for joining us still guys. We'll see you next time. Cheers everyone.