I had never been the kind of person to stand before a large group (over six) individuals to talk about my interests or their needs. This all changed back in 2004, I was a new residential agent with a corporate planning background trying to find a way to transition my real estate career from all residential transactions to hopefully include commercial.
A challenge that I was up for but without the proper insights to prepare me.
This then became my new obsession and along with another new residential agent, we started to address the needs of agents looking for professional growth and opportunities in commercial real estate and understanding the tools that are used by commercial practitioners.
First, we created a formal team and then developed several commercial real estate seminars for Mainstreet Organization of REALTORS®.
As time progressed, we went from doing about 90% residential to 50% residential and after 5 years we became a 100% commercial team.
Along the way, I have written several commercial C.E. classes, numerous blogs and have delivered commercial programs to Mainstreet, North Shore Barrington, CAR, Heartland and Egyptian REALTOR® associations in Illinois.
In 2015, I created and delivered a thirty-hour commercial mentoring program at several of our brokerages in Oak Brook, Barrington, Hyde Park and South East Wisconsin. This mentoring program evolved into what is as of 2017, a Commercial Real Estate Boot Camp which now offers a (ACP) Accredited Commercial Practitioner certification.
Mainstreet offers this foundations program every quarter and five classes have been completed and certifications awarded as of October 2018.
This program is offered exclusively in Illinois through an agreement with NewcastleCRE, a commercial real estate education enterprise.
Oh, by the way…the journey never ends!
Paul Martis-Commercial Broker/REALTOR®
Instructor-ACP (Accredited Commercial Practitioner)