The Tori Nook Talk Show

Welcome to this episode of The Tori Nook Talk Show! In this episode, Tori sits down with Shannon Blackwell, president of Zeisler Morgan Properties, the private family-owned commercial real estate company founded in 1976 and based in Beachwood, Ohio.

Shannon joined in 2000 and spent 26 years leading its shopping center portfolio through multiple cycles before selling roughly a million square feet across Northeast Ohio and Raleigh. He is Tori’s first developer guest, and one she has leased and closed deals with for most of her career.

Shannon grew up in Shaker Heights, earned a finance degree at the University of Wisconsin and an MBA from Case Western’s Weatherhead School, and spent ten years at Anderson Consulting building e-commerce products for large banks. When his father-in-law’s business partner died suddenly, Ken Zeisler had no succession plan and no interest in hiring family, until he decided the next best thing to a blood relative was an in-law.

They discuss underwriting to the worst case, redevelopment, debt structure, telling his staff the truth, and knowing when to sell.

🎯 Topics covered:

• Ten years of consulting before real estate
• The sudden loss that created the opportunity
• Why Ken didn’t want family in the business
• Running a family business with no family in it
• How they survived every real estate cycle
• Underwriting to the worst case and walking away
• Starting as a Kmart developer
• Talking AMC out of closing two theaters
• Building French Creek Square without an anchor
• Relationship lending with Bank One
• Why they never bought an operating center
• Staying at ten employees on purpose
• Self-amortizing debt and no refinance pressure
• Selling each asset as its own business
• Running out of depreciation and interest

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👤 Connect with Shannon Blackwell

Email: [email protected]

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👤 Connect with Tori Nook

Website: https://torinook.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/torirendanonook/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tori_nook/

X: https://x.com/ToriNook

Email: [email protected]

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🎧 The Tori Nook Talk Show is where real conversations meet real success. Subscribe for episodes exploring how leaders build personal and professional fulfillment on their own terms.

Welcome to this episode of The Tori Nook Talk Show! In this episode, Tori sits down with Aviva Sonenreich, managing broker of The Warehouse Hotline in Denver, who represents tenants, investors and owners across Colorado’s industrial market while building a portfolio of her own. Aviva hosts the Commercial Real Estate Secrets podcast and has grown a following of more than a million people, which is nowhere near the norm in commercial real estate.

Aviva was born and raised in Denver, worked restaurant and DJ jobs through college, and had songs out on Atlantic Records before deciding to lean into the work that came naturally to her. She joined her family’s industrial business in 2016, learning on a salary she could not live on and a father who answered most questions by telling her to call his buddy Bob. When the phone stopped ringing in 2020, she went all in on TikTok and posted four times a day before most brokers were even on the app.

They discuss branding, intuition, tenant rep, Google Ads, hiring people who follow through, and what successful guests all have in common.

🎯 Topics covered:

• Why DJing taught her more about marketing than brokerage did
• Why “just closed” posts are not valuable
• Going all in on TikTok in 2020
• Treating intuition as a skill set
• Learning the business by calling her dad’s friends
• Building a website as a digital storefront
• The grocery store moment that named the company
• Competitors copying her branding
• Winning tenant rep deals straight off the internet
• Standing out against the big brokerage houses
• Hiring people who do what they say
• Google Ads moving her into A class buildings
• Picking up her daughter at three o’clock
• A warehouse that burned down under contract
• How funds buy differently than mom and pops

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👤 Connect with Aviva Sonenreich

Website: https://warehousehotline.com

Social: @AvivaRealEstate on all platforms

Podcast: Commercial Real Estate Secrets

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👤 Connect with Tori Nook

Website: https://torinook.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/torirendanonook/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tori_nook/

X: https://x.com/ToriNook

Email: [email protected]

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🎧 The Tori Nook Talk Show is where real conversations meet real success. Subscribe for episodes exploring how leaders build personal and professional fulfillment on their own terms.

Welcome to this episode of The Tori Nook Talk Show! In this episode, Tori sits down with Michelle Buckley, principal and founder of Buckley Commercial Real Estate in Charlotte, an exclusive retail tenant rep and buyer rep serving the Carolinas. 

Michelle founded the firm in 2013 after 16 years at national, regional and boutique brokerages, and has spent nearly 25 years in site selection, land acquisition, ground up development, investment sale acquisitions and leasing. She has been an ICSC member since 2001, served on the Charlotte Region Commercial Board of Realtors, and co-chairs the virtual lunch and learns for The Pipeline.

Retail is in Michelle’s blood. Her father started as a stock boy at Marshalls and spent 38 years there, finishing as a regional VP who oversaw nearly 200 stores. Her mother was a buyer for a family-owned children’s clothing store in New England, and her great-grandparents ran the Italian restaurant that was the heartbeat of their small Massachusetts town. Everyone told her not to go into retail.

They discuss cold calling, reading leases, going out on her own, and the lead her boss nearly threw away.

🎯 Topics covered:

• Growing up with retail as dinner table talk
• Turning down commercial real estate the first time
• Getting hired at a country club interview
• Learning retail with no mentor and no internet
• Placing Sally Beauty in 44 Carolinas locations
• Moving Bombay Company out of the malls
• Reading leases until she knew too much
• A throwaway lead worth a 27-year relationship
• Four credit unions and a million in fees
• Why she felt paralyzed at her last firm
• The partnership conversation that ended it
• Opening her own shop out of adrenaline
• Why every client came with her
• Hiring a coach as her best investment
• The Pipeline and women in retail real estate

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👤 Connect with Michelle Buckley

Email: [email protected]

Phone: 704-589-9832

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👤 Connect with Tori Nook

Website: https://torinook.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/torirendanonook/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tori_nook/

X: https://x.com/ToriNook

Email: [email protected]

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🎧 The Tori Nook Talk Show is where real conversations meet real success. Subscribe for episodes exploring how leaders build personal and professional fulfillment on their own terms.

Welcome to this episode of The Tori Nook Talk Show! In this episode, Tori sits down with Courtney Ettus, a marketing executive with nearly three decades of brand building behind her and now CMO at Resimplifi, a commercial real estate data platform.

Her career spans Kenneth Cole, Visa, Bank of America, Beats by Dre, Luxottica, Emirates and Slack, a CMO run at Greenfly, and six and a half years scaling Crexi from roughly 30 people to more than 350. She also curates one of the CREi Summit lists and speaks regularly for GlobeSt's Women of Influence community.

Courtney grew up outside Chicago, put herself through the University of Michigan, and took a sales job at a local shoe store. When she noticed her sorority friends were cabbing to the mall for dress shoes, she told the owners the store should carry them. At nineteen she was handed a $250,000 open-to-buy and sent to the Las Vegas footwear show, where she met Kenneth Cole and sold out every run she ordered.

They discuss brand differentiation, asking for what you want, negotiating as the only woman in the room, taking equity instead of hours, and where AI actually helps a broker.

🎯 Topics covered:

• Buying dress shoes at nineteen with no experience
• A decade in nineties corporate fashion
• Why someone should buy your black pants
• Starting a media agency job 13 weeks pregnant
• Running Visa, Beats by Dre and Luxottica
• Becoming a CMO in her forties
• Scaling Crexi from 30 people to 350
• Democratizing commercial real estate
• What makes a brand people actually like
• Taking equity in companies she believes in
• Why CRE tech has outpaced its users
• AI as a starting point, not an ending
• Finding your slog before buying software
• How a majority-women room changes the conversation

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👤 Connect with Courtney Ettus

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/courtneyettus/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cdettus/
X: https://x.com/cettus
Email: [email protected]
Website: https://resimplifi.com

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👤 Connect with Tori Nook

Website: https://torinook.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/torirendanonook/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tori_nook/

X: https://x.com/ToriNook

Email: [email protected]

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🎧 The Tori Nook Talk Show is where real conversations meet real success. Subscribe for episodes exploring how leaders build personal and professional fulfillment on their own terms.

Welcome to this episode of The Tori Nook Talk Show! In this episode, Tori sits down with Kaylan Knitowski, Associate Director at Franklin Street in Miami, specializing in value-add unanchored retail centers and net lease sales nationwide across the Southeast and Sunbelt. Since entering the business in October 2022, Kaylan has closed roughly $60 million in retail investment transactions and built a following of more than 20 million impressions across X, LinkedIn, Instagram and TikTok.

Kaylan grew up in Austin, graduated early from the University of Miami, and walked away from law school. With no jobs available during COVID, she took a bottle service job in Miami nightlife, where she spent her nights serving brokers celebrating closings and decided she would rather sell the buildings herself. She started at Sands Investment Group in 2022, landed $24 million in listings in her first three months, then waited nine months for a first closing.

They discuss cold calling, mentorship, social media as a listing tool, national tenant rep accounts, fee sharing, and why her competition is other brokers' fathers.

🎯 Topics covered:

• Leaving a law school plan behind
• From bottle service to investment sales
• Landing $24M in listings in three months
• Surviving nine months without a closing
• Learning to underwrite as a junior broker
• Cold calling and the extra ten seconds
• Don Tepman's advice that changed her social media
• Building a brand on X, LinkedIn and TikTok
• Winning the Seven Brew tenant rep account
• Working with Culver's and national retailers
• Selling visibility instead of tenure
• Why she has no problem sharing a fee
• Turning down a commission to protect a client
• A $29M portfolio that came from a conference
• Advice for senior brokers mentoring juniors

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👤 Connect with Kaylan Knitowski

LinkedIn: Kaylan Knitowski

Instagram and X: @kaylanknit

TikTok: @bottlestobuildings

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👤 Connect with Tori Nook

Website: https://torinook.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/torirendanonook/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tori_nook/

X: https://x.com/ToriNook

Email: [email protected]

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🎧 The Tori Nook Talk Show is where real conversations meet real success. Subscribe for episodes exploring how leaders build personal and professional fulfillment on their own terms.

Welcome to this episode of The Tori Nook Talk Show! In this episode, Tori sits down with Edward Winslow, creator of the trademarked Proof Stacking method and a career spanning commercial real estate, investment sales, entrepreneurship, marketing, PR, and now the rapidly changing world of search and AI. Ed was the first sales broker hired by Bob Knakal at Massey Knakal Realty Services, and today he teaches brokers and owners how to build a brand so strong that clients come to them.

🎯 Topics covered:

• The Coldwell Banker system nobody ever taught him
• Cold-calling Bob Knakal and spending Saturdays learning
• Joining Massey Knakal as the first sales hire with no deals closed
• Photographing every building on the Upper East Side block by block
• Digging up 20 years of comps in the city archives
• The research mailing that kept owners on the phone
• Landing the front page of the Sunday New York Times
• Why nobody called for 30 days
• Reverse engineering that article into an SEO structure
• Steven Pressfield and naming doubt as the enemy
• Telling owners not to sell (and why it works)
• Long-tail specificity and winning on AI search
• Final advice: keep stacking and stop being afraid to invest

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👤 Connect with Edward Winslow

Website: proofstacking.ai

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edwardwinslow/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/edwardjwinslow/ 

X: https://x.com/EdwardWinslow20 

Company: https://proofstacking.ai/ 

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👤 Connect with Tori Nook

Website: https://torinook.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/torirendanonook/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tori_nook/

X: https://x.com/ToriNook

Email: [email protected]

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🎧 The Tori Nook Talk Show is where real conversations meet real success. Subscribe for episodes exploring how leaders build personal and professional fulfillment on their own terms.

Welcome to this episode of The Tori Nook Talk Show! In this episode, Tori sits down with Anthony Behar, Executive Vice President and Partner at Major Properties in Los Angeles. Anthony has spent more than two decades specializing in the sale, leasing, and acquisition of commercial and industrial properties throughout downtown LA and surrounding markets. He has earned Major Properties' President's Award and multiple Salesman of the Year honors, and is recognized as one of commercial real estate's top LinkedIn influencers.

Anthony is a second-generation LA native who studied speech communication at San Diego State. He spent his first eight or nine years after college in advertising sales, selling commercial television time for ABC, Disney, CBS, and Katz Media Group, then briefly working in the dot-com world. When the internet bubble burst after 9/11 and his father became seriously ill, he took a year off, then networked his way into real estate through a charity connection with one of Major Properties' owners. He joined the family-owned boutique firm in 2002, was eventually made partner, and has never left.

🎯 Topics covered:

• Second-generation LA native and San Diego State grad
• Nearly a decade in television advertising sales
• Door knocking in college and why those skills transferred
• Joining Major Properties in 2002 and becoming partner
• Why he chose a boutique firm over a big corporate brokerage
• Walking downtown LA district by district for five years
• What nobody sees behind being a top producer
• Why there's no paycheck for the first few years
• Training juniors and senior broker responsibility
• How the LA market has changed since 2002
• Best advice: learn to be a chameleon
• The habit that mattered most: taking emotion out of the deal

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👤 Connect with Anthony Behar

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthonysbehar/ 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/anthonysbehar/

X: https://x.com/Anthonysbehar 

Company: https://www.majorproperties.com/ 

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👤 Connect with Tori Nook

Website: https://torinook.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/torirendanonook/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tori_nook/

X: https://x.com/ToriNook

Email: [email protected]

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🎧 The Tori Nook Talk Show is where real conversations meet real success. Subscribe for episodes exploring how leaders build personal and professional fulfillment on their own terms.

Welcome to this episode of The Tori Nook Talk Show! In this episode, Tori sits down with Helen Chong, CCIM and founder of HAYLEN Group in San Jose, California. Helen has spent more than 20 years in real estate, moving from analyst work into residential, ultra-luxury, and finally commercial real estate investing. She serves on the board of the Santa Clara County Association of Realtors, is a two-time president of the Northern California CCIM chapter, was named one of the top 100 Women of Influence by the Silicon Valley Business Journal, and her team ranks among the top 1.5% of real estate teams nationally. She is also the author of Power to Change Lives.

Helen's family went through bankruptcy when she was twelve, sending her parents to work in Indonesia and leaving her largely on her own by sixteen. She joined them in Indonesia, working in the restaurant they built where a plate of fried rice sold for fifty cents and a good day meant ten dollars. At eighteen she secretly applied for a student visa and came to America alone, starting at Santa Monica College while waitressing, selling pastries, tutoring, and taking unpaid internships to build a resume.

They discuss learning English by refusing to only socialize with other Hong Kong and Indonesian students, sending out hundreds of resumes to find a company willing to sponsor an H1B visa, why watching retirement accounts crash as a pension analyst pushed her into real estate, leaving a stable job in 2004 for mortgage brokering, founding HAYLEN Group around 2009 to do things her own way, and how earning her CCIM changed her career.

🎯 Topics covered:

• Family bankruptcy at twelve and living alone by sixteen
• Working her parents' Indonesian restaurant for pennies
• Coming to America alone at eighteen on a student visa
• Learning English by immersing in every culture but her own
• Hundreds of resumes to find an H1B sponsor
• Being the only woman in an all-male sales department
• Why the pension analyst job pushed her into real estate
• Leaving a stable job in 2004 to become a mortgage broker
• Founding HAYLEN Group to do business her own way
• Being questioned about how she earned her listings
• How the CCIM designation changed her career
• Final advice: success is happiness, not numbers

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👤 Connect with Helen Chong

Website: haylengroup.com

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenhchong/

Book: Power to Change Lives

Instagram: @haylengrouprealestate

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👤 Connect with Tori Nook

Website: https://torinook.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/torirendanonook/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tori_nook/

X: https://x.com/ToriNook

Email: [email protected]

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🎧 The Tori Nook Talk Show is where real conversations meet real success. Subscribe for episodes exploring how leaders build personal and professional fulfillment on their own terms.

Welcome to this episode of The Tori Nook Talk Show! In this episode, Tori sits down with Melina Cordero, former real estate executive, speaker, facilitator, leadership development advisor, and founder of P20 Leadership. After building her career inside commercial real estate, Melina shifted her focus to helping organizations and leaders build stronger communication, trust, and inclusive cultures, with a major focus on helping women in commercial real estate become stronger leaders.

Melina was born in Washington, D.C., raised outside the city and later in New Jersey, and grew up bilingual in a bicultural Puerto Rican household that valued curiosity and reading. She studied urban studies and international development in grad school, focusing her thesis on the shopping mall explosion in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Her early career wound through market research, a mobile data startup that closed suddenly, and then CBRE, where at 28 she became global head of retail research. She later stepped into leading CBRE's retail investment sales and capital markets brokers, the only woman and the only non-former-broker in that role, after her predecessor Mark Bratt put her name forward as his successor.

They discuss the power of sponsorship, why almost no successful CRE executives have a straight-line career path, splitting her time between Mexico City and D.C., leaving corporate to found P20 Leadership, her CRE Women's Leadership Lab and the Speak Up program, and the number driving her mission: female representation in commercial real estate's C-suite has moved just one percentage point in the last ten years.

🎯 Topics covered:

• Growing up bilingual in a bicultural Puerto Rican household
• Studying shopping mall development in Sao Paulo, Brazil
• Early jobs in market research and a mobile data startup
• Becoming global head of retail research at CBRE at 28
• Leading CBRE's capital markets brokers as the only woman
• The power of sponsorship and being put forward as a successor
• Why career paths are rarely a straight line
• Splitting time between Mexico City and Washington, D.C.
• Leaving corporate to found P20 Leadership
• The CRE Women's Leadership Lab and Speak Up program
• Why the C-suite gender gap has moved one point in ten years
• Changing what leadership looks like, not lowering the bar

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👤 Connect with Melina Cordero

Website: www.melinacordero.com 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melinacordero/ 

Programs: CRE Women's Leadership Lab, Speak Up

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👤 Connect with Tori Nook

Website: https://torinook.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/torirendanonook/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tori_nook/

X: https://x.com/ToriNook

Email: [email protected]

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🎧 The Tori Nook Talk Show is where real conversations meet real success. Subscribe for episodes exploring how leaders build personal and professional fulfillment on their own terms.

Welcome to this episode of The Tori Nook Talk Show! In this episode, Tori sits down with Alreen Haeggquist, founding and managing partner of Haeggquist & Eck LLP, recognized as one of the best law firms in America. For more than 23 years, Alreen has dedicated her career to standing up for people who have experienced sexual assault, sexual harassment, discrimination, retaliation, and other workplace injustices. She is also the author of Fired Up: Fueling Triumph from Trauma, and founder of the HAE Fired Up Foundation.

Alreen grew up in the San Fernando Valley in a household with an abusive father and a mother who stayed silent. She moved to San Diego for UCSD, then attended Cal Western School of Law, discovering in college that education could be her way out. After realizing criminal defense work only made her sad, she spent five years at a class action firm before launching her own firm in 2008 with just $5,000 and no clients, at a time when woman-owned law firms were rare. She and her co-founder worked out of their home, reinvesting every dollar back into the firm, and slowly built it into a 25-person team.

They discuss why she never marketed at first, believing good work alone would bring clients, until she realized survivors didn't know she existed as an option, the case against Trump University, having a survivor advocate on staff to help clients process trauma, the emotional toll of writing her book and reliving suppressed memories, why releasing the book meant exposing her family's secret, breaking generational trauma for her daughter, and why her advice to her younger self is simple: start sooner.

🎯 Topics covered:
- Growing up with an abusive father and a silent mother
- Discovering college as her escape and path to law school
- Realizing criminal defense work wasn't her calling
- Five years at a class action firm before striking out alone
- Starting her firm in 2008 with $5,000 and no clients
- Learning that clients can't find you if they don't know you exist
- The case against Trump University
- Having a survivor advocate on staff to support clients emotionally
- The emotional toll of writing and publishing Fired Up
- Why releasing her story meant exposing her family's secret
- Breaking generational trauma for her daughter
- Final advice: start sooner and take action

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👤 Connect with Alreen Haeggquist
Website: alreen.com
Book: Fired Up: Fueling Triumph from Trauma
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alreen-haeggquist/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alreen/

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👤 Connect with Tori Nook
Website: https://torinook.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/torirendanonook/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tori_nook/
X: https://x.com/ToriNook
Email: [email protected]

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🎧 The Tori Nook Talk Show is where real conversations meet real success. Subscribe for episodes exploring how leaders build personal and professional fulfillment on their own terms.