Luciano D'Iorio

The full conversation with Luciano D'Iorio, transcribed. Lightly formatted for reading.

My goal is to obviously just concentrate on my highest and best use. Know your strengths and know your weaknesses. I'm really proud of our city and we need to make it shine. Yeah, we're having fun building a business and giving back to the community.

Yeah, just remaining connected. We've come up with 24 issues and projects in the city of Montreal, in the Greater Montreal area. Be cognizant that things do change and things are dynamic. And what's happening now is that over the next few years, Blue Line is being extended.

And for the extension, promote the downtown area. And of course, we've had some challenges with the pandemic. And so making sure that, you know, we have clean streets, we have safe streets, people are feeling— I think it's just seeking those people, getting the right people and getting the right around you. Yeah, surrounding yourself with the right people.

Like I said, like for social media stuff, can't pretend to be doing everything. I can't pretend. And I think that's the best approach is because really we're a team. It's a team of, you know, the different experts.

Well, Luciano, it's a pleasure to have you on the show. It's been a while since I haven't seen you. We've been friends for so many years, right? Yeah, absolutely.

And I'm happy to have you here. Thanks for having me. It's really— I love our chats, so happy to be here today. You're a well-respected person in the city of Montreal.

A lot of people know you, and for those who don't, please tell them who you are. Sure. So my name is Luciano Di Iorio. I'm a commercial and corporate real estate broker.

I'm the president, the regional president for CDN Global Quebec, which is a corporate and commercial full-service a real estate firm here in Montreal, and we have offices across Canada. I've been doing real estate now for— on January 4th, it'll be 25 years that I'm in commercial real estate brokerage. That's a long time. It is a long time.

It is a long time. I started when I was, you know, 5. Yeah, of course, of course. A lot of expertise.

That, that's what we're going to get from that. And today we have a bunch of interesting topics we're going to discuss that are top of mind for a lot of people. For example, we have the Blue Line extension, we have vacancy for the office space and affordable housing. So a lot of good stuff.

So to begin with, let's talk about the Blue Line extension, and what does that mean for the city of Montreal? Yeah, so maybe I'll just back up a little bit. So every year we come up with a list of like top stories, or I guess top issues and top projects that need to be followed in that given year. So this year we've come up with 24 issues and projects in the city of Montreal, or in the Greater Montreal Area, and the Blue Line is certainly one of them.

Yeah, I saw that, number 1. Well, you know what, it's because, and it wasn't, the list actually wasn't, in fairness, the list wasn't made with, you know, priorities, but it ended up being number 1 on the list, and it probably is very close to number 1. If it isn't number 1, because the impact of the Blue Line is massive in the sense where the expropriations that happened all along Jean-Talon Street East. So if those of that are not familiar with, the Blue Line ended at Saint-Michel near Jean-Talon, and now the Blue Line is being extended towards the eastern part of the city towards Galeries d'Anjou shopping center, which is roughly the 40 and Autoroute 40 and Autoroute 25.

And what's happening now is that over the next few years, Blue Line is being extended, and for the extension, there's a lot of different places that were expropriated and built the metro stations, of course, but also everything around around those metro stations, the city is looking at densifying those sites. So there's a lot of— along Jean-Talon, you'll see there are 2 or 3 major shopping centers that have a lot of parking, and they're ripe for densification for residential, and they're ripe for densification, you know, just in general. So it's having an impact because you're seeing now developers— some of those properties already— there's also, yeah, and there's also some development happening. And knowing that once the metro opens, and this will be a connection to— it'll be a direct connection to l'Université de Montréal, and it'll be a direct connection, of course, from the Blue Line, gets you to obviously through the subway system, but gets you to the Orange Line, which is one of the most popular, you know, lines in the subway, and of course gets you downtown.

So it's opening up another sector that are going to affect real estate of the city that was underserviced by public transit. So for the real estate, it's going to be a huge— it's going to have a good big impact. I think we're already seeing the impact. I mean, if we think of, like I said, Galeries d'Anjou area, that if you look at it from a Google Map, you'll see that, you know, there's a lot of empty spaces which is occupied by parking, and some of that I'm sure is going to be looked at for densification of on the residential side.

And with being close to being close to public transit, of course people are going to want to live there for sure. And there's going to be less traffic probably near the 40, and that's going to help a lot. Exactly. They said it's going to end in 2029, I think.

Yes, I believe so. Now that's changed a bit because, um, and I would encourage your listeners to look at the, the website of the STM because that's changed a little because of the COVID what we've looked at in terms of COVID And what is the next topic that do you want to tackle first, the office vacancy? Sure. Okay.

Yeah, why don't we speak to that? Because I know there was a lot of ink spilled in terms of office vacancy and where office vacancy is going. And, you know, so right now in the Greater Montreal area, like in the downtown area, we're looking at around a 17-18% vacancy rate. There's predictions from various groups and various brokerage firms that say that, you know, it'll probably go up before it comes down.

Like up by how much? A couple of points for sure over the next, over the next few quarters. So there's some large, there's some large users on the market right now that are looking at, you know, reducing their footprint. So that's going to affect.

So I think I think in general, what we're seeing now is a flight to quality for users of space. So if you're in a Class C or B building, you're looking at maybe downsizing and maybe taking less square footage, but you're taking that square footage in a more expensive building and a more— a building with more amenities. Interesting. Yeah, so what you're seeing is the AAA office towers, the 1250, René-Lévesque West, the Place Sainte-Marie, they're all doing very well in terms of vacancy.

They're over, you know, 95% full. Wow. So they're not in the same position as where the market is. They're actually— they're doing better.

They're performing better than the market. It's good that you make the difference here. So you're saying that the Class C and Bs are the ones that are in trouble at the moment? Yes.

They're the ones that are suffering the most because some of these were former industrial buildings that had large floor plates. And the large space users are the ones that are, you know, kind of relooking at how they're using space. And so, I mean, one of the things that we've noticed over the last couple of years is that there is demand for under 10,000 square feet, but over 10,000 square feet, some of those spaces are sitting on the market at 1 year, 2 years, even 3 years. So that's sort of— that's affecting the market.

But under 10,000 square feet, there are people, you know, they're basically employers and companies that are— they still need a space, right? As a smaller company, you still need a space to collaborate. And so those ones are seeing success. So what about office spaces?

Can they just divide them a little bit? Some of them they can. Some of them there's restrictions in terms of just the way the disposition of their, you know, the way the floor plate is designed. And sometimes it's just difficult to break up the spaces.

But our recommendations for any landlords, you know, any investor clients is look at seeing how you can cut up your spaces and look to see how you can give people and companies smaller spaces and what I call like bite-sized spaces, you know, like spaces that are, that are ready to occupy. —and that's what we've been telling— fully furnished, fully furnished and wired if you can, or, you know, certainly with Wi-Fi access, because most companies that are out there are looking for that space and they don't have necessarily the time or the resources, financial resources, to build out space. So they prefer that the space is already built out and ready to go, almost like a turnkey situation. Easier.

And in terms of the above $10K square foot, what is the cost? Of the decline? Well, I think that, you know, some of these are larger corporations, and they had— they're getting a lot of pressure from their employees that they don't necessarily want to, uh, you know, they want to have that hybrid model. And a lot of those companies, you know, the way they're working, they don't necessarily need to be, or they feel like they don't need to be in an office environment.

And so, um, so those companies are a lot more flexible. And those— so those large space users has become a challenge. But I think some of them are also looking at it and saying, yeah, this hybrid model, we're not sure, because we're losing that culture, that company culture. We heard it through pandemic, you know, there was that silent resignation and people kind of not feeling connected to their employer.

I mean, I feel terrible for, you know, anyone coming out of university right now and getting a job in a company and not really being able to kind of meet their fellow employee, you know, fellow colleagues. Everybody's removed. Everyone's removed, right? Everyone's behind the screen.

Akshay, well, we said it today, you and I have seen each other very often on a screen. Exactly. But it's just, it's different together, right? And so humans are meant to be with humans.

And so I think that in the long run, I think that— and I always say, I always joke about this because I say these questions are asked to me as a real estate broker, as a real estate, you know, someone in the real estate industry. We should really be asking sociologists and psychologists about what is the impact long term of this remote work and how we're doing work. So, but I think there's this push and pull from both sides. The employees don't necessarily want to go back because of the convenience of staying home.

They don't have to commute, traffic, and all these other things. But then, yes, But how do you balance that? I don't know if you know the answer to that. I'm not sure I have the answer, but I know that, you know, for sure, if you're given, if you're given the choice, you know, can I walk my dog and prepare my meals and do my laundry and do a Costco run versus driving to a place called the office and then, you know, having to drive back and then do all of those things that I've just described.

Right. So people are kind of— I mean, obviously we don't have any statistics or evidence, but I'm sure people are doing things that are not necessarily work-related. There's also— we are hearing, of course, there's some people that just have not been able to disconnect from work. Some people say, no, actually, I'm working longer and harder, and now my computer is always on, and I feel like I'm always connected to work.

I mean, we saw this in France, right? They're actually mandating, like, you cannot send an email beyond a certain time or else, you know, you'll— and there's a law on it. So I think that the fact that the culture part, like, a lot of the smaller companies, some of them didn't lose a beat. Some of them, even during pandemic, like, they just went in.

They didn't— they ignored any, uh, you know, they put those plastic. But they ignored any, any advice from the government and any advice from the health agency to say, like, you know, don't go in. People still went in because they felt like, you know, no, we're a team, we need to be together. So I think that there's going to be a balance to be found, and I don't know if we found that balance yet.

And until we do, the office vacancy keeps going up. Like you said, 17 to 18, and it's expected to increase. It's expected to increase a couple of points over the next couple of quarters. So, so yeah, it'll be interesting.

So I think it's, it'll be interesting to see where we— where real estate is going. And I think that one of the things about real estate that I appreciate is that it is actually the most dynamic static thing out there. When I say that, what I mean is a building is static. It's there.

It's, it's, you know, it doesn't move. However, the use of it shifts and the, and the need for it shifts. So today what is an office building might be converted into something else, or today what is a place of worship, a church, might be used for something else later on because the building is really there to service the needs of— at a given time and the people that need it. So I feel like it's normal in the course of, you know, you think in the course of history, like buildings do change their purpose and change their vocation.

We saw before the pandemic a lot of the buildings. You think of those of you who are in the Montreal area, the Chabanel district, which was, you know, basically clothing manufacturers. As those manufacturers started to move away and were offshored, you know, into Asia and other areas of the world, those buildings were starting to be empty. Yes.

And what did people do? Developers and the owners of those buildings, they basically started to convert them into office space or condos, or office spaces. Exactly. So, and now that some of those that are converted into office, some of them are thinking maybe we can convert them back into industrial.

Because, you know, we think about housing and we think about the size of people's condos. , and they don't have space for the different things that we need on a daily basis, especially in a city like Montreal where we have, you know, four seasons. So the need for self-storage spaces— so some of these buildings are being converted to storage, and, and they're no longer office, they're no longer industrial spaces. So, so I find that interesting because if you look around our landscape right now, you'll see some of these buildings are already starting to be converted into self-storage spaces.

Okay, I guess that's a nice segue into affordable housing and conversion of office spaces into condos or housing. That's a big debate at the moment to see is that possible in some places. I know zoning is a huge factor in that. It's a major factor, actually it's probably factor number one, closely followed by the fact that some of these buildings, it just cannot be converted because you don't have enough natural light for all of the occupants for the, you know, the bedrooms.

Of course every bedroom needs natural light, and so if you have a big floor plate like some of the buildings I described on the Chabanel area, Yes, these are huge. They're big floor plates. So we need to have— make sure that everybody gets natural light. So it's either you have a massive apartment or a massive condo, or we put a hole at the top of the building and put a big atrium, which of course takes away your rentable space or your sellable space.

And so, so some of them are just— the conversions are just not possible. The other thing too is, in addition to the zoning and the, and the physical conversion of the building itself, is the infrastructure that the city has in place. Okay. For those buildings.

Because, you know, some of those buildings are— it's conceived as like an office building or it's conceived as an industrial building where people are not there 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. And so, you know, I always think of like, you know, when all of us are watching collectively, watching like a hockey game and, you know, between periods, of course, people run for a bio break. And of course, if everybody starts flushing the toilet bowl at the same time, the city can't handle it. The city and the infrastructure that's in place in some of these neighborhoods just can't handle it.

So, so I think that's— and in fact, I think someone was telling me a story of in the Eastern Townships where as As people during the pandemic started to move towards places like the Eastern Townships or the Laurentians, the city infrastructure couldn't support all of those people just because of the normal things that a city provides, where sewage is a major one. Something we don't necessarily think about, but it's important. We don't think about it. Exactly.

We don't think about toilet until it doesn't work. Right? So like everything else. I didn't think I was going to talk about flushing toilets on a real estate podcast.

Oh, well, anything goes. Yeah, exactly. But do you think that the government will incentivize the builders or developers into pushing them into going in that direction, or— Yeah, I think there's probably going to be governments both at the local level and the provincial level that are going to look to see, are there possibilities of helping the cause? So I remember when these industrial buildings were starting to be converted into office, and the City of Montreal had put in a program called PRAM, P-R-A-M, and that was— they were basically giving a tax break to tenants that were going to be moving into these industrial spaces that converted into office.

The tax break was there because these buildings were being improved, and as they were being improved, the value of the building went up. And so to make up for the difference in price per square foot, okay, we'll give you a tax break holiday on that increase because we want to encourage people to come and move into these buildings and repurpose these buildings. So I think that, you know, the municipality and the provincial government are going to look at ways of how do we do this. But like I said, it's not every building that'll be able to convert it, you know.

And I think there's one pop, you know, one that was written about just recently on Sherbrooke Street, the Standard Life building, which then became Manulife, on the corner of Sherbrooke and De La Montagne, just across from the Ritz-Carlton. That building now has been sold to a developer who's going to turn it into residential. Oh wow. Yeah, and if we look at that building, why?

Because floor plate's smaller, you can get more, you can get natural light to, you know, to everywhere you need to. Well located, you know, not far from, you know, universities, downtown, and And so on. But is it a good deal for, for the developer to do that, or— well, I'm not sure in that particular case, but I think that, you know, obviously developers have to do, you know, run their numbers. And I mean, one of the things, one of the challenges right now that we're, as we're going into 2024, is, is the cost of money, the cost of labor, and the cost of material.

And so as those prices go up, conversions are going to be obviously less attractive because you're putting in money into an older building. To basically bring it up to speed. And so not everybody has the funds or the ability to do that. High interest rates.

Maybe now is not the right time. Exactly. Let's pivot into talking about CDN Global. You joined in 2021.

Yes. And what is your role? So we started— so CDN Global started across the country and I am— I started the brand here in the Quebec area and in Montreal. And the idea is basically we are building a brand across Canada.

So we have an office in Vancouver with my partners. We have an office in Calgary and Edmonton. We have an office in Ottawa. We have an office in Montreal.

We just recently opened up this summer an office in Quebec City, and we have just announced last— no, not two weeks ago— an office in Toronto. So we now have, you know, pretty much full coverage of the country. And of course, we, through our networks, we have the ability to work with groups out of the US and in Europe and in Asia. So we have that ability across, basically across the globe.

But here in Canada, what's interesting about what we're doing is that we're Canadian, we're privately owned, and like the buck stops with us. It's not, it's not somewhere else. It's not, you know, the decisions are made by us. We're 3 leaders here in Canada, okay?

And they're, you know, we're partners and we're basically building this brand across Canada and of like-minded individuals. Yeah, of course, that's important. Yeah, of course. And full-service brokerage, which means we represent landlords, we represent tenants, we represent users of space.

And so, and sometimes, like, we're buying, we're selling on behalf of our clients, always. We don't own any properties ourselves, and if we do, of course, you know, they're not— it's not part of the CDN Global brand. Yeah. So these are the services that you offer?

Yes. And what is the advantage of having you and then having all the other cities that for investors. Why is that important? Well, we have a pulse really on what's going on in the different markets across Canada.

And I mean, what we're speaking about today is very Montreal-specific, but not every city is experiencing the same challenges, or not every city is experiencing the same opportunities. And if I look at, you know, what's happening in Calgary or what's happening in Vancouver, some of the things are different. Like Vancouver actually did very well in terms of on the office side. Pandemic just kind of hit them differently versus what's going on in Quebec.

And so we're able to provide our clients across Canada with service where the client feels and knows that they are, you know, well taken care of, and it's consistent. Like, you know, if you go to a major fast food chain, you know that if you go to one restaurant, you know, in Montreal versus you go to somewhere else, it's gonna be the same taste and the same flavor. So it's very good. And do you necessarily help smaller businesses, or is it large firms that you represent?

Small, medium, large businesses. I mean, we've, we've helped— we do a lot of work with not-for-profits, actually. We do a lot of work with multinationals. So it just depends.

I mean, we're doing some work now with the groups out of the UK, some groups out of the US. So I just said it's based on the need. It's based on the need. But people look to us for our expertise and knowledge of what is going on in the market that we're serving.

Servicing. Let's say I'm in the, uh, I want to lease an office. I need, I don't know, over 10,000 square feet. How do I go about the process?

Maybe I've never rented before. Walk me through. What do I have to do? Sure.

So I think the first piece of advice I'd give to any employer, any, any company that's looking for space, is really understand what your employees want. And I think we touched on this before because you said, you know, you were saying before, well, yeah, you know, the hybrid model, or even like, why shouldn't I, why should I come into the office? Why don't I just work from home and I can walk my dog and what have you. So I think the first thing, do a survey of where your employees live, what your employees are looking for, and understand what the, you know, what, what is going on, um, within the company and what kind of culture you want to build, because space is going to help you build that culture.

If you have an open space, that'll allow for more collaboration between, between employees. If you have closed off a series of closed offices, that'll also have an effect. So the physical space is so important in how you design it, the type building you have, type of amenities you want. You know, there's some, there's some, uh, some employee, some employers or some companies that say absolutely need a gym in the building for our employees.

We absolutely want to make sure that there's access to food courts, access to public transit. What, what we suggest is that employers give us the postal codes of where their employees are so we can map it out and help them decide what, where the area of town that you want to be. Yes, absolutely. Because if people are traveling a certain distance, they're gonna stay home.

They're gonna stay home no matter what you do at the office. If you give them pizza every day, or, you know, provide them with cannoli, or I don't know what you want to provide them with, it's not gonna be enough. So I think it's just getting the right understanding. And so starting off with a survey, once we know as brokers where you want to— like, what your employees want and what you want as an organization— that helps us and inform ourselves as to where, where we can be and where we want be.

Yeah. So that's when you start looking to see where you can match the perfect— Yes. Okay. Yeah.

And then we get, and then we get designers involved because the designer is going to come and help us lay out the space as per your requirements. And so sometimes there are some buildings that just for whatever reason just won't be able to fit what is that, you know, the spaces that we look at won't be able to fit what you want. And so we have to obviously, you know, sometimes we'll plan 2 or 3 different spaces, 2 or 3 different buildings because maybe space that you're planning for 10,000 square feet in another building, it actually ends up being more square footage, maybe 12,000 square feet, because the way the disposition of the columns, the disposition of the way, you know, the washrooms are built out in the spaces, it affects your square footage. So you go through all of these details with the clients.

That's pretty interesting. Absolutely. And we wear, yeah, we wear different hats. I mean, obviously we pull in the professionals that we need and the different circumstances.

So, you know, on the space planning side, We have, you know, contacts with the various designers, and they'll come and help. You know, sometimes our clients have their own designers, sometimes landlords have their own designers, but the design part is a big piece of the puzzle because it helps inform us as to what kind of building we're looking for and where we're going and if we can fit. And do I pay for all of that, or how does that happen? So on preliminary designs, typically landlords, most institutional landlords, will pay for that preliminary plan, and that's that's an incentive that they give to kind of entice you to come to their building.

So they say, we'll take care of the preliminary plan. Obviously, construction plans and, you know, kind of more detailed plans, those will have to be paid by yourself, by the company. So this is like a long process. You should be speaking to your landlord today to be discussing kind of what are your next steps, because time goes fast.

Yes, one year goes by really fast. Time does go fast, and there's also several factors, right? Because you're not alone in this. Example, if today you saw a space that you like, by the time you get into the space, it doesn't work.

Like, you don't get in there by the weekend, you know, you'll get in there maybe within a month, if assuming that the space is ready to go. Because a month, it'll take you at least a month to negotiate your terms and conditions. Okay, is that something that you do on our behalf, or— so we'll help you with the negotiation of an offer to lease lease. We'll help you with the negotiation of the lease.

However, we always recommend, and highly recommend, that a lawyer, and typically a real estate lawyer, is involved in the process. And the lawyer is, you know, many companies have their own in-house legal counsel, and then some lawyers will go out, and some companies will go out and get their own legal advice, you know, from a third party. And I think that's the best approach, because really we're a team. It's a team of, you know, the different experts experts.

Yes. So the real estate broker, we're looking at the financial side of the, out of the equation. The design and project manager is looking at all of the design aspects of the physical space. And then there's a lawyer that's looking at all the legal implications of a lease, because most people are not, they're not signing leases every day.

A landlord is signing a lease every day. You as a, as a company, you're signing a lease every 5 years, maybe every, every 10 years. And so some of those documents 40 pages long. They're from the landlord, so it's their document.

So really, it's, it's very much pro-landlord. And so this is where, this is where our help comes in. It's a lot to process here. And what if I change my mind?

Let's say I signed the lease, and then, I don't know, a few months from now I said, oh, change my mind. Well, I like to say that a lease is like a, is like a marriage, because you're basically in the relationship with your landlord, and it's It's depending on the term of your lease, but you do have a couple of options. One is you can always try to sublease your space. And so you can put it on the market for sublease, and hopefully, you know, you get a tenant that comes and takes it at your terms and conditions.

There's also, of course, you can always approach your landlord and try to cancel your obligation, but of course there's going to be, you know, some sort of a negotiation. For sure. Have somebody else that's ready to take it, so maybe they'll give you a break. But in this market right now, I would say before signing a lease, take your time, read the document carefully, and make sure that you don't rush into it.

Don't rush into it. Absolutely. And what are some other mistakes that business owners make when they're leasing that they should avoid? Well, I think that the really is the review, the review from a professional.

Both on the brokerage side but also on the lawyer side. I sometimes, I see clients that say, no, no, I don't need to send it to my lawyer, I'm familiar with this and I can sign it. And I always advise against that because, you know, all you need is one clause, one comma that is going to come back to haunt you and bite you, you know. And sometimes it's not so much at the beginning of the relationship, but it comes sort of at the middle of a lease or towards the end of a lease.

I remember once one client that had asked us to help them with finding them new space. Their existing lease had a clause that had them paying for charges for elevator and security if ever they were to move out. And that's a clause actually that I like to scratch out because basically the landlord was upset that they were moving out. He knew, in this case it was a gentleman, he knew that he had this clause to protect him.

So he basically said, fine, you want to move out? Great. Guess what? You're moving out on the weekend.

Oh yeah, our security guard is double the, double the, double time. So you have to pay our security guard. And to use the elevator, we have a fee for the elevator. And this is what the fee is.

And so they got stuck with a bill. I believe it was like $4,000 or $5,000. It's always these amounts, by the way, that are never enough to go and take it to the next level, right? Yeah.

It's always like this, you know, $5,000, $6,000, you know, under $10,000 type of thing or under $15,000 type type of thing because no one's gonna fight. But still, it's like, ah, yeah, especially— and for small businesses, it's a big deal. It's a big deal. So I think— and that's a clause that's in a lot of leases where you see that there are charges for elevator use, there are charges for security when you're moving out, when you're moving, or, or moving in sometimes.

Even we saw one, we saw one a couple of weeks ago. I was like, our hair was standing up because clause said that the tenant tenant would have to pay a fee of $1,500 for the lawyer to draft the lease. Really? Yes.

And now the lease, remember, the lease comes from the landlord. Exactly. So why, why am I as a tenant paying $1,500 to receive a copy of your— my contract? It's your contract.

So of course we struck that out. But if you don't look, and if you don't— if you're not sure, you're not familiar, and, and of course when you're signing a lease, when you're doing this, you're probably doing 50 other things, yeah, right? Especially if you're starting a business, you're like, okay, fine, like, just sign. Like, it's— I know, distracted and, yeah, not paying attention.

Yeah. And all of a sudden you're getting a bill for $1,500 and like, what's this? Well, read your lease. So, um, so important to take your time and look at leases.

And also the— to choose the right broker to represent you as well. Choose the right broker. And, you know, having, you know, connecting with the broker and certainly like being comfortable with the broker. I think that what you want is a broker that's going to look out for your interest and make sure that, you know, they are following a process.

And like I said, you know, the process of understanding, doing the work beforehand, and that work has to be done really at the company level, at the client level, right? The group looking for space highly suggests that you're looking at all of this stuff beforehand and then allowing us to do our magic, I guess, properly. All right. We're going to— I don't know if you wanted to add another point on that subject or— No, I think that's well covered.

I think it's covered. I think now we talk a little bit about branding and social media. You're very present on LinkedIn, on other social media platforms. Why do you think that's important?

You know, I think that this— so I started 25 years ago in this business, and I remember when I started, I barely— Google was barely a thing. I think we were just starting to get Google Maps and Google Earth, and I don't know if we call it Google Earth anymore, but anyway, It's still around. It's still around. So, so I think what's happened now is, and I was saying this the other day to a group that was looking to hire us in terms of, you know, what are you going to do to help us promote our building?

5 by 11 piece of paper. We would go out and take pictures and get them developed and then put them in this flyer and distribute this flyer by hand or by mail. And today, I think that, not that that's wrong. Yeah, of course.

Well, maybe the developing pictures part, because I think we've We've gone beyond that. But I think that right now today you have to have 15— you have to do 15 different things to be successful. So flyer for sure, but, you know, electronic flyer maybe instead of a paper flyer. Paper flyer only if somebody sees you in person and sees you, then you can hand them something.

But the social media part I think has become so important. People are, you know, there are, you know, many, many people of course on LinkedIn, and LinkedIn has become a very good platform to meet people and really meet people from the business world. Yes. And people that are decision makers.

And so reaching that audience, I think, is so important. So if I'm representing a space that needs, that needs to be seen, it's certainly a great platform because the people that are on LinkedIn, many of them are decision makers. They're not decision makers, they're working for companies that they're obviously close to the decision maker or what have you. And so, so getting the information out there through LinkedIn, I think, is probably the most most important in terms of social media platforms out there for our business.

I think the other, the other platform that's become popular has been, of course, Instagram. And Instagram is, was based on, like, you know, images and stuff. And I think that because real estate people are, believe it or not, people are more fascinated about real estate than I thought. You know, I always thought that we weren't really, like, it's not sexy.

It was boring. Yeah, it's boring and it's not sexy. And it's like, it's not even, we're not selling houses, we're selling, you know, it's, it's commercial real estate and it's office spaces, but people want to see. And people, the more you, you show them, the more interested they become in things.

And so I think on that premise, doing some of the videos that I've been doing, you know, the 3 Things videos that I've been doing lately, is really just giving eyes to something in Montreal and things that are going on in Montreal that are not, um, you know, they're not like— there's things that we see every day. The SunLife building is one of the buildings I covered, and 1000 Legault-Chétière, and 1250 René-Lévesque. It's seeing them from a different light. Yeah, we see them, we see them on our skyline, of course, we see them from Mount Royal, but do we know about these buildings?

And so giving that information to people, I love that because I love my city, and being able to share that with people, I think, is so important. A lot of people would be like, well, why are you doing this? It has nothing to do with renting an office space. Many people, many people, yeah, many people have said that, and especially my competition.

But like I said, for me, I love Montreal. I think we have a fantastic city. I think we have a, you know, we have a great— all of its défauts, as we like to point out, of course, because we're always trying to find, you know, weaknesses and things. But I think we have, we have some rich heritage and I was going to say patrimoine, but, you know, heritage in Montreal and in our province.

And I think just showcasing that and showing the good side. Yeah, showing the good side of Montreal. I thought it was pretty good. Yeah.

Well, thank you. Thank you. I'm having fun. We're having fun with it.

We just did a series, Things You Didn't Know. In New York that are connected with Montreal. And of course, like Montreal and Toronto— and sorry, Montreal and New York were very connected, especially in the, like, in early 19th century. There's a lot of back and forth from the two cities and a lot of influence from the two cities.

Like, it's nice to know that there's a building in downtown New York, the Seagram Building, that has Canadian and Montreal influence. It's, you know, Phyllis Lambert was based, you know, she's the daughter of the Bronfman family that had the Seagram's empire. And, you know, when they built their head office in New York City, you know, Phyllis had an influence on that and decided that, you know, Mies van der Rohe should be the architect on that project. And Mies van der Rohe is the same architect that, you know, did Westmount Square.

It is pretty interesting. Yeah, little facts. And I think that gives, puts, you know, gives you more eye views on what you're doing and on who you are. Because you're talking about something that you, you know, you have interest in.

Just because you do real estate doesn't mean you have to just be laser-focused on that. But who is Luciano, right? What do you like? Yeah.

So people want to know that as well. And I think that's a huge part of branding, and a lot of people are missing out on that. Yeah. And I think that, you know, we see a lot of stuff out there that is self-promotion, and I wanted to move away from that.

I didn't want to do like self-promotion. And it's a fine line, by the way. Yeah. Struggle with that because it's like, you know, what are we doing here exactly?

So I just thought it was a good way to give back to the community and also to— yes, and just to garner attention to what we're doing. And because those buildings, of course, are— yeah, there are suppliers really at the end of the day. I mean, if a client calls me and says I'd like to go into the SunLife building, of course I present them that building or any other building that they'd like to go and, and, and be at. So yeah, because they say now attention is the new It's a new form of asset, basically.

So I can't believe some of the reaction we're getting on some of these videos. I mean, one of the videos that we did got 70,000 impressions on LinkedIn. I have no idea what that means. All I know is that that's the equivalent of like the Olympic Stadium being filled, right?

So that's pretty good. So if I can offer that to my clients and say we're using platforms that are getting this kind of attention for your product, and which is you know, you're not necessarily getting this attention. Um, yeah, well, just, just, or just in general, right? I mean, so getting those kind of views is interesting and it's, it's nice.

And if we can of course share that to our clients, it's great. So what do you have to say for those who think branding is not necessary moving forward? Because, you know, the years are going by and now we have AI, it's a lot happening with social media. What's going to happen to those that do not embrace, um, yeah, and I think There's something we say in Quebec, il faut suivre la parade.

And I think, you know, you just, you need to follow that. You need to follow that wave and you need to follow that trend, but also be cognizant that things do change and things are dynamic. And we talked about dynamic, you know, dynamic buildings and being dynamic. I used to be very active on Twitter, which is now X.

I'm less active on that. In fact, I think I only look at it maybe once every, you know, few weeks or something. But why? Because that platform changed.

You know, LinkedIn also is changing, it's evolving. Facebook is changing. I mean, the moment my mom got onto Facebook, I knew that it was a different platform, right? So, but it's changing and it's fine.

I mean, I remember when I first got on Facebook, why did I get on Facebook? Because my friends from high school wanted to connect. And that's why, you know, Zuckerberg started Facebook, right? It was for, you know, so I think that, you know, being what's up, what's next, what's going on in terms of how do we market, how do we get get in front of people.

Yes, where are the people? How do we get in front of them? Yeah, and, and I think today, uh, I mean, we're also looking at maybe doing a YouTube channel, which I've never thought of. I, I'm on TikTok.

I'd never even thought of TikTok. You know, we have followers on TikTok, and so I never thought of it. I, when I first saw TikTok, I'm like, what is this? And, and now all of a sudden, you know, we're— we've embraced it.

So yeah, I think it's just an evolution, but branding is so important, and more, more specifically is, um, just remembering your clients, right? I always feel like this servant, this servant, um, approach, you know, the client is number one. What can I do to service the client? And what am I doing that can help the client?

If I'm doing things on social media that are not helping, but like, it's just So then what's the point, right? So, yeah. And what are some of the actionable steps? I would say that there are a lot of professionals out there right now that are doing this stuff.

Obviously, be careful because there are a lot of people that are pretending to be professionals, but get involved with the right people and you can seek them out in terms of, you know, just preparing the proper content, doing things professionally. You'd be surprised what you can do. Like, I met one, one piece of advice that was given to me when we started the videos was he goes, you might want to get a microphone. I said, okay.

So I went to look to see what kind of microphone I can get. So of course, you know, you go into, um, like a Best Buy and there's a microphone for $400 and then there's a microphone for $50 and you wonder like, well, what's the difference? What's the difference, right? So I said, you know what, let me try the $50 one.

In fact, so I ordered it online. So I got this, I got this $50 microphone and like It's good. I don't know if it's great. I don't know if, you know, I'm not in the sound business, but so far it's good and it's working.

Just, I guess my point is seek the proper advice from people that are doing this professionally. Get people involved with what you're doing because, you know, yes, it might cost you a little bit of money to get started. It's an investment, but it's an investment. Absolutely.

You know, you wouldn't want to bring your car to someone who doesn't know anything about your car, right? So I think it's the same, it's the same kind kind of thing. All right, so what about the ones that are getting into the, uh, the profession, the industry? Yeah, I was afraid you're gonna ask me that question.

What are— what do you want to tell them? Word of wisdom. Words of wisdom for someone getting into the profession or thinking about it, I would say, is perseverance and consistency. Need to be able to withstand 18 months before you make any money in this business.

On the commercial real estate side. And, you know, I've come across some residential brokers, and I don't know if you have any that are listening to us, but the residential side and the commercial corporate side is different. And our sales cycle is a longer process. It's just, I mean, we talked about the process before, so imagine starting off a year in advance before.

If you are, if your lease is coming up and your lease is 1 year, chances are you as a broker are only going to get paid in a year from today. Yeah, makes sense. At the minimum, usually. So, um, sometimes, sometimes things go faster, but in general, so if you don't have the patience or the stamina or the perseverance to keep that, then you're going to have a tough time in this business.

So I would say that perseverance part, you just got to keep going like anything else in life, really, you know. But is it a good idea that they have a part-time and then while doing this on the side, or— and I think that, and I think that, um, you know, if you're gonna give yourself— this is a profession And really, like, you know, people in this business are— there's no such thing as a retirement age. You know, yesterday we said goodbye to an industry professional who just passed away, and he passed away at the age of 77, and he was still in the business until, you know, until the day he passed. And so, you know, I think about that and I think about our business.

It's a passion, right? And it's a profession and it's a passion. And so as long as we're having fun, then we'll keep going and we keep, we keep doing this. And so if you're waking up in the morning and you're feeling like, no, this is not for me, or like I'm not sure, or maybe I'm gonna do something else on the side, it's what's going to fuel you to, you know, withstand whatever that's going on.

People see it. Yeah, people see it. You know, passion is— so one of the pieces of advice I give to young brokers is that to get involved in the community. I think it's so important, and we, we've talked about this in the past about getting involved in the community, and I see some people getting involved things in the community just to put it on their resume.

And as, as being involved in certain community things, you see these people right away. You see them from a mile away. Why? Because they're not passionate about doing those things.

They're just doing it for their CV. They can only fake it for so long. They can only fake it for so long, exactly. So I think that if you're passionate about something, it'll, it'll show.

Yeah. And, uh, so if you're, you know, wavering, I mean, certainly speak to— try to get a mentor. I think that's maybe another piece of advice is get a mentor that can help help you excel in your career. And we've all had mentors, and I have— I still have mentors.

I actually, just before coming here, I was on the phone with one of my mentors, just, just bouncing off ideas. I think it's so important, so crucial, because they have a level of awareness that when you tell them something, then they can see through their lens and like, oh, what didn't you think of that? You're like, oh my God, I didn't even think about this. But then, then they tell you.

I think mentorship is underrated. People— yeah, I was just about to say it's underrated. And I think that people feel like they have all the answers and, you know, and we're, you know, we're alone and like we can do this ourselves. And like, I'm a self-made man.

Like, when I hear that I'm a self-made woman or I'm a self-made man, they're missing something. They're missing something. Yeah. No one is self-made, you know.

At the end of the day, there's always people in our lives, and it's a journey, right? Life is a journey. And I've had people in my life who are no longer in my life, and people that are not in my life right now that are probably, you know, are going to come in. And it's really, it's, it's a journey.

It's these people, they're there for a reason. And just like we are there for others, right? It's like just, it's just the way it goes. So would you say that when you're going through challenges, because now you are, you represent Quebec for CDN Global, how do you manage that?

Because there are days that are just boring. We have to do all these things when we're running a business behind the scenes. People don't know we're doing that, but they have to get done. How do you go through this?

I think you get, you know, you seek for help. You seek help. I mean, one of the things, Kathy, though, you know, I— when we started CDN Global, I was alone. It was one person.

It was myself. Today we're 8 brokers including myself. And, you know, and we have people that we're working with on a part-time basis. Some people are working with us, you know, as consultants.

And I think it's just seeking those people, getting the right people and getting the right— around you. Yeah. Surrounding yourself with the right people. Like I said, like for the social media stuff, can't pretend to be doing everything.

I can't pretend. You can't be wearing so many hats. I mean, you do as an entrepreneur, you wear— of course you wear a bunch of hats, but at one point you almost— you have to let it go. And even if that means like costing you money, and even if it means like going into debt because of it, you know, so be it.

Because at the end of the day, to look at what your highest and best use is, and if you're working on menial tasks, or if you're working on trying to figure out how to use my iPhone so that I can record myself, not the the best use of my time. Exactly. I'd rather be creating content that I'm going to be videotaping, or, you know, or creating content of, you know, articles that I'll write for the Espouse Magazine, or, or different things, rather than trying to figure out how to— exactly, how to use the typewriter. Well, yeah, because they're mini assets.

The videos are there, people will watch them. You don't have to keep repeating the same message, right? You know, it has a, a long life shelf of people can keep watching it. Yeah.

And people, a lot of people, they rather stay focused on trying to figure out everything themselves, wearing all the hats like you just said. Exactly. And not seeing the big picture, the big vision. And I get it because I, I still do wear many hats, but as it goes, my goal is to obviously just concentrate on my highest and best use.

And so I think that's, you know, another good piece of advice for some of your listeners who are, you know, thinking about getting into this businesses, you know, know your strengths and know your weaknesses. That's good advice. I was just about to ask you what is the last wisdom, you know, you want to impart to us, but I think that's pretty much it, unless there was something you wanted to add to that. No, that was— yeah, I think so.

And for the city of Montreal, I know you've given your time, your heart for this city. What else do you like about it? You know, we have a pretty unique city in Montreal, in North America, really. We have a bilingual a bilingual city.

We have people that speak more, many people speak more than two languages. I met some of your people here today that are doing great things in other languages and connecting with communities. And I think we have a richesse, like a very rich culture in Quebec and in Montreal. And I mean, I'm involved with McGill University, as you know, and it's so touching when I travel and people see me.

I'm usually wearing a McGill hoodie and people saying, oh yeah, McGill, Montreal, great city, or McGill, great school. And I think we have to, we have to capitalize on that. We have such a great— in this, I mean, we always talk about the food and the bagels and the smoked meat. Well, the bagels and the smoked meat, right?

It's a community. It's a community that came to Montreal that brought those, yeah, that brought those traditions to Montreal. The Jewish community brought that. The Italian community brought that.

The Greek community brought other— like, but it's beyond food. And so for me, it's— I'm really proud of our city and we need to make it shine. And I think that's, that's important. And do you want to talk about— you do a lot of volontariat.

Yes. Tell us a little bit. Sure. So what I'm doing right now— so I've done different things over the last 25 years and more.

What I'm working on right now is I sit on the board of Montréal Centre-Ville, which is our downtown merchants association. And so that's really the group that helps merchants downtown and tenants office tenants basically promote the downtown area. And of course, we've had some challenges with the pandemic, and so making sure that, you know, we have clean streets, we have safe streets, people are feeling like there is places to go downtown. I don't know if you saw some of the lights that have been put up in the downtown area, but there's some beautiful holiday lights that have been put up, and it's really changed the face of downtown.

For sure. You know, and of course, so the different things there. I also sit on the Board of Governors of McGill University. That's a volunteer commitment that I've started as a young alumni over 20 years ago, and just a way for me to give back to McGill and to my alma mater, but also connecting with just some great people.

We have 300,000 alumni across the globe, so in 195 countries. So it's just nice to be connected to that, you know, world-class institution really right here in Montreal, right? So those are kind of the two volunteer things that I'm doing. I've just I just stepped off of Desjardins after 25 years.

I felt like that was— it was time for me to go. Maybe, maybe too long in some people's opinion, but it was important for me to do, to be involved with that. I've been doing some work also. I had done some work with the Children's Hospital, as you know, and that as well, I passed the baton to others who are having the same experiences of me and having a premature child and, and just giving, you know, finding ways to get back to the hospital.

So I had done for over 10 years and also, you know, wanted to pass the baton. So yeah, we're having fun building a business and giving back to the community and just remaining connected with them. I love it. Well, it was a pleasure to have you on the show, Luciano.

Thanks, guys. Thank you.