In this episode, we sit down with Cory Zelnik who shares his journey from walking the streets to navigating New York’s ever-evolving retail landscape. Cory dives into how he grew his business, the power of staying hands-on, and the trends shaping NYC retail today. From luxury brands to the impact of COVID and even the challenges of crime in the city, this episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in real estate and retail trends.

Transcript

Hal Coopersmith: Welcome to Broker’s Angle. I’m Hal Coopersmith. We are joined by Cory Zelnick. Welcome Cory.

Cory Zelnik: Thank you for having me, Hal. I really appreciate it.

Hal Coopersmith: So before you came on, we were just exchanging a lot of stories, but one story that we didn’t hear, how did you get into real estate and brokerage?

Cory Zelnik: Oh, it was so simple. I came out of school in 1986, and I had a liberal arts degree from the University of Maryland in College Park, and I thought I was going to Wall Street. I didn’t know what I was doing, and I learned quickly, and I always say this, I never blame my parents for lack of guidance or anything like that, but I was just doing it on my own, and I thought I was just going to go down to Wall Street, and I got politely laughed at, and, I was sitting around, and a friend of mine back was working at a company that’s no longer in existence, and they were a, it was called Garrick Aug Associates, and they had a retail leasing company. They were the only people doing just retail leasing. My friend calls me up, he goes, they’re looking for a guy in Manhattan. You know Manhattan, right? I said, yes. He goes, they’ll pay $250 a week to walk the streets. And that’s how I got started in the business.

Hal Coopersmith: And so you started walking the streets, how did you, grow your business?

Cory Zelnik: Well if you go all the way back, the lesson was here’s a clipboard, here’s a map of the streets, walk first avenue all the way up from 14th Street to 96th Street. Then walk 2nd Avenue from 96th Street down to 14th Street. Take notes, write down phone numbers, signs in the window for rent, etc. And that was how I learned the business. And it’s so funny because Garrick Log, as I mentioned, was the name of the company. And they were famous for having their signs in windows. 212 557 909. And when you walked the streets back then, because the city was going through some things, you thought that every other store had 212 265 2280, which is Solil, Saul Goldman’s family, and their business, because they owned so much of the city. So there’s two names. To this day, it’s still sticking in my brain. Solil, obviously, is still around. But we walked the streets, took notes, started calling people and getting information about their properties, looking at retailers in different segments of the market. Now, retail wasn’t as prominent as what it’s become today in terms of the vitality, one, of the city, of the income it provides landlords and things like that. And, the city is very segmented. Herald Square, then you got the Gold Coast Madison Avenue, and Times Square, and Tourism, and all that stuff. But it put me up, it literally put me on the street. And so my first lesson was get comfortable shoes. And to this day, it’s all about the streets. And my guys know, I walk the streets, for the purpose of seeing what’s going on. Because you get out, and things change. I mean, think about it. Broadway, the only street in the city only street in the city that goes from the bottom to the top. So you go from the bottom of Manhattan to the Bronx on Broadway. And so you can walk up and down Broadway and by the time you’re down and you turn back up, you hit certain areas, three leases have turned over and things change. So you got to keep a constant eye on markets. And so I do it very regularly for our clients needs and things like that. And it was spitting off quickly into where we are today, but it never ends. You know, that’s another thing that I learned about this business that continues on today. Is that there’s so many things that are just basic. That don’t change. This is a real feel and touch business. Technology has changed. Technology has helped. Gives us data points, we have software programs at the company that are beneficial to our clients. There’s Google Earth if you want a quick look at something. But there’s nothing like feeling and touching, which you must do. You must do it because how could you represent a client on either side, landlord or tenant, without really knowing what’s going on. You can’t look at a picture on Google Earth and know if there are two steps in the back of the store that go down or up. You can’t know that. So I love the fact that there’s still a simplicity to our business.

Hal Coopersmith: So when you are walking the streets, what are you looking for?

Cory Zelnik: I’m looking for new brands. I’m looking for whether brands or businesses, food, whether it’s food or clothing. I’m looking for turnover, something that may be vacant, you know, something that might have gone vacant that I hadn’t known about. For, if there’s a property going up, to see the progress of the property. You know, I may have read in the real deal that a building’s being built and just hadn’t been there. And now I go by and I see, and I see there’s retail and there may be some interest. You know, I’ll look to talk to that landlord possibly about representation, things like that. So you, you just try to follow that. At this point, and at this stage, I know this, how the city is broken up in terms of luxury and tourism and things like that. So I’m not going to necessarily see a neighborhood change because I haven’t been there. I’ll just see what’s going on in a particular neighborhood.

Hal Coopersmith: Can you talk about how you matched a tenant to, or a landlord to a tenant? By virtue of, hitting the pavement.

Cory Zelnik: What happens is you develop whether it’s through cold calling or referral, have you get a, let’s say, let’s talk about the tenant side. A tenant wants to be in a particular market, or they want to know about a particular market. So, usually you know it somewhat in advance. I have some knowledge of markets, but I always like to get out and see them. So if that call’s coming up on Monday, I’ll get out and walk that market, and I’ll see what’s going on so I can tell them specifically who’s there. I can tell them specifically who might have moved in. And then when you have time, more diligence, you find out what certain tenants do in terms of sales. You just do that through digging, and you look at traffic patterns down there, because you’ve spent time there. Again, you can press a button these days and get a printout, but there’s nothing like being there and so you articulate that. On the other side, when you’re representing a landlord And the landlord says to you, Hey, I have this space coming up at 54th and Lex, you know what’s going on? And then you talk to him about things you’ve learned in the market. You talk to who’s come in what they’ve paid because he’s more likely not going to ask you about value of his space. You give him comps, you do your work.

Hal Coopersmith: What are some current trends that you’re seeing in the market right now?

Cory Zelnik: Coming out of COVID, it’s been tourist driven, luxury, and food. That’s been pretty consistent. Now, luxury, they’ll tell you that sales are off the last year or so, but luxury took advantage of COVID and the softening of rents. Took a lot of space to be on Madison Avenue, again, what they might call the Gold Coast, from 57th to 72nd, let’s just call it.

When rents floored at 500 a foot, they swooped in and took advantage. So you go walk there now, and almost every space is spoken for. And either you see it visibly as a layman who walks the street, or I see it and know that transactions are happening and it’s going to be taken, the space is going to be taken up. So that was a strong trend. And again, although now luxury sales are off, they came in and they rented a lot of space. Another luxury trend, which you may have read about is that the big brand LVMH and the products and the carries and those conglomerates bought their real estate. That’s probably the latest trend in retail. These guys came in and bought, 30, 000 square feet on 56th and fifth for $963 million. Not a lot of people can do that, but that’s the trend. Those companies, two things. One, they know how to think for the next hundred years and two, they have so many brands, so they’ll open up and if they, if Gucci goes in, they can operate for five years and let’s just say Gucci stops being cool. They’ll put another brand in for five years and they can bring Gucci back again, but they have full control of their property. And so the kerrigs of the world, the LVMHs of the world know what, know what their value is, know what the value of New York City is. They know that Fifth Avenue in that area of 59th Street, down to Rock Center and St. Patrick’s, that market is, it’s open, it’s going to be. Prices will fluctuate every now and again, but they’ll always have it, and what I read was, you know, those guys did, like you know, down their every 10 years and every 15 years. And the taxes, they wanted to own the property and they dug in. LVMH at the northeast corner of 57th Street and 5th Avenue. Well, there was a zoning change here in New York. They up zoned Midtown East. And so LVMH is now temporarily in the old Nike town across the street because they’re tearing down their building and the neighboring building, which they own as well. And they’re going to put up, you know, 5, 6, 7, 800, 000 square feet of an LVMH tower. It’ll be their corporate headquarters and they’ll have the store at the base, of course, but it’s nice to have money. It’s nice to understand the market. And that’s what they’ve done. So that’s a, that’s a consistent trend.

As far as the food goes, we have a wonderful entrepreneurial spirit in New York City. You can rent or re-rent, I should say a second, as they say, restaurant in a heartbeat you know, if things are reasonable enough, you can rent it in a heartbeat because people want to come in. They don’t want to pay for the infrastructure. They want to take advantage of the infrastructure that’s in place. They’ll rebrand the box and they’ll open up a restaurant. Very, very happening. It’s been going on post COVID. Once, once COVID shook loose people were coming back, huge, huge turnover and huge, huge. Waiting lists of people who want those spaces.

Hal Coopersmith: Well, it was impossible to operate a restaurant during COVID. And those were the first spaces to move. We were involved in a lot of those.

Cory Zelnik: Exactly and, you know, we were talking to client, you know, certain clients at the time. I said, look, sit tight, sit tight. Some of these things are going to come back. And so part of it, you know, from a legal perspective was the fact that you couldn’t evict the tenants, you know, they weren’t paying rent, they weren’t operating well, they weren’t making money, but you couldn’t get rid of them. And so for certain tenants of mine, we had to wait it out a little bit. You know, just from our diligence, we knew guys going to crap out, but you had to wait for the legal course to play through. You know, the eviction, the removal of evictions and things like that. You know, guys didn’t pay rent for months and months and months and months.

Hal Coopersmith: And the city injected the guarantee law, which was found unconstitutional.

Cory Zelnik: Right. And you couldn’t, so you just had to play. And, especially early on in COVID, all the courts were shut down. So if you’re a landlord trying to just do the proper and standard eviction process, you got in line. You just got in line. And the line wasn’t moving. If you recall, the line did move for like six or nine months, and then someone pressed the button, so to speak. Opened it up and then, then you first started the process. And you know what it takes to evict a tenant it’s very hard.

Hal Coopersmith: So those are current trends. What are some things that haven’t changed in New York? in retail.

Cory Zelnik: I think that what you see is, one, the consistency of the city now, you know, now that people are coming back to the office and things like that, you know, Midtown has really regained its footing. And so we remain the, we remain the capital of the world. Okay. I know I’m biased and all that stuff, but I staunchly stand behind it. And we’re here, the people are here, the transportation hubs are here. Grand central, Times Square, port of thought, you know, so we always have the people, maybe change a little bit, but the people are here and that’s consistency. We had the COVID break, but we’re still here.

And now what’s changing. And I know you’re asking about what’s staying the same, but within the context of staying the same as these buildings are here now. The office building outside your office here, tomorrow, that could be a residential building, we don’t know, but they’re allowing for that, and so the fact of the matter is, is that there’s the stability of people that are gonna always be here. And that’s what’s consistent about New York.

Hal Coopersmith: And what are you seeing, in terms of what residents want in their retail?

Cory Zelnik: Changes from neighborhood to neighborhood. Right, because the residents that want the good restaurant in their building also don’t want the rodents that come with it. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a one star or a four star restaurant. There’s going to be rodents. It’s just natural. So there’s always that funny dynamic. But you’re not going to get the food. You’re not gonna get food into Co-ops and Condos along the Upper East Side or a certain places on the Upper West Side, but that’s what the tenants want, again, it depends where you are. New York has always been built on convenience, but convenience has changed, I was involved with 200 Duane Reade drugstore openings over the course of 10 years, years back. And there was competitors called Rite Aid Walgreens. I mean, Walgreens has owned Duane Reade for the last 10 years, but prior to that, we were doing this because New York City was about convenience. That’s what the people wanted. They wanted Duane Reade downstairs. And now that dynamic has changed. Because, maybe we’ll get into it, how the internet and online and social media has changed the retail landscape, it’s hitting the retailers twofold. The drugstore retailers specifically. Most of what they sell is an easy online item. And so people see that convenience. It’s no longer the convenience that the corner drugstores at the corner. They want it more convenient. They want it at their doorstep. So a lot of that is gone away. They still need the pharmacy services. I think that will change too. Amazon’s going to figure that out completely very soon.

But that’s what’s changed. The, the convenience aspect is gone. And so New York, you know, they, like I said, they want to eat conveniently. They want to get their stuff conveniently. And that’s what goes on a regular basis.

Hal Coopersmith: So in terms of, Duane Reade and pharmacies, how is that business being affected? Because you’re seemingly an expert in that. What is happening that retail block?

Cory Zelnik: Two, twofold. One, the crime, the city’s going through a period here, you know, coming out of COVID, we went through a stretch and these stores have been pilfered beyond, so much so that stores just flat out closed because of it. Some of these stores were losing 30 worth of goods on a daily basis. I was in a Duane Reade a couple, two years ago or so and I’m in the pharmacy line with my wife and I look down the aisle to the left and there’s a guy, he’s in the makeup section, he’s got a bag and he’s filling it up, he’s filling it up and then the store manager comes over and says, all right, that’s enough, get out. So we finished up with our, our transaction and I went over to the store manager cause I had Duane Reade in my blood and I said, what was going on? He goes. Every day. And so I had to get him out, his two friends were over there doing their thing. So I let him do it, I keep it peaceful, and I get him out. And so that affected a lot of stores, a lot of the pharmacy stores.

Nike has a store on, 3rd Avenue, 66th Street just announced they’re closing because of You know, the crime. It’s terrible. It’s terrible. And so, again, it’s two fold with the drug stores. One, their items are just too easy. You know, we talk about now your toothpaste is locked up and da da da. So that affects how you do business. But they were stealing everything. And again, like, so now, get your toothpaste online. Get your paper towels online. Get your toilet paper online and so on and so forth. So they don’t need the big box. So that’s what’s changing about that business.

Hal Coopersmith: So, do you think that they will have smaller footprints in the future?

Cory Zelnik: Walgreens has tested like a 2, 500 foot space down in Florida as like a Walgreens Express. And I haven’t heard how good or bad it’s doing, but the primary, function was to have the pharmacy because that’s the service you’re providing. People still need to come up to you and things like that. I haven’t seen a huge rollout of it, but it’s going to be interesting to see how it plays out. And in the interim, in terms of like trends, like you asked earlier, a handful of these old Walgreens, Rite Aid’s, Duane Reade ‘s, what have you are going to be small format, whole foods. They’re stepping in. And so they regret these are 10, 000 foot boxes. It’s. right into Whole Foods wheelhouse for this new concept. And so they’ll get out, you know, five or seven of them, give it a test drive, and see what happens. And so that’s what you’re going to start to see in some of these boxes.

Hal Coopersmith: What do you think retailers should do about crime or I know it’s not just Dwayne Reed, it’s all, and you talked about Nike, but it’s also high end retailers. It’s Soho. what do you think should be done?

Cory Zelnik: If I had that answer You’d be calling me mayor. I don’t know. What they’ve done throughout all of the drug stores throughout the luxury, the brands or the stores, they tell their people, don’t confront them, let them do what they do and get them out. And, you know, what we covered by insurance or what have you, but I don’t want my worker to be killed, God forbid. And at the same time, I don’t want my security guard to get hurt trying to protect a tube of toothpaste and then he winds up suing me. So everything becomes hands off. And so it’s very, I don’t know how you solve that problem. I think that what will help some of that problem is how retail has changed in certain aspects, in that there’s not that much display. And so you can come in and see, and then you could order it online. And that’s what we call on the channel retail. It’s getting those two things to work together. That’s, that may be something that changes.

Hal Coopersmith: So in terms of your career journey, you started and then you now have your own company, can you talk about how you got to where you are right now?

Cory Zelnik: So like I said I walked the streets for a little bit and I was, when I was young, I was not as focused as I am now. And I guess maybe that just comes with youth and experience. And I did some bouncing around and I had a one, my first business life altering moment. I was fortunate enough. To get a job with a company called CVS, my first foray into the drugstore business. They were not in New York City at the time. They were looking for a real estate director for the five boroughs of New York. I had a friend who was handling classified ads for a magazine. Imagine that,  called Shopping Center Today, which was spun out of the ICSE group. And she said, look, I know the guys at CVS and they’re going to, they’re asking me to run an ad and I think this would be perfect for you. And I was at a time in my life where I had made some early money on the brokerage side and I didn’t make money on the brokerage side. And you know, when they paid you as a 1099, someone forgot to remind me that you got to pay taxes, things like that. Again, I blame nobody but myself, but I went through all of that stuff. And I was at a point in my life with the stability of a job, salary, bonus, car, was perfect. And I interviewed and I got that job. And so I worked for CVS for about three years. We had identified about 15 or so locations throughout the boroughs. And CVS was this little company of about 1,100 stores back then, and they wanted, you know, new market. Let’s get these stores open. Let’s see how they do before we go bonkers. And I was at a moment in time where I literally had nothing to do, and they sent me out to Long Island. They knew like I was hanging out with my buddies in the Hamptons on the weekends. They said why don’t you go work in Suffolk County? Just looking and they just kept me occupied and I happened to come, I was fortunate enough to meet a gentleman who became my partner instantly, his name was Jeff Winnick and he was working with this small mom and pop company of 39 drugstores called Duane Reade and he said listen, Duane Reade’s doing things, we’d be a great fit, da da da, and I tell the story the same way every time, he made me an offer I couldn’t refuse and I took it and I joined him, Duane Reade went went public under,  I don’t know if you remember a company called DLJ, Donald Lufkin Jenrette, took them public, da da da da.

So they blew it out, and Jeff and I became fast partners in the company, and over the course of nine years or so, we did about two hundred plus Duane Reade drugstores. So I had some drugstore experience I could bring to the table, da da da. And, and by the way, I jumped past it, but when I left CVS, they completely understood, and I thanked my boss for giving me a master’s degree, a master’s degree in corporate retail real estate. So I really got that. And I’m grateful to him to this day. It helped me become a real estate investor, a retail real estate investor. And so I’ve parlayed that and then obviously the drugstore aspect of it, fit right in with Duane Reade.

Hal Coopersmith: So you got a degree, as you say, in corporate retail. What’s a couple lessons that you wouldn’t have otherwise known from the outside looking in?

Cory Zelnik: You assess, first of all sales. You learn how to look at sales volumes and how you assess a property. You know, you look at the rent, what is it going to mean?

You learn what kind of return. You know, CVS worked off a certain formula of the kind of return they wanted on their investment. Now they, they’re an 1100 store chain. So they can look at other stores. They didn’t have New York City stores, but they may say, Hey, this location looks like. Something we have in downtown D.C. or something that we have in downtown Boston. And so we can make a projection. And so I learned how to look at sales and sales projection and rent ratios. Understand that. Understand product placement. And it was specific, obviously specific to the, to the industry. But I learned about that. And then I also got to learn from the investment side, as a real estate investor. Rents, purchase prices, cap rates.

Hal Coopersmith: So when you’re seeing a space, you’re beginning to visualize, as a broker, knowing your client, where everything gets placed, and you can see that as an investor as well.

Cory Zelnik: I see it as an investor. And then. You know, I know we’re talking about my, you know, my sort of career arc and one of the things, you know, I was with Jeff Winnick and I were together for ten years and as the documents say, we had philosophical differences and we moved on from each other and in our divorce, Duane Reade stayed with, with Jeff and I took a landlord client at the time. BLDG management was, run by a gentleman named Lloyd Goldman and he remained with me. And so doing landlord works, I did both. But when I first started my company, which is now a little over 18 years ago, if you put me on a scale, I was 75 percent landlord rep primarily because of Lloyd’s portfolio and what I did for him. And so from that, I really got to learn a landlord’s perspective, not the investor who’s looking for cap rate in return, but a landlord, a multi generational landlord and that perspective. And so through Lloyd, I learned that. I was fortunate enough to become friendly Jeffrey File, and see and again you just see that side of it. And it was fabulous. It’s a perspective. And so today when I go into a transaction, whichever side I’m on, I get to speak about both sides and try to give perspective. It’s very, very beneficial.

Hal Coopersmith: So you had a business divorce. It’s how you got to starting your own brokerage. What are you telling young brokers now and the brokers that work with you?

Cory Zelnik: I tell them go walk first Avenue 14, 96th Street and then second Avenue. Yeah, I literally do that. When they, I have a young group, we’re nine, and there are eight brokers and myself, eight salespeople and myself, and those that came out of school, I have a couple of experienced salespeople, but the new kids, I literally tell them, go walk. We have, you know, we have every single street in the city mapped. So now they go out with a better map. Back in the old days, we had to make copies out of books and things. We have the maps, most of them actually just do, they can do the maps on their phones. And it’s a basic map, it just tells you every single retailer in every single building, on every single avenue, on every single street. And I send them out, go walk, go look, and go learn. And then come back to me, and let’s talk about what you saw. And so that’s what we do because that’s the basics.

Hal Coopersmith: And what do you talk about? What’d they see?

Cory Zelnik: I guide them, I’m not, I don’t, I try not to too much of a ball buster. And I just say, hey, so you walk Madison Avenue, I know keep saying Madison Avenue. You walk Madison Avenue, from our offices at 49^th walk up 96th. Tell What you saw, what were some of the things? What did you notice about the retailers? I saw all these jewelry stores. I saw all these high-end. I said, well that’s the makeup. Because next week, you’re going to go walk 34th Street, Herald Square, and you’re going to come back and tell me, Oh, I saw all these, you know, regular retailers, Target and things like that. And so we start to talk about that and we start to talk about the markets and why things are such, why is Target over on 34th Street and not on Madison Avenue, and Madison at 57th Street. Well, Target, you know, look at the density, look at the subway stops, look at the population that’s moving through here. That’s why certain people want to be in certain places. Look at the draw of what the Empire State Building brings to 34th Street up, down, and sideways. Those are the kind of things that we walk them through. And then eventually we’ll get them on the phone to talk to landlords. We’ll, we’ll start them out by talking to brokers who have something to say. So they can just go through the basics of our language. How big, how much rent, what’s your frontage, will you take cooking, Learn the vernacular. And then after that, I’m calling the landlords about their spaces. Do a little bit of tenant calling. It’s an evolution. It really is a get on the treadmill and start going. Not too fast. I’m not rushing you. But that’s how you learn.

Hal Coopersmith: So you talked about kind of the traditional building blocks, but in addition to that, you’ve been very active in social media, podcasting, kind of how we met. Can you talk about how that has affected your business and either helpful or what it kind of led to?

Cory Zelnik: It’s been great. And I know we spoke prior to, but when COVID came and we were all at a standstill in this world, just needed something to do, the word of the day then was pivot. Our pivot was to try to become more active. And that just started with just postings, little postings here and there on LinkedIn or an Instagram and things like that. And then it evolved. We were getting good feedback and then we were talking and said, you know what, let’s try this podcast thing and I told you I go on the radio so I have no fear of the microphone and I enjoy it. And so let’s play with this thing. We got nice feedback.

And so, you know, I do my podcast, which is how you found me. Basically how you found me. We called it Retail Redux. We wanted to keep it retail. At the time we launched, retail was changing. The dynamic of retail was changing a little bit. So we played off of that. And now through just some force of nature with the renovation of our office and times changing, and people I’ve come across who want to get involved with my podcast, we’re going to relaunch as the Zelnik Exchange and open it up beyond retail. There’ll be a real estate core to what we do, but we’ll talk to other people about different things. And so through that, I started meeting people, started to talk to people. I’ve done more. When I look back a little bit on the time in the business and I tell this to my guys, probably my epic fail was I was not a good networker. Part of it, part of it was the business we were doing. So like, when we were doing those Duane Reads back at that time, it was an insane time.

Had a wild pressure cooker CEO and there was a stretch. We had an answer to the public markets in terms of store opening, things like that. So it was crazy. And so I couldn’t go to the cocktail hour or the REBNY thing or that. I missed a lot of those. Okay. I don’t regret it, but I didn’t do a lot of that. And so now do much more of it. And I impart upon my guys. To get out. Pay attention. I said, you know, there’s all this young gen, next gen stuff. Go find it. Go be there. When I see brokers, or having, showing, breakfasts, or cocktail hours, to mark, space their marketing, I say go. I make sure they go, because I know who’s going to be in attendance. Just get to FaceTime. Be out there. Be out there with your peer group. Because these are the people you’re constantly calling about. You know, they are vacant space, and you want information, and one day you want to exchange a dirty little secret in our business, because people don’t like to give it away, but you befriend people, and you get to know them, and people will share, you know, vice versa.

Comps are currency in our business, and so I get them out there and I force that, but I didn’t do enough of that, I’m making up for it now, in a lot of ways, partially via social media, partially, I’m involved with a group that’s called, CREI,  Commercial Real Estate Influencers. I told my daughter, I have a 22 year old daughter, I called her up one day, I said, I’m an influencer and you’re not. Because I’ve made this influencer list because of my social media presence, links, LinkedIn, Instagram, what have you. And so it’s helping. Am I retiring because business is just rolling in because of it? Of course not. But it’s helping. It’s out there. You know what I’m saying. It’s in the universe, and so things happen, and I do get calls about how I heard you, or I saw you, just the same way you read me. And we talk. And my whole business is about taking shots. So if, you know, you’re a retailer and you call me because you saw my Instagram or you saw something, it’s a shot. That’s all we do. And what it does, mostly, is it takes away the traditional cold call. Because they know me. Because they follow me. Our first conversation is what we call warm. Because everything I’m about is in my Instagram. And the idea is to personalize my business. People know what I do, but they also know that I’m an avid runner; they know I’m up early, they know I ran four miles every four hours for 48 hours and raised money. So that lightens it. It’s easier than saying, you know, Hi, Mr. Jones. Can I help you?

Hal Coopersmith: Well that is a great note to end things on, Cory Zelnik, thank you for being a part of Broker’s Angle.  

Cory Zelnik: Thank you very much for having me.