 Hi and welcome to School of Hustle, I'm your host Sarah and this is the show where we chat with everyday entrepreneurs about everything that goes into starting a new venture. New York City is one of the most iconic and expensive real estate markets in the world. Eric Benign, the CEO, president and founder of Modern Spaces has completed over $7 billion in sales and has overseen more than $4 billion worth of real estate at any given time, which equals about 8,000 units. Modern Spaces swept the Long Island City market by storm and completely changed the perception and value of real estate in the area. Welcome to the show. Thank you for having me Sarah. I am a resident of one of your apartment buildings and it is literally the nicest place I have ever lived in. Thank you. So your interior design skills have really impressed me. I'm glad to hear. Every person that walks in my apartment is like wow this is so nice. Yes, nice. Good. Thanks for having me. Of course, of course. So tell me a little bit about Modern Spaces. So we're a real estate brokerage and marketing firm and so aside from being like a traditional brokerage where we help somebody find a home, sell a home or either buy or rent, we also work with developers on consulting them on the project from the inception all the way to completion. So like this building right here that we're sitting in, this is a project that we had worked on probably for two or three years prior to you actually moving into the building. And so the developer would give us a call, hey Eric, I'm buying a piece of land. I can do this. What do I have this many square feet? What do I do here? And then we kind of like help him assemble the, him or her assemble the entire team. Wow. So it's a lot. Yeah, we do a lot. You do a lot of different things. We're like full service. And it's interesting because you didn't originally start in the real estate industry. You were in live event production. Yeah. So tell me about that process. You were doing something else. You had a different job completely and you decided to shift into real estate. Why make that change? So I was actually, I used to throw rave parties. Oh, fun. Yeah. We should have a rave in these apartments. So in the 90s and back then it's actually very similar because I'd had to find a location and you booked DJs and that's kind of like the team that you're putting together and you're marketing the party or an event or whatever the case. And so I kind of always had that kind of like skill I guess. And then after 9-11, nobody wanted to party anymore. I decided to do a little bit of a career change because it was just a little bit of a hard time here, especially here in New York. I got into real estate. I thought it was going to be something temporary. I thought, I just wanted to go back to doing partying again. When I first started, I hated it actually. Really? Yeah. I didn't like it at all. And then after maybe like two or three years, I just started getting really into it. And then I was a Manhattan agent. And then in 2005, I was at a party in Long Island City. All right. There was nothing going on over here. And I saw a sign for a new building that was being constructed and I was like, you know what? I kind of like it over here. I think I can sell this area. Yeah. And there was literally nothing over here. Yeah. There was literally not developed really at all. No. There was really older like walk up type of railroad buildings or like single family houses, some of those mostly industrial and it was just one tower, which was the city bank tower, which we've been here since 1988. So from 2005 to today, we've seen a huge shift in the development of Long Island City. Correct. Now this is very much like I would say a more luxurious area to live. That's more high end buildings. Back in 2005, you didn't really have that at all. Now. So I know that your company actually helped create many of the buildings here. Correct. So we have like a 70% market share over here. So if you know somebody who lives here, there's a 7 and 10% chance that they came through us. In 2018, Long Island City was named the fastest growing neighborhood in America, which basically was huge because all based on all the construction and not just residential, there's obviously is a huge residential development going on over here, but there's also a lot of commercial going on over here. So just like down the block from here is the headquarters of Bloomingdale's. Across the street is the JetBlue headquarters. Yes. That's a giant sign. Yes. So it's just a lot. It's really like a live work kind of a community over here. And then we became kind of like on the world map during the 2019 announcement of Amazon. Right. So when the whole, when the whole Amazon was announced that it was going to come here, we were really kind of like in the center of it all. Everybody here kind of felt like, oh my God, this is like the Lotto, right? Yeah. It was supposed to create like 25,000 to 40,000 jobs, and it was really like exciting. And it created a lot more interest. I was getting calls from people in like Paris, I want to buy an apartment over here. Wow. Right. So it definitely put Long Island City on the global map. So how did you know that this area was going to be successful back when you were at that party in Long Island City, middle of nowhere, you see a building for sale. Why did you decide, you know what? I'm going to invest in this area, even though there's nothing here. I, A, we're five minutes from Midtown Manhattan, where Midtown, like in 10 minutes you could be in Bloomingdale's. It's amazing. I know. That's why I love it here. Correct. Like if you're living like it's a $7 taxi ride, if you're living uptown or even downtown, right, it's cheaper to go to Midtown from here than it is from any of those areas. Even if you're on the west side of Manhattan, it's still quicker to get to Midtown, at least Midtown East, where everything is happening from Long Island City than anywhere else. We also have, in my opinion, the nicest waterfront in entire city. Yeah. If you haven't been to the waterfront here, it's iconic with the gantry and with the pepsi coal. The gantry state park. Beautiful. Very iconic waterfront. It's probably been Instagramed like 10 million times or something. Yeah. At least five million by me. It's just, at the time, I just kind of saw it. This one building that opened up, I was just like, you know what, let me put, I took the information and I put up an ad on Craigslist. Back then, Craigslist was the place to put up the ocean ad. Yeah. It wasn't creepy. It was, yeah, exactly. I would have to put maybe like 10 or 20 ads to get maybe one client. When I put up this one ad, it was just one ad. I got like 40, 50 clients. Why do you think that was? I think people would, my ad was the next hot neighborhood in Long Island City. Was my ad. It was like the subject of it. And I think just people kind of always have heard of Long Island City. And then from that, I built like a newsletter back then and just like hustling like I had to. And I built the client base and when that building opened up, I was, remember, I wasn't like a, I was just a regular agent, right? So I built the client base and when the building opened up, the building opened up on April 1st, 2006. So April 1st, April 2nd, 2006, I sold 18 apartments. You sold a lot of units in a small amount of time, which isn't common for a real estate agent. Clearly you had sold people on the vision of Long Island City because in 2006, there really wasn't much here. How did you do that? So I started getting really obsessed with the neighborhood and being a Manhattan agent, you're really competing in Manhattan as about 22,000 agents, right? So you really have a lot of competition. I knew that over here, there was really nobody focusing in this area. So I decided to really like learn about the history, learn about what's coming. And I would do these like walking tours. Oh, really? Yeah. So I started doing like walking tours to start, hey, well, this was built in whatever and this is built over here. And just like I became like a tour guide almost, right? Because I had so many people interested in doing these walking tours. I would sell them first on the neighborhood. Okay. And then once I sell them on the neighborhood, I sold them on the building. What was the first step that you did to make modern spaces NYC a reality and get more people into Long Island City? So when I started the company, I was at another company and another agent, we were at, I was at a party at another agent. Another party. Man, you're a party animal. And I was at a real estate party and another agent, a colleague of mine goes to me. We were in Long Island City. He's like, what are we doing? We should start our own company. And you were like light bulb. Exactly. And the next day we met at a bar and we're like, yeah, let's make it like in Long Island City focused company. And we found a space like within a month. It was a ground floor apartment because there wasn't that much retail at the time. So it was a ground floor. It's very industrial here. It's very industrial. And so it was a ground floor apartment and we made a deal with the landlord where we're going to convert the ground floor into a retail space. And so we went into construction, signed a lease, went into construction. And then around July of that year, in July of that year, we opened up shop. So it's just kind of added on, it seemed like. It seemed like you got one building and then it was a referral type thing where every time you worked really well with someone, they thought, they said, hey, I have another building or I know someone else that's looking for this. Correct. And that's kind of how your business expanded. Correct. And then there was about four other buildings on that year. So that year we took over every building from all the competitors. And then we ended up building ourselves in the market. And then from that, then developers started going to us and then we started planning out, to this day we planned thousands and thousands and thousands of units over 12 million square feet of residential space. We planned to date and it's really exciting. And we're in other markets now too. We're not just. Yeah, you're in Astoria. We're in Astoria. And we just opened up in Jersey City. So how is that going? So we just, we opened up during the pandemic. Great. So one thing about, one thing about. But you have experience with that. That's like how you're used to starting businesses. Almost. So I think the thing with the way I work, where I've never had a business plan. I've had several offices and if I go and somebody tells me, hey, if an agent, we should open up an office of it and I'm like, all right, let me go see it. I'll go see it. I like it. I'll meet the landlord and make a couple of jokes to the landlord, get friendly to the landlord and I'll probably make a deal right there without even thinking of, hey, I want to have an office in this location. So what about when you work with big buildings, right? How do you decide if you're going to end up working with them based on how much potential you think that building has? So when we're working with a developer, depending on where the location is, sometimes, I mean, we've worked on, like, small, I'll give you a good example. The developers of this building, for example. So they were developing two buildings at the same exact time, condo buildings a few years ago. And they were probably like eight or nine blocks away from each other. And we were like, okay, we're going to be launching two buildings around the same time, around the same size, one was like 50, one was like 20-something units. How do we not compete with each other? Right. Yeah. So then we took information, a lot of my agents for that year were telling me, Eric, you know, we get a lot of people who are looking for, like, pre-war co-ops. And it's a new neighborhood. Okay. So you don't really have pre-war over here. No. You have industrial factories. You have industrial factories. Right. So people were like, you know, we get a lot of people who want this whole pre-war kind of. I'm like, you don't really have pre-war. Right. But I was getting a lot of agents telling me we're getting a lot of requests for, like, people who are just coming here and they're like, is there anything pre-war? So my pitch to them was how about we build, like, a pre-war from the ground up. Oh, interesting idea. So one building, we basically, like, made it like an old-fashioned looking brick. Had brick interiors, had, like, shaker cabinetry, which is kind of like a more of a traditional kind of, like, kitchen look, subway tiles in the bathrooms, and more of, like, I guess, a pre-war type of look with regards to finishes. We had to give this building a story. So researching... Yeah, tell me about the process of giving a building a story, because I think that's a lot of the sales process. Yeah. We really believe in giving an identity, a brand, and a story to a building. So with this particular one, we were like, okay, there's no real pre-war history over here. Per se, we started looking into the history, and we noticed that Long Island City years ago used to be, used to have a book binding industry. Mm-hmm. So we were like, oh, I like that. I like kind of like that direction. Yeah. So then we were like, okay, we're going to call the building the bindery and give it a history of, this building used to be a bindery, and it was kind of like converted into these apartments, and that was kind of like the history. So it has like this really cool identity. Correct. So giving it that identity. So we had like a library, and like in the lounge like this. It's a fun theme. Yeah, it was very fun, and people loved it. Now you say you own seven out of every ten buildings that still leaves three out of the other ten to be competitors. How do you compete with those people? With the other three? Yeah. Well, we technically can't own 100%, because then it would be a monopoly. Oh, because it would be a monopoly. Right, right. Just skip those away. Yeah. Legally, I can't take those. Okay. So I'm trying to be generous. But I mean, we're always competing, and you know, sometimes we don't get every single project that we go after, and that's totally fine. It's just, it is what it is. I think I like to say that ours are more successful than the competitors. So when you go to a building and you're competing with others to get the job, what information do you provide the building so that they'll hire you over the competition? So we talk about our track record, we talk about the history, and then we talk about like our data and information. So none of our competitors can provide the data that we do, because we can give 12 years of data and information, and the developers actually need this for their lenders, for their investors, because they can go to anybody, the person will be like, yeah, we can do this and I'll get you X amount of dollars for the apartment. How do I know you're not just telling me that? Right. Show me the proof that you can get me that. And you've been here longer than anyone else. Yeah. So you have the most data. Correct. We have the most historical data, and also because we have a lot of market share over here, not just on what's current, but also on the pipeline, so like we're working on stuff now that's two, three, four years away, we're working on one project that's actually a 10-year-long project. Wow, really? So it's like developing like an entire neighborhood. So we can give also data on the pipeline, so if someone's going to be coming to us, hey, I'm building this building, it's probably by the time I do the construction and it'll be coming into the market in two years from now, I can tell them, okay, well in two years from now, this is what your competitors are going to be like, this is how many one-bedrooms, this is how many two-bedrooms. So it seems like it's when people move to Long Island City, they're not just moving into a building, they're moving into a neighborhood. And to get that neighborhood going, you have to convince restaurants, shops, and other establishments to move here. Is that part of what you do trying to build up that whole experience outside of the building? Yeah, so I'm on the board of several organizations in the neighborhood and one of the organizations is the LIC Partnership, which is like kind of like the parent org of the LIC bid. Okay. And their sole mission is to attract businesses to come to Long Island City, so I mean they clean the streets, they do like if you see those beautiful banners out there. So all that stuff is what they do to help promote the neighborhood and also give a lot of like small business advice to businesses who are coming here. So in that sense, I work with them on helping. My company also has a commercial division, so we help businesses come in here. So Modern Spaces has opened in Long Island City, Astoria, and Jersey City. Are you thinking of expanding to other areas as well? So right now we just opened up in Jersey City, we have 10 agents over there. We also just acquired a property management company. So we're getting into I guess property management also, which is something we weren't doing before. Could you define what property management is? Collecting your rent. Oh, so that's not something that you do with yours? No. Okay. Yeah. In the future maybe I'll be collecting your rent. Great. Looking forward to it. But that's basically what property management, paying all like the bills, the taxes, and stuff like that. Gotcha. So we just basically acquired a company based in Jersey City and we rebranded it as Managing Spaces. Oh, very similar. I like it. And so we're hopefully going to bring that over here too and have some properties over here. And then other markets I've kind of like thought of, aside from within New York City, we want to go into Manhattan and I've actually thought of Miami. Oh, cool. Yeah. I think our brand would actually work pretty well in Miami. I think so. I do. Yeah. I think a lot. You've covered things that most real estate agents, I know you're more than an agent at this point, didn't even think of doing. And what I want to know is as an entrepreneur, do you have any advice for aspiring entrepreneurs? Yeah. I think like now is actually a really good time when I was at home quarantining. I was excited, wasn't excited to be home all the time, but I was excited because I knew that in 2008 it's a door open for so many opportunities and now unfortunately it's very sad to see a lot of restaurants or whatever closing, but at the same time it's just an opportunity that maybe if you want to be in a restaurant business to open up a restaurant or if you have a different business idea to open up a different business or go into a different trade or career path or whatever. So one thing about times like this is that there is a lot of opportunities and I'm actually very excited about 2021, 2020 when we are in quarantine we decided to, we were all working remotely and didn't lay off anybody or fire anybody or anything like that and we were very content driven. We don't believe in just like selling you real estate all the time. Yeah. We're going to be more into like giving you content and neighborhood info or whatever and so we're going to probably like expand that selling more just the brand rather than just property all the time. That's really smart. Yeah. People are exposed to so many ads every day bombarded with ads and if you're instead focusing on content it establishes a relationship with your customer where they trust you and they don't think you're just trying to sell them something all the time. No. It's really against that. If I go into like a boutique and I have a salesperson constantly coming to me, hey can I help you? It kind of like turns me off. I just want to leave. I want to leave. I usually want to leave. Yeah. So we try to have all of our agents not like bombard anybody and let the person coming into the home just feel at home. Is there anything that you learned along your entrepreneurial journey that you wish you knew when you started out? Yeah. I mean I learned every day. I didn't go to college and I literally just working every day and it's like been a big education. I think a couple of mistakes I made in the beginning which I wish, which I know now and if I would have known back then I probably would have had 80% or 90% but then it would have been a monopoly. Yeah. Then it would have been a monopoly. But a couple of things that I always get a really good attorney. Contracts are extremely important. I learned that one too. Yes. That's a fun one. Yeah. Okay. Make sure you do that. Yes. Always. I know this is a go daddy. But always actually if you have an idea I have like a couple hundred domains. I had an issue with somebody in the beginning because somebody registered my name Eric Benign and I had to take them to court. No way. Yeah. Because of that. Because they weren't Eric Benign. Right? But so always if you have an idea for a name like branding is so important. I just buy names constantly. So always do that. And if you have a budget get a PR agency. So OA I didn't really get or in the beginning I had a freelancer who wasn't really a PR person. Yeah. And I thought they were a PR person but they really weren't a PR person. If you're hiring a PR person make sure they have real credentials. There's probably a lot of freelancers right now but make sure the PR person has credentials and then PR is extremely important because if I had PR I would have that's where I probably would have had my business would have boomed more because I didn't really get any press when I took over like the biggest building in the neighborhood. And then that year I took over like three or four buildings and I hardly really got any press. And that's such a good PR story too. Correct. It's been wonderful having you on the show Eric. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining us. And thanks to everyone who tuned in today. If you want to learn more about modern spaces visit modernspacesnyc.com and follow them on Instagram at modernspaces. And that is all for this edition of School of Hustle. You can keep up with us on all of our other episodes on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or wherever you stream and download podcasts. 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