In this week’s episode I visit South Dakota and talk with an extremely talented and hard working broker named Nick Gustafson, a principal at Bender Commercial Real Estate in Sioux Falls. Nick  is a ten year veteran commercial real estate broker.  Nick started taking real estate classes in his final year at Augustana College and started his brokerage career upon graduation.  Applying the phone skills he acquired at his college sales job with Gateway Computer, Nick made thousands of cold calls in his first year in the business, quickly becoming a leading tenant rep broker, honing his deal making skills on small to mid-sized office leases.

Nick actively expanded his client base with repeat business and aggressive prospecting. Tenant representation deals led to listings and listings led to an increasing number of commercial building sales.  Nick spends the majority of his time working on investment and commercial real estate sales transactions over $500,000.

We have a lot in common in that we're both from small markets and started our careers at about the same time. I quickly realized that Nick is driven and focused. While his success, and any of our successes, have a lot of layers and reasons his starts and finishes with one thing... hard work. Enjoy!