Conversations with Jennifer Hill & Julie Harris

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jennifer Hill & Julie Harris.. Them and their team share their story with us below:

The J2 story originated about 5 years ago when we met working together at SVN in Phoenix. Both Julie and Jennifer have a marketing degree, Julie has a background in television and has her Masters of Real Estate Development (MRED) from Arizona State University, Jennifer was once an editor on a government contract and has worked in commercial real estate since the late ’90s.

When the pandemic hit, it rather quickly became clear that business desperately needed to be done differently. Residential real estate was light years ahead of commercial in its embrace of tech and social media. So we jumped into storytelling with both feet, which included as much data as we could grasp, taking our cell phones, and putting as many videos and photos into our marketing efforts as possible. In our fast-paced world, you have but a few seconds to grab attention and deliver a message.

The notion that the best storyteller wins the business is always top of mind. We didn’t want to just rely on telling the best story, we wanted it fact-based. Census data was too static. So we set out to find the best provider of real-time cellular data available. We researched and created a sheet of the data companies and put them side by side, looking at their capabilities, shortcomings, and pricing, and the leader far and away was a company called Locate.

Locate was not only a data provider, they were a commercial real estate brokerage. So in the middle of the pandemic with San Francisco completely on lockdown, we hopped on a plane and met with the Stanford engineers that founded the company to discuss their platform.

We were impressed with the capabilities and continuous efforts to evolve, however, we had decided to focus on the Landlord and Developer side and not take on any new Tenant work and the platform had really been focused on helping Tenants get educated and reduce risk while identifying new locations.

Our parting message was a quasi-challenge, “should you decide to reverse engineer the platform to help Landlords identify the best tenants for a property or even identify land that a developer might pursue based on who could fit ideally, let us know, we will put that into practice on our projects and give you feedback.”

Eight months later, they gave us a call to say they had done precisely that. Not only did they want us to give feedback, but they also offered us an opportunity to join their brokerage and start the Landlord rep side of the business at the brokerage offering the tech as a differentiator to our clients.

Armed with real-time data, we strive to elevate an asset by telling a story about a property that is backed by data, delivered in a visually appealing way to capture attention quickly and effectively. That message is identified in a storyboard meeting we set early on in the timeline of a project and filters into our deliverables: Brochures, property videos, social media posts.

We are known for being data-driven storytellers, and truly love what we do.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
As it relates to the lane we’ve chosen it really has revealed itself to us over time.

It has tasked us to think differently. Never getting comfortable is how we’ve evolved. The biggest challenge has been starting the landlord side from the starting line. It’s like steering an aircraft carrier.

They’ve never had brochures, signage, costar, eblasts… all that takes time. Establishing the structure, processes, and systems and having the right support have been essential.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
The feasibility of assisting a municipality with its growth strategy revealed itself to us since joining Locate.

With real-time data, a city or county can better understand the psychographics of an area to see how they can shape the right developments to serve their changing community. We have teamed up with different cities to help them identify opportunities, arm them with the data, and collaborate to bring the right audiences together.

Essentially, what we do on the brokerage side but on a grander scale.

Who else deserves credit in your story?
We’ve had unanimous support from others in the industry and agree the CRE model is an outdated one and needs to be shaken up.

When Jennifer mentioned what she is doing to her long-time mentor, Fred Collings, he immediately understood and said to keep following that path. Julie is in regular contact with Mark Stapp, head of the MRED program at ASU and he stands by his message of “he who tells the best story, wins.”

Carrie Bobb has been an inspiration to getting the messages out via social media and the pursuit of building your personal brand. The CEO of Locate, Joe Lee has given us the latitude to pursue new, non-traditional methods of helping others. Other brokers in the industry have cheered us on, excited about what we’re doing.

Contact Info:

• Email: jennifer.hill@locate.ai and julie.harris@locate.ai
• Website: locate.ai
• Instagram: @jennhillretailcre and @julie_harris_cre