2018 Ones to Watch: Michael Freedberg, President at Suffolk Industrial Properties

Name: Michael Freedberg

Title: President

Company: Suffolk Industrial Properties 

Address: 51 Cabot Street, West Babylon, NY 11704

Year that you entered your current field? 2014

Who or what do you attribute to your success?

I’m very good at mind control. I silence the part of my brain that wants me to fail. I laugh when I get rejected, and literally think about squashing that thought. Success is about being able to eliminate all of the negative thinking and fill it with belief in what you can accomplish. Followed by hard work. Its all mental. If you keep running, keep pushing you succeed, when you stop you fail. 

I am always reading books on success. Some great authors that understand it: Tony Robbins, Grant Cardone, Tim Grover, Gary Keller. Success has been done before, just like swimming and algebra, you can learn it. 

What are your professional goals for 2018?

2018 Will be an enormous year for industrial real estate. The prices are going up so fast that it is hard to keep up. My goal is to get as many of my buyers as possible into buildings. My list of buyers keeps growing and I feel terrible that there are not enough buildings for them. By the way, this is also a big drag on the Long Island economy. There are so many people looking to expand their businesses on Long Island, but the industrial real estate has become scarce and expensive. I will definitely be hiring this year. As my deals are getting bigger and more complicated, the need for more infrastructure grows. My to do list for the company has gotten out of control. 

Where do you see yourself in five years?

I have always been involved with investment properties and will continue to do so. My favorite line about being a broker is “The reason you sell real estate is to buy it.” I see myself developing downtown retail properties into multi level mixed use buildings. The future of Long Island is by the train stations and that is where I want to be. For right now I am having fun doing deals on the industrial brokerage side. It seems to fit very well with my personality. I’m not fancy and feel very comfortable walking warehouses. 

How do you manage the work/life balance?

Very simple, work comes first. I left a business in retail children furniture and that was getting pretty bad at the end. I had enough money put aside that when my transition to real estate brokerage happened, we didn’t miss a beat. People say that money is not that important, but they never met my wife, (laughing.) If you can’t support your family comfortably your relationship with your family suffers. I intend to work as hard as I can so I don’t have to explain to my loved ones why we can’t buy the things they need. I make sure to think about work when I am at work and my family when I am with my family. It is very easy to do the opposite. A lot of people spend the weekend thinking about their work and the whole time they are working, they are thinking about the weekend.