The highly competitive nature of commercial real estate brokerage often attracts athletes from across the sports spectrum. Many find the traits that allowed them to excel on the playing field — resilience, determination, and a competitive mindset — translate well to their profession. But Garret Gilliland, VP/Partner, a new addition to the Voit Anaheim office, tells us that the skills he acquired off the playing field are equally important to his success as a broker.
Early Years
An Anaheim native whose family was an Angels season ticket holder during the late 90s and early 2000s (World Series winners in 2002). Gilliland feels he has come “full circle” as his office at Voit overlooks Angel Stadium. Both his parents were in professions that were both sales-oriented and real estate adjacent. His mother worked her way up from a bank teller position to a mortgage lender with the World Savings Bank. His father was a broker with Pilot Air Freight, an international and domestic supply chain provider (acquired by Maersk in 2022), before opening his own firm, Ontario-based GK Logistics, in the early 2000s.
A multiple-sport athlete in high school, Gilliland excelled in baseball and football, earning a football scholarship to the University of Washington as a linebacker. “There seems to be a strong correlation between being an athlete and a salesperson, specifically in commercial real estate,” says Gilliland. “I think it’s because so many aspects of being an athlete tie into the business. For one, it’s the discipline, just showing up on time and setting specific goals to get to where you want to be. As an athlete, you’re used to failing and learning to overcome adversity. You just find a way to keep pushing through, and I think that’s where the real success comes from.” He also stressed the value of learning how to be a selfless member of a team, “because if everyone contributes, then you’re going to be stronger as a whole than by yourself.”
However, many applicable skills he learned in college were not on the athletic field but in the classroom. A business communications major at Washington, Gilliland learned the basics of sales: presentation skills, how to construct a concise and persuasive argument, and how to network effectively. “When you get to college and you see the window closing on the athletic career, you need to figure out how to interact with the general population — people that have different interests, people that are going to be the next generation of business leaders — and 90% of those people are not athletes,” he recalls. “So, getting to know different types of people really helped me with my career, specifically in commercial real estate.”
Midway through college, he decided on a career in sales.
Early Career
Upon graduation in 2014, Gilliland was hired for his first job as an inside sales rep at a tech recruiting firm. He learned the basics of phone sales: cold calling, general business communication, qualifying leads, and how to run in-person sales meetings. “For me, it wasn’t really about the company that I was working for. It was more about the skills that I was going to develop,” he says. After a year, he took those skills to his next job, an outside sales position selling copiers, IT equipment, and software to small businesses around San Diego County, where he further honed his skill set.
So, instead of a phone, he walked the streets, knocked on doors, and talked to people. He often got a door open only to have it shut in his face. Most of his clients were small business owners with 50 employees or less. “It wasn’t a glamorous product, but it really wasn’t about the actual product. It was about getting used to facing adversity and getting comfortable with making pitches in person and talking to people face to face.”
After 10 grueling but educational months, Gilliland accepted an inside sales position with Dassault Systèmes (a French company with operations in the U.S.), where he sold product lifecycle management (PLM) software to large pharmaceutical, medical device, and biotechnology companies across the Western U.S. While at Dassault, Gilliland developed skills in prospecting, qualifying leads, conducting demos for their software solutions, and most importantly learned how to identify the decision-makers. “I also learned how to communicate effectively with people from other cultures since many of my colleagues were Irish and French,” he adds.
CRE Career
After nearly three years with Dassault, it was time for a change. So, Gilliland consulted with his grandfather, a self-made man who had come to California in the 1960s from a farm in Iowa, became a machinist “with an engineer’s mind,” and formed his own company, ATS Workholding, Inc. His grandfather started in a garage in Santee, CA, and at his peak, employed nearly 100 people in different warehouse locations throughout Corona, Anaheim, and Santa Margarita. “He’s probably the smartest guy I’ve ever met. And when I told him I was looking for something else to do with my life and was interested in commercial real estate, he introduced me to his longtime broker, Larry Null, an industrial specialist with Lee & Associates.”
Gilliland met with Null and his son. While there were no openings available at the time, his grandfather suggested waiting for the opportunity, as Null had been thoroughly impressed with him. “My grandpa was one of the biggest mentors in my life, and I just believed whatever he advised. His word was gold.” Gilliland’s patience paid off, and he soon became a runner for Null. “I packed all my stuff and moved back to Orange County to start doing commercial real estate in February 2019.”
On February 1, 2020 (six weeks before the COVID shutdown), he was promoted to associate and now had a 100%-commission-based paycheck. There were a lot of sleepless nights in the first couple of months, but that’s where his training as an athlete, where he learned to work through adversity, paid off. “It was also trusting my grandpa’s judgment and trusting people I was working with and the leaders in my inner circle because what happened was completely out of my control,” Gilliland says.
He credits Null, whom he describes as “an excellent mentor,” with crafting an extraordinarily detailed training program. The program consisted of four modules — leasing, sales, investment, and development — designed to give associates a working understanding of each kind of transaction. “It was kind of like getting my MBA in real estate,” he says.
Gilliland worked in a support role with Null’s team, learning the nuts and bolts of the business by conducting tours, qualifying leads, and going after new listings, which helped him build his foundation as a broker. Oddly enough, he also credits the timing of the pandemic, which, following the darkest initial months, activity “took off like a rocket” in July. The adversity contributed to his growth as a broker. “By pushing myself to get out of my comfort zone and doing the things that I didn’t necessarily like — like cold calling and facing rejection — I learned to enjoy the process. Like most athletes, it’s about continuously getting better every single day,” he affirms. “When you’re never satisfied, you’re always improving.”
One of his career highlights has been assisting his father with his real estate needs as GK Logistics continues to grow. “He’s actually my client,” says Gilliland, who has seen his father’s business grow from a 2,000-square-foot startup (before he got into real estate) to a 32,000-square-foot flagship location in Ontario, CA. “He gets cold-called all the time, but hopefully, he’ll stay loyal!” jokes Gilliland.
Joining the Voit Team
While Gilliland was and is grateful for being part of Null’s team and his mentorship, he found himself working more independently as his career progressed. As he began to envision his life five to ten years down the road — which included building his own brand but doing so in a collaborative working environment — he also found that he missed the team feeling that he experienced as an athlete. “It’s helpful when you have other people around you who are pushing you. I’m also mature enough to know that I still have a lot to learn,” he says. “It’s just harder to teach yourself than learning from those who have experienced success.”
Voit offered such an opportunity. Gilliland had competed for listings with Ryan Moore, SVP/Partner, a seventeen-year CRE veteran in Voit’s Anaheim office, and the two began talking. “We just had this natural conversation and discovered a kind of synergy, and we started talking about what it would look like if we started working this market together,” says Gilliland. A few months later, in February 2025, Gilliland joined Voit. He dove right in and has been actively working on deals with Moore. “I think the benefit that I’m seeing from coming to Voit is not in the deals that are happening now, but the deals that will happen because of the skills I’m developing by working with Ryan,” he says.
So how does he satisfy his sports jones now that he’s no longer actively competing? “I’m playing a little golf now, and I’m not super good. I think commercial real estate is my sport now.”
Additional broker profiles are scheduled over the next few months. Check back to see who we highlight next.