Broker Profile: Senior Vice President Todd Holley, SIOR
If there is a thread that runs through the life and career of Todd Holley, SIOR, SVP/Partner in Voit’s San Diego office, it would be his ability to think outside the box, fueled by an unwillingness to settle for less. Whether creating events to boost sales in a retail position, devising ways to enhance product performance with a security company, or finding creative ways to source commercial real estate leads, a desire to innovate has been a driving force in his career.
Setting Goals
Holley grew up in a working-class family in La Crosse, Wisconsin, about a block away from the Mississippi River. “So, I grew up as kind of a river rat,” he says. Like many brokers, he was an athlete, competing in football, basketball, track, and baseball through high school. It was during his participation in a youth basketball tournament that he set his first major life goal, although it had nothing to do with the game itself.
“When I was a kid, the winters in Wisconsin could hit 20 below zero,” says Holley. “It was 85° and sunny in Phoenix, so I thought to myself, ‘There’s another world other than Wisconsin out there.’ I told myself right then that I would move to Phoenix after I finished school.”
Holley did “really well in school with little effort” and became the first member of his family to go to college. He stayed local, graduating from the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse with a degree in business while working at a local grocery store, where he consistently received promotions. He considered a career with that chain but, true to his dream, packed up and moved to Phoenix not long after graduation, where he had landed a position in Kmart’s management training program. He was transferred to Yuma after his initial training and soon realized that this was not the career for him. “I was making a decent living for someone my age, but it was arduous,” Holley recalls. “You’re on your feet 50–60 hours a week, and it was monotonous.”
Devising Creative Solutions
He made the best of it and devised creative ways to increase sales at his store, such as advertising special events that would attract kids and their parents. Management noticed his initiative and began grooming him, transferring him to a store in Rancho Cucamonga, California. The change in scenery did little to change his feelings about the job, and he left Kmart for an outside sales position with DuBois Chemicals, selling industrial cleaning products to hospitals, hotels, and restaurants.
“I found out that you could also sit back and just be an order taker, fielding calls and servicing accounts. But I always wanted to do more. I wanted to do better. I wanted to use my head and make more money,” says Holley. He soon found that instead of dealing with the individual restaurants, he could sell directly to the plants where the work for the linens, towels, etc., was being outsourced. “And I was selling a lot more of the product.”
He became very successful. So successful that management began transferring his new accounts to struggling salespeople to service and process repeat order, prompting him to reevaluate whether this was the best direction for his career. “I thought there has got to be more,” he says. “Unless you search, you can become complacent. You can be a guy in a manufacturing job for 30 years putting widgets together, or you can run the place or do something that you can use your mind to better yourself. If you are not happy with what you’re doing, find something better.”
So, he did.
Innovative Thinking Leads to CRE Career
Holley left DuBois for Wells Fargo, where he helped design and sell card access systems. It was a new product. There was only so much business, so he again “worked smarter.” He determined that the best time for a company to install a card access system was when they were in transition — moving or expanding their office or facility. When he made cold calls to prospective customers, he would simply ask if they were considering a move or expansion in the near future. Holley said, “they would tell me because I was non-threatening — I wasn’t in real estate.” He would then share the information with brokers as to who was moving, and they, in turn, would share who was moving or expanding with him, enabling him to sell more systems.
“A few of the brokers said to me, ‘Why don’t you do this full time? You would kill it! You are not even in real estate, and you’re doing well.’ My referral checks on these real estate deals were larger than my commission checks in my regular job.”
He spent a summer obtaining his real estate license. In the fall of 1989, Holley joined Sher-Voit (a previous iteration of Voit Real Estate Services), where he became a runner for Chris Loughridge. He excelled immediately, becoming the firm’s youngest vice president, and advanced steadily through the ranks. “I was a cold calling machine, digging up requirements left and right,” he remembers. “I already knew what I was doing from my time at DuBois and Wells Fargo and was doing the same thing at Voit. I started with an area and got to know every building, every owner, and every tenant. And when you know what you are talking about, they will listen and work with you.”
With Loughridge serving as his mentor, he would arrive at the office between 6:00 and 6:30 a.m., hit the streets at 9:00 a.m., return to the office at 4:30 p.m. to review his day and strategize with Loughridge, then head home around 7:00 p.m.
“They were long days for the first five years or so. But if you do that, it gets pretty easy, and a lot of the new guys don’t understand that,” says Holley. “If you just bust your butt, you can really get ahead quickly. It’s not rocket science.”
While Holley acknowledges that hard work is the cornerstone for any successful broker, he realizes that much of his success comes from his ability to innovate. “I try to think outside the box, to be smarter about what I’m doing because all you have is your time, and you have to learn how to manage it. That’s what I tell the brokers who work with me.”
Track Record of Success
In his 35-plus years as a broker, Holley has completed over 2,500 transactions with more than $2 billion in leasing and sales, representing local entrepreneurs, regional investors, and major institutional owners. And he shows no signs of slowing down. Holley was the San Diego office’s Top Producer in 2024. In the last month, he directed the $2.6 million sale of a 7,500 SF industrial building in Carlsbad (with Connor Usselman) and the $2.75 million acquisition of a 9,300 SF office building in Oceanside.
Does he have any suggestions for younger brokers?
“Enjoy what you’re doing, and don’t live for work,” he advises. “I have been doing this for over 35 years, and if I didn’t like it, it would have been a long road. Anyone in my office will tell you that I have lived like a rock star during my time with the firm. And if someone says, ‘Let’s go do it,’ I will say, You bet!”
Additional broker profiles are scheduled over the next few months. Check back to see who we highlight next.
