Barbara Hokel was a single mother of two children when real estate developer Denny Elwell encouraged her to step outside her comfort zone as an administrative assistant in Elwell’s three-person (at the time) Ankeny office and take on the sale of commercial real estate — a transition from an established salary to an income based solely on commissions.

Hokel, one of the founding members of Commercial Real Estate Women (CREW) Iowa, received her certified commercial investment member designation in 2002 and has been a broker for Denny Elwell Co. and NAI Optimum. Late last year, Hokel took over the leadership of Omaha-based World Group Commercial Real Estate Services’ brokerage office in West Des Moines. World Group represents the family that bought West Glen Town Center.

Here’s a sample of a few questions Hokel answered in a recent Closer Look interview with the Business Record:

You are one of just a handful of women who are leading a brokerage.

Through my CCIM (Certified Commercial Investment Member)connections and being involved at the national level of CCIM, I found some women who were involved in the national organization called CREW — Commercial Real Estate Women. We didn’t have a local chapter. I am one of the founding members of the CREW Iowa chapter that was founded in 2012. You had to have 30 members to be considered a chapter and we’re at almost 60 members now, and we just had our first male join. CREW doesn’t have that many brokers; it’s more asset lenders and managers, attorneys, and we just got an engineer who comes all the way from Cedar Rapids. We all have commercial real estate in common, so it’s really nice to visit with women about the business.

Is it difficult to get into the business?

I don’t think it has to do with gender. I just don’t think that many women consider it as a career. We look at the graduates coming out of the University of Northern Iowa (the first university in the state to offer a real estate degree) in real estate and finance, and there might be one or two out of 20 that are graduating, and a lot of the time they become asset managers or work on the debt side for companies such as Principal Financial Group Inc. It’s more of an office job rather than a brokerage, which can be tough.

What does it take to be a successful broker?

Integrity. You do one thing sideways and have a bad reputation, and you’re done. You have to have honesty and integrity. You have to know numbers, or at least know how to run your calculator. My biggest strong point is listening. I always say that I listen more than I talk, because I want to know what people need. And it’s service oriented; you go the extra mile to help people. It isn’t hard sales. You have to listen to what people need and say this is what I can come up with for you.

CONNECTION POINTS

Contact Hokel via email or connect with her on Twitter or LinkedIn. Learn more about CREW Iowa online.

 Read the full Insider article at BusinessRecord.com.