Coffeez with Joe Shalaby - The Very First Episode ft. Sharran Srivatsaa | Coffeez for Closers with Joe Shalaby

Episode Date: April 18, 2025

To celebrate over 100 episodes of Coffeez for Closers, we’re re-airing the one that started it all.In our very first episode, Joe sits down with Sharran Srivatsaa—serial entrepreneur, investor, and now President of Real (REAX). Sharran shares how a chance encounter at a programming contest led to his first major exit, and how that lesson in equity and contracts shaped the rest of his entrepreneurial career.They dive into what separates high performers in real estate and mortgage, the real reason most people don’t produce, and why the best thing you can build isn’t just a business—it’s your personal brand.From scaling Teles Real Estate to launching the 5AM Club and mentoring thousands, Sharran unpacks timeless strategies for anyone serious about growth. This episode set the tone for everything that came after—and it still hits.Still stuck at 150 bps?Top producers at E Mortgage Capital are earning up to 400 bps per deal—with faster closings, better tech, and no junk fees.👉 Learn more: https://joinemortgagecapital.comAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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Start your free trial today. We've had the privilege of sitting down with world-class minds. 100 plus episodes, two full seasons, billions of dollars of wisdom, and it all started right here. Our very first guest, Shiran Srebatsha, entrepreneur, investor, and president of the real brokerage, where he helps scale to over 14,000 agents and over a billion dollars in revenue. He's sold companies, built others, and still wakes up at 5 a.m. daily to coach thousands, From Wall Street to real estate to Angel investing, Shiran's story is what happens when consistency meets vision.

If you're serious about building something that lasts, this episode is required listening. It's where the Coffee's legacy began. Welcome back to the first ever coffee's episode with Shiran Srivatsa. Let's go. Quick break. If you're a loan officer closing $50 to $100 million a year and still capped at 150 basis points,

you're leaving serious money on the table. At eMortgage Capital, top producers are taking home up to 400 basis points with better tech, faster closing, and full control. No junk fees, no red tape, just real calm. Hit up joining Mortgage Capital.com and stop building someone else's empire. I'm so stoked that you're here, and you got so many projects underway. So we're going to dive into it, but you had five exits. What's the exit that you're most proud of? So the first one is the one that I'm most proud of.

It was a technology company. The craziest story how this happened was I was a computer science math major at college. And when I was done, I was in a programming contest. I was a nerd. I was in a programming contest at UC Berkeley. And I finished presenting on stage. And one of the judges comes up to me after, and he's like, hey, kid, you're not going to win. I'm like, oh, man, thank you.

He's like, but the project that you talked about, I actually funded. two other guys, I think what you have created would be a great addition for them. And so he connected me with them. That was our first company. We raised, you know, tens of millions of dollars on Sandhill Road, and then that got acquired by Sienna, which is publicly traded. So a chance meeting where I presented at a programming contest that led to me joining a company and using the thing that I'd built as my senior paper to then actually build something that is live in the world today. That's amazing. What is what is? What is that?

that company? It was called Light Era and I was acquired by Sienna. Light Era. What did it do? We built optical switches, optical networking, big boxes that we competed with the Cisco's and the red box of the world. So you were a programmer by trade. That's like your niche. Yeah. That's awesome. And so you're most proud of that because of just the chance that just introduced you to, you know, the entrepreneur spirit. Yeah. And understanding that, you know, being at the right place at the right time and just innovating it, like lightning speed at the time. Well, I'll tell you that there's two deeper benefits from that. Benefit number one is I didn't know anything about building a business or raising money or how comp structures work.

When the exit happened, I thought I was getting this much, but I actually got this much. And I was like, why did I get like a one full zero less? What was that? Because there was a clause in my contract on a ratchet. and it's a dilution preference, which I had no idea about. And this was the olden days where you didn't even have online bank accounts. It was 2001 on the exit. And I remember going to a Bank of America ATM on the wirehead.

And I would like, summary statement. I remember, like, it's not hit yet. Summary statement, it's not hit yet. Summary statement, it's not hit yet. I would do like seven, eight times that day. And then finally, like, that zero is off. And that's what made me realize that I need to learn business in a whole different way, how what contracts actually mean.

So that taught me that the hard way. But at the same time, the judge in that place had invested in me and supported me is still my partner today. So 20 plus years later, he took me under his wing. He got me that introduction, and we've been partners in several companies from that day all the way to today.

So I built a relationship with one person who has been an amazing mentor to me. You know, sometimes like those big losses, but the relationships that you build through those losses are priceless. Yeah. Yeah. I could never go back and recreate that. What happened there taught me more about business than anything else because a lot of people get good early exits along the way and they think it's like that all the time, but it's not. But learning it that way now allows me to realize when I invest in a founder, I'm like, hey man, I know what a dilution is. I'm not going to screw them

that way, like how it happened to me. So it made me think a lot about how to be a better investor too. So do you invest now in your angel investor? Yeah. So we have a we have an angel investing arm. We have made like 24, 25 investments over the last 10 plus years. Most of these companies need follow-on round. So as soon as you make one, we've realized that whatever we commit to one, we double our investment because we know that there's never, not one time being a company that we've written one check into that have actually said, oh yeah, we're done. That's never happened. So we always say, hey, we're going to write one check and we're going to double it because we know that's going to be the follow-on round. So have any exited? Have you had any big exits

that have any of those? Multiple. Several have had private exits, but one of the 25, one public. So, which was a good win for all of us. That took care of portfolio theory. That took care of everyone. So is it true? Like when you have these kind of one company basically pays for all your 20? It does, but it.

It'd be great to have two, three. Correct. But it does. But the problem is, I will tell you, so there's this legendary investor. His name is Fred Wilson in New York City. And he always asked, the first time I met with him as an angel when I got my first set of cash, I was like, hey, I want to be an angel VC. He goes, okay, I'll meet with you.

Met with me for 15 minutes. He's legendary. And I asked him, so what's the secret? He goes, when you know that after you've deployed all your cash and you still want to keep going, that's when you're a true investor. And I was like, what in the world are you talking about? He goes, you're going to make 15, 20 investments thinking you're a hot shot. And after none of them are going to pan out, maybe one will. And then will you stop or will you keep going?

That's what makes a good investment. So the first for 10 years, I was just writing checks. Like, I had no idea. I was trying the best that I could. But now I'm a significantly better investor because I kept going. And you learn stuff the hard way. It takes a while. The longevity of the investor game is more important than picking winners.

It's super hard to pick winners. You know, that sounds like the essence of the entrepreneur spirit, right? The essence of the entrepreneur spirit is just to push beyond. And what I've even realized, even with this company in like 22, 22, 23, some of the tough times we had over with the rate spikes is like, I'm willing to go and go all in and be broke and do this with, and I don't care if I make money. Yeah.

Well, see, that's a really interesting thing, right? Real estate agents, mortgage brokers, why do they get into the game? They get in the game for two big reasons. One, they have full control over their time. So you have time flexibility. And two, they have unlimited income potential. Well, when you get extreme time flexibility and extreme income potential, what you get for half the population,

is laziness. That's the problem, right? When you have unlimited, uncap potential, something dramatically changes. So what do you actually need for it to happen? The need is not, the need is playing the infinite game. The game is not to win. The game is to keep staying in the game.

And when people realize that, like great entrepreneurs, like you realize that, I think the way we do it well, the way you do it well, is like, you freeze lifestyle. You're like, hey, I'll take less capital. I'll take less cash flow. But I'm not going and buying four mazoradis, but I'm going to freeze income, right? You know, it's a winning mentality.

I don't care what it is. I just want to win. Yeah. And the drive that you have when you're an entrepreneur, you're like, to your point. And when you have extra time, laziness is like so immense between our two organizations. It's like everybody, you know, the average loan officer, the average realtor is just immensely lazy. Or they just know how to be leisurely would be a good way to describe it. I actually have a deeper feeling.

on that. So if you're a real estate agent or a mortgage loan officer, listen up on this one, right? It's not that you're lazy. It's actually the deepest spirit of entrepreneurship. It's the fact that you don't know what to do next. That is the problem. And most people, coaches, consultants in our space, are very, I'm going to push coaching so that you sign up for a $1,000 a month package with me. Instead of some, if they sat down with you for 15 minutes and you said, hey, here's your plan and they just did those things. They would win hand over fist. Most of the time they just don't know what to do. Like I would tell like yesterday I wrote an email to our entire company and I said send this email to everyone in your database. I was like don't change anything.

You know what they will do? They will change it. And I said if you change stuff, you will change the result. Copy paste and send this exact same thing. And whoever copy paste it and sent it and sending me screenshot of a man, I got like eight responses, nine responses, 14 responses. And I'm like yeah, you got to find a way to not put your pink font and actually like do the things at work. And so when someone gives you like a playbook that works, have the courage to do it as opposed to saying, oh, I want to do it my way. Shut on, you sound like me. Like I literally with my loan officers, I'd be like, here's exactly the data. Here's exactly the message.

Here's exactly the cadence of messaging to go out. Copy this. Implement this. It's bulletproof. How did you mess this up? I don't understand. Let's do tactical stuff. I'll give you two really interesting examples, right?

there's two emails that work, emails or text that work for a loan officer and for a real estate agent. The number one email that can work for a local estate agent is this. The email is, are you still interested in buying a home in blank? Are you still interested in buying a home in Orange County? Question mark, send. That is the number one performing email you can send. Not like, hi, Joe, remember I met you on 1, 2, 3, Banana Street? None of that.

Are you still interested in buying a home in Orange County? Question mark, send. That is the number one response on the email that you get right now for a real estate agent. Number one. The second, and I would send that once a quarter. The second for a loan officer, the number one response for a loan officer, and even for our agents, is, hey, would you like me to let you know when the rates drop below 5.5%, 6.5%, whatever the number is. That's all you're asking, because now the person that responds to that activates and says,

oh, yeah, I am interested in that because now you have a conditional buyer, right? If I have real estate agents sending out the LO email, I have real estate agents that are saying, hey, Mr. Mrs. Client, would you like me to let you know when rates drop below 7%. That is generating more leads for an agent because now they know that they're conditionally responsive, to the, they're buying a, they're buying a mortgage payment, right? So I always tell people, consumers don't buy homes. They buy monthly payments. So our job is to at least know where that condition lies and every piece of communication should be tied to that. And then you get a significantly more bang for your buck from the leads. You have great lead strategy. I mean, we have a lot,

even in the mortgage space to learn from you. I mean, where did you, coming from the tech space, understand the psychology of sales? How did you even get introduced to that? Because that wasn't your forte. No, not at all. So, um, I learned, I got a million dollar sales education because after, so I went to business school, and then I went, I was a banker at Goldman Sachs. And so I was on the Goldman floor. So I did, we were 33 MBAs that got in my year that year was 2008, middle of the financial crisis, 33 MBAs that got to Goldman.

I had 39 one-on-one interviews to get the job at Goldman. 39 individual one-on-one interviews. Wow. So, but at Goldman, our first six months were in New York, and it was straight training. I'll tell you what happened. My first day on the job, they hand you a BlackBerry those days, a no limit AMX, corporate card, and a headset. And I was like, what is the headset for? So the managing partner tells me, put the headset on, don't plug it into anything. I want you to get used to that as a part of your body. Like, think about the craziness associated with that.

That's still part of my body. When I come home, when I used to come home after Goldman, my wife you like, hey, you had a long day. And there was the line on my hair with the headset, with the band. But that's important because they wrap around your head now, so you don't get that line. But I still have, I still have the same exact headset, which goes over my head. But the crazy part is you learn skills, right? Everything is a skill. And I remember the time where we were calling on CEOs and CFOs of big companies. And two months into training, managing partner walks in, he says, all right, who was his birthday's birthday in January? Like six people stand up. He goes, come on up. One person comes up. He stand in front of the class.

They hit a button. The C.R., like Goldman's CRM pops up. It has, you know, CEO of e-mortgage capital, Joe Shelby right there, right, with phone number, et cetera. He's like, call. I'm like, what the heck? So you're calling in front of the class. Like, think about the pressure associated with that. Wow. Right. And, and- Goldman is some serious boot camp. You have the managing partner sitting right there. saying call, right? And all I said was, so when my turn came up, I was like, hey, I will make as many calls you want, not only to people in here, but in a phone book, whatever, I'll make all the calls. Can someone give me a script? Like, what do I say? And then the managing partner starts laughing.

He goes, the first person to actually ask for a script. I was like, I'm not making it up. Like, someone has gone before me and done it right. And I think the skills are important. There's no reason for us to figure it all out. It's all the sales training I learned most of the foundational stuff happened at Goldman. Like the skills, the scripting, the tonality, actually practicing, framing, and leading people through the process, doing a consultative selling,

all of it happened at Goldman. Wow. Yeah. And it's really like they don't have like a routine, like we actually have sales coaching here. I got a guy who comes in and trains them with like NLP sales strategy. They didn't have any of that at Goldman. No, it was close enough though.

It was very functional. where they would teach you how to approach a client. They would teach you how to use soft language. They would teach you how to frame each conversation. They would say, hey, you don't say where the cheapest solution. You say you're the most efficient solution. Like small things like that are tremendously helpful, right? The greatest phrase that I learned from the CEO of Goldman Sachs,

at that time his name was Lloyd Blankfine. He said, the limits of your language are the limits of your world. And so everything is very language-based. And he goes, if you can't spend the five minutes practicing the language, how do you expect the client to trust you? And so it's super powerful. So I'll give you the craziest real estate story. When I got in the real estate business, I knew nothing about real estate.

I was like, I made investments. I owned my home. That's all I had. And I hired a coach. And the coach said to me, he goes, hey, if I were you, I would do something that no other owner of a company has done. So I memorized the listing and buyer agreements, word for word. And so now when I'm in a listing appointment with the client, I'd be like, hey,

Section 9A of arbitration talks about this. and I would recite it completely memorized. Right? And so the client would be like, how do you know this? I was like, how should I, I need to know this to protect you. And that's what generated so much, so much knowledge because, and I'll tell you how I did it. I took the document, I read it, I recorded my computer. I put an MP3 player during those days.

And I just played it on my drive up and down the 4 or 5. Just memorized the entire contract. You're a brilliant student, you know, you just, you just, it comes in your DNA just being Indian, you, you were supposed to be a doctor. Dr. I know because I'm Egyptian. So it's the same thing. We went through the same thing.

I did that in law school. I had to do the same thing you did. But from a, when you know you can get a skill, I think a lot of, a lot of salespeople, both real estate agents and MLOs think that, hey, I'm an outgoing person. I have a high deep personality. I can sell. That's not it. When you have skill, then you can sell.

Yeah. And that's the cool part. So skill is super important. You know, there's a couple things. There's skill. There's grit. You know, and you have to have both. And you have to have ingenuity.

People are like, well, someone was talking to me the day and they're like, well, why are you successful? Like, I work really, really hard too. Like, I just don't, as an entrepreneur, like, well, working hard's not the only solution. Like, working hard is a big part of it. But how much are you willing to sacrifice, you know, and are you willing to outwork everybody? Yeah. And, like, can you outthink them? Are you out, can you outsmart them?

Yeah. There's, you know, there's a, the, a lot of times I look back and I'm thinking about, like, is there a formula for success, right? And I think there's three big pieces. And the nice part, folks that are connected to your organization, you support them significant. I'll tell you what those pieces are. So if you take a triangle and you think about three sides to it, there's opportunity. Number one. So if there's not a lot of, if you're super skilled and you don't have anybody to, like, talk to, that's really hard.

So opportunity, call it lead. So opportunity, call it leads, call it people that you're talking to. The second is effort. And the third is skill. So even if you provide training, so you're providing skill to people, you're providing opportunity to people, they still have to do the work. So, but the nice part is great companies like yours provide opportunity and skill. And all that the sales professional has to bring to the table is the training, is the effort. And so I always ask, is this an opportunity problem?

Is this an effort problem or is this a skill problem? It's a very quick diagnosis. And if you can be really honest with yourself, you'll figure out what the problem is. You know, we try to present the opportunity. We try to mitigate the skill needed. Try to mitigate the effort needed. But at the end of the day, you know, even through all those strategies, like we, you know, we still need significant effort. Yeah.

We still need you bought in. Yeah, of course. I want to talk because I don't, I want to, and people want to know, like, so you sold tell us real estate. you had that exit. First off, how did that happen? And then we all want to know about real. Yeah, yeah, of course. So the coolest story of how this happened was I was a banker in New York.

And my partner, who has been my mentor, said to me, he's like, hey, there's this small company in Beverly Hills. It has one office and a few agents. Do you want to invest in it? I was like, I don't know anything about running a real estate company in Beverly Hills. I live in New York City. But if you're in it, I'm in it because I'm partners with you. So I was a passive investor. and tell us when it started.

And then one day I got quarterly statements. I was like, huh, this doesn't look, this looks strange. And so I found the P&L, and I was like, it looks, this doesn't look right. And so I talked to the CPA and he's like, we found that the then CEO was embezzling. And so I was like, all right, well, now it's my fiduciary responsibility to not allow this to happen. So me and my partner met with the CEO and bought him out. and I took a six-week leave of absence from banking to do this. And I said, well, my job is over the next six weeks to stabilize the organization to find a CEO so I can go back to banking.

Well, you're going to laugh when I tell you the story. I had a simple model. And my model was, all right, we're doing roughly $300-ish million in gross sales volume. And I accidentally put a zero. So it became $3 billion. And suddenly I was like, what just happened to the P&L? And the model just changed. So I was like, wait a minute.

The vision. It was by accident. So then I told the board, I was like, hey, I will resign from banking. I will come run this business, but we're going to do 10x in five years. And they're like, how? And they're like, well, we don't have any money to pay you. I'm like, I don't need money. I bought my equity because we bought this other guy out.

I will build and grow this business. So we went from one office, 33 agents, to 22 offices, 700 agents in five years. And then sold a business to Douglas Solomon. which is publicly traded out in New York, and Elman wanted a California-based footprint. Now, here's the key behind how we did that. As a investment banker, I didn't know what our business was ever worth. So every summer, I would shop the business softly. So I would go to the three, four big suitors, and I'd say, hey, here's our stuff.

And they'll say, hey, we'll pay you. I'm making up numbers. Hey, we'll pay you $50 million for this. And I said, thank you. So now I know their model. I said, well, what if I wanted 100? They said, well, if you want 100, it needs to have A, B, C, D.E. I'm like, great, thank you.

So I took the A B, C-D-E, handed it to my C-O-O, that became the business plan for next year. I did the same thing next summer. I said, oh, it's worth 100 now. Good job, Sharon. Hey, what if I want 150? Well, if you do A, B, C-D-E, it'll be 150. I'm like, thank you so much. I took that, handed to my C-O.

That was the business plan for next year. We did that for three years in a row. I need to go over my business plan with you here. But what the main part is a cell – what founders do is they think that that becomes the plan, right? But they don't realize it from a mark to market from who the potential buyer would be. That's way more exciting. Because now I can go back to them and say for three years in a row, you told me I built, you told me I built, you told me I built. And I'm working off of their model. So having these conversations became really easy because they knew that whatever

they say I was going to do, I was going to do. And then the offer from Doug Selman came, which made it really easy. But shopping the business every year made us have a much tighter business. that's just truly insightful like I never even thought to shop my business I don't ever want to sell it but it would be of course it would be good to know like you know how many billions would it be worth if I did X yeah no totally right but I think that's important because it forced all of us it forces us to know where we stand because we are on someone else's scale diagnostic first right diagnostic is really important because when we walk into a doctor they just don't start diagnosing this. They're like, hey, does this hurt, does that hurt? Does this work? Does that work? That's very prevalent across every business. That's why even when I'm talking to a real estate agent or an MLO, I'm like, hey, is this an opportunity problem? Is this an effort problem or a skill problem? I can dice it out very quickly. If it's an effort problem, I'm like, hey, what kind of business hours do you keep? That's the standard question. Like, what do you mean? I'm like, okay, so you don't

keep any business hours. That's the problem. Because you just wake up and if you have work today, great. If you don't have work today, great. And that's the problem for a lot of people. If you can find a way to diagnose this stuff quickly, then success is like just around the corner. I mean, like your salesmanship, your vision in sales is like, it really is just another level. So I want to dive into how you've been able to do it with Real. Like you've been able to take Tellis, you sold it, Delis Elman, great. I'm sure it was a good exit, but what it did was it positioned you to start to be the president of Real. So are you the president of CEO?

The president of real. Is there a CEO? Yeah, there's a founder. There's a founder. Yeah. Who's amazing. He and I have awesome partnership. Awesome.

So, and you're, I'm sure, a pretty decent equity shareholder in real. So how were you appointed as the president of real? And then also like, and then I'm going to talk about some of the vision because you got some immense vision for 2024. Yeah. For real. So how it all happened was after we made our sale to Douglas Selleman, I had a five-year non-compete. And so I sat on my head. for five years. So I did two things during that time. Thing number one was since I could not

work in the real estate business in the U.S., I helped real estate businesses in Australia and New Zealand. That's cool. And so I got a chance to do that for a few years. Do you have a non-compete here enforceable in California? It was across our wherever the TELS footprint was. So it was, and I wanted to respect that. I mean, they paid me to set on the sideline. So I was very happy to do that. And then while my non-compete was coming to an end, I got a chance to, I've been consulting with several big real estate teams in the U.S. And many of them were interested in going, leaving brokerages, switching brokerages. And I said, hey, if you want to go somewhere, I want to make sure I get connected with who the top players are.

So I reached out to Real and said, hey, I've got several teams that want to move to Real that I advise. Let's have a conversation. So that's how I got to know the Real platform. And then that's how I met the founder of Real. And he was like, hey, what would it take for you to potentially come out of retirement to do something like this? And I said, well, I want to run the business. I don't want to talk to Wall Street. Like, I've done my Wall Street thing.

I just want to build and grow the Willisd Business and he says well I'll take care of that And you take care of this I was like that's a great partnership So we get a chance to really work together I grow the business And so everything that is quote real broker is mine And but I don't do a lot of it

So your founder does all the ops You do all the sales all the visionary stuff He's amazing he does he he he does all of the The wall the public rooted wall street functions Which is a lot by the way Yeah Which is a lot like I would not want to like hey I'm like Where are you today?

he's like in Milwaukee at an analyst context. I'm like, oh my God, how do you do this stuff? And the reporting requirements, the working with the board, the audit committee, it's a, the cost of being public is a lot, but it also gives you a lot of benefits, which is, which is powerful. But the running of all our operations, essentially it is growth, our COO function, our CMO function, all our brokerage functions, they're all buying. Wow.

So what's, so we're coming short on time. So I want to make sure that we go through. through your vision for 2024. Yeah. And what do you think, you know, for people who are buying REAX right now? Well, it's tough. So a lot of this is material and non-public information. No, no, I'm just kidding.

But really, tell us about the vision for 2024, just so people have some understanding about what some of the growth strategy and goals are for 2020. Yeah, so big, there's a few big initiatives in 2024. Well, in the last, a reel was essentially built in three years. In the last three years, we've gone from roughly, 600 agents to 14,000 agents. So one of the fastest growth. We're in all 50 states and the biggest Canadian provinces. We're in Canada as well. We're in Canada as well. So which is really, which is a great footprint in North America for us. Our goal is not to leave North America. Our goal is to dominate

North America. We have, but, but one of the things that is my baby for 2024 is this. There's roughly 1.6 million real estate agents in, in the United States. Out of the 1.6, is million, 900,000 of them are with small independence. It's the Joe Chiran royalty down the street from us. 900,000 of them, right? There's roughly 83,000 independent brokerages. And they've built a brand for 3, 5, 10, 15 years serving local markets. And I was like, but with the recent things that are happening in the industry structurally and cost of doing business, it is really hard for them to scale. So I've been talking to multiple independence and thinking, how can I get an independent to partner with Real?

And the number one thing that they wanted was we want to keep our brand because we spent all this time building. We established a private label program. Any independent in the United States based on state regulations can join Real and they can keep their brokerage. So it's Sharangio Realty can keep Sharantio Realty powered by Real and actually continue to operate as that. That's number one. So we already done this in five markets and a big part for 2024 is to turn. on the spigot to allow independence. Are you doing trade names or DBAs?

Full DBAs registered under, so if you go to your DRE license now. I'll have 15, 20, 30 based on the state. Yeah. Yeah. So that's. But the problem is not that. What we realized after we put five, we've done five markets of these is that these independents when they come on, they need a way to run their own business model.

Not one independent runs the same business model. One is on an 80-20 split. One is on an 80-20 split. One is on an X split with Y cap, with Z-fees. and it's super hard for them because what they do is they plug their model on top of hours and then they have to make all these manual calculations on spreadsheets, etc., to make their agents pay out. So we built a software function, which is a brokerage in a box. So any independent can keep their brand and keep their economic model and flip to reel.

Now it dramatically reduces pain of transition, which is super powerful. And the third part of it is that independent brokerage, Joe Chiron brokerage on the corner of the street with 15 agents, literally has no value because no one's going to buy it. But now when they're rolling to real, now they get to be a part of, they get stock, and so they get to be a smaller piece of a much bigger pie. So they get synthetic equity, which is super cool. So now we're able to take private label combining what we call the pro teams, the team-based broker-in-a-box offering and the scale function,

which is going to completely turn on a whole new world for real estate. I like the synthetic equity. You give them, I know they get like. RCs and options, essentially. Yeah. Yeah, which actually is significantly growing now. Correct. Yeah, exactly right. So that's my personal big initiative for 2024,

so stand on the mountain and educate people that 83,000 independents are out there who don't have a home to scale. You know, your model and our model is so similar because we have the same thing. We're trying to do the same thing with independent brokerages, and I tell them the same thing. I say, your mortgage company doesn't have value. you, it's not like there's a multiple here. Like, you need to walk away from this thinking that you're going to have some big exit

because that's not going to happen. That's not the way this business, this mortgage company, real estate company, they don't have big exits. Correct. You know. Not anymore. I mean, I think we hit, we were fortunate to hit what we hit and we hit our full earn out during COVID.

So we got very lucky. But it's not, it's not the exits. There's just no buyers. So that's the problem, at least in our world, there's none of the big boys want to buy any small companies because they would much rather they roll in like we do. That's why we turn on the private label program. Yeah. Yeah.

And we're we just have to, and both of us just have to continue to help these loan officers and realtors navigate, more importantly, like produce. Yeah. And what are you doing right now to get your loan officers to like, take initiative, take action? So we are a training first company. A lot of times what brokerages will generally do is say, oh, yeah. Once a week, I'm going to provide some two minutes of coaching, maybe play a video. I think our philosophy is completely different.

I told our teams that we have to take full responsibility for our agents to produce. Full responsibility. That means us delivering on skill. One of the things that we've done is we just built an amazing internal academy. And it's taken a year to get traction to have adoption. Yeah, like a thousand plus people on a call. Right. So if I do a training, I do a training one to two times a week.

I break Zoom every time because I have to show up with the right playbooks, the right frameworks, the right skill sets, and they should be able to ask me a question, throw an objection, I got to be able to handle it. And this is with the top agents. So we've turned a training first company, which has been super, super powerful. The second is provided a home for the biggest team. So I run something called a $100 million roundtable. Every team that does over $100 million in sales is like I get to work in their businesses with them.

So I'm like, hey, you are a driving performance unit. Can I help you grow much faster? Those two initiatives have dramatically changed just skill in our in our in at real, which is allowing agents significantly more confidence to do more business. So we have to lead with training first. You know, I'm really taking some notes here, mental notes, because like if you're really crushing it, you know, in terms of like what you're doing to keep your top of agents engaged and to be in

there in the weeds with them helping them grow and i was actually going to be rolling out an initiative like that with a with a with a roundtable with all of our top agents now it's just you know it's been like death by meetings for my agents you know and i feel for them because i'm rolling out so much and i got so many ideas and i'm throwing out so many things at them so fast so it's hard to always keep coming up with a new initiative get adoption a new initiative get adoption it's like the adoption is poor for me and i'm sure it's you know the same in your space it's actually in interesting for us, it's not bad because what I tell the team internally is to do great things, you have to do fewer things. And anytime we add something, I'm like, stop, to do great things,

we must do fewer things. To do great things, we must do fewer things. The team knows that. So, yes, I may add a few things, but those are one to many, but for the, for the $100 million roundtable, like, that is six meetings a year with me, right? And so now they know that, hey, put this on your calendar. We have six meetings a year. Sharon's going to come and deliver, which is good. How many of those you have? How many hundred million dollar round tables? Just one round table. It's one round table.

Essentially, it's called a 100 million dollar master. We have maybe 38 teams in that roundtable. 38 teams. Yeah. So it's somewhere between 100 and 1.2 billion. Wow. Yeah. Yeah.

That's incredible. Yeah. So the last thing I wanted to leave with was your five minute. Yeah. Your five minute call every morning at 5 a.m. Yeah. It's called the five minute. Mastermind?

Five a m club. The five a m club. Shoton runs a. Every day at five a.m. He does a collective, is it a Zoom call? It's a straight traditional phone call. Yeah, no pin.

You dial in a number and you hear me live. That's awesome. And it's you live. Fired up. You already had your cup of coffee at five? No coffee. I'm a decaf kind of guy. Like, I'm like this all the time.

So I, no coffee for me. But I will tell you this. this is probably 10 years ago it's going on 10 years so roughly 10 years ago I had an idea and my doctor said to me I was I was not well and the doctor said to me he's like hey when you wake up early the weeks that you wake up early looks like your blood tests are better you should consider waking up early and I was a night owl so I said all right well I need some accountability to wake up early so what I did was I texted three friends and I said hey would you mind for a week jumping on a call with me at 5 a.m. you don't have to say anything I will lead the

they give you a joke or some inspiration or something cool as a message for two to three minutes and you can just drop off. So I created a little conference line number and then first day I was really hoping that they would show up and they all did. So as soon as I log into the call, I heard ding, ding, ding, ding. Three people showed up. I was like, awesome. I did a message and I turned up and I quit.

The next day, I log into the call and it was ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. And I'm like, wait, where are there two more people on this call? Anyway, that must be an error. I let it go. looks like those people had invited a couple of other people. And then the next day I logged into the call, it was ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. I was like, why are they like 18 people on this call? Well, suddenly, people just started sharing the number, and it went from three people to 10 people to 30 people to 300 people to 3,000 people to 8,000 people.

So we have like 8, 9,000 people right now, of which roughly we have maybe 3 to 4,000 live on a call every day. It is. And you're not marketing anything on there. You're just giving a message. What are your messages? is like, close today's message. What's the second about?

Let's say, to do great things, we have to do fewer things. I was like, hey, a lot of people, business plan right now, and they say, of all the things I did last year, I don't want to do anymore. I want to do this, this, this, this, this, this in New Year. Well, which one of these are you going to get done? In fact, with so much overwhelmed, you're not going to get much done, because to do great things, you must do fewer things. So then I use that as a phrase, and I build a message around that.

But it's only three to five minutes. It's a straight conference call, and it's a little espresso shot for your day. We actually have a Facebook group. that Facebook group lights up every day at 505 a.m. Because everyone's discussing the call, then it dies down for 24 hours, and then it lights up again. But it's 100% free, 5am club.net. 5am club, cool. Right on.

Shot on. It's been such a blessing to have you, man. Thank you for kicking off our first ever Coffees for Closers podcast. And guys, subscribe. Thank you guys for watching and listening today. Awesome guests we had, one of the most brilliant minds in the real estate space. We look forward to having you again. God bless you, man.

Thank you.