KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Building a Business That Thrives in AI’s Real Estate Revolution

Episode Date: November 14, 2025

Friday Focus is your weekly mini-series from KGCI Real Estate On Air—a deep dive into one theme, broken into tactical, easy-to-implement episodes. Every Friday and Saturday, we unpack the strategies, scripts, and systems agents use to win more business—without the fluff.Catch every episode in the series to get the full picture, and put these moves into play by Monday.Summary:AI isn't coming for the real estate agent's job—it's here to redefine it. This episode provides a strategic roadmap for agents and brokerages to build a business that thrives in AI's real estate revolution. We reveal how to leverage AI tools for massive efficiency gains, predictable lead generation, and hyper-personalized client service. The key to future-proofing your business is focusing on the uniquely human elements of real estate while automating the rest. Ready for more? Subscribe to KGCI Real Estate On Air and grab the Always Free Real Estate On Air Mobile App for iPhone and Android. Inside, you’ll find our complete archive, 24/7 stream, and every Friday Focus mini-series—ready when you are.

Built to close your week strong and start the next one smarter. Here's what you is from this week's Friday Focus on KGCI, Real Estate on Air. Seven-figure success starts when you start thinking like a CEO. Welcome to the John Kitchens Coach podcast Experience. This is your host, John Kitchens. You're ready to think bigger and transform your business into a path to lasting freedom. What is happening to everybody, man? Thank you guys.

tuned in another episode of the one big fire podcast. We've got all the boys in the house today. And before we jump in, I wanted to share something with you guys and just kind of think, because I think it's going to kind of lead into kind of understanding moves and thoughts and kind of where we need to be

and what we need to be thinking about for ourselves and our businesses moving into the future. I picked up something last March, and I forget where I pulled it out of. I was reading something this morning from you know, I've got all the OG, you know, newsletters and emails coming in from all the marketing OGs. Perry Marshall had sent over something I clicked on and read this morning.

I've been reading his stuff quite a bit lately and maybe kind of go back and pull out the note. And like I said, I can't remember where I pulled it from. But it talked about growth mindset, a must moving forward. And this was from March of last year. And it said, you know, the three things that. we have to be paying attention to moving into the future. And it kind of prefaced the thing is that you need to focus on if you had to grow by 20% year over year, how would you do it? Right? So start to program yourself in that, in that kind of that thought process. If you had to,

how would you do it? And but it talked about from a growth mindset, there's three things. Number one, continually innovate and evolve your products and services. So I take Jay Abraham's definition of innovation, and that just means add more value. So how do you continue to add more value to your services, your products, your offers, and continue to make the offer even more irresistible? Number two, have a strong, defensible business model. Basically put a moat around your business. That's the number two most important thing to be thinking about moving into the future. And I'm going to come back around to Perry's message, and it's going to hit on the number two point. Number three is, and this is what we have to, and this is taking this into perspective,

kind of the short, the story you shared right before we jumped in now, use a tough market to break away from the pack. So like, we're all experiencing a tough market, like lean into it. Like, thank you. I've got this. This is going to help me be even more competitive. I'm going to lean into this tough market and it's going to help me separate from the pack. So those are the top three things. Those were marks of last year. So I was reading this with Perry this morning and he kicked off the whole email and he said, one question you must ask yourself when starting any company. And I would say start or continue to maintain or grow any company is what kind of moat can we build around this? What kind of moat can we build around this business? And then in the next sentence,

he goes, for the next 18 months, the width and the depth of your moat will determine if you survive or if you get overrun the next 18 months the width and the depth of your moat and if you take back to the second bullet point of the moat is a strong defensible business model so continuing to dive in and continue to tweak on the business model we know we have one of the best business models platforms that we're plugged into in the entire real estate industry in the entire space and so how is your business within this model to continue to make the moat for you even wider and deeper. So it was just really interesting how kind of thinking about that going into it into today's conversation about the news that unfolded yesterday with KW's move.

Ooh, I like where we're going with this. So you sent over right before you went right into GROC 3 and you just started dumping and having a conversation. I would love for you to just kind of unpack and what we're seeing and what we're hearing and kind of what we're thinking about why the move was made with KJ. Yeah, I think I learned a lot from Grock. He's quite knowledgeable.

And he laid out all the likely direction and things that they're doing. We'll talk through some of that. But, you know, I think that is, you know, the direction they're going is, you know, the obvious thing that's happening is, Gary's taking some chips off the table, as he should. You know, that's, that's, you know, kudos to him.

I think it's also, you know, probably somewhat of a waving of the white flag, you know, and we are a tech company. You know, I think that, you know, that's been, you know, a lot of his personal wealth invested into trying to build command and the challenges of building tech versus partner your buying tech as an option. And, you know, you know, the, you know, the alignment with CoreLogic with this, you know the stone point capital and their ability to leverage you know the data you know to be hyper local and integrate that into command and some things are you know they're they're good plays on

stone points you know side too as well they learned a lesson and when they invested into i think it was home home point home light no it wasn't home light it was um i saw that too it was the mortgage company they invested in and they invested at the peak of all refinances and They just couldn't, they, you know, they, they, their value, the valuation at the time they entered was with the wrong timing probably. And so I think the timing of making this investment from their perspective, it's, you know, that's likely all upside because they're getting in at, you know, the third year of the, you know, the slowest year in real estate, you know, that we've had since 95. So I think their timing of making the investment makes a lot of sense for, you know, a five to, you know, a five to 10 year IPO, you know, or sooner. you know, I think that's their, you know, whether they're going to be able to actually, you know, I think the thing in real estate that is, is difficult to do is to increase productivity

per agent. I mean, no matter what you do, you know, there's just a large number of people that don't do anything. And so you can provide all the tools, all the data, all the, you know, all the, you know, the pizzazz, but, you know, integrating that into, you know, an agent's daily workflow is is super difficult. So, you know, they're going to get a natural increase in valuation just from the uptick of the market over the next five years. So that all makes, that all makes sense. So to me, you know, the whole move makes sense, you know, from from their position, from Gary's position, the strategic alignment. But it's also, you know, it's like, you know, it's like trying to, you know, put new, new tires on a, you know, on a, you know, Volkswagen, right? I mean, it's a, it's a legacy

model. You remember, you know, we had, you know, our old mentor that we, that we used to have, HOA. And one of the smartest people ever, ever. Brilliant. Brilliant. And, um, wicked smart in so many ways. And, you know, he, he, he always made a comment that he said that disruption in the brokerage industry will come from an out, it won't be, you won't, you can't innovate on your current legacy model of franchise, for instance. You can't innovate on your current legacy model of franchise, for instance. You can't innovate out of that. So they've learned that they can't compete with the cloud-based models, us being the biggest, and that they're getting murdered. They're getting killed by us in terms of recruiting agents from Keller Williams over to this cloud-based model. It's better in so many ways, and they can't compete with that. So they can only go deeper in their own legacy model and try to improve franchise, you know, franchisees, recruiting systems, productivity per agent, give them better tools. But they're, you know, they're the really on a sinking ship as it relates to the future of real estate being, you know, a tech-enabled or tech-focused brokerage, cloud-based, the efficiencies that are gained by that allow you to just do things

others they're never going to be able to do. And so, you know, so that, you know, it's, you know, on one hand, I understand why they did it. Probably the best move they could have made. On the other hand, you know, they're organizing chairs on the Titanic is the, is kind of the viewpoint I take on it. Yeah. Hey, so you, you know, we come from, you know, the Rilogy, you know, Colwell Banker world. You, you had Remax experience and talked to one of our, one of our rock star Honey Badgers yesterday that took a meeting with Remax just to hear the pitch, right? Just was kind of curious with the pitch. And, you know, they got the, you know, the Pepsi balloon now and just kind of seen what their value proposition was and what they, what they could offer. And, you know, looked at kind of split structures. and based upon, you know, he's a solo agent based upon his production,

he would have given, you know, 60 to 70,000 a year to remax. And what they were trying to say is that, oh, you would have got an extra couple hundred thousand uptick by being at remax. He's like, how, how? Like, show me how I would, I would make a couple extra hundred thousand off of being at remax. He said, well, the brand is going to bring that to you. He's like, are you kidding me?

Like, seriously, are you kidding? I mean, is that what you're telling me that the brand is going to get me a couple, extra 100,000. He goes, have you seen my social media? EXP is nowhere on my social media. It's me. It's me. I'm the brand. So how is that going to help? It was just fascinating at what they were saying. What is kind of as you see this with with the legacy brands and in the moves, like you have that, you know, that experience. And I mean, you talk to as many agents as we do on a day and a day out basis. I mean, what are you kind of thinking from a legacy perspective that they're going to do?

So I did just a little, I mean, I have no clue. Nobody knows the crystal ball, you know, we do know this. Keller Williams has, you know, been able to stay in the game partially because of Gary Keller. You know, he is a, he's a badass. I mean, he is a force in our industry, an innovator. And he just wasn't able to pivot when he needed to pivot with this last big change of the, of the, cloud-based brokerage coming, but he's, he's hung on. So the question becomes this. In 2013, Remax went public. Dave Lineager said, all right, it's time. He didn't probably know how many

years he had. He's run into bad health even when I was there multiple times. He's not getting younger. And so he cashed out and went public in 2013. Now, they had 92,000 agents. They have 52,000 agents that's a 44% or whatever it is drop in agent count since they went public is that going to be the same of what we see with color williams i don't think so because i think one thing that keller nailed that remax didn't was culture and all my remax friends out there are going to disagree with me but i lived it um and and i witnessed from across the hall what keller williams did you mean they they really the one thing gary i feel i feel he nailed was culture. I mean,

everyone talked about the Kool-Aid. When you hear Kool-Aid, that's, that means their culture is just rich. People are bought into the vision. They're bought into the leader. And of course, you know, they've had issues. They can't keep, you know, sea level executives, long,

around long. And that's probably attributed to Gary's hubris that's grown. It's only grown, I believe, over the years of this, you know, there's there's a sense of arrogance there and i have a lot of i say that with a lot of respect because you can't not respect gary keller um at the same time that hubris i believe has caused um

you know them to stop growing and we we will see what happens if you know remax they are continuing to struggle even from last year i believe they're down seven percent an agent count their agent count keeps just dwindle yeah and um is that can happen with Keller. I don't think at the level that we saw remax. And I think the reason is because of, you know, I think on average, when you look at a remax franchise, you know, at least in the Cleveland area, there's a lot of little mom and pop, maybe 20 agent remax offices, right? You don't see 20 agent Keller Williams offices often. Usually they're pretty, you know, 80 to 100, sometimes three, four hundred. I mean, they, they, they grew these market centers more sustainably with

more agents, even though majority of them don't sell a whole lot of real estate. That is a big difference between remax because of the fee, but remax caved. I mean, very little remax brokers I know actually charge the desk fee. Only the top, top agents pay that desk fee. Everyone else is on a split. Yeah. Additional split. So they've kind of broken away from their old model just to survive. Remax offices are closing. We just helped close one in Charleston with Caleb and J.D. And what did they do? They find another broker owner to take over the franchise, make a deal with them. And that has not worked for them. On the surface, it may look like, oh, well, the office didn't close. See, it's still open. But truthfully, you know, the production's gone. So there's

nothing to sustain it. So we'll see, we'll see what happens. You know, I don't see Gary saying sitting in the CEO or seat or bouncing back and forth because he was bouncing back and forth from CEO to whatever he was. Yeah. It'll be interesting to see what pans out. There's a lot of indicators even on both sides, right? Even you see remax, they have a lot of turnover in the leadership and leadership and even at the top. So I mean, that's that's a lot of telltale signs when you're seeing, you know, there's a lot of leadership movement. It's like you look at you know like NFL organizations when you see a lot of turnover in the coaching head coaching or GM roles what does that tell you right there's some dysfunction going on within the

entire organization so those are those are some behavior some signs there to to kind of pay attention to the one thing you know that what are some things that we can pull out of this that can be like hey this is this is probably a good move and I think you were talking about it a little bit with core logic and you know what is what could that mean for us where to pay attention to if we know, hey, this is probably their chest moves. This is probably how they're going to move across the board. Where can we kind of take and say, ah, that's a good idea. We need to be paying attention to that as well.

Yeah, definitely the data. You know, leveraging, you know, local, you know, hyper local data is, you know, putting that in the hands, you know, that's, you know, we, you know, we would go to outside sources for all of that, all of those things. But having that baked into your technology, you know, it's probably on our roadmap at this point, I would imagine. but you know we did the right thing by partnering with tech you know at least initially and so you know kind of the next move will you know need to be somewhere in us you know

leveraging data and integrating it into tech and just be you know arming the agents with the best information to differentiate us from other agents and that that's what if that's what kW is going to that that is what they're going to do but um that that's going to be the the thing that we'll have to do to to maintain, you know, relevant as I think we're already in a place where we provide the best world-class training of agents. We've taken that from them. That used to be Keller Williams. Used to be KW. I'm sure. Yeah, I think we've taken that from them, the spot for that. And now it's, and at scale. I mean, it's the stuff we're doing, dude, like, you know, I don't know how much y'all, y'all, you guys weren't at that meeting we had last week, but you saw the notes and

listen to it. But the, you know, the, the, the team leader training that they're, that they're rolling out for teams at, at EXP is, is EOS. It's what we used to coach and train every single agent to for years. They're doing it every six weeks for teams. Like, that level of, from a, from a company, it's not being done. And so that, the fast cap program, like, the things that we're rolling out at scale for every agent to take advantage of, in terms of the odds of being successful or not, it is world class. Yeah. And so I think we have a, you know, a position there.

You know, and again, I think obviously we're super profitable as it relates to, you know, the overall cost structure of our business model versus the legacy models. And that gives us the ability to bring on better people and run, run these business units and really, you know, really execute at a high, super high level and very relevant. And so that's, that's great. You know, that next piece is going to be competing on who has the best data and information, which in this day and age, the speed of things, you know, that landscape changes every day. And I think opportunity for us is going to be.

So, Jay, you think, so you say it's data. I don't disagree. But isn't it going to be really a combination of data, the race for data, and AI, who has the most powerful AI? In five years, I don't know what our industry is going to look like. in five years. It's not going to look like what we like this because AI is moving so fast. What is it going to replace?

What software is AI going to replace with all these, you know, all these real estate brokerages and their models? You know, what we and anybody that's cloud based that operates as one unit, not franchised out has a huge advantage. You know, those franchise owners are only required to abide by what's the franchise agreement. Beyond that, they can operate kind of independently, you know, one EXP office, I'm sorry, one, one Keller Williams office over here in Westlake does not operate the same one that operates down there in Medina that doesn't operate. They can make their own

splits. They can put a franchise, I'm sorry, they can charge a transaction fee or not charge a transaction fee. They can let their, it's all over the place. There isn't a consistent model. so how with with AI growing it's such a rapid I mean I don't even I can't even imagine what it's going to look like in five they're they're going to I would imagine they're going to change that so so you know it is and I don't know what what what all they have the ability to do but grog did point out that that making changes to the franchise agreements is something that they would likely do and so to me like I just we just recruited a KWA agent, 100, 100 plus transaction producer and, you know, and a little town of 6,000 in Texas

with a 28,000 count. That's crazy. Like 28,000 plus the royalty. So you're, you know, that that's not a competitive advantage. You're going to, you know, like if you allow all your franchisees to do whatever they want, you know, it's just, you know, it's going to be difficult to compete when you're going to, you have, well, these people over here, we're losing agents over here. Why?

Well, because they're doing, you know, $28,000 caps in a market that it doesn't support that. And so they're going to have to change that, I would think, which is going to be, you know, there's no money in the franchise. If you're the franchise owner of a Keller Williams, unless you have 250 agents in that office, you're, you know, it's not very profitable usually anyways. It's not profitable. That's what, you know, Dave Jinx told me years ago. But, you know, that's going to be, you know, that's going to probably upset the Apple card a little bit. some of these people, you know, might be looking to get out and look to the new model. I think there's a lot of disruption that can happen when they do make those changes

because all they're trying to do is make it profitable. But, you know, the, that's where all this money in the model that we don't have, you know, we don't are, you know, there's no negotiating what our, our cap 16 grand. Our fees are the same. You know, that's, it's a disadvantage that they're going to have in trying to fix that. Yeah. Hey, before we move on, every great business strategy starts with one question. what's really holding us back.

If you're not sure how to answer that, take five minutes and complete the growth score assessment. It gives you insight into the eight areas that drive growth and will show you exactly where to focus to increase revenue, improve operations, and grow with confidence. Go to mygrowthcore.com and take the assessment now. Now back to the show. There's a franchise.

a couple franchise kw franchises here in my town one of them um you know they all owner groups you know how that works they'll put together you know maybe 10 to 20 investors to open up a market center everyone kicks in whatever um one of those owners um who's a great great guy um owns he's part owner of the franchise but he has his own office so imagine all the money he's paying toward his cap that's paying for the office the lights the coffee all those things yet he has he's leasing a completely different office about a half a mile away now he was able to get away with that i believe because he's not putting signage up or whatever right there's another team that's trying to open up and they're getting they they won't let them so like we can

literally like if you're a team leader and you're listening to this and you come to xp you can open up an office pretty much anywhere you want that's that the state of ohio at least or state of texas allows you to. Sure, you got to go and do an application for a branch office and it's approved every time. Easy. Now, you're basically like, this is, this is like giving the handles of the luggage of an entrepreneurial real estate, you know, practitioner that wants to grow their team. Sometimes they want their own place where they build their own culture, have, you know, I built an office, you guys built an office. Yeah. You can't do that at Keller Williams unless you get permission because there's a franchise model. So you can't open another office.

five, six, seven miles down the road because this person over here paid whatever it is, 80 grand, whatever, I don't know how much it costs for a franchise for Keller Williams, but it blocks anyone else from opening up a Keller Williams office anywhere around there. And that's happening actually right now. So I think the more we start seeing offices being opened, you know, brick and mortar offices by team leaders because they want their own space to grow their own culture, have their own trainings, meetings, whatever,

call nights, and the competition just can't do it because the franchise doesn't allow it. We're going to start seeing some, I think,

some more interest in peeking on our model. Yeah, for sure. You know, one of the things that kind of been thinking about

just in conversations over the last few weeks as it kind of relates to your question with AI. And like I said, I can't even imagine. I think we have to take into consideration

who's going to make the play at the consumer with buyers and sellers in leveraging the AI in their home buying and selling process. You know, because you've got a lot of agents right now are just saying, how can I use this to help my business? Well, you get on the flip side of the coin, you've got consumers, buyers and sellers that are using AI as well to help them position their home to be able to sell to bring the most amount

of money. Buyers, how do I get into the ideal home and the ideal market and ideal conditions? So I think that has to be taken into some considerations. I mean, imagine what Zillow or. even of us, right, even if we flip the script to the consumer to, you know, with AI to be able to help them in their buying and selling process because that's where buyers and sellers are going to go. I mean, that's just just human nature, right, behavior in where it's going to trend.

So it's going to be interesting to see how that plays out and that factors into the future as well. Yes, sir. Well, exciting times. It is. It is exciting times. And we got some exciting things going on, you know, here at EXP as well. You know, with that meeting.

I don't know for a lot of to talk about that yet, Jay. Yeah. Yeah, you know, yeah, I think we probably, we might want to give it a week or two. Later, Mary Nate, you know, one thing, though, in Jane, yeah, you and I were talking about this on Saturday, but, you know, Cindy sent over kind of the value stack. And I think, I mean, shit, we've been here, what, seven years, going on eight years. And there's so much that we don't even know that EXP offers. And I would challenge all of you guys to really look under the hood of what this company is. The best way I like to say is, man, I feel like I'm going to a Chinese buffet.

And it's just whatever I'm in the mood for today is what I'm going to get because that's what I want and that's what I need. And I feel like EXP has built that, like you said, with the team lead structure that's teaching EOS. And I don't even know what the investment is, but I can promise you it's a fraction of what it would cost to go get an EOS implement or to implement EOS into your business. the fast cap program like you look at all of these these things that as as teams trying to build a team trying to build a business trying to build a company you're like damn man how do we install the drive-thru right how do we get how do we get takeout how do we get curb service like it's just it's just like man it's so heavy but yet ex-p's providing they have the drive-thru for you they have takeout they have curb service they have all of the things that you would need this was this was

a really good thought exercise. I'm going to share this with you. And this came from Chauncey off of expert mentors last week. And Chauncey was like, listen, this is how I look at any business venture and anything that I do. She goes, I imagine myself standing at a blank box that is now my business. And so when she started telling me this, because it made me go back to when we were getting ready to take down the space next to Texas Roadhouse in Laught in Oklahoma. And how we took in every detail into consideration, working with Stacy, building out the plans, we want this component. What is it going to look like from the curve? What is it going to, what does the signage look like? And that was just really important understanding from the way Chauncey

broke it down. She's like, what do you see? What's missing here? Oh, you don't need a sign. You have a signage. Oh, you're walking up to the door. What do you see? What are your business hours? Right. Like all of those little details that you have to take into consideration. And when you try to go do that on your own. It is so heavy, so hard, almost impossible. And it takes years. Whereas I feel like what EXP's done is that you can go and install all of those components right away. They have everything there for you. You want to bring on new agents. Great. Make them go through the fast cap program. Right. You're building a team, get into the team lead production at a fraction of the cost in the investment, install EOS into your business. It's just absolutely.

absolutely remarkable. And then if you're in, if you have the opportunity to play in the luxury market, I think, I think EXP luxury is one of the best looks and feels of any brokerage, any company out there. It is so good. The luxury stuff that EXP has is so good. Yeah. It's, it's, it's really remarkable of what they've been able to do just since we, since we've been here over the last seven, eight years. Yeah, the, you know, and I geek out on this. I geek out on a lot of stuff. But I geek out on operational efficiency. I geek out on marketing. Those are the two things I love. You know, our operational efficiency is incredible. Like, you know, that is the benefit. And this is probably the most misunderstood thing about EXP. Like in Canada, it takes sometimes a week, two weeks to get paid. You get paid same day.

Like our same day transaction close is 90% right out. 90% of transactions are, you know, are settled and paid within 24 hours. And I think something like 66% of them are same day payment. And so like the efficiencies that are being, you know, Like the throttle that they're putting on, how do we make it better? How do we make it better? You know, like first level support. So, you know, like if you ask a question, you know, anywhere in our ecosystem that you have a question,

getting that answered at a first level support is happening. Our resolution right now is 93%. So 93% resolution, any problem, whatever it is you have, 63% of that happens at first contact. So I messed that up the other day because I had one that I was pushing back on and I was trying to go up levels because I was like, there's no way I had to, I had to set up my company in Oklahoma to do to do it. It was easy to do. I didn't realize how easy it was, but I didn't want to do it. And so, but, you know, just like your NPS being 77, like, you know, we came from this world, right? Like, we understood NPS and measured it at every area of the business that, you know, businesses that

we were operating. And we do that company wide. Like every department. I didn't realize that was that high. 77, bro. Like that is unheard of. Listen, guys. Listen. guys like if you like at a company our size to understand it's at 77 is remarkable if you guys don't understand what net promoter score is google the ultimate question go to ultimate question 2.0 bain and associates did the study back in what the 90s and it was what they determined is to be the only truly survey question that would determine if if you would repeat or refer people to do business with your with your company and we're talking about apples of the world in the 40s, the 50s, like, us to be at a 70.

30 is considered good because you take your, you know, your detractors, which is one through seven, and then you got passive, seven and eight is passive, nine and ten as, is promoter. And then you divide it. So like, a good score is in the 30s. Like, great is in the 40s. We're in the 70s. Like, to have agents happy, are you out of your mind? Like, it's crazy.

Like, you know, that's, that really is a testament to Leo and really pushing on operational efficiency and operational excellence agent focused like that people don't know until they come over and you know the statistic 9.8 agents are coming back to EXP every day. That's a lot. But the number one reason that they cited is when you go back to a legacy model and the way things are done and the it would be like going to Blockbuster and picking out a video for you to watch tonight. Like you're going to do that when you're going to be like what the hell am I doing this is so slow why don't I just watch it on that place right like it would never go back to that but that's what when agents come back they're like I tried it sounded really good

but I couldn't do it there's just too slow to be to be clear on what you said Jay it was nine point whatever agents per day coming back that had already been here left yeah they thought the grass was greener yep another brokerage and they there's nine coming back a day a day yep yeah you know what I'm guessing those are productive agents that are coming back. Right. I believe the ones that are not coming back for the most part. Not always are the unproductive agents.

They're probably just hanging it up or they're going to where they can find the cheapest, cheapest thing to hang their license or whatever. Yeah, yeah, the, you know, we went through all the attrition numbers and it's like, you know, 70, 80% of the agents sold one home or less. Like, it's, yeah, the agents that come to produce, they're not going anywhere. And, you know, we, you know, are onboarding right now, 94% onboarded within 24 hours. Like, that's, that's hard to do. that's remarkable. It's a lot of the agents that maybe they may be left maybe for the grass or greener or they left because of the challenges and the struggles that we fought through, right? And here's the other thing. Cindy and I, Cindy's on here. We were, Cindy had a great conversation with Cindy last week, you know, kind of sharing the value stack from EXP. So she she shared that over and just made me kind of open my eyes up to be like what I don't know about. I know there's a lot of value there. There's more that we don't.

don't even know. She brought up a really important thing. And this was this was one of my big, my big things. And what Cindy and I were talking about is that you don't realize this until you have your own company and you're paying your own insurance and you're paying your own E&O. And she goes, the thing that she's most thankful for, I mean, 25 years at ERA. But the one thing that was just like a heavy lift off of, off of my shoulders to where I didn't have to worry about anymore is thinking about where the next lawsuit's coming from. And, and, and, and, Until you've been in that role where you have to pay the insurance, you have to deal with every dang complaint that comes in.

And what she was raving about, another part of the value stack is the legal team at EXP. And they are world class. And she shared story after story after story for her that the legal team at EXP had helped her when you do the amount of business like she does. and like a lot of a lot of the folks at eXP it's it's you sleep better at night knowing that you got good legal protection legal legal structure behind you 100% yeah that's you know the you know I want to make a point here too you know yeah they went through they gave us the numbers of of where agents had where the majority agents are coming from which is keller williams

remax and cobal banker and and I want to make this point the the agents that we that we lost majority last the last year was real Keller Williams epic LPT you know then and then who knows wherever they to a job is where most of them went to but the ones that that took the most for us so we took on this onslaught of competition that we had never taken selling on our story hey you come over here you're going to be the next brink dove it's going to be great and that's that's what that's what they were selling on we survived that it was that was something we had never experienced before the last two years we experienced it Those agents are all going to come back.

By the way, spoiler, I'm not going to tell, we can't give you what we, I don't even know if we can say it yet, but I'm going to tell you right now, what's going to happen in 2025 is we are crippling the competition. And it's the most strategic move I've seen the company make

since I've been here. I'm more excited now than I've been since I first joined DXP. What they're about to roll out, mark my words, is going to destroy our competitors in the in the cloud-based space, like our actual, I don't even consider them competitors anymore.

It's that big of a deal. And so, like, all, you all have no idea. If you want to reach out to me on a side note, I'll talk to you, but like, the people that are getting catching wind of what's coming, are like,

this is not really happening. It's really happening. Like, they're doing it. I think what I think's going to happen, Jay, is everyone's going to follow and copy. Because they can.

Of course. But let me, let me make a really important point. So when we were at 20,000 agents, you know, from 12 to 20 to 40 and, you know, then 60, 80, it was like trying to keep the wheels between the ditches. Like, it was not easy. There was problems. There were people in key roles that were not the right people that we had to top grade from.

What were you saying the agent count between what? I'm just saying like from like even going from like 12 to 20 and then 20 to 40, like that whole space. of like what got you get you there and see and how you know just on the sidelines watching like all right we got 2,000 employees this is a problem over here this broker is a problem we got to fix this next thing you know it's fixed and you know that was fascinating to me and what I see happening with our competition is they're operating on a fraction of the dollars that we operate on we got a 16 cap you know 12,000 cap at one of our competitors they're operating on less dollars they can't go solve problems like that as quickly

They can't, they don't have the money to do it. So you got to, now you're an agent over there and the sky is falling, which is what's going to feel like for these companies in about a month. And they're not going to be able to take action to solve that problem. It's just a tremendous amount of turmoil and already probably probably they don't have enough money to go solve all the problems that need to be solved in order to operate efficiently. While we're at scale and we're, you know, just adding more, adding more, adding more, adding more value, value to the value problem going back to how. you started this, you know, this whole podcast, John, we, you know, we're just adding more value, more value, more value. They can't even solve problems at a pace that, and top grade talent fast enough to keep up with, with managing growth. So they got to slow down growth because growth

sucks cash. So it's fascinating. It's going to be interesting. I used to think that we would have, it would be like a Google, it would be like a Google Yahoo thing. You know, you know, competitor. Go ahead. I was going to say, it's going to be, I think it's going to be really interesting looking back and being able to see a couple things. One, that this, this kind of, where we've kind of held with growth for the last 18, 24 months, I think we're going to look back at it as a blessing. Oh, for sure. And the reason is, is that when you look at the, the lessons of, as we were going so fast. So I just want to, I want to share this with everybody. And this was, this was a very

important get from one of, one of our crucial mentors, Clayt Mask. And what Clayt said is ones and threes because what happens is that when you look at and this is how we operate you guys if you're not operating this way you've got to think through this and through the theory of constraints it's always you know the what the how the who and when you've got a great what and you got a great how then the constraint is always talent it's always who's and so the lesson that Clay was telling us is that you're going to outgrow your people and when you grow fast through ones and threes and basically what he's saying is the people that can get you to three million they're probably not going to get you to 10 million when they can get you to 10 million they're not

going to get you to 30 million 30 million is not going to get you to 100 100's not going to get you to 300 and you know you're going to outgrow people what was happening is we were growing so fast we were outgrowing people exactly and and so once once the we stagnated on growth it gave us a chance to breathe for a second get all of our shit together get all of our right who in place to make that next jump and that's what that's what's happening that's what we're seeing we got the right people so that's to me when i see what happened that was the lesson we're going to look back and we're like thank god we got to breathe for a second in right yeah yeah so good john good stuff yeah you're right which is which kind of leads into why the hire with leo

being tagged the CEO couldn't have come at a better time to the like when you think about 24. We're in real estate sales since 95. And let's just sandwich an NAR lawsuit on, you know, the settlement on top of all that. And we had the best leader that we could have possibly at the right time. And what's cool to do is he wasn't new to the company because he was still, you know, he was he was already in a, you know, I don't know if it was C level, but yeah, probably C level of leadership. And so he already knew the pulse of the company. he already knew how to work with Glenn well all those things you know bringing someone from the outside would not have been a great move man we got lucky with Leo yeah you know do you know and

this was one of my favorite takes going through listening to um you know the trumps and the elons leaving up to on the podcast circuit and eric eric trump was on the pbd podcast um after after his dad was on before before the election and he really broke down the entire entire Trump organization. And you guys listening, I mean, I don't, I don't care what you think, what you believe, what side you're on or not. But here's the lesson. He goes, we've had people that have been with our organization for 40 years. When I hear that, I go, leadership is the number one thing and they believe in loyalty and they promote from within. He goes, he goes, one of my favorite things is to take somebody that started out as a bus boy. Now they're managing one of our

one of our hotels, one of our signature hotels, and they started out as a buspool, he goes, that gives us the most fulfillment. And when you can hire and grow from within and make those moves instead of bringing from the outside, you win. I mean, you just got such a deep bench. And I think no matter what happens to our point with AI, the disruptions, what's going to happen in the next four, five, 10, 20 years, leadership will always be leading the way. And when you've got the right leadership and the right people and you have a set of guiding lights and core values because what you were talking about was with the core values. I default back to the decision that's about to roll out guys. Like listen, this company does not make decisions unless they run them

through the filters of the core values. Agile. And we do things that make the company even more sustainable. So for the age. Yep. Yeah. And dude, yeah. And you know, and let's go, you know, this, this, this thing that's coming like, I never, I didn't see it. I did not see this move. I didn't see it and that's it's a testament to glen at the helm like when you got a true visionary at the helm that can sit back and be like hmm how can we make this better what's what are all you know what are all the secondary impacts of making a certain decision and be like that's not good that's that's that's not going to serve anyone well let's not do it this way let's do it this way and like so i'm i'm super pumped that you know that we have the right visionary um founder with

the vision that's focused on agent that's obsessed with what's best for the agent and then operationally having the right CEO that's of absolute dog wartime war time execution focused maniacal about it dude I love it man I think his background man I think I think we're seeing it's so fun to watch it is fun to watch I think I think his experience and his background in the ario space, where you have to be wartime playing that game. Yeah. You know, kind of lended into, you know, kind of his philosophy and skill set, navigating the waters ahead.

And for you guys that don't know, I mean, we're talking about wartime and peacetime generals and leaders, you know, when you're into a headwin, you got to have, you got to have a wartime. In a tailwind, like what we saw 2021, 22, you can be a peacetime general and be, you know, kumbaya, lovey, duffy, and less accountability, sliding through the cracks a little bit. But when you're into a headwind, details matter, accountability, execution is everything.

I mean, going back to, we started the conversation out with Gary Keller. He's a wartime CEO. He's strapped on. Yes, he is. He's strapped on, you know, the grenades and everything. More than one war that man's fought. Yes, he has. Just mad respect for him.

And Dave Linger, you know, like, Linaiger started remax in 1973. That was the year I was born, him and Gale. Man, battle. Federal battles, everyone trying to keep you. Those are the OGs of the industry, man. They rolled out. And they took all the arrows and they were like, we're doing it this way.

If it wasn't really for those two guys, I don't even know, you know, if EXP would really exist or real or any of these because they paved the way. Trust me. They tried everything. When I say they, I'm talking about the old legacy models. Right now, now we're saying that potentially they're a legacy model, right? But the old legacy models did everything. They conspired to keep them out of the market and did everything. When you talk about arrows, Dave Lineger, when he had really long hair, the reason,

I don't know if everybody knows this, but he had a ponytail. The reason is because he swore he would not cut his hair until he won the federal trial against Realty 1 and Smyth Kramer here in Cleveland, Ohio. He was in federal court battling it out, and he won. And talk about a strategist. Kind of reminds me a little bit of Trump and how he's negotiating these big things, right? Like, Dave went in, rented out every hotel room in the closest hotel room to the federal court building so that the other legal team could not stay there for this long trial.

They had to stay miles away. It was cold. You know, like, just these moves, right? Like, I'll be honest with you. That is exactly why I joined Remax in 2007 was because I'm like, I'm following that dude in the fucking that's the guy. I'm following Dave because, you know, so, yeah, we'll see, you know, it's fun to watch all this and see, but they definitely took it.

And I'm just, I'm just excited about, yeah, I'm excited to see this announcement in about 30, 30 days or so. It's going to change the game. I do believe it's actually, just like other companies, when they came along and gave us some competition, and start making us improve our model. All this is going to do, it's going to force, it's a chess move. I don't know that they can't not like follow suit with it because it's freaking brilliant. And if they stay, I hope they do because it's going to make it a lot easier for us. Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. Fellow's amazing conversation. Really truly what the whole one big fire conversation podcast really embodies and all about. And, you know, appreciate you guys tuning in to us. lock it in. I mean, we come live, you know, 12, 12, 15, Eastern every Tuesday. So lock that in and love to see you guys continue to join us. You know, push and promote the show. We typically have a guest in with us, but we had the opportunity to the three of us get to chop it up today, which is always fun. I know we've got some guests, some rock stars lined up in the coming

weeks. So lock this into your calendar, set a reminder, and make sure to stay tuned in. Also, No, for no other reason to see, you know, Jay's jersey collection continue to grow every podcast we do. Pretty epic. It's got out of control here. Pretty epic. My wife's like, what? She's like, I love you, you redneck. I was like, what?

And she's like, you got these, like, at least get better hangers. I was like, I'm not displaying these for anybody else. This is for me. I don't know. They're all over the place. I'm about to get them all framed. Then I don't know what I'm going to do with it. So pretty freaking epic.

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Later. Thanks for tuning in. If you're done guessing and ready to lead like a real CEO with a custom strategy, real accountability, and proven systems, check out my executive 101 coaching at john kitchens dot coach fill out the application and book your one-on-one call with me be sure to hit follow so you never miss an episode catch you on the next one