KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Eric Miller

Episode Date: July 30, 2024

Hey friends, welcome to the podcast today. I'm so excited. I have my good pal, Eric Miller, out of Fort Lauderdale, and what's up with a hat today, Eric? Well, being you're in Texas and I'm in Florida, I couldn't decide how to get dressed, so I have palm trees on, stets in for you, and my sunglasses. God, you're, I love it. I'll take my hat awful for you because I want to be a little bit more appropriate there. There we go. Okay, well, I rely on you for that kind of shenanigans. So thank you.

Hey, so let's jump right in. Today we're really, we're going to talk about your real estate journey, but some of the things that are just really important to you in the industry and what you're seeing out there, like some things that like, what are agents getting wrong? What are they doing right? How can we move things forward? in our businesses. And I know you got all sorts of really cool stuff going on in your business.

So like we could we could do tons of podcasts and mix it up. But but today, you know, we're just going to, we're going to focus on, you know, a few things going on in your business and what you're working on and advice that you have for other agents. Sound good? Perfect. I was thinking about this last night. And I want to I want to tell you a quick thing that came to mind when I was a brand new agent, first day in the business. An agent comes running up to me and I don't know, you know, a lot of people who watch this may not remember the way MLS books and there were these big thick MLS books. Oh God. How long ago was that? It's a long time ago. I don't want to really admit it. Yeah, you had your MapQuest book then too. Right. You all I did. I had a book of maps. Yeah,

That was reality. But my very first day in business, an agent who I'm still good friends with today came running in and said, his books are outdated. Does anybody know how to use a computer? I'll pay you $100 to find me some listings. And I was absolutely convinced I had a new career because I knew how to use a computer. And my new career was going to be help realtors find listings because it was taking them so long to transition. Using a computer, yeah.

Using a computer. Oh, my God. What year was that? That was in 2000. Serious. That was just in 2000. It was just in 2000. God, that's amazing.

You know, one of the reasons a lot of companies today talk about being the tech company of real estate is because real estate in general, we were behind. It was 2000. We were printing books and we were handwriting contracts. and we were doing things totally differently. So as an industry, I think we've been playing catch up. That's why everyone gets to say, I'm the new tech company. Yeah, that's really interesting because 20 years or, I mean, with your math is 22, but let's just call it roughly 20.

It's like, are you kidding me? Just 20 years ago in this industry, there were markets still using the listing book. That's insane. Wait a minute. I my first contract was written with carbon paper oh my god and that is only 22 years ago it was a three-part form that you pressed through the pages god we're we're dating ourselves this is scary well i don't know if we're dating ourselves that much or we're showing how quickly things can change in an industry yeah once somebody lights the fire and realizes there's a better way to do it. Yeah. You can be more effective with your time. Right away, things start changing. Yeah.

Well, and with that, so talk about that speed, where will we even be one year from now, two and five, let alone 10, because in technology terms these days, that's an extremely long time. even, you know, one year, two years, you know, two years from now, the technology in our business is going to be very, very different. I think one of the hardest things for realtors today is that technology is coming at us in every direction. I mean, we all get it. We get emails every day.

We get text messages every day. Everybody's trying to sell us the new best mousetrap to do things. But what people don't realize is when you build your stuff. a real estate business and you're up and running every day, you're not wasting time, you're listing houses, you're selling houses, your marketing houses. There is no extra time. Those changes of technology can kill you. They can set you back so dramatically that you need to be really sure about what's good for you and what's not good for you. Well, and I think you're making a good, a really important point here in that one thing I heard when you said that and

and tell me if you were going there or not is we are bombarded. And honestly, I'm sure that applies to other industries as well. We just happen to this is our lane with real estate. Almost for some folks, you have to train yourself. You don't have to look at everything that's coming your way. That's right. You don't have to respond to everything that's coming your way. Every single thing that's surfacing in the industry, you wouldn't get anything done if you felt like you had to keep up with every single new technology or development or technique or this on and on and on. You wouldn't get anything done. I am a firm believer that one of the things, I don't know if we're talking about our particular company today, but if we are, one of the things

I love about the company we are with is that I feel if there's a technology or something out there that people are winning with, I'm going to hear about it. It's not going to be a secret. We have to be careful about chasing the wrong things. And it's kind of like with all of this technology, and I can argue this all day long. And you know, both you and I are very tech oriented. Yet, with all this technology, I still think agents succeed, the majority of agents succeed considerably on the non-technology stuff. The technology helps us get the job done. But at the end of the day, and you've heard me say this, at the end of the of the day, we're in the business of having conversations with people about real estate. So you can show me all your fancy gadgets, but I'm still going to ask you, how many people did you talk to about real estate this week? And, you know, we can say talking to people is having a conversation, even social media, but bringing it down to a conversation. And yes, you have to talk to people. You know, the first thing I tell any of my mentees is, does every single

person you know, know at this minute that you're a realtor and that you're looking for customers. Yeah. And if the answer to that is no, that's the only thing that they should do over the next few days. That is it. So I want to tell you two things from that first lady who came to me about, you know, did I know how to use a computer? Okay. One of the wonderful things about that is that I became friends with people in an office that were way above me. in real estate. I mean, I was the newbie. I thought I had interviewed for a job and just, you know, put my tie on and gotten a job in real estate. So I became very good friends with some people who in those days were mega producers. And I will always forget two lines that came

from two different people. And one of them is very relative to this bombardment of technology and buying leads. And he said to me, he said, Eric, just remember in this industry, it's not about how much money you make, it's how much money you keep. And that was very early on, and 22 years later, I still remember him telling me that. Because, so in those days, they were selling us signs that had lights that flood, they flood let your sign at night. So the person driving by at night could see your side. But there was always somebody selling you something. And I tell my ventis, buy nothing, okay, until you've exhausted every free thing out there and know you are doing all the free things in this world to make yourself stand out as an incredible realtor by your business

clients. Yeah. That's it. Well, and here's, and I want to throw this out, it's like, it's easy to get a real estate license, but it's hard to stay in the business, right? And part of that is if you look at your business, who is teaching you kind of in the industry, in your brokerage, in your business? Who is teaching you? There's two aspects. There's how to do real estate. Okay. And there's a heck of a lot there. And we're actually going to talk about that. We're going to talk about agent competency. Okay.

But who is teaching you how to build and succeed in a business? Who's teaching you how to be an entrepreneur? How's teaching you how to build a decent pipeline? You know, who is your who? So what is your goal? Why do you want that? And here's the key question. Who's helping you get there?

And there's two aspects. of the business, the contractual and really, really, really knowing how to advocate and negotiate and negotiate properly for your clients and win your offers. And the other is just how to run a successful real estate business. Let's go to contracts first. Okay, let's do that because, yeah, you have said, and you and I have talked about this off and on recently, but you said, our industry needs better trained agents. Yeah. I've been saying this for, I've been saying this for a very long time.

Somebody once asked me at a big meeting, what's the biggest problem in real estate today? And I responded with poorly trained agents. And the crowd went crazy. The room went wild. They all raised their hands. Lots of people agreed. I'm going to quote another real estate friend of mine. And he once said to me, making a mistake in getting yourself.

in trouble is a terrible time to read your contract. Okay. Yeah. So I actually, when we were in a world of doing very long buyer presentations, because being the market is so skewed right now towards buyers have to go at 90 miles an hour, which maybe it would be appropriate time to do it. I used to, as part of my buyer presentation, sit down and go over the real estate contract. Oh, gosh.

that's that's time consuming no I did it very very quickly I got it down to all the important points okay it was like here was our nine page contract and I basically explained some parts of the country where you come from the attorney will write the contract where I am the realtor's going to write the contract so you need to feel comfortable with it because if we find the house you love we might be doing this on the trunk of a car and it's going to be much point. That's a good point. So you can take, and you're in Florida, I'm in Texas, our contracts are different, yet similar. You could take that nine page contract. How many is mine? Mine, I think, is 11 is the number. You could take that contract and I could say to the buyer, Mr. Mrs. Bayer, I want to explain, in my opinion, what are the five most important things in this 11 page document that's important for us to, for you to understand and for you to be with. So let's hit that real quick. I mean, is that kind of what you're talking about? Oh, absolutely. I want to get two things out of it. One, I'm going to get past that first

part of fear that we could be signing something today. We're going out house hunting. I could do it and I can at this point go over that contract in the front yard of the first house. That's how I've gotten it down to a very tight presentation. Yeah. We may be signing something today. I have it ready to go so i'm being optimistic that we're going to find the right house and i also reassure them that on our contract the inspection period allows them to back out for any reason at all we have that too in texas right but getting so getting someone to go through that process of signing the first time is it's a really good process for people it takes away a fear level um it it shows that they're ready to buy a house now

there's something really good about it for me going over with them. If they respond to me, oh, we don't have to go over the contract, that's not important. Then I'm not going to show them the extra few houses that I have planned for the day. They're only going to see a few. Because if I know they are not the least bit interested in writing that offer, we don't need to go see every single house. Yeah. Be better to see three than six because you're at your risk. You're at risk of wasting wasting time. I always like to tell my clients, this is just one of my phrases that seems to make sense. I'll say, hey, Mr. Mrs. Beyer, everything we do is designed to protect your time, but it's also designed to protect mine. Fair? Absolutely fair. I love that conversation and a reasonable person is going to say, oh, you're right, that is fair.

great. I appreciate you protecting my time and I totally understand the concept of protecting your time as well. If your budget is 500, we're not going to look at houses listed at 700. Right. There's just no reason. You can go to self in house if you're just curious. I've gotten, I mean, buying presentations change over time, as do seller presentations. I mean, everybody wants to hear a different story these days. And one of the things that I used to, to do in a buyer presentation, if you would have said to me, I want to go out and see houses in Oakland Park, I would have, as we got together, I would have printed out the three last sales that sort of proved my point. If I wanted to show them three sales that just sold over

listing price, I'd pull those three. And I'd say, I just want you to look. This was on the market for six. It sold for $6.25. And I'd only go over one of two things. price, days on market, and I would probably pull houses that were in similar condition to what they're looking at. It's just, you know, how quickly can I get my customer to be an educated consumer? Because nobody makes a decision until they feel comfortable doing that they're educated enough to do it. Let me say that again. I'm going to quote you. How quickly can I get my client to the point of being an educated consumer? Absolutely. I did, I did a Facebook post this morning. Okay. I might have it here. I have it right here. I posted this morning

on Facebook for anybody who in Broward County who doesn't know this, in all of Broward County, there are 3,600 single family and condominiums on the market. I think every realtor needs to know that in the morning, okay? Because I could tell that to every consumer. And a balanced market where buyers and sellers, neither one really has an advantage, we'd be about 20,000 years. Yikes. And if you want to hear how I pain myself during the day, I go on the MLS and I'll look Broward County, how many properties have been listed today and how many went either pending or active under contract? Yeah.

And every time I see, the net is always negative five. You know, we are not gaining anything any day. We're not gaining, yeah. So I don't see any route of us going from 3,600 to 20,000 where we have a balanced market anytime soon. In South Florida, we would have needed an event, and hurricane season has ended. So we're not having that event. Then we could look at world events. Interest rates going up is not going to make that happen.

No, it's not. Historically, they're fine. I listened to an economist the other day, and he said, when interest rates go up a point. Actually, he said when interest rates go up a half a point, you may feel a little pause in the market for 60 to 90 days and then it's business as usual. When you bought your first home, when you bought your first home, what was the interest rate? I think I was about eight and a half. Okay. I think I was 11. I want to argue that point that he made. I yell at MSNBC and CNBC a lot when I'm watching TV at night and they have realtor economists come out.

It was one this morning, so I'm going to tell you what he had to say, which I thought was hysterical. But I think when interest rates go up for a brief period of time, the market explodes. Because all those people running around going, I'm going to buy sooner or later, go, I got to buy now. Fear of missing out. Yeah, they're like, oh, my God. You're right.

A little surge and then some caution and then normalcy. So, yeah, I can see that. I think there's two groups of people how they respond. One is, oh my God, I'm buying now. And the other is, what's going on? And then it's business as usual. Well, one of the reports this morning, and you can tell what type of economists you're talking to

when they say mortgage applications and they don't divide it between purchases and refis. Yeah. Guess what? Mortgage applications are dropping and they're going to continue to drop. because everybody who was planning to refi and stay in their home has pretty much already done it. Okay.

So that piece of the mortgage business is over. So it doesn't take a brilliant economist to sit there and realize that if that part of the business is gone, mortgage applications are going to be dropping. So in the same sentence, this economist on TV this morning said, I think real estate prices are going to continue to rise. Inventory is going to continue to drop. And because of that, we probably will have less transactions in 2022. Okay, none of that is that alarming.

Or is it anything other than what we would expect? Was he talking to Florida or national? This was national. You know, if there's less inventory, there will probably be less transactions. I mean, I didn't get on TV for that this morning. You know, it was sort of like. That's pretty basic. So let's talk about your real estate business a little bit.

What's working really well in your business right now, even with this current market? Okay. So I like to sometimes say that we need to go back to the things we have forgotten to do. And over the years, the most effective thing for me in business has been to be the expert at something. You know, we talk about when you got your real estate license, we talk about don't do things you really don't know how to do, go out and refer it out. I think we had a similar conversation the other day about it's commercial, go ahead and refer it to somebody. I love, I am the expert of a particular area of condominiums. Yes.

It is a nice piece of my business. I've been at that one particular building, which if you lay it down, it's a farm area, there's almost 300 units. Lay it on its side, it's an entire neighborhood. And I've been doing a tremendous business there since about 2004 is when it converted to a condominium. I really like being an expert of something. The other one where I tend to market myself a great deal is multifamily, two and three unit rental properties, duplexes. There's a certain language of real estate that I think it's really important that realtors just sort of learn certain words. And they heard them in their first class.

They just sort of forgot them. Like what? Like cap rate. If you don't know what a cap rate is, you're going to get caught off guard one day because it's not that big of wild term. It's not that big of a term. But if you're not familiar with it, then stay out of investment property until you do understand that. Well, go read a few articles. You'll be on your feet with it, but that's the language.

You have to speak the language in the area in which you are practicing and serving your clients. So what's the language? Well, when I used to start off a brand new agents in Fort Lauderdale, I don't know who will watch our podcast someday, but there will be some agents who will see this. And they'll go, oh, God, he did that to me. I used to tell them to drive up the beach and start at the very first building. and look at the building and go, okay, that's Hermitage, that's South Point, that's Gold Ocean Terrace. I said, because otherwise you're going to get in the car one day and a client is going to say to you, oh, what's that brown building over there?

And you're going to look like the worst thing in the world, a brand new realtor. Just be able to have an intelligent conversation. Go to open houses. Let other realtors talk. You'll learn a lot from them. Yeah. Well, and even, you know, and start for most agents, for most agents, start geographically where you are, where you live.

Absolutely. I lived in that building. Yeah, exactly. And so in your case, it's like, look, do you know, so if you're in a condo building in South Florida, do you know the 10 buildings to the south and the 10 buildings to the north and the 10 buildings to the west of you, start there. Know your inventory. What is what?

What is what? Just start there. For me, there aren't too many things in real estate that I've done well over the years that are consistent. You know, I think we all do things that fall apart. The one that can't fall apart from me is MLS every morning. Oh, okay. I have to look.

First thing in the morning, and I probably do it three more times by the end of the day, what went bending, what came active. I think Zillow has done, Zillow has forced realtors to be on guard because the worst phone call in the world to me is when a client calls me up and says, so did you see the property that just came on the market? Right. And you didn't. You hadn't. No, I didn't. They saw it before me. You can't be that person. You got to say, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. you're typing away, you're going to like find it before they start telling you. But so you've got to be on top of it. Let's talk.

I want to shift just a little bit because, and this is another thing that you and I've talked about a little bit. And I want to dive into it because I know you have some strong opinions. But it's the you said agents need to be super well behaved. I'm quoting you to other agents. Oh, yes. What's behind that? I've never done this. but if I went online today and printed out, I shouldn't say I never did it.

I once did it as an inspirational thing. I went on the MLS and printed one long page of all the deals I ever did. And I think it was 300 deals. But if I ever had to look at it, I would bet you there are no more than 25 agents where I've done more than one deal at a time. Oh, wow. The reason is, you know, I had a letter once, Are we allowed to mention a company?

I had a letter from Cold War Banker. The broker from Coldwell Banker was thanking me for understanding the definition of a transaction broker and helping his agent completely walk through a deal and doing it correctly. And she had a family emergency in the midst of the deal. I took care of the whole deal, both sides of it, and just kept her abreast of the situation. and we still speak to this day. Nice. You did what you needed to do to keep that transaction moving forward because everyone

we have that obligation. That's our obligation. That is our job. No matter what type of market you're in, whether it's a buyer's market or a seller's market, it will serve you well to be able to get on the phone and have the other agent know that you are a good agent, a good person, but to treat them with respect, and there's really nothing you can't talk about to get the deal done.

Every once in a while, you'll get an agent who just approaches the business. I'm quoting someone else's term here. That is every deal is to them like they're negotiating a divorce. And that is a very bad way to approach a deal. In a multi-offer market, like we're in, today, people can deny it all day long. But if you see somebody that you've done business with before, know they're friendly, know they're a pleasure to do business with, know they know what they're doing, you know what, there's going to be a little extra check bark next to their offer

when you're sitting with a client and you're going to say, by the way, I know this agent, they've already provided us with a desktop underwriting. They've provided us. The offer's clean. This is somebody we know. over my 22 years, I really can't think of any agents that I've ever had like a total blowup that didn't end well. I once stood up an agent at an appointment and I was so mortified that I stood her up. I screwed up my day that that night I sent to a dozen roses because it was just like, what did I do? I had her standing there for an hour. Yeah. And waiting for me. I mean, You screwed up.

Yeah. I screwed up. I royally screwed up. And you know what? Whatever it was to send a dozen roses, it was like the right thing to do. Made her day too. Her husband was a little concerned,

but other than that, it was okay. You know. What do you, let's talk, I always like on this podcast, I always like to have advice for agents to really help them make this business work. And there are, you know, there are agents that struggle.

They're really, really good agents that may get in a sticky point in their business or something may be happening personally in their lives and their business slows down and they have to dial it up. There's all sorts of things or the market maybe, you know, throws them for a loop. But what advice do you have for an agent who needs to lean into their business, whether they're just getting started or they need a restart or, you know, their business is not currently in a healthy state. What is your advice to agents. Because I know you mentor a lot of agents, you're an awesome mentor. What's your advice? You know, I think we get very scared when big agents tell us to go make a list of 100 people we know.

The second somebody says make a list of 100 people you know, I think most people go, do I know 100 people because your 3,000 Facebook friends are not really people you know. Right. I tell people, I want you to figure out the one person you know. Oh. I only want one person. And I want you to call that person and tell them exactly what you're doing. And I want you to say to them that I am making sure I'm launching my real estate career.

I know you've been in your home for a few years. I know you're probably not a seller or a buyer. But would you be okay if I sent you like 10 of my business cards in the mail? And over the next week, can I count on you every now and then just to give somebody one of my cards and say, hey, this is a friend of mine. There's a great agent. Anybody you know, would you please pass this on and get them going? And you only have to do one person this week.

Yeah. And next week you got to do two though. But it's less alarming than, And a lot of companies teach that thing and make a list of 50 people. And this week, you got to call all 50 of them. Right. You know, if you get one really good person, I'm not going to do this math on you, but if you get one really good person giving out 10 of your cards,

and over about a five-week period, you get five or six people talking about you, and then a few more people talking about you, before you know it, you will have people talking about you. Nice. And that's, you got to start off with what makes you feel comfortable. You know, there's nothing in this business to be scared about. There's this great line that nobody ever bleeds out in real estate. And what does that mean?

We're not doing brain surgery. If we make a mistake, we can fix it. Okay. Okay. So if your first phone call doesn't go perfect, your second one's going to go better, you know. But you want to be prepared when once you start giving out those cards, you want to be prepared with what you're going to say when the phone rings. Because it is going to ring. Yeah.

The phone is going to ring. Yeah. I am, I gave, I challenged some agents just this morning. And actually, I'm going to, I'm going to teach this in a few weeks on our weekly mastermind that you and I do. But I challenged some agents. And one's a newer agent and the other is a very experienced agent, but she really focuses on her business. So it's interesting to have the same conversation with both of them. And I challenged them to do 30 CMAs in 30 days.

And all that is is just every day, just pick one friend, one neighbor, just one person that you know. And you need to do this anyways. This is how we stay really sharp with the market. do do a quick market analysis. And right now in so many cities, the numbers are are bonkers. And this stuff is really interesting to people. So just do a quick CMA. Call your friend up. Actually, text them and say, oh, my God, I just ran some numbers on your neighborhood. I want to run them by you. Do you have a minute? And you're just going to get them on the phone. You can email them the report. And you're talking through it. You're saying, let me show you what I'm seeing.

and this is what it's been year over year in the last few homes and da-da-da-da-da. That's a substantial real estate conversation that you can have with someone. It's easy. I'm not sure I understand. Whoops. You know, it's so rude when Siri jumps in and you haven't asked her to join the conversation. It's just so annoying. But anyway, so the 30 CMAs in 30 days.

So I think any agent who needs or wants to dial it up, or is trying to create just some structure. And for you, like part of that structure is it's completely non-negotiable that you jump in the MLS every morning and you look at the key statistics. See, that's the one non-negotiable in my life. That's your non-negotiable. And I would say for a new agent that needs to build and needs to lean in, do this 30 and 30 thing.

And I like your call one person with the 10 cards thing. Absolutely. You know, we used to have an office and there was a video that came up every now and then. And there was a little old lady on the video. Yeah. And she'd come in and she'd say it like this. And she'd come closer and she'd say nothing. And she'd get closer and closer to the screen.

And then when she got her face fully in the screen, she'd say, just pick up the damn phone. And it was a reality. Hey, it's all for all of us. Hey, you're in the business of having conversations with people about real estate. So if you didn't have any conversations with people about real estate today, guess what? You didn't work.

So I hope you enjoyed the day and really took it off as a day off because that's what it was. It was a day off. No, I was busy. I did this and this and this and this and that. No, you're busy with the wrong things. Just pick up the damn phone. And doing 30 CMAs in 30 days. is a really super easy, constructive, and valuable way to do that.

Remember the line, every sale leads to another couple in the neighborhood. Remember we used to say that every house that sells usually leads to two more. Somewhere we've gotten confused thinking that it had to be our sale. It leads to some of the sale. If anybody's sale is gonna lead to two more,

Because if you're in a neighborhood where the average sale is $500,000, and all of a sudden a home sells for $600,000, guess what? There are two more people out there who are going to be going, oh, my God. Well, and guess what? If you're watching the MLS every day and you're on top of it, like you just on top of it, then when you have a friend in that neighborhood, you see that.

And all you do is you just pick up the phone and you know, oh, my God. Let me tell you what just happened in your neighborhood. That's a great conversation. And then part of that conversation is, who do you know in your neighborhood that needs this information? I want to tell you. Can you introduce me to that person, please? Ology has changed the way we do things. But the reality is we're not doing anything different than we did 20 years ago.

20 years ago, I sent out a postcard that had little stars on it. It was all black. And it said, would you like to hear what I did with your neighbor last night? And on the other side, it said we sold their home. It's good. Hey, tell me what's something you're working on in your business this year? What do you focus on? What are your goals?

Where are you going? Well, this is a little different because I'm older and I've been around a long time. So this isn't a little bit totally fair for new agents. My goal is to work my websites, work my blogs. I'm going to go back to that briefly for one second. I want to generate leads for people. Yeah, you had said this caught my attention. that one of your goals this year, I had it written down somewhere, one of your goals this

year is to give out 30 referrals. Yes. What is that? I am not looking to build a team. I am not an internal team. I am not looking to add assistance and clericals. I've done that whole routine, and I'm probably going to finish the 12 months doing 30 deals on my own, which is exhausting. That's a lot of real estate. It's a lot of real estate. Now, fortunately for you, I'll just add that a lot of of your real estate is very geographically tight. That makes it a lot easier. Yes, I am not driving all over the world. No, and you're not having to like relearn a particular neighborhood for every transaction. No, I'm complaining about having to drive two miles today, but I'll be okay. So maybe, you know, right. Yeah, I know it's right. And I'll drive, I'll drive 20, you know.

Right, exactly. It's a different market, you know, and then when I, if I'm doing, business up in North Carolina, I think totally differently. You know, you're lucky if you could show three homes in a day. The second thing that I did every morning when I was like 100% on was I did a blog post every morning. Okay. You know I'm a big believer in blogging. MLS and then a blog post. And how much time would you spend? How much time would you spend on that? If I am like really on it, I can do my MLS stuff in about 10 minutes and I can have the blog post done in a half, hour. Really can have it done. We're talking 300 words, get it out there. Social media has added so much to that pile that it has pulled me away from it a little bit. But one of my goals is to get

back to that so I can give out 30 referrals next year. I want to give out more and more referrals to business. I like working on my websites. I like working on my blogs. That's what I love doing. Well, and you're good at it. There are other agents that should just stay away from that stuff. It's not a good use of their time. For you, it's a very good use of your time. And if it's not a good use of your time, then that falls into the category of someday you want to pay somebody to do something for you. Yeah.

As long as you're getting that return on the investment on it, then you find a way to do it. There are tons of companies out there that are trying to sell you social media posts and blog, posts, but they're also ones doing it for free. There are things you could pull up for free. You know, I don't know if you saw on Facebook the last few days. I had like three new listings. I posted in these beautiful collages. And those are all done on a free website. So there's lots of things you can do for free. But that's, you know, one of the things I do want to do more of. I love talking to clients on the phone. A lot of my Fort Lauderdale business and the North Carolina of business, from out of town clients. I'm very happy starting that conversation on the phone,

doing the buyer interview, having the conversation, and then being able to pass them on to different people. That's a mature business is what that is. Well, actually, you could start off that way. That would be pretty cool. But I love that that's where you're at in your business. But part of that formula for you is that you have to be in business with the right people in terms of who you're referring that to. Let's touch on, I want to touch on you joining EXP, which you did a couple years, was it two years ago? We're about a year and a half. Okay, year and a half. So you moved your business. You had been with Keller Williams for a long time. Just over 14 years. Okay. That's, that's solid. And you moved your business to EXP. Tell me about that.

Why? What? There are a lot of reasons. And I will tell you, the number one is not financial. Okay. You know, I think it's great that EXP costs me less money. And I think it's great that I'll put more money in my pocket. Yeah.

I said, you know, it's all about what you keep. But that is not the number one reason. Number one reason is if I could quantify it, I found two hours a day by not having to be. in an office. I'll tell you, the hardest thing for me to get used to at EXP has actually been a win for me, but it took me a little while to get used to it.

Okay. And my analogy is, and I've said this to a few people, I visualize a real estate deal as a tennis match. Okay. You write the offer, you lob the ball over, and you wait to hear from the other agent. Yeah.

Right. Wait for the ball to come back over the net. Hopefully it comes back really fast, okay? You forget to fill out something on the form. You hand it into the administrator. It's on her side now or his side waiting to come back. My old company, and I'm not going to pick on Keller Williams. When I was at Coldwell or a Vita, those administrative processes always were on the other side.

The bull was never on my side. I never felt panicked that the company had already done their own. part and they were waiting on me. At EXP, they are so responsive about deal stuff and broker stuff. It comes back to you so quickly that I had to accept, okay, these things are going to wait on me. And you can see it on your screen. So the tennis matches on your screen, you're like, oh my God, the ball's back in my court already. It's back in my court already. Yeah.

I've never had to wait. for a commission distribution, whatever we call it here. I've never had to wait for it. I've never had to go asking for a check. And these were the came on it after I joined the XP. I was very slow on this. I mean, if I told you when I bought my first EXP stock, it was long time ago. It was less than a dollar a share. I was watching. It was a long time before you joined the company. Yes. So I was watching the project. the process, but being more in control of what I go to every week, how I get there, that I could just sit at my desk and decide I'm going to go to this class. And if it's not the right class for me,

I just click out and go on to the next process. There's so much going on all the time that if I have the time to do it, I mean, I have a little list on the side of my desk here of things that I want to attend at EXB. Yeah. And that's an absolute win. Well, and we have, so I know a top agent, well, Melanie, so one of my business partners here in Austin, and one of the top agents in the country,

so, you know, she's rocking and rolling. She goes in, so every Sunday evening, she goes in online and looks at the training calendar for the next week, and she picks a couple couple classes that she wants to take every week. Now, and I'm sure sometimes her schedule gets in the way and it doesn't happen, but that's part of her weekly process, is she's always looking for that. And that's such a huge value, I find. I'm going to tell you, one of the piece, this was probably going to go full circle to something I said before. When we were talking about technology,

and I was saying how dramatic it is when a realtor has to make a change. In my prior company, very long time I it was indoctrinated into me that you didn't want anybody else owning your data okay this was this was a big thing at our prior company yes you know and then so we always had third party vendors who that if we left the company we could take it with us I love that expe uses third party vendors because expe is big enough that if for any reason those third parties are not performing to the level we need them to perform, they're going to shape up quickly and they're going to respond to whatever EASP needs them to do. Whereas when you build your own thing and you're building it in an ivory tower somewhere in Austin, I mean, somewhere

in Texas or whatever, and you can't even find out how to tell the person what's wrong for you. Yeah. And I'm going to tell you a quick story on this one, a little side note. When The mobile app came up at our former company, and the building I did the most business in showed up on the mobile app as a red dot and always showed up as one listing. Now, that wouldn't have been so bad if it was Keller Williams listing. But it never was. Because Keller Williams was always at the bottom. And whoever had a listing above Keller Williams was the one that showed up at the condo. I cannot tell you how many hours I tried. to talk to somebody in technology who explained to them that I know it's set up for single family homes, but there were also condominium buildings. And I understand that you can only show one listing, but it's got to be ours first. So it wasn't working. It didn't handle a really important slice of the market.

It was a hugely important thing to me. And when it first came out, the mobile app, I embraced it so dramatically. Yeah. I mean, maybe that was my mistake. Yeah. But I was actually calling clients. And I was actually getting in the car with clients and going, give me a phone. And I was actually taking their phone and putting a mobile app on their phones. Yeah. Yeah.

And then finding out it didn't serve the purpose I needed it. I don't blame them. I do blame that every time we get new technology, at some point, we need to make sure it really works for the realtors. Yeah. Yeah. And when you're using third party, and I like it. It's like you have the entire industry deck to choose from and find out like which one is best and why. Tie that one into and get them in. In some cases, they can end up talking to each other.

So they're not always totally standalone. They can overlap. Yeah, it works. I'm thrilled with the technology platform. There's a comfort feeling, a comfort knowing that everybody at EXB is using a similar platform. It's some of the best technology I've ever worked with in my 22 years. I've been on lots of systems. I've been on a lot of different CRMs.

I've been on a lot of different contract programs. And I'm really pleased with what we're working on. Hey, let's wrap this up a little bit. What is one final piece of advice that you have for agents out there? I really take this to heart. Don't spend so much time worrying about what's going to happen in the real estate market. Worry a little bit more about your business, excuse me, the way you behave, honing your own skills, being better and better at who you are. And you're going to be fine in any market.

There are always people buying homes. There are always people selling homes. And you're going to be fine. If you know what you're doing, I swear, you know, I've been accused of re-eventing. I'm spending myself like five times in the last 20 years. And guess what? I never did it. All I did was stick with what I knew to do

and find ways to do business in every market shift. I think that's really good advice. Cool. It's always good to shift, you know? It is good. It's major real estate. But people are always going to buy and sell homes. It's true.

Not going to change. So worry less about the market and where it's going and more about who you're being in your own business on a day. I want to give you one of the pieces we wrapped this up. You know, we were all taught in real estate that was local. Real estate was always local. You know, I took a great fair housing class the other day, and we talked about, you know, the right side of the railroad tracks,

the wrong side of the tracks. Real estate was always local. And yet as social media keeps building with Twitter and Facebook, we hear more and more national, real estate reports that get us all wrapped up. I mean, I love you guys, but the weather in Austin means nothing to me today. Right. Okay. My real estate market is right out that window. And, you know, I don't care that they're going to, that Amazon is building a warehouse. Right? It doesn't matter. Yeah. All that matters is my local market. And we need to remember,

You know, when somebody says to you, you know, there's the Gary Keller's old line, how's the real estate market? Well, you know, which one are you looking to buy or sell? Which market are you talking about? Are you talking about the neighborhood you live in? Yeah, which market are you talking about? How's the market? Well, which market are you talking about? That's good. That's a good response. I kind of forgot about that one. Yeah. Very good. Awesome. Well, thanks for joining today. And my pleasure. It was great talking to you. Yeah. I got as much out of as you did.

All right.