KGCI: Real Estate on Air - How to Fix a Stale Listing and Get it Sold

Episode Date: September 13, 2026

Summary:John Kitchens and his team examine shifting real estate market dynamics, focusing on rising inventory levels and managing days on market. They demonstrate how overpricing properties creates negative buyer perception and share strategies to re-establish pricing authority with sellers. The conversation also covers Exp Realty's open-source seller advisory form, outlining how agents can leverage wide public market exposure over private pocket listings to maximize seller net returns.

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, Honey Badger Nation, man? Welcome to another episode of One Big Fire. And man, we got three great topics for you guys today as we're going to dive into what we're seeing with home appreciation and seeing the cooling as as inventories. continue to grow. We're going to dive into EXP Realty as they launched the open source seller

advisory form and talk a little Trump administration. See what he's up to with CFPB job cuts. What's good, fellas? What's happening? It's good week. It's a week. Nice. Nice. So we got a little swag update. Mr. Stasick. I'll let you as Cuzz is rocking some new year. The new gear. Yeah, ours hasn't even hit the mailbox yet. So Jay got it first. Awesome. We've seen a lot of the new line that we, the legacy line.

So we got a new Honey Badger merch legacy line. It's sweet. We got hats. We got the t-shirts and really cool. Like I guess you can call them, you know, the hard bound notebooks. Some people call them, I guess, diary books or whatever they call them. But they're awesome. I love taking mine everywhere, whether it's a conference or just writing notes when I'm listening to a podcast, jotting them down.

We got you covered, and it's going to be great. Go to honeybadgernation.com. Just scroll down to the merch button, and it says HoneyBadger merch store. You click on that, and you can see all the different things you can pick up. And we're excited. t-shirts, sweatshirts. I'm excited about the hoodie. Yeah, the hoodie looks dope.

The hoodie. And the other thing, too, is if anyone's ever bought in the past, the first hoodies that they were putting out, they were just kind of thin, you wash them a few times, they got real thin. We upgraded those to the higher quality hoodie. Mine hasn't even come yet, but I think Allison grabbed one in. They're awesome.

So I can't wait for that to come in the mail, but check it out, Honeybadger Nation.com. Get your Honeybadger gear. Let's go. Also got a little update, Cuzz, with our Honey Badger of the Month nomination

about ready to roll. Looking forward to throwing that out and adding some, celebrating some honey badgers. Is our form available? Is it ready to roll? I'm actually checking it right now. It was built,

but I didn't see it on Honeybadger Nation.com. but it is built. So by the time this is done, we'll revisit it. I'll find out where that form is so you can nominate. And you know, like, okay, well, how do you nominate it? How do you nominate somebody? Why would they? Kind of go over that real quick, just so since we're on the topic,

why would somebody nominate someone else or even themselves for Honey Badger the month? Jay. Oh, that was a question for me. Yeah. I'm sorry. I mean, if you know you're a honey badger, then, you know, I guess you could nominate yourself. But I think I think it's, you know, better for the community for you to notice someone who's being a honey badger and nominate them. And it is a coveted award, to say the least.

The people that have won this, including yourself, Al, over the years, are the baddest of the badasses in our network of people that are getting shit done, making things happen, relentless. And so, yeah, so I think, you know, if you want a nice little swag bag, you know, you want to do someone a favor, you see someone out there doing honey badge or shit, you know, give them a nomination, do them a solid. It is, man. You know, we all go through it, right? We're all going through some shit. We've either, we're either in it or we just got out of it or I can promise you, one's a coming. And it's, it really is, you know, to kind of test your fortitude in what you're made of. And, you know, I mean, it's just anything in growth, right?

You know, Stuman has, you know, the force of average. But it's true. Anytime you, you know, you're trying to level up any time, you're trying to push, which Honey Badgers do, right, just relentless. And no matter what's thrown our way, we're going to, we're always going to find a way, right? And I think that's really what it embodies is the people that just have the fortitude to, you know, nothing's going to, nothing's going to slow them down. They're going to find a way to reach the objective.

They're going to find to do the thing that they want. want to do no matter what is going is going to slow them down and so man if that's you or the you know the people that you're riding with that's you throw them in there man get the nomination honey badger nation dot com we want to we want to celebrate some of these these badass honey badgers that we have in the honey badger nation so looking forward to to celebrating some some amazing people in the coming in the coming months so all right let's dive in guys um let's let's hit let's hit first and foremost kind of what we're seeing in the market um um um The appreciation, you know, article from Inman talking about kind of where they're projecting home prices to go.

They're seeing them to slow a bit. But inventory is starting to creep up. I know the stations I'm having with agents all across the country, that's what we're seeing, right? I know I remember Kendall talking last year, you know, it was the perfect storm of low demand and low supply, right? but now we're starting to see an uptick in inventory and buyers, you know, having some more options. But what are you guys seeing as in conversation, but also kind of what they're touching on here in the Inman article. Yeah, I mean, there's a there's a handful of markets that are that are getting a lot more inventory. So, you know, depending on what markets you're in, you're filling it, you know, probably more so than the average.

But certainly days on market going up, certainly inventory is starting to climb. And obviously that has an impact on, you know, the projection for house price appreciation this year, which I thought was pretty aggressive originally at, was it 3.4% down from 5.8 last year. We started to see a little bit of course correction. Nothing double digit. I think it was in the nine's was the biggest, the biggest correction in price. And there was multiple markets throughout Florida down in the lower, the coast areas down into Texas as well. where we saw a lot of the, you know, the course correction. But, I mean, do you think we'll start to see any, any double digit course correction on prices?

No, I don't think so. And not yet, you know, until you see, you know, you start seeing 120 day average on, you know, days on the market, you're not going to see things, you know, come. You're not going to feel that pressure as a seller. If everything still, I mean, if everything went from selling in 30 days to 60 days, that's, that's still move. that's still a seller's market. So it's still very evenly supplied, if not still a seller's market and almost all markets. So you're not in a buyer's market.

And that has to hit for some time before you start to see prices come down. The thing is, if that does happen, you know, the sellers have the equity to make those moves. So if inventory was high and your home hasn't sold in 90 to 120 days, you're going to lower the price because you can. And if you have to sell it, you're going to lower the price. It seems like it could be headed to that direction. But I don't know that we would see any. kind of, you know, moving, you know, negative appreciation in terms of, you know, home prices this

year. I don't think that's realistic. The pessimists, you know, they have the graph that shows the pessimist versus the optimist. It's a broad, a broad spectrum of what people believe will happen, but it seems like just more or less flat or keeping up with appreciation is kind of the low expectation. And, you know, the high expectation is, you know, ridiculously high. So, you know, it feels to me like, you know, three percent to three and a half percent is probably kind of what to expect. for the next couple years. And interest rates can play into that, obviously. You know, they get these rates down, which, you know,

it doesn't look like Jerome Powell's going to listen to Trump. It feels like Trump would like to get him down some more. I think it would be helpful if he did, but it doesn't look like he's going to pull the trigger on that. So probably a lot more to come of what we're currently seeing than anything. Yeah. And I know, you know, every market is different, right? Being able to pay attention to.

And, you know, obviously we have a, obviously a strong following. in Ohio and having a lot of conversations the last couple weeks. I mean, Al, you guys are still, I mean, inventory is still relatively low for you guys throughout most of the part, you know, Cleveland and the suburbs. Yeah. We're still getting multiple offers if it's priced right. And that's the big difference between like, let's say three years ago. It actually didn't have to be, you could get away with overpricing it a little bit and still

get multiple offers. You're not going to get away with overpricing it now and get me. But if you do price it competitively, you're still, we just had a house that was actually expired. And I'll give you some real numbers. It expired at $400,000 because that's what the seller thought it was worth. One of our agents jumped in, listed it, and convinced them that if they could just list it at $350, which is what the market's telling them that they should be at, they're probably going to get more than that. They ended up getting six offers, and their highest one was $4.50.

401. How did it not sell it 401 when it was listed at 400? Well, you know, that that previous agent probably had it up at a higher price, eaked it down. By the time they eked it down, it was, it was probably showing 120 to 180 days on the market. And we know that, you know, and I think Zillow is now starting to show these days on the market or they have it for a while, whatever, but now I think sellers are seeing it. So, you know, the way we're coaching our agents is look, you know, When you're talking to a seller, ask them, what do you think, like, number one red flag is, if you were a shopper, you were a home buyer and you see a house that's been on the market, what do you think the number one thing that they look at and they think, well, it's probably overpriced. It's not the price because most people by just looking at a house and a price, they're not able to just, you know, determine, they're not an expert enough to look at it and say, oh, that's way overpriced. No, it's the days on the market.

So if you're seeing days on the market, it's the number one red flag saying, well, if it's 120 days on the market, then it must not be worth that price, right? So it must be less. So it's going to force the buyer to probably make a lower offer on that property. However, price it right. Now the market, the true market, the ready, willing, enable buyers, the people who are serious buyers that are ready to, they're going to buy if it's close. they're all going to jump on the boat at the same time. And you probably will still get the, you know, the effect of an over, over list, you know, sale possibly.

You know, so we're still seeing multiple offers. They are less and less. It's not 13 offers, you know, three to six. But there's multiple offers, which is still a good sign that there's buyers out there that need a house. I think that inventory levels going up is not an entirely bad thing. You know, think about someone made a really good point. I don't remember what I was listening to.

But actually, it was in the training. We're doing these aha meetings. It's agents helping agents. That's what aha stands for. And it's a lot of the agents that are stuck. And so you have some experienced agents coming in and sharing their wisdom and knowledge. And one of them had said, there's a lot of buyers out there, excuse me, a lot of homeowners that had bought in 2020, 2021, 2022, that are just not happy with the house that they bought because they felt forced into the house that they really didn't want.

It wasn't like the ideal house, but because things were flying off, they found themselves settling, lowering their standards for what they really wanted for their family and just going into something that they could make work. So, you know, I think that you're going to have a lot more happier homeowners because they do actually have more of that selection out there. But, you know, hey, if there's 3.4% appreciation, that's an average. I think it, I read in the article, guys, maybe you can correct me if I'm wrong, but San Francisco, which you could argue is not a normal market. It's just not normal, right? Like, you know, it's not your average person. Average sale price there is well over a million dollars. Maybe it's up to two now.

And it's very unaffordable. And they have experienced a slight decline in price, but that would be, that's normal because it's already massively inflated already. And we're not just not seeing that in just kind of normal markets. I don't know if you're seeing it in Frisco, Jay. Frisco has been one of those markets, one of the hottest markets in the U.S., people flooding that market to move there. And they've been high prices there. So I don't know what you're hearing from teams down in Frisco, but we're still getting multiple offers and, you know, more. normal markets.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If it's priced right on the button, you're getting multiple offers. Yeah. I think that's the key too, right? So like a couple examples.

So talking with Georgia, so even going up north right into Canada. And, you know, you used to be able to play the game, come in high, they would come in low. We would meet in the middle where we wanted to be. And then play the game where we were low and it would drive it up.

And she's like, nobody's playing the game. anymore. So like she's talking about how critical it is to nail it right right on the button is where we need to be. And I'm like, listen, and this was this was always our rule of thumb. If there is no real motivation, like if there is not a dire situation that they absolutely have to do not take it overpriced. And Leanne and I were talking about she was listening to something Tina was saying. And, you know, we've, we've heard it, right? It's like, like, cool, good luck, right? When it doesn't sell, call me and I will, I will be your,

I'm not interested in necessarily being your first agent. I'm only being interested in being your last agent. And, and I think that's really what we're seeing right now is like, if there's not like, they absolutely have to, have to, and they're not going to be realistic on price and all the data supports that it needs to be here and they're not budging off of here. I mean, I think you just got to make a business decision. And if you understand your value in your time and they ain't going to get right. I mean, I think it's just like, you know, I love Tina's advice, right? Like, you know, good luck. I'll chat with you when it doesn't sell. So I think it's just making that and Wally threw in some really good statistics and I think it's

good to understand. Homes aren't selling for, you know, they're coming off because most agents like like Wally saying, they don't have a system to accurately price a home in today's market. They don't take into consideration of all of the variables involved. I mean, it's law one, law of expertise, asking the tough questions, factoring in all the different variables. It's all right there that we have to get back to really looking at to be able to position correctly in today's market. Yeah. I think the other topic that came up in this pricing, it was cool that, I think it was Thursday

that this meeting happened in Cleveland was that it kind of brings back all the CHSA principles that we've coached and taught for over a decade. And I believe the number one thing that you guys taught me was we have to establish trust and, and, um, and authority. Why is that so important? And the trust thing is obvious. Authority. Why authority? Because they're going to listen to you.

If they're not going to listen to your advice, that means they're not respecting the advice. They don't believe that you know more than they do. They believe that they know more than you do. And so Wally, along with my mother, or the two, you know, they're ganging up on me saying, I need a haircut. And please, yeah, Wally, Venmo me the money. You're right. I do. I do need the cash for a good haircut.

So my, my, leave it to Wally to throw the train of thought out. So if you're able to establish that authority, meaning when you're coming in there, showing them that you're like, demonstrating that you're an export. You can't just say you're an expert without, especially now. Look, 2020 and 2021, you could absolutely get away with selling a bunch of listings and not being an expert, slapping them up there because it wasn't really hard to be a listing agent. If you can land that listing, get them to sign on the line that's dotted, you're going to sell the listing. Now you're going to need skills.

Now you're going to have to go back to the principles of, you know, what is your plan? What does it involve? How do I raise the perceived value of your property? And can you demonstrate that to a seller enough that they not only trust you, but they look at you as an authority. And when it's time to price the house correctly, they listen to you. If they don't and you're not able to establish that authority, either it's going to be a long listing,

which is going to elongate the amount of time that you're going to be able to land the commission on that. Or it's just going to expire and you just wasted all of that time, money, energy, and it's going to go to another agent who they will listen to. Yeah, 100%. It really is. I mean, I love that. And, you know, it's one of the, you know, I know, Al, you went through the PBD, you know, training for the year. And that's one of the things he talked about in there, right?

You know, moral authority, right? A lot, and it's what he's saying is a lot of you don't have authority. And then they don't trust you. And so you've got to be able to, you know, demonstrate and, you know, your value, people you've been able to help. I think testimonials, I think reviews, I think the actual data. numbers and things are more critical now than ever just because people don't trust. So you got to prove that you are, you know, you do have the authority. You know what you're talking about.

Leveraging the market reports, revisiting KCM, get your real market reports, Altos reports, whatever you have, the data to be able to support, you know, your, you know, your viewpoint from your experience, I think is really, really key. So speaking of listing tools, let's touch on the next topic. And Jay, I know you want to dive into this one, but. EXP Relity launches open source seller advisory form. What the heck does that even meet? Dude, I love this.

This is what this is us over here playing chess. So, so this is risks of limited market exposure. This is some shit that I would have done. But to see EXP do it, and this is awesome. So it literally goes through and explains the financial risk, longer time on the market,

limited buyer exposure, no public portals. We're having every seller, we're educating every seller to our benefits. Like this is, this covers, it's important because most agents, the good agents all know how to leverage this in the conversation and in the listing appointment. This is, this is now forcing that conversation to be had with, with, and educate them to what happens when your home isn't listed on all the portals. And so this is a game we're playing against Compass and anybody else who wants to play the die on the mountain of we're going to have our own little little pocket listings. which is a terrible strategy, but they're sticking to their guns so far.

But I think this is super powerful. And it's open source. So you can go to EXP Toolkit. I think it's 4 slash seller. And anybody can download this and create your own version of it. It's super powerful. It would be, it would be, it's what I would call the Compass Killer form.

Like this is how you compete against Compass. And then to back that up, the data, it's in the MN article. how Zillow views saves and shares impact home price and sales speed. This should be content that you build into your presentation on the importance of being on these portals. You know, 250 views per day, typically under contract in a week, 75% go pending in two weeks, 500 views a day, often sell above list, five saves per day, likely under contract in a week,

10 saves a day, strong indicator sell above list price. All this is real data of whether if you're not on Zillow, then we don't have data for you. So your odds of selling or selling at a high price and as a percentage of the asking price or above the asking price by being on Zillow and having those views, it should be built into your presentation. And again, if you're ever competing against someone who's trying to put this in their own little portal and not go, that doesn't go to Zillow, that doesn't play well with Zillow, their home's not getting that exposure. So this should be a talk track for every, every agent, every agent that's not at one of those companies for sure. Yeah. And it's, sorry, John, go ahead.

Go ahead, bud. I'm just going to read the one part. And it was like in this form, it feels like something that we would write in one of ours. Like, you know, one of our brokerages, you know, I love this. Because this is like the, the preemptive strike. Remember we used to like, we teach, okay, you know, some of these agents still usually. this thing called a CMA to price your house and kind of really talking sellers because we know that if you're competing against that listing, four out of five agents that are going in there are going to show

them a CMA. We pull market statistics. We look at homes on the market, not just sales. A lot of people look at a CEM say, well, there's five sales here. So your home should be pricked here. The problem is that the buyers today aren't looking at those sales. They're looking, they're comparing that house to all the other homes. that are currently on the market. If they're going to go shopping for homes, what are they going to look at? Two, three, four, five homes in an afternoon.

And they're going to be comparing your home to the other four that they saw, not the souls. So the preemptive strike that they wrote here, so I'll read it. Prior to engaging in any form of office exclusive or private listing network or pocket listing, it's imperative to establish priorities and assess the potential ramifications.

of restricted visibility on both the buyer demand and transaction results. So, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's, think of it this way. And, and, you know, you can convince people by just asking them questions, letting them come to their own conclusion versus just telling them. And the question, a great question would be, you know, Mr. Kitchens. I know you'd love to sell your house for that you had shared with me that you want to sell your home for the highest price in the shortest period of time. Do you use? think that you could achieve that through, let's say, multiple offers, say five, six, seven offers, or maybe one. What do you think your odds are of getting your highest potential price or even

over your asking price? Yeah, many offers is possible. Yeah. Anyone with a half a brain is going to say multiple, right? Well, what do you think if you're going to sign up to this, that they're painting this picture of an office exclusive, this office with compass or, you know, some of our other, you know, Howard Hannah is trying to do this as well. If they're just exposing it to just those agents that are in that office, what do you think the odds of getting six offers over asking price are versus the thousands of buyers that if we were to market it to, you know, into the MLS and all these public facing portals, including Zillow, where your odds are exponentially higher of getting that, for instance,

the example I was talking about, it was a seller listed at $400,000, it expired. the the listing agent the next listing agent it happened to be expe is one of our agents she recommended that the market saying you should be listed at 350 boom they ended up getting 401 that would not have happened if they had done a pocket listing office exclusive or or any of these things so it's actually not a really hard conversation no it's so mr seller do you believe in the law supply and demand yes okay well 71% of all sales come from a cooperative agent from another company. So if you're going to be listening with the company, would you not want to be exposed to all of the agents and all the buyers in

the marketplace? I mean, this is easy. We would crush any compass agent on if they stick this, stay this course. It's not good for them. What data points would make the, make the story even more compelling? Would you need to know how many compass agents that you're competing against? How many homes they sold in the marketplace, how many agents are in the marketplace, how many total transactions? Like if you could articulate a little bit of that data in there as well, how much more you know, would that create? A number of agents in the marketplace versus the number of compass agents, you're talking about exposing probably to 1%. They have 1%, 2% market share. So you're probably exposing it to 1 to 2% of the whole agent population. And we know that 70% of

the buyers come, 71% of all buyers come from a cooperative agent that's probably looking on Zillow and how they found the property. So if you're going to limit yourself, you know, by two thirds, you know, two thirds of the entire marketplace by going with that company, which one, which do you think is better for you? Yeah. I love that, right? I mean, I think that's important message for everybody listening in is like, you need to know those little details because it tells a better story.

And, you know, creates more authority for you being able to, I don't even to say argue, but, you know, make your point of like, come on, Mr. is a seller. You guys are smart. I know you get this. Yep. Right. A little NLP. I know you would never fall for this, but some companies, some companies actually have their own portal and they tell you it's better for them. If I know I'm competing against the compass agent, I can't say that the compass agent is an idiot. You know, I can't talk bad about them. That does not build trust.

So what you can't say is, you know, some companies out there actually try to convince you that it's better for you to be on their private portal and not be on the MLS and be, you know, marketed to all the buyers and all the agents that are in the marketplace. I know you would never fall for that, but that's a funny story that some, some companies that will try to tell you so that they can keep your listing in house and hopefully sell it themselves as opposed to trying to attract the, the most amount of eyeballs to attract you the highest price. That makes sense, right?

Like that's, again, now you're saying it without saying. I love that, dude. I know you would never fall for that. Yeah, I know you. You guys are smart. You get it. You guys are smart. If I didn't know you guys, you walked in my house and, you know, you were doing your,

your dog and pony. And he said, Al, I know you'd never. fall for that. That's when you see, though, the wife under the table kick the husband, like, that other guy said he was going to do. The other side of this, like, I've been hearing some, you know, people defending this, right? And the only thing that, and this isn't even legit, but the only one I'm really hearing is this thing that sellers have the right to, you know,

market their home how they want. You can't, you know, say like, they've always had the right. They can do for sale. They could do a, you know, they can sign a forum that states they don't want the thing listed at all. And that's fine. But they should know the problem is, is that agents are being taught by their office managers to basically lie to these sellers and tell them this is better for them. And the only, only entity that wins is the, is the brokerage because they have a chance of double ending that, keeping both sides, ensuring that if it co-brokes, it's co-broking with two agents within the same brokerage, not an outside brokerage, which makes who the most amount of money, the brokerage. I mean, they encourage just bad behavior in the industry. It's not, it's not what it's, it's never better. Like, it's never better. Like, it's never better. Like, it's never better to not hit the market.

market and have every and have you know multitude of options of potential buyers of different financing in terms and conditions all make an offer at the same time you that's when you win the most that's you have the best opportunity that's not better for the seller and and if if a company is taking that stance and all the agents are saying the same thing they're literally lying to their clients they're lying to them and that's not good for this industry at all no not at all guys listening in a lot of the things that we're talking about are all out of the articles from Enmin over the past week. So if you're trying to follow along, you want to go back. If you, you know, are not diving in or not, don't have a subscription to Enmin.

Get your subscription. All the articles and the things and the information we're talking about is in there. The one on EXP comes from BAM, which is another great source. Nowbam.com. It's tremendous resource to be able to go get all of the things that we're talking about. So guys, let's move into. I have an EXP, hold on, I had it up, EXP Toolkit, I think is what it is.

Yeah, EXP Toolkit.com, and you can download all of the stuff from ExP, whether you're at EXP or not. So it's open source. Use it at your leisure. I love it. Awesome. I love that for sure. I love that for me.

I think it's so gangster. I love it. I love it. All right, guys, let's talk about the last topic of discussion for today. Talking about the Trump administration, making its case for massive CFP B job cuts. What's their thoughts here? Less government is better.

You know, we remember when that came about and I believe one of the biggest reasons they formed this new government entity. I was actually blown away when I saw seven. It's got 1,700 employees. Yeah, I mean, that's, that's, we can do a whole podcast on government waste and why, you know, these bureaucracies are just growing to be out of control. 1,700 employees. But it was formed to protect consumers against predatory lending, lending that, you know, there were no, no, no document. You don't got to prove your income. You just state your income.

And there were all these wild and wacky, wild, wild west loans being given out to people that couldn't, um, they didn't. They just couldn't afford it. And at the end of the day, they wrote the loans anyway. They closed these loans anyway. And I don't know, just, I don't know what the percentage was, but it was just a huge percentage, a tsunami of loans going bad and into foreclosure. And they needed an entity to step in and say, hey, look, we can't be doing these loans. You got to watch out.

Also, the appraisal part, too, inflated, protecting against inflated appraisals, because that was the other thing that people were doing was, The values were going up at such a fast pace that they could get an appraisal to say, could you appraise it at 500,000, even though it's only worth 400, the values were going up so quickly that the appraisals, the appraisers felt, well, this is safe still. And a lot of those guys got thrown in jail too. So I don't think, I think that the intention behind the entity was good.

And ain't it always, almost always. But just like anything, it started getting bloated, lots of, lots of waste, wasteful, you know, hey, you get a job, you get a job, you get a job. Next thing, you know, you blink, we pick our head up. And there are no, those loans don't even really, you know, exist anymore. You don't have stated loans for the best, not my knowledge. And now we're starting to see some more creative things, but like an arm, for instance. and not just your traditional arm where it might make sense to do it, where it's slowly an arm loan, like, you know,

year one goes up by maybe a quarter of a point, year two goes up by another quarter of a point, and that's just a gradual. And I like that one better than after year three, it goes up, you know, to whatever the LIBOR is. And so people get into trouble. Their mortgage payment, you know, was going from, let's say it was 900 bucks a month to $1,500 a month.

Well, all of a sudden now it's unaffordable. those people are going to start to fall behind. And for that reason, I like that, you know, a little bit of oversight. But it's obviously Trump comes in as Trump does and says, we're taking this sucker down to 200 employees from 1,700. And I think a judge upheld it, but said, look, you have to prove to us that you could still run this agency, you know, effectively with 200 employees versus. of 1700.

And I have faith that they could do it, but we'll see. You know, I like seeing smaller government. I like seeing less regulation, not to the point where it starts to hurt a consumer, but there is a happy medium and I think we're going toward that. Yeah, there's no doubt based on what we've seen the last four months, that there's probably inefficiencies in the current structure, I would imagine. Yeah, my thought, just with, you know, thinking, thinking through kind of a green light, yellow light, red light with AI and getting things in alignment, right? Like if things aren't in alignment, you ain't going to be around. And so, you know, immediately when I start seeing this and all the, you know, things of how regulation and put things there. And I'm like, can AI not do that? Can there not be some, you know, can you not, can you not?

have 10 people oversee it with the power of it. Like that's, that's where my mind goes. And I think that's, if we're not thinking that way, if you're not thinking about how, how am I, you know,

getting an alignment, right? And we talked about it the last few times, like discipline over disruption. What is not going to change? What do I need to focus on within my control? Where does the alignment need to be? And like when I hear this and see this and I'm like,

oh, if they do what they do and they had to do it with 100 people, how would they do it? And it's just like, yeah, I don't know. I just see a lot of disruption. I see, you know, that just doesn't make sense as we continue to move forward. You know, they've probably got a bunch of paper files on their desk and then they probably, you know, use a dot matrix printer. And I mean, it's probably.

Yeah. Yeah, it is. It's really interesting. So I think, you know, too, you know, on the, on the AI conversation, a little bit off topic. and I was just thinking, having a great conversation with another Honey Badger. We'll give him the honorary title, Mr. Brandon Town, and was talking to Brandon this morning about a lot of, you know, kind of the direction and AI, because it's been on his mind,

it's been on a lot of people's minds, just as you start to try to, you know, figure things out a little bit differently and how, you know, there's always got to be a better way. And we were discussing it, you know, kind of this morning and talking about you know, the one thing that will not get disrupted is, is a real community, right, a real environment, people that you can really lean on. And that's, to me, that's what we have here, right? That's what Honey Badger Nation is, is a real environment to really lean upon each other, to be able to know that we got, you know, some people deep in the trenches that are actually doing the work that we can lean on and,

you know, really pull from to continue to grow and continue to move forward. Yes, sir. So, Wally, I just got a little notification. He sent me $25. Personally, Wally, I think that the reason you sent me the $25 is because that's just a little deposit on the money you're going to owe me when the Cavs smoked the Celtics and the playoffs coming up here, which is fine.

I'll hang on to it. You're probably going to owe me a little bit more than that. But appreciate the deposit on that lost bet. What's up, Pat A's. What's up, Jason P. Jordan. I'm running. What's up, guys? What's up, fellas?

So, guys, I know we're going to continue rocking and rolling. You know, pay attention, reaching to dive into Honeybadger Nation.com. Grab your swag. Also, get the nomination up. We will start to announce May will be our first Honey Badger of the Month. We're talking about some cool, cool stuff that we want to do to celebrate the Honey Badger of the Month and throwing around some ideas, what we want to do for a Honey Badger of the year.

So get the nomination in. That nomination link was just posted on mine. We're going to get it to you guys so you can post it up on your wall for your audience. It's listening to this. We're going to post it in Honey BadgerNation.com here. We're going to put that link up there. It should be by the end of the day. And we will also put it in the Facebook group, Honey Badger Nation Facebook group.

We love you guys. Appreciate you joining us today. Guys. Yes, sir. Guys, we'll see you. Big fire. Yes, we'll see it. Later.

That's a wrap for today. I hope you got something valuable from this episode. If you did, hit follow and visit john kitchens.coach for more ways we can work together. See you on the next episode.