KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Is America’s Real Estate Advantage Under Siege? | Zillow, Compass & the Transparency Battle

Episode Date: June 26, 2025

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? Everybody, man, thank you guys, tuning into another episode of one big fire. And I've got all the boys back in the house again today. And excited to jump in and chop it up.

we've got three topics so want to kind of reset kind of the flow of our one big fire conversations and I know Al reached out and it's like man we got to dial it in we got to get it tight I'm like yes sir let's go and definitely modeling a lot from one of our favorite shows at the show that I go to to get truth that's the PBD podcast and I think they've just done an incredible job and really have nailed the format and so we've We've been loosely kind of following, but we're going to tighten it up and really identify three key topics that we want to unpack a couple of announcements and a couple cool things that we've got up our sleeve that we're working on. But before we jump into the three topics, I know, Al, you've been working behind the scenes updating some much needed update to the Honey Badger Nation swag. And I can't wait for those pieces and things to be revealed.

What you got cooking over there? Man, we got some just fresh, some fresh merch, man, coming out. And, you know, we've been, we've been wearing the merch for years now. And, and, you know, it's just time for an upgrade. And so we have a new legacy line coming out here. It's actually already built. If you want to sneak peek, go to honeybaggernation.com. Click on the merch button.

Just scroll down. Speaking of honeybadgernation.com, that's getting a facelift. And we'll be, there'll be a fresh. look to that. So look for that coming soon. But for right now, you can go there, click on the merch and check out the legacy line. There's going to be limited amounts of this merch available. What we're going to be doing is switching up the theme a bit. We're going to actually have a one big fire theme coming out. So that'll be fun. But some of the stuff you're going to see us wearing on podcast, you'll be able to grab for again a limited amount of time. We're going to put it up there

and then we're going to change it up. We're going to another theme. Just keep things fresh, you know. People love the merch. We see people, you know, we've had baby onesies, you know, from anywhere from that to underwear. And I think we're going to discontinue the underwear. That wasn't a big thing.

The hats, shirts, the notebooks. When you go to an event, taking notes, I know we all like to do that. We all like our hardbound notebooks. There's going to be some really cool stuff. It's actually there. Click on the legacy link in Honeybadger merch. And stay tuned because we are going to see that on us.

We're going to be sporting it. And you can too. So I'm excited to get that out. Me too, man. Definitely, you know, keeping it fresh. There's so many, you know, just little cool themes and ideas with us over the years, being able to really put out there. And I definitely like the limited supply for sure.

The other thing, man, that you brought up that I'm really, really excited about, that we want to kind of tease, tease a little bit. And it's the most sought after award, right? You look back at, you know, when we were doing EGS and the NAEA days, and it was the award that people were jockeying for throughout the year to be able to be positioned to receive. And because I'll let you kind of tease what the award is and then we can share later in the show how we're going to go about nominating for this prestigious

award. Yeah, man, you know, the thing that you learned being in this industry is that, man, it's bound to happen where you're going to have to go through some stuff. You know, like, you know, you might have eight or ten years of nothing but good, and then all of a sudden you go through some stuff. And we've all done it. Many of us, many times have gone through these valleys. And I always joke because, like, sometimes the value, you know, like, right, if it's too fresh, man, you don't even want to talk about it.

Like, but those valleys are some of the best stories. It's really what creates, you know, I think the spirit of a honey badger is when you go through some really tough times in your business and you come out and you're better for it. And so we did an award that, you know, at the time we didn't really realize was going to become the most coveted award at all of our events. And it was the Honey Badger Award. and it was just based on, you know, what they had to go through and, you know, and just really being the spirit of a honey badger. And so that, you know, we customized the gift. It was always something very unique. But that became, you know, the award, you know, which is funny because, you know, you really don't want to get that award.

Because of stuff. But, but, yeah, we just, you know, we always wanted to, you know, have something that we rewarded people that, you know, they just, you know, embody the spirit of being a honey badger. I think that's, you know, that's kind of why it's our moniker. It's our, you know, our, spirit animal. Spirit animal. There you go. That's what I was looking for. It's, it's been our spirit animal for a long time.

And, you know, it's, I think it embodies what it takes to be successful in anything. And so, yeah, that's going to be a fun award doing that monthly. So you'll be able to nominate, you know, folks in Honey Badger Nation for that award. So if you know, if you know somebody that's really embodying the spirit of being in a Honey Badger, you know, nominate them for the award. It's going to be fun. We'll do that every month. Yeah. Absolutely. And if you're thinking, you know, well, I'm not, I'm not part of the Honey Badger group. Yes, you are. You just don't know it yet.

Yeah, opportunities coming here that you can absolutely be part of our community and plug in more on that later. But, uh, jk 47. Yes, sir. I think, I mean, yeah, we'll talk more about that. And I've got, I got some other additional ideas with it to, um, from awards perspective and the nomination and then for the yearly and some stuff that we'll tease a little bit later. but, you know, a lot of topics that we can really dive into, I think, you know, picking out, you know, the three most important right now for us to dive into. Obviously, we need to unpack and touch on, you know, kind of what the plays Zillow has made, you know, XPs move.

You're seeing a few others follow suit, but also some of those that are drawing a line in the sand. The other topic we want to dive into and just from a really, from an understanding perspective is, you know, America's real estate, right? The advantage of, you know, under siege also kind of part of why Zillow made the, you know, the move, but, you know, definitely get Leo's take on, on that. And then also, you know, I want to hit on five questions that agents need to be asking themselves right now if they feel stuck or they feel things are really slow, some things that we can give

them to be thinking about to help navigate the waters of just uncertainty right now. That's going on in the market and definitely we've got a lot of a lot of love up north in Canada a lot of great humans great agents up there and you know I mean they're they're they're they're going what we went through in in October right they're dealing with right now as they've got elections two weeks out and so you know being able to to have some some understanding and be like listen right you know we get it we went through it the beautiful thing is that you know they have the spring market coming we had winter coming so they've got a little bit of an advantage to hopefully move quick out of after the elections, but we'll talk more about that.

But let's dive in, man. Let's hit, let's hit this first topic, you know, talking about how Zillow is going to prohibit listings that are privately marketed starting, starting in May. So let's unpack that. I know we have some strong opinions and strong feelings around that. Definitely our love, hate relationship with Zillow, but definitely, man, it's worth understanding and diving into. Absolutely, man.

this is a big one. Like this is, you know, the, the future of this industry is hanging in the balance with the decisions that are being made right now. And, you know, I've never been a big fan of Zillow, but I'm a big fan of what they just did. When it comes down to, you know, these companies that are wanting, especially specifically compass, like, you know, wanting to take their listings and take them off market, it seems like a good strategy. It's a bold strategy. The underlying question is, what's best for the consumer?

Is that best for the consumer? If you've been to anywhere else other than the United States and Canada and tried to look at real estate and there's three different listings on classificados.com with three different prices from three different agents. And you see how real estate is done everywhere else in the world. You would never trade what we have for that. Like it's it is not from a buyer perspective. It's terrible from a seller perspective. I mean, I'm going to use them Puerto Rico as an example. And that's actually improving and moving in the right direction in Puerto Rico.

but it was awful. Like the seller that my house that was listed, I was living in, I was leased in the house in Dorado Beach East, that she knew I was in real estate. It'd been on the market a year. They didn't have photos. It wasn't anywhere. It wasn't listed anywhere. They didn't show it one time.

And she thought it was for sale the whole time. And I said, the first thing I would do is fire the angel. Like this agent has it. They don't even have pictures. They wanted to send somebody pictures and they asked us to take pictures of the house while we were living in it for them. I was like, this is, I mean, that's pathetic. But that's what happens when there's no, there's no.

controls and there's no agreements where we're working together in the marketplace. You can, it's just the Wild Wild West. And that's what you get. And that's the, that's the worst case scenario is we're going back in time to a place where the data is not true. You can't find information. You can't find comps. You don't can't trust the square footage being correct. Like all of those issues happen when you start to silo up the listings and not and not make a public. One of the, you know, one of the rare things about the U.S. market that we don't want to lose. Al, what, what's your take, right?

We, we asked the question before we went live. Always, always ask, what is best for X, Y, Z? What is always best for the consumer? Well, you know, what is best for a particular home seller? It's, we all know that supply and demand is a, is a law that you can't buck on it. It is what it is. It's a principle. It's a law because it's a fact that the more buyers you can expose to any product.

I don't care if it's a car. If you had, let's say, an old Cadillac collector vehicle, right? And you're like, all right, I've had enough fun with this. It's time to sell it. You have a choice. You could put it out on the biggest car portals out there to get the highest exposure to the most amount of buyers, which then in theory, not in theory, in fact, will, you're going to get the most amount of the highest offer,

you know, versus or you could put it on your front lawn. And you can hope that somebody that just happens to drive by that street and the time that you have it out on that lawn is going to see it fall in love and pay the highest price. And we know by putting it out there, which is why all the biggest marketers want their listings exposed at the highest to the highest number of buyers. So what are the consequences if you don't?

There was just an example Leod brought up about a deal that closed about 23% below every comp in that particular neighborhood. It had zero days on the market. One company got both sides of it. It had no exposure. There was no transparency. There was no fairness. And those sellers lost hundreds or tens of thousands of dollars,

possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars if it was a high price range versus all the other homeowners that listed their property. So, you know, this is we're talking about. big money, not little money here. And I believe that obviously, you know, self-serving. Zillow did it as a sell, you know, they're positioning it as a consumer move, but it's also serving them. Let's not pull punches here.

They want every listing on there, including for sale by owners, which I want to get your guys' take on that. So for sale by owners aren't put into the MLS ever, right? Unless, of course, they go with these one of these FISBO companies. So I wonder if they're going to rip those off Zillow if they don't list. That would be a nice little rule. I don't think they're going to go in that.

direction but you know they're they're positioning themselves from consumer standpoint that's expe agrees with it with if it basically comes down to if you don't put the ML if you list the home you don't have any MLS within 24 hours and Zillow somehow finds out about it that they're marketing the property to another group I read specifically it's another group for instance your office only you know if you're going to allow and you know the argument on the other side Let's talk about that as well. It's not right for every home seller out there to put their home on the, you know, out there on all these portals and put it into the MLS.

They just want private. Okay, fine. What is, what do you guys think the percentage is of all home sellers that are out there that are potentially want to market and most, I haven't met one seller that said, don't give me the highest price. Exactly. I'm not just a mediocre price. I mean, yeah, if it's 20%, yeah, 20% below market.

That's fine. Okay, cool. There's a ton of investors that will go out there and buy those deals off market. They happen every single day. That's fine. But someone that hires a real estate agent, most of the time, I would say all of the time, they want the best terms and price for their home. And in order to do that, it has to be exposed.

Have you guys ever met a seller that said, hey, I want the highest and best price and best terms? That's what I want to hire you to do. But I don't want it to advertise. anywhere. I don't have to sell it. There are sellers that aren't really sellers. Those people that I'd sell it if I can get this price. Like it's not it's not you know, not your ideal seller. Those are not the people I like to work with.

I know that. They're not highly motivated. No. And if they're not highly motivated when when you do do all the work and bring them an offer and they don't take it and you're scratching your head, you work for free. And you're wondering, do I really want this listing? You know, are they really all in and sell? it or are they just kind of interested? So I want to get in sellers. Absolutely. We do. And I believe

the market conditions we are in currently in the States and obviously in Canada as well is that like you will be wasting your time with want to's. You have to find the half tos. And you know, I think that that comes down to somebody just not knowing their worth, not knowing their value and and you know, getting hung up. And just because you got one on the hook doesn't mean you need to reel it in. And so I think that's just really understanding that from knowing their true motivation and true goal. So looking at, you know, everything kind of reading through kind of what's being put out there, you know, the move. Yeah, I mean, just being able to be able to create the most amount of exposure.

And it really ties into the whole second point as well. The second thing that we want to touch on in Leo's stance on, you know, if we don't do this, you know, what we can, you know, potentially and possibly experience and see. And I think that truly only comes from, you know, he touched on it when we had him on on one big fire at the end of last year. He touched on it again in Cleveland last year. And I think it's only having the viewpoint and understanding of how real estate truly happens in other countries. And, you know, being able to work with, with our boys in Portugal, it's wild, right? It's just absolutely wild. You have the firsthand experience in in in in Puerto Rico and just being able to hear how they have

about navigating in in in Portugal it is just it's it's ridiculous like I don't know how we could do what we were able to do or do even as a consumer looking for properties and not knowing you got to do all the due diligence it is just not what is in the best interest of buyers sellers anybody it's going to be interesting how this plays out guys like like truthfully I I like the angle that Rethkin's taken, he's trying, he's trying to make a bold move. I think it's crazy. I think he's absolutely nuts because I know like you're betting on, you're betting on one of two things at this point. If he sticks to his guns on this, which he'd be crazy to do. There's a lot of backlash from agents, a lot of backlash from sellers that would come from this.

If inventory starts to climb and we have an abundance of inventory, meaning rates stay high, and we eventually get some inventory on the market or they come down enough where people start selling, then this doesn't work, right? You have houses that expire. That becomes that the market could help him win this or it could help him lose this. But if there's not a lot of inventory, then he does have a competitive advantage to a certain degree. And so the market, the timing of this is going to be very important as to whether or not it's going to work or not. If he chooses to die on this mountain, which Rob Edwards is watching from San Francisco, you know, made a comment on YouTube, you know, he's been building this for the last five years. He's going to die on this mountain.

he might very well die on this mountain. Like he might very well die on this mountain. They still haven't figured out to turn of profit. If you're a Compass agent, go listen to the to the calls that are done every, you know, the public, the public calls for Compass and listen to the strategy

they're talking about to all these investors. They're not an agent-centric company. You guys don't know, like, they're like that because I think that, I think that's important for everybody to really understand so they can get the full understanding of, how and why decisions are being made like this.

Yeah, 100%. Compass is trying to be the brand. They're not, they're not trying. they're not trying to support the agent and make the agent the brand. They're trying to be the brand. And if they are able to be successful at doing this and moving all that inventory in-house, what's to say they don't change their independent contractor agreements and put them all on 60, 40

splits like the old days because they control the marketplace. And so if you listen to the earnings calls, they literally talk to the investors and they're saying, yeah, our goal is going to be to take more from the agent. We're going to lower the percent or increase the percentage we take from an agent by one percent of over the next five years. That's how we're going to become profitable. That's what they said a few years ago. So if you're over there and you're like, go, I'm a big, big compass fan. You're literally sitting, you know, sitting in the lion's den. They're looking to take more and more from you, not help you. So this move, if he is successful in pulling this off, it's going to be, it's going to be complete

chaos. They're going to have a competitive advantage, but you're the agent over there that could end up on a 60, 40 split because of it. And so, you know, they have control of that. If they are able to pull this off, it's a big deal. Zillow. move was huge. We know why they did it. They want everything on they don't want any. They're not going to allow anything to be put on Zillow. They already know how to scrape the data. They know if something gets listed on Compass's site and it will not get listed on Zillow ever. And if you're, if I'm an agent and I'm competing against the compass, compass agent for a listing, I am going to crush you. I'm going to crush you. I'm going to crush you every time I'm going to win because I'm going to explain. And this is why I love

understanding what moves the competitors are making and what they're doing is saying, oh, you know, see 25% of all listings before it's a. I said, if I sit in front of a seller and I explain to them, 71% of all sales are done by a cooperative agent. That means you're leaving the largest chunk of the potential buyer that might pay the most for your home completely out of the picture about knowing about your property. That is not what's best for you in terms of marketing. Would you like to attract the high offer or would you like to attract the low offer? Well, I want to attract the high offer. Then we need to get the most eyeballs on this home as possible. I will be every compass agent over and over and over again

with just that one thing. You gave me that one thing and I can go beat. you now. And so they're going to potentially lose agents over it. There's going to be a lot of, a lot of noise. It would be very, I mean, it's a crazy, ballsy move to stick to it. If he sticks to it, he's crazy. But if he bows down, then, you know, it's everybody's on Zillow. That's the, you know, that's the move. We're now, we choose your poison here, right? Like it's, you know, how much do we trust Zillow? Not that much. How much do we trust? Compass? Not at all. Okay, which, which direction do we want to go? I think you have to go, what's best for the consumer? What's best for the consumer? And what's best for the industry as a whole. That's how you have to look at this. And that's why I think Zillow's move

was smart. I think Leo, being the gangster, he is, made the right move and back in it. Yeah. And what I love and value from a leadership perspective, because I think, you know, looking back and seeing the biggest void in this industry is a lack of leadership, first and foremost. And so when you've got, you know, somebody at the helms making quick decisions, it was funny. I don't know if you saw Al, senior Mike in Kvayat and posted. We were on our coaching call and we were talking through and I'm like, listen, the most important thing you guys can do is lead, right?

You're not sheep. You're lions. You have to take that. This is wartime, not peacetime. And you've got to understand the difference. And there's agents right now that are in the wash that are not built for market conditions. And they're just going to wash out. And then you've got, you know, the right type of mentality, the right type of agents that'll be coming in.

And she go, and we were talking about leadership and making decisions. I said, but you've got to have really good decision-making filters to make decisions fast. And I forget who told me, but the single default for Leo is that he doesn't like noise, meaning if it's noisy, he makes the noise go away. And, you know, we all have quick decision-making filters. So what does that look like to be able to make it? And it just popped up. She goes,

you just got a lead, right? You know, we're talking about lions, not sheep. She goes lead like Leo. And so she just started, she's like,

we're just going to hashtag that. So I thought it was, I thought it was really good. But I want to, I want to kind of transition on this other point. And we've, we've kind of talked a little bit of both about Zillow's play. And then also,

you know, Leo being quick to make the decision. And I think it comes from experience. I think it comes from a global perspective to see the markets. But I want to read this from the Inman article that, that really talks. about, you know, how America real estate, if this doesn't stay the course, we're in trouble. And here's what we're in trouble for.

And this is what I really love about it. So, EXP last year, over 350,000 transactions, only 1,000 were off market. So just a transparent marketplace. So where every buyer and seller deserves fair access to opportunity. This is what I love right in here. It gets into it. the envy of the global real estate community is now under attack. First hand,

what happens when transparency breaks down. So, because this is this 100% to your story, your experience, what I've been able to see and help, help our Rodolfo and Noo in Portugal. And they give the example. In France,

this will sound familiar because in France, buyers must check eight different sites to see 70% of the inventory. Yeah. And if that's there, if they're lucky, there has to be an element of luck. Sellers pay per listing per month to appear online. In agents, they're navigating chaos, all while the most vulnerable buyers are left behind, priced

out and shut out and simply overlooked. Here's where it gets really interesting. Let's put this into perspective of buyers and sellers. A deal closed at 23% below every comp in the neighborhood. One company, both sides, zero days on market, no exposure, no transparency, no fairness, the seller lost hundreds of thousands of dollars of money of equity and now every homeowner in the neighborhood has to answer to that sell when refinancing or listening to their own property.

Yeah, it hurts the neighbors too. I want everyone to kind of like if you're an agent, most of our audience are agents. I want you if you're an agent listening to this to take the agent hand off, put your home buyer hat on for a second. Okay. And I want you to imagine if we all just said, yep, Rifkin's right. let's file compass's lead. Let's everybody do this. First of all, EXP, we're the number one single real estate, you know,

residential real estate company in the world. So if anyone would benefit from this, it would be us. If we just went along with his move here, we as a company would benefit, but you know who loses the consumer. So think about it from the consumer standpoint. Imagine you're a buyer. You're looking in Frisco, Texas. One of the hottest markets in the United States right now. Everybody's moving to Friscoe, right? and you had to look at 17 different real estate brokerages sites just to see not 100%, just 70, you're not even seeing everything that's in that market.

And you got this, it's all about who you know. Does this sound familiar, Jay, Puerto Rico, the good old boys club. Even you, to sell your house recently, you had to kind of connect with all the influencer agents just to try to get a fair offer on your house. Let me tell you guys, Jay, I want you to go on this. if you're a consumer, we do not want this in the United States. Right now, we're ahead of the curve and what this would do. If everyone just said, yeah, he's right, all the brokers do this.

Keller Williams, Remax, EXP, all of them, you know who would suffer? It'd be the home buyers. It would not be the experience we see today. You'd miss out on that great house. You would not see all the listings. And from a seller's perspective, you could be losing hundreds of thousands of dollars, as John pointed out. Jay, you have some firsthand experience.

I mean, it just, it fosters more, more opportunity for agents to do the wrong thing. Like, and I say, I mean, it's dirty dog, you know, where I was at. Like, they don't tell you nothing about nothing unless they're the one that shows it to you. So you've got to talk to 10 agents to find out what's for sale. It's just not, it's, it's a terrible process, but it actually, it makes it easier for agents to steer and to manipulate what they're going to show and what they're to tell someone about or not tell someone about there's no transparency and you know that just it creates it the when you un pull up start pulling on this yarn and you start thinking of all the things that it's going to impact now now you can't get an appraisal now someone's doing a loan and you've got a comp that

you have to use and all of these little things are just absolutely messy and it makes the whole real estate experience a horrible experience which is not good for consumers not good for agents not good for anybody and so it's not the right thing to do it's a thing I see the reasons why someone might want to, but it's not what's best for the industry as a whole. It's not best for the consumers. And that's where we have to stay focused. This is one of the rare places in the world where real estate works and it's better. And we're on the verge of really screwing that up. And it's a big deal.

Yeah. And we're on the envy. I mean, you know, talking, you know, Leo and listening and like just I keep default back to, you know, Rodolfo and No, they're like, we wish real estate was as transparent and ran like it is in the United States. So it's something like, you know, it's, it's, think about it. Al, to your point, four to seven million people are making a move. They're looking to make sure we get it right and not leaving, you know, for most,

that's the only wealth that they'll ever create is through the, the homeownership and through real estate. So, you know, start mucking with that, right? What happens? What's the ripple effect, right? What's down, what's down, what's down river from that decision? And most people don't think about that. The last time that we saw listings not available to everybody was right before the millennium, right?

Like 98, 99. I think Realtor.com came out and don't quote me on this year, but somewhere around 99, this Realtor.com thing appeared. And it was before Zillow. And I remember I was at a century 21 office. A lot of like OGs of the industry from our area were all in there. And as soon as it was announced that all of the listings, that were in the MLS, we're now going to be broadcasted out to everyone.

The agents do, the old guys in my office freaked out. They thought their business was going to be done. They're like, oh, man, what value do we have now? Because why? Because back in the 80s, 90s, you had to go to the broker to get what? The listings. You couldn't just go on www.reelor.com, Zillow.com, your website.com, and find all the listings. You had to go to a real estate broker's office.

They had to go in there to this old DOS computer that was our MLS then and print out these, these just, it looked like a data sheet of numbers and letters everywhere. It wasn't even fun to look at. I remember, fun story. When I first got my license and I walked into the office, there was a line from the front door all the way to the back. There was this real long hallway. You know why? There was only one computer in the whole office.

We all had to share it. And if you needed to print listings out for your buyer or whatever, you had to stand in line to use the computer. I'm not making it up. We don't want to go back to those. That's the ice ages. Well, think about this, too, is the evolution of, you know, how brokerages have evolved. Like, back then, like, this was like, my dad was in the business in the 70s, you know, got the business in the 70s. And, you know, I jumped in in the late 90s.

They were still acting like they were in the 70s in a lot in Oklahoma. But with the MLS books and all that stuff, that was 60 days. the day you got it, it was 60 days old. So like, that was what everybody was using. But back then, what was the split if you were at a Coval Banker? It was, you were on a 50-50. Why? Because the brokerage controlled the phones. They controlled all of the, the, that you had to, as a buyer, you had to come into the broker. Like, they controlled everything. And they, and it was, it was, that was not an agent-centric model. And we're, that's the direction they're moving back to. And if you think Compass is not going to tweak the numbers in terms of the commission split back in

their favor. If they can pull this off, you're crazy. That's all they're trying to do. It's the only way they can make money is take more from you as an agent. So anybody that's participating over there in this is just participating in your own demise if he pulls it off anyway. Yeah. Yeah, 100% man. And, you know, just maybe kind of as we're going through this, just working with some agents that are breaking into, you know, luxury, right? Higher-in luxury, the three different levels of luxury. And, you know, when we do a competition analysis coming into a market, they'll pull it up. And it's just, it's no different than what we do in the clarity report. Like, look at your competition. They look at them. They're going, I can't,

how do they have, how do they have any market share? How do they sell any houses for what they do? They provide no real value to the consumer. And that's why it's like, once, once you realize that in the agents, they're just, they're dominating with, you know, being able to, to crack into into these tough markets because people are trying to, you know, the good old buddy network, hey, we're buddies, you got to list your multi-million dollar property with me. And that's just, that's not what's best for the consumer. So we definitely don't want to go back into into the way that's not going to be the best, you know, being able to create as much demand. So I want to, I want to shift to this last point. And this was more kind of an article on NowBan talking about

five questions to ask when the market feels slow. Just being kind of, you know, really sensitive to, you know, the climate across the country. There is. pockets, right? There's pockets that are smoking hot, but there's pockets that are a dead standstill. And it's just, you know, why every market's a little bit different. And so for a lot of folks, they're feeling it or their team is feeling it. And so I think this just kind of caught my attention to talk about and really think about the questions, right? Change your questions, change your life. And just think about things a little bit differently and really put the emphasis on what is within my control.

And the one thing that they talked about here before, we talked about these five questions. And I agree. They said the agents who succeed during slow times, right? They avoid getting trapped in negativity, excuses and self-doubt. They succeed during this time because they're the ones not complaining.

They're the ones who have doubled down and keep showing up no matter what. And I would go on to say they focus on, is this within my control? And I think that's one of the top questions. We always talk about what's the goal. Is that really the goal? What am I going to do today within my control to move closer to my goal?

And so here's a couple of questions. Love to get your guys' take on these questions. Question number one, how many meaningful conversations have I had with people in my daddy base this week? So good. Yeah. That's a leaning indicator. It's the one measure.

measurement. When we built funnel pilot, the one thing that I, when I just filled it down to principles, it's, if you're an agent and you're wanting to sell more houses, it comes down to how many conversations per day are you having with people that want to buy and sell and are open to doing business with you. And you're only going to have those meaningful conversations by talking to people in your database and figuring out which ones are. And so like, but if you can increase that number, it's a leading indicator of how many sales you're going to have. That's the thing you have to change. That's the focus every day is that one thing. It's the most important thing. And so, yeah, it's a that's, that's, you know, that either you're having conversations or you're not.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if you guys remember. I hired a guy named Jeremy. It was over 10 years ago. And he was the number one Kirby salesman for Kirby vacuum cleaners. I don't know if anybody has never heard of Kirby. They, they make some really powerful vacuum cleaners. And they only sell these things door to door. Now imagine you're you're someone that makes a living from selling these things and you're the only you're basically top of funnel is the street you pick and you go door to door trying to sell somebody a vacuum that that they don't necessarily maybe they don't need. They got a vacuum but they're there these are trained killers, right? And one of their number one metrics, how many doors did you knock? Now I'm not suggesting we I do not knock doors.

I used to do that back in the day with expires. I wanted to beat the mail so I would go and knock on knock on that expired's door, but like it boils down to a metric. The reason I told the story about Jeremy, because I implemented the same systems, they had it, he actually got it from a different industry, whatever, but it was just a formula. And our formula for success was 25 new opportunities per month should lead to 10 face-to-face appointments should lead to four sales. There was just a formula we followed. Our ISAs followed it, right?

So our goal, each ISA was to get 25, each of them, 25. five new opportunities. What's an opportunity? It's someone who's motivated. We talked about the motivation thing, right? They're motivated to sell their home or buy, but we were always focused on the listing side. And they have not committed to another agent,

meaning they're open to doing business with you as a professional. If you can gain the trust with them and sign that agreement, and that they're willing to do it. They're ready, willing, and able, they're able to buy. They're not broke. You know, they actually have the. means to actually make that purchase that's what i consider an opportunity and so how many of those conversations are you having how many new opportunities are you creating and the cool thing is like yes

how many conversations before you have the conversation you got to have the opportunity which is why funnel pilot was created to create those opportunities to bring those into your top of funnel into your your your CRM and into your world so that you can start to build that trust with that person and then eventually have the conversation. Yeah, it's so good. So guys, Al was talking about his 2510, 4. We did one of the very first expert mentors live episodes. We're almost at episode 300.

I think we're scheduled to hit 300 in July. So on the expert mentor series, one of the very first ones, one of the top five, first five, first 10 episodes we did was on the 25104. So if you guys listen to Nand, want to check that out, go to email replays.com and you can go and check out Al talking about the 2510.4. So so good. All right. Question number two, am I offering real value to my clients and sphere this month or am I just checking in? What is real value? What is not generic? What stands out that we need to be really thinking about with your clients in your sphere? what is real value right now in the market?

Oh, this is an easy one for me. Your update market updates are the most. First of you need to establish your expertise consistently, right? So like being personally relevant with people and being professionally relevant. Being professionally relevant is understanding what's going on in the marketplace and communicating that to your sphere of influence to your database to the people that are watching that they don't know what the trust, watching the news. seeing this thing, that thing, how is this impacting things?

You should be the voice of reason for your entire database. And that's knowing the data, communicating the data, keeping current matters is my favorite market trends, all different reports we've used over time. But being able to take that information and communicate that out so that you can really educate people as to what's really truly going on, being that voice of calm in all the chaos. Yeah.

I could comment to what's not. Your funny TikTok videos that you're hoping goes viral is not changing anyone's life. I can tell you they're fun to watch. They might be fun to shoot, but you can't, you know, I learned this back in coaching with Kinder Reese and NAA, John. You can't be an expert and claim to be an expert without actually being an expert. And how do you do that? The cool thing with what you said, Jay, is you can kill two birds with one stone.

One, you have to study the market and be an expert. you got to know your numbers. I remember when I would go into a listing appointment, I would memorize the numbers. I'm not very good with memorizing a lot of things, but I can memorize just a couple little things that would make me position me, excuse me, as the expert in front of that seller.

I'd reel off how many homes they're in competition with him right now or on the market. I wouldn't go look at a sheet on it. I would know it. I would bring the sheet. Don't get me wrong. But I would memorize. I would be positioning myself as an expert.

I would know how many sold in the last six months. And is it a buyer's or a seller's market? So it wasn't pull much to know, but the more you start digging into that, yes, put that content out there. I'll tell you this, if I'm a seller, if I'm thinking of selling my house and an agent's putting funny TikToks up of them dancing around and on a pogo stick or pretending to beat somebody up because blah, blah, blah, blah. That might be fun and entertainment for people to watch. But if I'm a seller, I'm looking at the guy. I'm looking at Jay or John's market update. I want to know how many homes have sold like mine in the last 30 days that I'm competing with.

I want to know what the trend is looking like. I want to know are people moving into the suburb or are they moving out? And there's no only way to know that is to study your market. Yeah. Keeping current matters from when we used to use it. They've come light years too. They were great then. Yeah.

They're even better now with, But in fact, I think we have no affiliation with them, but we used to. They even like help you build the, you know, the relevant content that positions you as an expert. So yeah, definitely check them out. I haven't seen those reports in a minute. But I know a lot of our agents are leveraging them and it's really making them shine. It needs to be your number one one expense investing in, you know, the relevant information that gives the key resources, you know, of where they're pulling the data. It's just not, this is my guess.

This is like, right here's the resource, goes right to it. So this leads right into the third question, Al, that you just hit on, is my content bringing in new leads or just recycling the same updates with no real energy? I'm sorry, I jumped the, I jumped the gun on that. That's perfect, right? You know, it should be to start a conversation. Is it engaging or is it just noise? There's a lot of noise out there. And I think, you know, aligning with AI to be able to help you.

and even the direction going back to meaningful conversations within my database, real value that's relevant, that's going to, you know, bring in possible new opportunities. What's resonating now in the market? There's some ways, man, oh, God, I just think back, you know, just with our raving fan program and understanding lifetime value and being able to connect with, you know, the lifetime connection programs that we had built out, how we communicate, what buckets they're in. Are they raving fans? Are they just advocates?

Are they one-time customers? How you speak to them? Being able to understand, you know, the Harvey McKay, 66, understanding hug your customers and all the hug fields. Now with the power of AI, you could quickly, because we used to talk about, hey, can you imagine going into your database? Pull up everybody that has dogs that loves the University of Oklahoma football. Oh, by the way, they're doing a special spring giveaway to bring your pup to the spring practice game.

How about we send an information to the database that has like that? That's reality now, right? And so that's meaningful. That's real value. That's relevant. But I think to your point out, you know, are you doing things that starts a conversation that my filter with marketing was, man, we just got to join the conversation in their head.

And, you know, we want to go after motivated sellers. What's keeping them up at night? We want to go after motivated real estate agents, you know, that are looking for a new opportunity. What's keeping them up at night? let's join that conversation. So is your content joining the conversation of the real opportunity in the marketplace? Yeah.

And I mean, you know, we all see people and I've been guilty of it way back when I first joined Facebook in 2009, 10, everyone was just plastering their new listings all over their, their Facebook wall. And we still see some of that. And I'm not picking on you all, but, you know, what sells is that the buyers and the sellers, they're human beings before they're a potential buyer. They're a human. And all the clients that are out there, Sheppleck said it best is that, like, I think, I don't know, I'm making the number up.

But he said it's like 96 or 97 percent, a super high percentage of your audience on social is disinterested. And what do I mean by disinterested? They're not just a buyer and a seller right now. So what do we, what do we put up there that's still relevant, still professional, that's still going to capture them when they are ready, not just the three, four percent who are thinking, right now. And by just plastering listings all over your wall, you're only appealing to those maybe three to five percent of people who in your audience are in the market right now. And so my suggestion is tell stories. Tell stories that connect here. You know, the connection's not made through logic. And by, you know, you can post stats and this and that. But when we're

talking about posting, what connects is the heart to the heart? It's a story. When, you know, we kind of all both came up with, through Craig Proctor's, you know, putting the ads in the full page ads. I used to do a full page ad in a magazine called Mimi's here. And my ads weren't ads. They didn't look like an ad. They were a story.

I would tell a story, not mentioning the seller's name of a seller who had listed with another broker for six months. And they were, you know, they had called me because the home expired. And we would dissect why it didn't. So I would be telling. these stories educating the market and connecting them with them on a deeper level. And so that's what I would encourage you. Tell stories through your social media and then connect on a deeper level.

And then, you know, of course, pepper in the expert data that we were talking about. But just don't pepper all of that in, really get that human connection going. And now you're going to start having more of those conversations and you're going to really build trust quicker. Yeah. So that perfect segue into question number four. and am I showing up in places where my ideal clients hang out online and offline? Am I showing up there, right?

You did the Mimi's ads because that was your target market and that's your ideal client was there. They were paying attention to that. And I think that's just such a, such an important, you know, factor is to be able to go. But to your point with storytelling, Sam went to 1,000 watt. They're changing up the name of it. He says it's one of the, the best marketing events he's he's ever been to, Sam Basil and which has been in Dallas, but they're going to, in 26th, they're going to Denver. And I was like, sign me up. What's the dates?

I'm coming. And the theme over there has been the number one thing that we have to focus on with everything we do is storytelling. And, you know, I've given you guys examples, I've talked about it. In my opinion, right now, inside of the real estate game, The one person, if you guys want to get better at telling stories specifically for your listings, right? The power of video and the power of storytelling is you got to go pay attention to Georgia Tush. She's at the top of the game right now. I don't know anybody better. She just happens to be a storyteller that just happens to sell real estate.

That's what she is. This is what we've been talking about for years, right? You have to be a marketer that just happens to do what, happens to recruit agents, happens to help motivated sellers, has to help first time homebuyers. What do you do? But you've got to be a marketer first that just happens to do that. So these questions are all marketing type questions, right? How do I have more meaningful conversations? How do I join the conversation in their head? How do I provide value, real value to the person that's actually going to spend money with me, right? Not just make a new friend. I need to talk to somebody that's going to exchange my value for their money.

what type of content am I creating new leads stories I'm telling how am I showing up and where most importantly where am I showing up and that was always kind of our rule of thumb like we ain't married to nothing the only thing we're married to is where our target audience the person that has money is hanging out that's where we're going to go if billboards are working they're working if they're not working they're not working if radio's working if it's not working it's not working TV ads. No, nobody watches TV anymore. We ain't doing that shit, right? We're going to go where they're hanging out. And so I think that's super, super important. And because you think about this all the time. I mean, we all do. But where are the ideal clients hanging out right now?

Yeah. I mean, you know, there's all these, all these social media platforms that just changed the whole game as far as, you know, where people tend to, their eyeballs go. It still comes down to fundamentally, it's reach and frequency. So, you know, So, you know, it's the same reason like why direct mail. So like what I learned when I did billboards and direct mail and newspaper was there was no personality to it, right? Like people didn't feel like they knew me. But they thought of me and they would call me. And that stuff all worked.

If I mailed you enough times, you would think of me first and eventually you would call me and I would get the opportunity to list your house. On radio, what I felt instantly different with right. It instantly changed when I started doing radio. again, running a spot at 7.50 a.m. every single day. Instead of spray and pray, like, you know, a 6A to 10P type schedule where you don't know who's going to hear that message how many ever times. But every day, the same people are creatures that habit in their car. They're doing whatever, you know, their morning ritual is. So there's a small subset of that of that K-Law station that was always listening in at 750. And every day, I was a first in rotation, told a story of a, of a, of a, of a, of a, client a client story and after three weeks so basically 15 to 18 days of of me being you know every day one message a day to the same same people there started to be this temperature change of people feeling like they knew who i was like they were my best friend and they started referring other people they knew and they started calling and and you know we're just the phone was ringing and and it's that so

it's still fundamentally reaching frequency so no matter what the medium is you still have to have enough frequency in order for them to think of you first, ultimately. And so that's where that's where social media gets a little bit more complicated in terms of, you know, what can you be creating that's going to pop up and then happen to actually be, you know, looking at their feed and it be relevant. And that's why I think the only game you can play, and this is what we do with Funnel Pilot is, if we know somebody's interested in new construction frisco and they clicked on that, we generated a lead from that.

Now, now let's think about content. what all content could I now create that would be super relevant to that person? And then let's put that in their way. Let's put that in the email follow up attached to a YouTube channel playlist with 15 or 20 videos that might, you know, eight or 10 of them might be super interesting to them. And so now they're consuming your content. You're forcing them into your world of content. And so it's so cheap and easy to generate the lead.

But now you just have to think about what value can I start using to demonstrate. demonstrate my my knowledge so they think man this is my guy I'm buying new construction in frisco I'm calling this guy and that's I think that's how it's it's not just like I should post three times a day on Instagram that's not going to do it bro like that's not strategy strategy is is identifying that target market you can do that through advertising and now you can use the social media to establish your trust and build trust because they don't know you like if it's somebody that knows you in your database yeah it's a different it's different or somebody refers to you, those people already know like and trust you.

They've already experienced it. Someone who hasn't, you have to be able to bridge the gap with marketing and content and value creation, giving them great things that are helping them with a decision where they go, man, if I'm doing this, we should call this guy. And that's, that to me is the ultimate strategy. And that's why we teach it. It is 100%. And so, you know, a lot of thoughts, things around there.

But these are things that won't change, right? I think that's the one thing that we need to talk about. about, I use discipline over disruption, focus on the things that won't change. Fundamentally, no matter what happens, won't change. I truly believe real estate will always come down to a decision of trust, right? Do they trust you because you've been transparent, authentic times time? That's the key. Reach and frequency times time out there to that point. We know storytelling, fundamental. I mean, stories forever. It's always been about stories in storytelling. That will never change. Relationships going deep. Trust will never change. So that's how the things that we have to do.

And then we had a couple questions on the stories. This is the book. Get the, get it. Stories that stick. Kendra Hall. It's the best one. It's the best storytelling book. And you just, she breaks down the core fundamentals and every story, the four types of stories of story, a founder story, just all kinds of different stories you need to have. I'm getting that book. Yeah. Yeah. I haven't read it yet, but I've read a book on stories and it was it was game changing.

I want to get the updated version. Get that one. You know, Seth Godin's on the front, right? Talking about, talking about anything he's going to say, you better pay attention to. I want to, I want to break down people. You're listening to this saying, but I'm not a good storyteller. Yeah, but I don't know what to. post consistently. Yeah, I know I hear you, Jay, we got to do this consistently. Like the radio,

you don't go into radio for 30 days and say, this didn't work. No, you go in 12 months. You go all in. You're obsessed with success. You're committed and you're all in. But what about like, I just don't know what to say. Well, let me ask you this. If you're one of those, and I get it, like, that's probably one of the biggest. And we solved that problem with funnel pilot. We actually give you the content that's relevant to the funnel that's built out so that you don't even have to think about it. But let's go back to that. I'm not good at that. Do you tell stories to your wife when you come home? Do you tell stories to your husband, your kids? Have you ever told your kid a story about something? We all know how to tell stories. The matter is, get yourself out of the, just get out of

the way and start bringing that story to your audience that's going to be relative to and they're going to connect with that story. That's what you're doing by it. You know, John says about video, right? Video's great. And it doesn't, here's the cool thing. I want to leave with this because there's actually, I may have to hop off real quick. John says, my bad video outperforms your non-existent one.

My bad video. And I want to, you know, I get, I still get postcards to my house from, you know, the competing realtors that are trying to get listings in my neighborhood. I'll get them today. It's still this day. Some of them are good. Some of them are really bad. You know what?

They're consistent. I can tell you, guy's name. I'm not going to say it here, but there's a guy that just consistently mails bad postcards. But I know his name. Bad postcards going to outperform the non-existent one. Back in the day, postcards was how you, that was the only way to farm. Now you can geo-target and do all kinds of fun things online, but it was postcards, which I think are still that still work. I have to work, still work. Like I used to get the most dog, it was dog-eared. The printing was was faded. It wasn't even a great message and it didn't matter because the first person that

you think of. What was it the, Jay, you know, it was that statistic like people only really know two names. And if you're not one of the two names that people are thinking of when they think of a real estate agent, then you're out. Yeah, it's a two horse race. They're going to think of two people's names. And if you don't come up, if you don't come up and those two, you're not getting a phone call. And so, you know, the same thing happened to me. Now, like when I would get mail, you probably could probably talk to even more to this. Like, there would be a listing that would sell somewhere when I lived in Aubrey. It would probably not even be relevant.

Like it would just be a house in a neighborhood, a mile away. And then I would get one postcard. And that's it. And I'd never see them again. So I couldn't even think of their name now to make fun of them. Never while I lived out there, nor since I've been here in Newman Village, have I gotten something consistent over a period of time where I actually think of the agent. And so, like, that's the opportunity is in the frequency.

Like, you know, like my favorite story I tell with Mike Reese when he started doing postcards was I was riding around with him in the Hummer. And he's like, man, my mailer's about to drop here in Frisco. And he was mailing all of Frisco, the whole damn city, every house. And he was mailing them like two, three times a week a month. And so as Miller drops the phone rings, he answers the phone. And this lady goes, is this Michael Reese? I can wallpaper my bathroom with all these postcards you've been sending me. I need to sell my house.

I died laughing. I was like, dude, that's the funniest thing I've ever heard. Like that's just understanding marketing and just beating them over the head with this message, message, same message over and over. Same color. It changed nothing over and over and over. That lady was like, man, I'm calling this fool. I got to sell my house.

Like that's what happens when you have mind share. You're just trying to get mind share. When they think of you first or second, you at least have the opportunity, you have the app bat. And that's, you know, that's why this stuff works. And, you know, direct mail, even though it's on the way to the trash can, they see your name. You do that. You think, well, I mail them once, you know, quarter, once a month, that's not enough. That isn't meaningful.

You send them something once a week for 15 weeks. They'd be like, what the hell is this guy? Keep sending me this stuff for it. But they remember you. And that's what all you're trying to do in marketing. That's it. Fifth question to ask. And it comes back down to, we always joke, right, the law of Mike.

If you don't ASK, you don't GET. Have you made any specific offers in the last seven days that someone could say yes to? have you made any offers that somebody could say yes to and we have to remember right offers move people into action and if we're not making offers to move them into action we're missing opportunities so get the offers out there i want to tee this one up jay what's the number one rule of marketing work on your what number one rule of marketing work on always be working on your what know. Your offer.

Oh, yeah. All right. But yeah. I threw you for a loop there. What's the number two rule of marketing? Always be working on your offer. Working on your offer. Right.

Yeah. Yeah. It is. It's so important. Your value proposition, your offer. Hermosci's got the easiest follow because he has, he has pictures and he has stick figures. So he makes it really easy for for me to comprehend and read. So $100 million offers.

If you guys are looking for a little cheat code. to kind of help build out that process is really cool. And here's the reality, right? You know, we come from the belief you're either growing or you're dying. And if you're sitting on the sidelines, giving yourself permission to sit still, that ain't growing. And, you know, growth takes momentum. It takes energy and, you know, got to have the confidence.

And you don't build confidence by sitting still. Get into the game. Fellas, great conversation as always. Listen, I am excited about the Honey Badger Award that we're going to be given on a monthly basis. We're still trying to come up with what does that get you? What does that mean? I know we've thrown out some pretty cool things, but we'll be opening soon. Obviously, the go-to resource for everything is Honeybadger Nation.com.

So pay attention, right? As soon as the site goes live to be able to get in, nominate. We'll have kind of a little more information. of what that looks like, what that means, what they're going to get. We're going to put a link up, honey badgernation.com. There's going to be a link right at the top that you can click on it, submit a name that you feel embodies the core values and traits of honey badgernation. And if you don't know what those are, we will be putting those up there too so that you're

completely clear. You'd be like, oh, yeah, I know, I got to nominate, you know, Amy. I got to nominate Renee. I got to nominate John, whoever it is. Like you're going to probably know someone who's been just, just fighting like a dog out there. And they didn't quit. They didn't give up. And then they, they won.

And that's what we want to see free also. Appreciate it, boys. Always good. Connected. Good. Thanks guys. Thank you guys. Thank you guys.

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