Determined Society with Shawn French | Adversity & Mindset - How Matt Kantro is Redefining Settlements with Noble Title & Escrow

Episode Date: March 14, 2025

In this episode of The Determined Society, host Shawn French sits down with Matt Kantro, President and CEO of Noble Title & Escrow, to discuss the journeys of entrepreneurship, the importance of determination, and the significance of collaboration over competition. They delve into Matt's personal story of building his business during the pandemic, the role of mentorship, and how technology and community service have become integral to their operations. Tune in to gain insights on resilience, business strategies, and the value of solid relationships in achieving success. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Everybody can say they're a self-made whatever. You're not. That's bullshit. It's 100% bullshit. Somebody opened a door for you at some point. The difference between people that make it and people that don't are the willingness to walk through that door are recognizing that door. You have to be uncommon. The common man goes nowhere.

If you do want to elevate and you want to do your own thing and create your own destiny, you've got to be willing to take those shots and not give up. Shot French, what up? I'm doing. Up until it's done. entirety. I put it in over time. I'll be working. Just know I'm a go for mine because I earned it. They watch and I know it's time. I confirmed it. A whole society, determined. Determines. What's up, everybody? Welcome back to another episode of the Determined Society. I am your host, Sean French. Today, as you can see, we're at a different location. We're at Iron Valley

Real Estate here in Norfolk, Virginia for the Determine Your Destiny tour. I'm super excited to announce today's guest. Before I do that, though, if it's your first time listening to the show, Please hit subscribe on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube. Go check it out. Leave a comment, leave a review. I want to know what you think. Today, I have the president and CEO of Noble Title and Escrow here in Norfolk, Virginia. My man, Matt Contro.

Nice to meet you, thanks for having me. Dude, I'm Jack to have you. You're just a handsome son of a bitch. Look at you. I'm going to get off and say it's Cantrow, just like, you know, everybody messes up the first time. What I say? I don't know, whatever somebody said. I tell a marketing phone call.

Did I say Can't know? No, it was some version of him. but you're fine. Whatever, man. Hey, we're not perfect here, guys. We just keep moving. So I apologize for that. I do know your name.

I do know your name. It's fine. I've already fucked up, guys. Here we go. But, dude, it's so nice to meet you. You know, we're here for this amazing event. You're actually the stage sponsor, correct? I am.

Yep. Cool. So, you know, let's talk about the event first, about what led you to become a stage. That's a pretty big thing. Did you believe in the mission? What spoke to you? So a little bit of everything going on.

on. So Mike and I have known each other for going on five years now. Right around the time I was starting Noble, they were starting Iron Valley. They were talking about doing a title company. I needed business for a title company. So we kind of linked up. We've kind of grown hand in hand together. So pretty much anything Mike is doing, we're involved with. We're involved with. Same thing the other way Iron Valley supports Noble pretty well. That's awesome, dude. So, yeah, just supporting Mike and watching him do his different adventures that he keeps coming up with. And there's nothing that he does that he doesn't commit 100%. Yeah, dude, I've noticed that about him. I met him in July. And he's just, yeah. He's my kind of people, man.

What I think is awesome, because you and I were talking off air about, you know, social media, you know, instant gratification of society. And everybody wants something now, now, now. And there's a lot of competition in the world, right? And I fully believe we don't live in a competitive world. And this is something that a lot of people are going to listen to the show or watch it on YouTube. Like, what the fuck is he about to say? Yeah, you got my attention right now. We live in a co-creative world.

And it's somebody's choice every single day. Are you going to compete or are you going to co-create? And you and Michael decided to co-create together. That says a lot about how he feels about you and how you feel about him. What are your thoughts there? 100%. I think there's different. avenues of that.

There's definitely the competition side of thing. Sure. And I think that's an important. We're going to talk about, you know, obviously growing in, I think in sports and competition is probably what fueled a lot of this. I mean, I think Mike has that competitive design also, but the collaborative aspect of things. You know, collaboration over competition, he says a lot.

Definitely plays a role in business. For certain things, there's definitely things that, for example, title companies can get together to benefit the industry. Yeah, we're all computer. competing for agents. We're all competing against for the same people. But there's aspects of the industry and aspects of life where definitely you come together for the betterment of the industry you're in. And I see them do that a lot. Yeah, I love it. And again, I want to clarify for the audience and even just with you, when I say we don't live in a competitive environment,

I don't mean that there's not competition. There's not other people out there competing. What I mean is if we focus on the co-creation part of it, right? And we focus on the processes and what we're trying to grow in our businesses and our culture, right, within the business and our standards and everything like that, when we always rise to the standards and the processes every single day, we're going to beat the competition nine out of ten times because you know why? We know they're there. We respect them, but we don't think about them. We think about what we're doing right here.

Block out the noise. You have to. And it's interesting because in sports, you know, you grew up playing baseball and at 14, you specialized the hockey. Then you played college hockey up in Boston Where you got your college degree And It was a low level, you know, club

Just for the viewers out there Wasn't anything No Boston University or anything You played, you play, right? And you got to see three world championships By the way, that's pretty fucking cool, man That's pretty dope Nothing like Lincoln at 18 and 6 a.m.

For championship break? Yeah, exactly, right? It's like, maybe I should go to class but I'm going to do this anyway. They canceled class. Oh, I bet you they did. Yeah. So I just think it's really cool

Like, when you talk about that competitive spirit that you have as a young child and adolescent and going into college, how do you feel that competitiveness has helped you grow your business? So I'll hone in more on the hockey thing. So I was a goalie. Oh, really? So one of those things was blocking out the noise. You know, it's such a big goalie. It's pretty mental. You're there by yourself.

You are the last thing. you give up a goal, you have to be able to reset. So that plays into business, I think, where, you know, you're going to, you know, you say you can curse on their show. Go ahead, man. You know, you're going to fuck up. Yeah, yeah. And it's being able to, same thing when you give up a goal, it's being able to reset and go, okay, I fucked up. That doesn't mean the rest of it has to get fucked up.

Yeah. You reset, okay, here's what went wrong. Here's what I can do better. And you move forward. I love that, man. Blocking out the noise, you know. I always told people it's like once you step on that ice

you can scream and yell from the stands all you want it goes silent Mike yeah I can't hear a word I can't hear like I'm so locked in and that's you know with business and I talk about Mike and so he it's being able to lock in and tune out

the noise the naysayers people saying he can't do it and there's a lot of people that said we couldn't do it there's a lot of people that told Mike he couldn't do it yeah so I think that aspect of things definitely plays into it. Dude, it's great, man, because, like, there's a lot of fuel, right? Like, I always say when someone tells me that I can't do something, I remember where I started,

people laughed. Yeah. They laughed. They laughed at me, man. Yeah. And I think some people still are because now, but now they're mad because they were wrong, right? But I did not, I think at first it bothered me, Matt, you know, like, it really, it really, truly did.

But then I realize that if I just focus on what I'm doing and what I'm building and the purpose of why I'm doing it, I'm not going to hear it. Yeah. I won't hear it. And it's funny, you know, we, we hit it off off camera and now we're having this great conversation. You were the last line of defense. You were a goalie. I was a catcher. Yeah. Yes. I actually caught in place. See? I look at it. Amazing. We got a bromance going on in here. So it's like behind the plate, you know, in the SEC, like, dude, I remember one time at Alex Box Stadium, the old Alex Box.

He tore it down and turned into a fucking parking lot. Midweek game, even in our midweek games, we had about 8,000 people there at a college baseball game on a Wednesday playing like Shreveport or some crazy stuff or Loyola in New Orleans. Pop up behind the dish. All right. I missed it. I missed it.

They're not easy. Like poplubs, those are not give, those are not giving easy. You got to get a basketball. you got to find it you got to find you got to you know backspin wind everything right you got to make sure you get your back to the you know the field and be in a good position and the amount of oh in the whole stadium it's like i'm gonna tell you i could block a lot of things out i could not block that out i heard that man that was loud yeah yeah that's that's what you know talking about that though that is you were talking about business people laughing and something like that and yeah that's you know you

fuck up. You can hear that noise for a second. It's okay. I think that makes people human. Sure. Like people laughed us. This company was started, both of these companies were started during the pandemic. Yeah, you started in 2020. 2020. Yeah. Yep. Um, we talk about the start later on or whatever. Yeah, we'll get there. Yeah. Um, people laughed. And then you tuned it out. And then we started doing stuff and gaining traction. And then we brought on, um, Sarah, who's our director of business development. and she came on with these ideas. And the thing she had come from other title companies and worked in the industry

and had these ideas. And we started doing these things. And then social media, we'd see other title companies doing the exact same thing. Oh, well, we started putting a closing graphic up and this company is doing it. And we were doing spotlights. And this company was doing it.

And at first, yeah, I was like, fuck these. We're sitting here coming up with these ideas. They're sitting here on social media. Let's just block all these people so they can't, well, you can't block everybody. No, you can't. So got to the point where I let that noise get to me,

but then it was fuel, tune it out. Well, if they're copying us, we're on their radar now. Right. Doing something right. That's the thing. It's like the initial thing, right, that you did is you reacted. And I've done it too. I'm like, why is human nature?

Why are they copying, man? Go get your own stuff. And then I'm like, wait a second. They're copying. And I guess there's a quote out there. like, you know, what is it, when someone copies you, it's the best form of flattery or something like that.

Yeah. Something like that. And I, and now it's like, imitation is a serious form of flattery. Thank you. Thank you. See, guys,

he's on it, man, he's on it. So, that's my point is like, I want as many people to copy me as they want. Yeah.

And in fact, I'm at the point where I will give them all the secrets. I will tell them exactly how to grow their show. I don't care. Here's the playbook. You have, you have to be willing to do the work. Yeah.

the playbook, about five or six things, go for it. Have fun. You got to be willing to do it. Hey, stay consistent, right? And so, consistency is big, right? In sports and entrepreneurship, especially. I want, if you can, I want you to walk everybody through the start and the launch of Noble Title and escrow in 2020 and how you guys have leaned on technology innovation.

I graduated 2011. There wasn't a whole lot of stuff. going on because we went through a minor, you know, economic crisis. Oh, yeah, that thing. So didn't really know what I was going to do. I had a marketing degree, left Boston because I wanted to make sure I wasn't a stand-up party. Yeah. Party City.

Yeah. Came back, didn't really know what to do. I enrolled in a management program at a bank. Mm. And a couple days before that program was supposed to start, they canceled the class. so they'd realize that they were training all of these people in this management program and didn't have anywhere to put them.

They were training them and they were going to other banks. So like, all right, now what? And the biggest mentor I've had in my life is my grandfather. He's no longer with us. But he was a retired veterinarian. My entire life, he would be day trading, trading in the stock market watching CNBC.

And he had a photographic memory. We would, he'd watch CNBC all. all day long with the ticker at the bottom. And we'd calm him up just for fun. I'd be like, what was the last price or whatever? And he gets rattled up. He just remember it. So I started getting into that as I got older.

And he was in real estate, rental properties, and building. And I said to him one point, this was before college. I was like, hey, I want to get in real estate. He just go to college, get a degree. If that's what you want to do when you get out, I'll help you get soon. Well, here we are. Fast forward. I'm out of college.

I have no idea what I'm going to do. This management class got canceled. I was like, kind of want to do stock market. I kind of want to do what you do. And this was when you could buy foreclosure properties, 25 cents on the dollar. So there's this property you've been trying to buy forever from the bank and he kept bidding on it, they kept saying no.

And finally, we go and look at it, and we spent $42,000 on a townhouse in Northern. Now, I graduated three months ago. I have like $500 in my bank account. He made me sign a note to him for $21,000 for my portion of it. So, and that was one thing I credit, and I've taken that into business and stuff, you know. He treated me like a partner and like a businessman, not a grandson and when we were in the office. I have a lesson, man.

And that taught me a lot. I remember going to sleep and I was like, how the fuck I'm going to pay him $21,000? I have $500 to my name right now. And then we started day trading. and taught me the ropes a little bit kind of about it. And then he's very old school. Yeah. And then I started self-teaching options trading and charting and all that.

And that little killing time before I figured out what I was going to do, turned into a full-blown day trading. Come on. Him and I buying millions of dollars worth of stock at a time in and out. That's wild. Yeah. It was an interesting time. Yeah.

I had probably more money than I should have when I was 24 years old. Didn't know to do it. They bought a lot of stupid things. I bet, dude. We did that for a while, and he ended up getting sick. And around 2019, it stopped being fun. So it was him and I in an office all the time. We argued, like, business partner that punched a hole in the wall one time.

And it just got to the point where, like, Monday morning, I got to turn this computer on. I don't look at flashing numbers. I was like, I can't do this anymore. Like, I'm good at it. I just don't want to do it anymore. So I stopped doing that. I was building houses too at the time, flipping houses.

And I was like, what am I to do next? And I was having lunch with one of my friends who's a real estate attorney and another friend who started talking about title. And they were like, there's some money in title. I was like, I never really thought of it. Kind of wanted to go to law school. my dad was a lawyer. My brother's lawyer. My dad told me to kill me if I went to law school.

So there was also no jobs for lawyers when I graduated. Yeah. So that's kind of close to law. Tetering on there. Sure. Interesting. So I started looking into it more and then COVID hit. And I was locked in my condo with nothing to do.

And I got introduced to Mike and Eric. And they were like, we're starting Iron Valley. you know, part of the package with them was title company. I was like, well, I've actually had some conversations and we've kind of already started mapping it out. Instead of giving them, you know, the parent company or whatever, whoever you're going to do it with, because I know they talked to a couple people, let's do it ourselves.

It may take longer to get set up, but let me do it. Yeah, sure. And run with it. Yeah. So I would nothing to do. crammed for the title exam. I did it in two weeks. Took it in this office, actually,

because Noble didn't have an office yet. And then hit the ground running. It's amazing, man. There was growing. When it comes to what your family eats and drinks, you know your choices matter. You're the expert, because you know what fits your life.

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Visit good to know facts.org. Dude. And that was an interesting time because I don't know how it was up here in real estate, but in Florida, it fucking boom. So we had absolutely no idea. I remember sitting there getting a license, getting everything started and going, okay COVID just shut everything down

how do you tour houses how do you like this is either gonna be a huge failure that's been a bunch of money to start where it'll work or who knows and then yeah nobody nobody saw what happened coming and then the market just took off

they started recruiting agents we're in here all the time for trainings and stuff and started meeting agents and doing closings and next thing you know we're at 25 closings a month 30 closings a month Now we're up over 100 every month, and it's just, it's wild to look back. And that was almost five years ago.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But that's amazing. That's like consistent growth, right? And I don't want to overlook your grandfather. Like, I would appreciate that because I lost all my grandparents when I was younger, right? And, you know, I mean, look, man, like, nothing is better than a grandparent, dude.

Yeah, I credit him with. I wouldn't be where I am without him. Zero chance. And I was going to say, I might get emotional if I talk about him. But no, he was my grandfather, my mentor, my best friend. Your sparring partners. Like we, yeah, I mean, we would drive around looking at properties together. We would trade.

We would do. I talked to a lot of real estate. I have a couch in my office and my aunt agents. She is a therapy couch. I don't always listen, but try to give them that wisdom in those conversations that I had with my grandfather. And it's like, yeah, you argue, but we also, him and I, my view on like, because they'll talk about certain teams and partnerships and working with people and contracts and paperwork

and like, like, if you have to worry about a partnership agreement with somebody that you're going to go into business with, probably shouldn't be invisible. Yeah, yeah. Especially to start off. Sure. Different when you get to bigger companies and doing that kind of stuff. But like, you're getting into real estate. state you want to team up with somebody, if you don't feel 100% comfortable being in business

with that person that they're not going to screw you over, it's probably not the right person. My grandfather and I never had anything in writing. It was understood no matter what he did, 50% of it was mine. No matter what I did, 50% was his. Cut and dry, man. Disagreed on a lot of shit. I bet, man. But I backed him, he backed me.

It's valuable, you know. I think everybody for the audience, I just want you guys to listen and to this point is, look back in your life about that one mentor that you had. It could have been a grandparent, could have been a friend or your parents. It's like the value that they bring is truly tremendous because, you know, there's been mentors in my life that I don't think I would be where I'm at. Even the adversaries, I wouldn't be where I'm at right now if those things didn't take place.

And I always like to value the past, right? Instead of, you know, I guess bringing shame about the. past of the stupid shit I used to do or I embrace it I embrace it all man race your screw ups you never learn from them it's part of the growth journey right and if it and I think a lot of times when people fail or they get egg on their face and go oh my god look at me poor me this is victim bullshit when they really need to look at it and this is down a rabbit hole talking about today's society we could but we could right but this all gives insight to who you are and how you built your company and and and the thing is is when we focus on the past and the mistake

that we've made and the failures that we've made in our businesses, you know, no matter how big or small, we start to realize, like, those are the moments that we grow into these amazing entrepreneurs. It's not the wins that take us there. It's all those micro failures, you know, in between, right? And I, I quit out, like, I go back to sports a lot in business and that team mentality and having, like, I come from hockey. That's a sport where if somebody, somebody hits one of your players, somebody runs your goal, you go to bed. Like, we self-police. We have each other's back no matter what. Um, and I think in business,

especially with partners, that's something you got to do. Um, and then also like the conversations I have with people, I find myself mentoring people more often than I intend to. Nobody got to where they are without help. Yep. Everybody can say they're a self-made whatever. You're not. That's bullshit. It's a hundred percent bullshit. Yeah. Somebody opened a door for you at some point. The difference between people that make it and people that don't are the willingness to walk through that door or recognizing that door. Yep.

You got to be willing to take a chance or notice that somebody's trying to extend a hand to help you. Yeah, man. If you have this mentality of, fuck it, I don't need any help. I can do this on my own. You're probably never really going to make it. At some point, somebody's going to help you along the way.

I love that, dude. It's a great point because as you're speaking, I'm thinking of all those moments when I was super immature in building the show. I was doing this. I did this all in me. I think there's a big component of me,

but it's like there have been people strategically placed in my path every single stage. And it was up to me to embrace that. But they created space for me. When I met Michael Little and Tim Lewis when we were hanging out with Eric Thomas in Traverse Michigan,

I was just going there to meet a friend. I was going there to meet Eric. Yeah. And here they come in. And we just said like, hey, are you meeting E.T. as well? Yeah. And we sat down. And this whole event was birthed. Like, so for me, it's like, no, I didn't do everything to get. I didn't do everything on my own. Like, he and I built something. And then he ran with it. And here we are. You are doing it on your own. It's noticing those people along the way. Like I said, it's like, Mike is doing this.

On his own. I was doing noble. Like, but there was strategic people to help me do it on my own. If that means, like, you know, those people were put there,

you put yourself in positions to run into those people. To execute. To execute. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, dude, it's all about,

you know, having great relationships and leveraging those relationships in a respectful way, right? Yeah. And doing things together. But I always say, like, you know, you're only as good as your circle. Everybody says that. And if you have a powerful circle that just are a bunch of get shit done type of people,

you're going to, you're going to excel because of that, right? But I want to go back. I don't want to, you know. I want to say to that point, though. Yeah. If you have that mentality, your circle tends to have that mentality because you tend to attract people that are like minded.

Like I, my group of friends right now, um, one of them, real estate attorney. I've known him since we were four. Wow. We went to school together, didn't talk to him for, we graduated high school, didn't talk to him for probably 15 years almost. I was there a baseball game one day and he showed up to an event I was at and I went, what are you doing here? And he goes, what are you doing here? Started talking. He's a real estate attorney. Yeah. I was in real estate. You know, a friend of mine lived,

condo below me, plays hockey. He's a Navy pilot. That's sick. we just and it was like his dad did certain thing his mentality and his drive and Igor

it was the real estate attorney who I've known forever his drive and then meet Mike and you just tend to and another good buddy Seth

like had his own oil company brokerage company like different industries that all kind of you had to be your own self

motivator yeah yeah you had to he was an oil broker, he worked for himself. Him went sick, similar to my grandfather. It was him and his dad.

You had to get up in the morning and make shit happen. Yeah. Unless he didn't make any money. Mm-hmm. And that's the mentality that you have to succeed in business. Like, I used to have people tell me, oh, you work for yourself, your day trade. Like, you don't feel like working. You don't have to work.

It's like, yeah, if I don't work, though. I don't make money. I don't make money. Yeah. So it's not like, yeah, I get to do whatever I want. Like, yeah. Yeah, I played golf sometimes. Yeah, I watched a little Netflix.

Yeah. Maybe I made a couple trays in the month. morning. It was 85 degrees in sunny, so I'd go play golf at 2 o'clock. Shit, why not? But I still woke up. I still was up to look at the pre-market. I was still looking at charts. Like, to this day, I haven't day traded in six years. I still have seen me see on my TV all day. That's okay. I can't break that happening. Is it nostalgic for you, like with your grandfather? Does it bring? It's a little nostalgic. It's a little, it's still somewhat relevant to

the industry I'm in, too. Like, I talk to people all the time about the 10-year churchery. Yes. A lot of real estate agents and they have absolutely no idea. That's tied to the rate. Why that is important. Right. Like, well, that's the most closely related thing to mortgage rates. Exactly. And if you don't understand that, then I think I saw the stats came out.

There's 7,700 agents roughly in this area. Half of them do business. Half of them do nine. And then you've got the top that they'd actually do a bunch of business. Right. If you want to separate yourself and you want to succeed in your field, those are those little things that you need to learn. That's added value. That's added value.

Yeah. Yeah, it's added value. Learn your craft. And I've heard Mike preach that numerous times in trainings that are in Valley is like hone your craft, learn your craft, learn things that make you different that are going to grow your business. Yeah, everybody can read whatever real estate book on how to sell 100 houses or whatever. But like, that's what worked for that guy. Yeah. Doesn't mean it's going to necessarily translate to, and every city is different.

But if you understand how things work, have those lunches. you know, with brokers and lenders and title and understand each. You don't have to be an expert. Right. But understand it. But I think also, too, like to your point about that is it's important to understand it, not just from a knowledge standpoint. It's important to understand all of it so you can be dangerous enough to send people

that way. Yeah. Like, you know. Enough to say this is, but let's get who you talk to. But let me get you in touch with that. Yes, exactly. Yeah. It's how you build a massive business, right?

And, you know, I'm reading a book right now called Go Giver. It's a really good book. I got to get better at books. I think school traumatized me with books and, like, I had to read them, so I'm not a fan of reading books. Don't get it twisted. My buddy David Waldie sent it to me. All right. Randomly.

Just, you know, kind of out of the year, I say, hey, what's your address? I sent it to him. And in comes two books. And one of them is Go Giver. I'm like, hmm, beautiful. So I'm like, I have to read this. but typically I'm not a big reader either I probably should do it a lot more

but my mind like if I'm at home and just sitting there I feel like I'm not doing anything so after my workout if I can squeeze it in before the kids wake up or on a weekend or something like that I'll crack it open a little bit but yeah I actually get better about reading yeah it did me too all right you heard it

Matt and I are going to read more that's my goal for 2025 just read more that's easy to be fair yeah if you started zero one books boom crushed it yeah 100% approval All right. It's freaking fantastic. I want to talk about your specific company.

And because I know when I did some research on your company, there's a lot of talk about technology and innovation, right? How has that played a part in helping the consumer not be surprised by closing statements, et cetera, and how has it made those relationships for you better? Yeah. So I have to definitely give credit to Sarah, business development, director of business development. having been in the industry, she kind of came up and showed me these ideas. And it's crazy because I had bought six rental products before I bought my own house.

Right. And to me, I had to relearn real estate because to me, closing was a transaction. Like, it was, there was no emotion to it. Interesting. Even when I bought my condo, I just, I signed some documents. Yeah. Done. There was no emotion.

There was a complete. No removal of it. Yeah, it was just, oh, I've done this plenty of time. Yeah. It's sold or whatever. So then I kind of took a step back and realized, okay, that's not the experience for most people. No. So most people are nervous. Most people are scared. It's a lot of numbers. You don't come from a background with numbers and finance and money. You don't understand how old. It's intimidating. And the last thing you want is to show up at closing and you get a closing disclosure. It's five pages long. It's got everything broken down and the prepaid and the taxes and all that. And I've absolutely no idea what any of it. Yeah, what is this? And it's the first time you're seeing it because the lender sent you a, you know,

three weeks ago sent you the one he has to send you that had nothing like the real numbers on it. Yeah, it was like thousands of dollars lower. You know, we can talk about the rules and a Dodd-Frank and all that stuff. Yeah, I want to, yeah. Because there's nothing worse than like as a, you know, as a buyer or the seller like, okay, if it's a refi, I'm getting this much back at closing. Like I'm getting, oh, okay, cool, it's 70 grand back at closing. And you need that 70 grand for something.

Yeah. Maybe a down payment on another home. And then you get your final closing statement and you're getting 40. And now you're like, oh, my God, that's pretty extreme. So, yeah. Yeah, they're not that, but. Technology wise, one of the big things we have is the calculator on our website. That has all of our preloaded fees in there.

when you put the taxes in, depending on what city you've said the property is in, it knows if it's quarterly or something annually prohibited taxes. It can break down pretty close.

I find that most people use it for sell our net sheets to see how much money they're going to make. That's within, unless you lie, which people will forget that they modify their loan

and there's $100,000 on the back end. They've got to pay off. Or solar panels. Yeah. Don't buy solar panels, by the way. Solar panels. That's a good one. It's a UCC lien.

You're going to have to pay it off. Yeah, that's a good one. Great way to quickly ruin equity in your house. But yeah, that giving the ability to have agents have access to that so that when they go on a listing appointment or they're talking to their first-time buyer, they can go on that calculator. Put all that information there and have it able to present and break it down for the client line by line to show, okay, this is where this goes, this is where this is how, you know, where your earnest money. deposits going. This is what you're going to have to bring. We can try to negotiate that, you know, the seller.

That's empowerment. Yeah, just showing people making it less scary for the end user and giving agents tools to use to better their business so that we can get business. Yeah, exactly. And then we've got, so we've got the calculator. We've got a portal. So once you go under contract, we have the contract. clients have a portal and agents have a portal.

Agent portal, once you send one deal, your portal's there forever. Wow. And every deal you do is in your portal. And you can see where it is in the process, title search, things like that. Our wire instructions are in there. You send money through it.

And the client has their portal where they can see where we are in the step, you know, what step of the process it's in. So EMD, submit through our website, just things that make it more convenient because nobody wants to drive around it. EMD check at 6 o'clock at night and drop it off in a drop box or have to come to that. What's an EMD chat?

So earnest money deposit. Okay, got you. Yeah, yeah. You know, you got to have consideration. So, yeah, old school used to be everybody to wet signed contracts and get a check. And you didn't have to bring it to either the, you know, real estate brokerage or the title company who I was going to hold it. Now everything's just online. Yeah.

It's secure. You had to verify through your bank. And everybody gets a receipt. So it's just making things easier for the client and the agent is what I wanted to. Our slogan is simplified settlements or settlement simplified. That's the idea to make it not so buttoned up and like scary. Yeah. Yeah.

We are not, we're not an 80 year old lawyer that's coming in and it'll be dry and boring. Exactly. And I do most of the closings. I probably do 90% of the closing. That's awesome. How many employees do you have there? We have, we just got two more. So I think we're at nine or ten.

That's awesome. But I think that goes back to the whole day training thing where it's not a room by myself for nine years. Exactly. I'd like to sit across from people. Oh, absolutely. It's fun. Like seeing that excitement that I guess kind of,

I was numb to when I did it. So seeing, you know, that 20, year old kid buying their first house, family never owned houses before, but they've got the chance to do it or I did a closing for a guy that was 60 some years old, never owned a house. It was his first house. And first house. Wow. Broke down in tears after closing.

Like that's the fun side of it. Yeah. That's the doing things, helping people. That's a big part of our business too. Tidal companies and things around here, you know, people sponsor events. and do stuff all the time. We started off that way. I looked at what people were doing.

I was like, all right, that's what we got to do. And I realized everybody's doing that. Like, there's nothing different. We're not doing anything different. Right. I was like, we're fortunate enough to be in an area that is so transient. There's so much real estate activity. Going back to what you and I were talking about before, competition,

there's always competition. Of course there is. tuning those out, you know, there's enough agents in this area for everybody to succeed. Let's do something different. So we started doing community service kind of stuff. Started doing more outreach stuff. We do an autism event every year with one of the agents at Iron Valley. We're going on our third year doing that.

It's amazing. So that's gone from a little thing in the, we have a backyard area at the office, a little thing there to. a local bar in the area that has a giant outdoor space linked up with the Eliza Hope Foundation. It's a local autism center here. We just had the mobile mammography unit from Santera Hospital in our parking lot this week. That was Sarah.

But doing things that we did the, the Virginia SPCA, we've done two years in a row. So we've gone to their gala, been a sponsor of that. Giving back, you know, we still do all the normal stuff too. Yeah. That's where I feel like we have the power to be different and give back. That right there, though.

And if that gets me business, it gets to be business, but if not, we're giving back. But I want the audience to marinate on that for a second. Like, you know, push pause and really think about what Matt said. And for me, when I'm listening to it, it's like the opportunity to set yourself apart from, you know, what everybody... I don't know how you don't hit this thing. Every time I hit this microphone. I don't know where it's supposed to be. It's like, I don't know what it was this.

It might be like, Becky Bobby. Yeah, I was just like, same way. I don't know what to do with my hands. It's interesting because, you know, while you're creating this trust within the community, right? And of course, you're not there pitching the people when they're there getting their, you know, mammograms or... or the autism event for three years running. But it solidifies you in a community. And it shows everybody what the culture

and what the people are about at your company. And then of course, when it comes time, they're like, hey, I'm buying a house. I need to call Noble Title and escrow to see who I should use for a realtor representation. And I know I'm just going to ask that. That actually happened at the event the other day. See?

But that's awareness That's eyeballs That's providing the value And it's funny because I was scouring Your Google reviews Not one under five stars Come on man That's gonna be that goalie superstition right there

I'm not you know what I just fucked it up I'm sorry It's been a good It's been a good game right now Hey it's been a good run No You're gonna get a bunch of one stuff

But no I just think that In like seeing What the people are writing is empowering. And that's the approach that I've taken. We're very, Sarah and I are very on the same page on this, non-sales sales approach.

Love it. Because I am that person, and I'll give the example, there's a Xerox representative. He comes by, or he was coming by the office, and we already have Xerox. Yeah.

And he was stopped by unannounced and asked to talk to me. Like, I'm not that guy that says I'm always, I have a very open-door policy for agents. Anybody that needs to talk to me, I legit have an open-door policy. But I also live and die by my calendar. Sure.

And we are closings, and the last thing I'll ever do is if an agent, agent client show up early and I don't have a closing before them, I'm going to do that closing that. I'm not going to make you wait for your two-thirds appointment. You're there. Let me get you in and out. You want to buy this house. You don't want to be in my office.

Yeah. So Xerox guy walks in the office. So I go up front, introduce myself. And I say, all right, you know, thanks. Like, if I need anything, I'll reach out. He showed up the next week. I was like, I told you. If I needed something, I'll reach out.

Turns out we needed a new, we opened a satellite office. I needed another printer because that friend was going up there. Guess who I didn't call. Him. Because all you do was annoy me. Because you didn't follow instruction. Exactly. So my thing is, I'm not going to, I'm not going to howl you.

There's lots of people out there that will. Yeah. And if that's what works for you, it does. Like, I'm quality over quantity. Yep. And not everybody likes to hear that. Yeah. I'd rather grow slow.

have agents that close with us or send their clients our way because of genuine connection and we think the same, we operate the same. Yeah, it'd be cool to make a million dollars a month. Wouldn't it? Yeah.

But. But that's not real. Yeah. Like I like where I can sit, talk to the agents, the clients, like friends. That's that connection where I know like if there's a problem,

they're not just going to drop me for the next guy that called because they're going to take them for a beer. They're going to call me. And most agents that we work with, I'll give them my cell phone. Yeah, of course. If I'm awake, I will answer. That's wild, bro. It may be, hold on. You don't have a shut off? This is what I tell people. If I'm awake, you'll most likely get a response. And it might be, hey, I can't talk right now. You know, give me a call tomorrow morning. And you can't do anything in title at 11 o'clock at night anyways. No, you can't. But there's sometimes that.

people have an issue accessing the portal or have an issue sending their EMD. If I'm awake, what does it take five minutes of my time to answer the phone and be like, hey, yeah, what do you need? Mm-hmm. That's I'm in the middle of doing something. If I'm in the middle of doing something. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, honor your boundary, right?

But if you're doing nothing and you're sitting there at it's 9 p.m., like this person needs something, you could do it. Why not? Right. Doesn't hurt me. It doesn't take anything away from me to be there for these people. It's funny. fun to me, dude. She goes, you always feel like you have to respond immediately. And I'm like,

but if I'm not doing anything, why not? Like, why? Because for me, I don't respond though. And then I, and then I have 10 other texts and then I can't have a notification on my phone. No. It drives me absolutely. We're so much alike, dude. I'm so tight with that. But I do. As soon as I have to clear a notification. So if I do that, that means I clicked on your text. So I can clear the notification. If I don't respond, I'm going to forget. Dude. Same. And so, I mean, I finished, it's like example. I still play men's league hockey now.

Oh, cool. I played last night. Game was at 9.40. Oh, Jesus. So we got off the ice around 11 and I had a text. And I was like, hey, just got done playing hockey. Give you a shot in the morning. Yeah.

Just acknowledge them. That's all. That's really what people need. Value. And like, when I say I'm there, I'm there. Yeah, I think it's important. Standing by your word and, you know, is important. So.

Absolutely, man. You get any fights? now. We're not allowed to fight. There are fights sometimes. There hasn't been one in a while. There was one in a handshake line a couple years ago. Seriously, tell me about that.

I don't even know. There was a penalty towards the end of the game. So men's league hockey. There's always a handshake after every game. Okay, yeah. Most people can let it go. And I don't know. I was behind this guy, and it was the guy in front of me that him and this other guy

had a little issue. And the other guy in the handoff. check line just punches the guy in front. So then they start going and then everybody started grabbing. This is 11 o'clock at night. Like this is playing in league. This is men's league hockey in Norfolk Virginia. Yeah. I saw the foot.

We talk about at the time. I have a screenshot of the game summary still and it's like misconduct misconduct. It's not fighting. It was like six of us and there's just a little fights breaking out and I like I started going with this like guy and I was I had him, you know, by the jersey and he had me.

And I looked at him and I was like it's 11 o'clock a night. I'm not doing this. Like, I got to go to work. Is that what you said to him? Yeah. I was like, hey, bro, I don't want to. We started and I was like, what are we doing?

What are we fighting for? I was like, you and I had beers in the lobby like last week. Yeah, what are we doing? And that's the funny thing, too, about Men's League is like, you leave it on the ice. Yeah. I think that's also, that's something I think people can apply to business. Yeah. It's like the ability to leave something where it is.

Yeah. Like, I've had arguments. It goes back to my grandfather. Like, punched a hole in the wall. Like, that's wild, man, with your grandpa. Like, the day, I mean, we were selling the house. So it was a back room in that, in their house was our office. It was his office forever.

And then it became our office. And you walked in and right on the wall when you walk in was all my, me and my brother's heights from growing up. So all these marks have been there for 20 years at this point. And yeah, he wanted. well, it was in Vida stock. Now if I'd held in Vida stock what it is now. I'd be on an island

probably talking to you right now. You might be. But it was going down and his famous thing was it'll come back. That's not how it works. I'm very analytical, and that drives Mike nuts, by the way.

It would drive me crazy too. Lawyer minds, because that's what I grew up around. I look at every negative to support what I'm like Here's everything that could go wrong. So let's plan that way. And yes, it drives me nuts too sometimes.

That's just a way of thing. So I can't change it. So I'm sitting there reading charts analyzing. I'm like, we got to get out. Like it's breaking its trend. He's like, nah, it'll come back. And I was like, you want it? It's your fucking trade.

And I went to leave and I punched the hole in the wall right next to the lines. And he's just like, I fucking ate my words. The stock came back like two days later and we ended up making money on it. That's okay, though. It was always right. It was always right. Yeah. But I was young and dumb and...

But it's a good mistake, right? And it just shows you, right? It shows you that patience and that discipline that it could be down right now. That's also what I tell people too. Like, on that unofficial mentor role that I somehow find myself from time to time. It's okay to have those slip ups and stuff ups. Yeah. Yeah.

Like, I've gotten very good at it lately of tempering those outburst. Yeah. It took a long time. Again, I came from a sport where... Dude. You do something wrong. You sit down for two minutes and then it's over. Yeah.

You go to your timeout. Yeah. You know, two minutes and then you're free. Yeah. Slav shot, quote. But it's fine to have emotion. Emotion is passion. You can fuck up.

You can slip up. It's what you do after that. And like you leave it in the past. Yes. It happened. Yes. And like you said before, can't look at that and go, oh, what was me?

Like, yeah, I fucked up. Own it. Yeah. And move on and grow from it. And that's where I've got, like, today. There was an issue in the office. somebody pissed me off I woke up

it was like 8 o'clock I'm already getting an email and don't threaten my business say you're going to do something that I know it was an empty threat and I just start it just

I'm on like four hours to sleep I'm tired not how I wanted to start this morning of course not 24 year old me would have fired off an email around the way I was like no no

like it's have coffee Yeah. It's through. Yep. Yeah. You know, it was something that when I worked for the minor league hockey team, I would tell people, there's two people that I was more scared of growing up than my dad. And one was the coach.

One was the GM. And they terrified the living day's out of me. I still know them to this day. They're also. We have very different conversations than when I was 15 working in the locker room. But they were, by grandfather, I was one big mentor and they were another. and that was like, don't act on emotion. You have to process things.

If you act on emotion, most of the time, that initial reaction is going to be wrong. My wife tells me all the time, you need to think about this. I'm like, no, this is how I feel. This is it. So my mom used to tell me what I'm sick. She goes, well, I'm like a toddler sometimes.

Dude, I'm not going to freaking lie to you. I think you are. She will tell you. I still have the sense of humor of a 14-year-old. Oh, dude, trust me. My sense of humor is pretty, pretty, pretty, twisted. But, you know, it's the thing, you know, you think this through. You know,

no need to figure this out now. Take a deep breath. Wait a little bit. And then proceed and respond how you feel you really need to. And that's a big big thing in business. Yeah, man. Well, look, dude, I've really enjoyed having you on the show talking about your company and your mindset and your disciplines on how you built this whole thing.

I think it's an interesting story. And I know the audience has gotten a ton out of it. I want to ask you one more question before we shut this bad boy down. What does determination mean to you? The unwillingness to give up. That's it. What does that look like? I think it looks like what we've talked about.

I don't know how long we've been in here. 45 minutes, yeah. You know, all that stuff that we've talked about of, yeah, you're going to get that egg on your face. Yeah, you're going to fuck up. Yeah, you're going to stumble. Don't let that crush your spirit. Yeah.

Don't let that be the thing that beats you. You know, hockey guy. Herb Brooks is one of my, you know, the 1980s gone ice. Oh, dude, that's awesome. The background on my computer is you have to be uncommon. The common man goes nowhere. Yep. Don't be, like, and some people that, if that's what you are,

like, you know, if you're okay doing that, cool, fine. That's your path. Yeah. If you do want to elevate and you want to. and you want to do your own thing and create your own destiny. Yeah, you got to be determined. You've got to be willing to take those shots and not give up.

I love it. And for the audience, you guys always hear me say, discipline is not, and determination is not this gritty, fighting, scratching, and clawing, social media definition of being determined, right? It's not running 17 miles every day. That's just idiotic on your. your body. I would say discipline and determination are not the same thing. No, they're not.

They're completely, you can be undisciplined and determined. Sure. May not make it as fast. Right. But you don't have to be, again, you don't have to do 17 miles a day or whatever. Like, let yourself have some grace. Exactly. I think it's just super important for everyone to understand what determination means that you are getting up in doing the work, executing your process, even when your emotions are telling you not to. Your emotions, at any point in time when you're building something, you can feel them, lean into them, but still, move forward a little bit.

Your 100% isn't going to be the same every day, right? And actually, that's something I've learned too in business and that I tell people now that you could have told 25-year-old me and I never would have listened, is that it's okay that if that day, you don't have it. Yeah. Take a break. Like, go play.

And like today, I was stressed out beyond believing it's fine. How that he had that whole stuff going in the office? I was doing this podcast. You're the first podcast ever been on. You've crushed it, by the way. I was like, I have absolutely no idea what I'm going to talk about. I hate talking about myself. Now here you got me talking about myself for 45 minutes.

Fucking imagine that. You're like that therapist. I know, I'm really good. More often. Probably good for me. I'm really good at my job. But like I went and had a cigar. That's not advocating for smoking.

Smok's bad. Yeah, yeah. I love cigars. I got a dip in right now. I'm so jealous. I quit a long time ago. I'm so jealous. Yeah, I was going to say baseball hockey.

Yeah. I quit for a while. But that cigar and people like That hour and a half of having a cigar We had this conversation at the shop It is a disconnect from reality It lets you reset You let yourself reset

Yeah 100%. You have to man If you go 100% every day You will burn out and I did it with day trading It costs me relationships It cost me whatever Give yourself a break I love it dude

I love it And we're gonna end on that To everybody that has listened to this show Go check out my boy's company It'll be in the show notes Click on just learn a little bit more about them. And if you know, buddy in the Virginia Beach area that's buying or selling a house,

Noble Title, and escrow, please hit them up. And until next time, guys, stay determined. Real quick. Oh, we are licensed in all of Virginia, so we can close anything in Virginia. Anything in Virginia? Let's go. I said Virginia Beach, but whatever. The whole damn state. Oh, my boy. You got questions, reach out.

Yeah. See ya. Share French, what up? Spire me. I put my all and everything I'm doing. Up until it's done. I meet for the entirety. I put it in overtime. I'll be working. This no, I'm a go for mine, because I earned it. They watch, and I know it's time. I confirmed it.

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