The Home Service Expert Podcast - AI and the Transformation of Business with Leo Pajera

Episode Date: September 22, 2025

In this episode of The Home Service Expert podcast, host Tommy Mello interviews Leo Pareja, CEO of eXp Realty, discussing his journey in real estate, the impact of technology and AI on the industry, and the importance of branding and visibility in business. They explore the future of real estate, the challenges posed by AI and automation, and the need for human interaction in a rapidly changing workforce. Leo shares insights on finding purpose beyond success and the significance of prioritizing family and experiences over material achievements. 00:00 Introduction to the Home Service Expert Podcast 01:25 Leo Pareja: Journey in Real Estate 04:23 The Future of Real Estate and Technology 09:27 AI's Impact on Business and Society 12:23 Navigating Change in the Workforce 16:00 The Role of Branding in Business 28:08 Visibility vs. Ability in Leadership 39:25 Finding Purpose Beyond Success

When a lead converts through ChatGPT, it closes at like 600 times better than Google. Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields, like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership, to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now, your host, the Home Service Millionaire, Tommy Mello. Before we get started, I wanted to share two important things with you. First, I want you to implement what you learned today. To do that, you'll have to take a lot of notes, but I also want you to fully concentrate on the interview.

So I ask the team to take notes for you. Just text, note, N-O-T-E-S, to 888-526-1299. That's 888-5-26-1299, and you'll receive a link to download the notes from today's episode. Also, if you haven't got your copy of my newest book, Elevate, please go check it out. I'll share with you how I attracted and developed a winning team that helped me build a $200 million company in 22 states. Just go to elevate and win.com 4 slash podcast to get your copy. Now let's go back into the interview.

All right, guys, welcome back to the home service expert. Today is awesome because this happened to be by chance. I've got Leo Pereja in town, and he's an expert in sales business, real estate based out of Miami. You guys might have heard of EXP Realty. He's the same. He's the CEO. And it's one of the fastest growing real estate brokerages in the world and a core subsidy of EXP World Holdings, the cloud-based company with market capitalization of around $4 billion. Appoint a CEO of April of last year, 2004, Leo now leads a company that has transformed the traditional brokerage model through its virtual first platform and innovative approach to agent growth and community. With deep experience as both entrepreneur and industry leader,

Leo is uniquely positioned to talk about the future of real estate, the power of technology, and what it takes to thrive in a shifting market. Thanks for having me, Tommy. I'm excited. And like you said, this was a happy coincidence. I really appreciate you being here, brother. You want to just tell us, I always like to start with a story about how you made it and where you're at today and what you're interested in the future.

Sure. So I'm born and raised into real estate, even though I didn't come from a real estate family. Most people enter the residential real estate space. as a second or third career. I feel lucky enough that I fell into it at 19 years old while I was in college. I got my license and sold. My first transaction was to myself at 20 years old.

I bought a property with an FHA loan. My dad was my co-signer. I used my commission as my own down payment and rented out three rooms and house hacked before it was a thing. And then that summer I ended up selling my fraternity brothers and any sorority girl who took my quote,

call, 11 homes during my summer vacation and made $60,000. And as they say, that was that was that tipping point in my brain where I said, this is what I'm going to do with the rest of my life. I then went on to have a pretty awesome couple of years, thought I was special and thought I was, you know, God's gift to real estate and realized I had a license during the greatest bubble in the history of the world, got my ass handed to me, lost everything. and the financial crisis turned out to be one of those very important educational processes of my life because that's where I went from being a solopreneur, a self-employed person to a business owner.

And I scaled and I learned how to win government contracts and do RFPs and became one of the top agents in the world. Then I went on to do a lending fund. And then I did a tech fund where I ended up raising close to $50 million of venture and private equity and scaled that business to be 80% market share in the United States from a distribution standpoint to real estate agents. And after I exited those businesses, I got a cold call from the founder of EXB. And this is my first job in my 40s that I've ever had. And I lead a publicly traded company. And we're about $4 billion in revenue, about a $2 billion market. cap company, but NASDAQ, you know, S&P 600. Oh, that's great. Where's the real estate market

had? What are you excited about? I've been a really big advocate for transparency. I think if you have a consumer first strategy, and again, this is agnostic of industry. Right. You know, I think if you do what's absolutely best for the consumer, in the end, you win. And that's been my philosophy, whether I've been in real estate tech or finance, right? I think the goal of capitalism is to remove as much friction as possible so they pick your product and service over everything else. I think human beings go for the path

of least resistance, right? Whether, you know, it's my Apple watch and my Apple phone and my Apple wallet and my AirPods that are in my pocket. It's like four pieces of technology. And it's not that I'm obsessed with what Steve Jobs built as a human being versus the frictionless ecosystem he designed.

And think about your favorite products and services. That's like the reason Jeff Bayes is one of the richest men in the world is because he made it painless for us to get what we want when we want it as soon as possible with the least amount of friction. So real estate is one of the most frictionful experiences American consumer makes. It is not simple. It is not painless. There's a ton of complexity from title and mortgage and all the other things.

So I don't, you know, I believe that consumers will still over index on having an expert advisor, helped them through a super expensive, highly infrequent, highly emotional thing that they only do on average three times in their whole life. Wow. But where I think of the future right now, I think AI is going to fundamentally change everything, and that's not just hyperbilly. I actually found it in scaled a tech company. So I'm more technical than the average CEO.

That's not an engineer. But where I think everything's about to shift. is the gatekeeping of technology is not what it used to be. So once upon a time when I founded a tech company, I relied solely on engineers to build everything versus with the advent of large language models where you can vibe code, even if it's just like the first wireframe and the layout. And I can, you know, verbalize with context what I want it to look like and then give it to an engineer. That's a game changer. The speed at which we can do stuff. And I believe that in the next three to five years, most B-to-B SaaS products will no longer have the UI experience that

we're used to, right? Most B-to-B SaaS products are an interface that sits on top of a data layer. And I think what it's going to look like is more like that little talking bubble where you either type into it what you want to know. Like, tell me how many garage doors we have an inventory. You don't actually now need to go to a display that has these predetermined visuals. Like, how many customers did, inbound calls did we get? You know, who have we not talked to in a while? Like, what supplier? Like, pick your industry and pick your KPIs, and you'll be able to contextually talk to it.

And so I spend, you know, I speak at conferences often. And as of late, I feel like I have anxiety that can't go fast enough. I have anxiety that everything is moving at a speed that I haven't felt before. right? I'm 43 and I've experienced two gigantic tech jumps in my professional career. One was high-speed internet. Yep. And again, I grew up in the real estate business, but prior to high-speed internet, I actually had to drive into the office physically to look up listings. Yep. Like Zillow didn't exist, right? Oh, yeah. It was like this gatekeeping of information. I had to physically drive somewhere and then print stuff out and give it to you if you wanted to buy a house.

And high-speed internet democratized that. And then the next giant step that changed everything, in my industry was mobile, right? I went from having to print maps on MapQuest. Like, that's how old I am. Oh, yeah, yeah. And we'd drive around with those like multi-page books that I remember those days. And so that, what both of those technologies did

was actually compressed time, right? So if it used to take me, you know, three to five days to schedule appointments and, you know, get information to people back and forth, fact stuff. I can do it in minutes now. Yeah. And then mobile, you know, made it even faster

because I didn't have to go back to the office to look stuff up. I could just do it on my phone. I could schedule an appointment. I could get instructions on how to show property from my car. And so if something used to take days or weeks, I could now do it in minutes or hours.

That's the gigantic leap forward that I'm seeing with AI. And something I'm hyper aware of is everything's overhyped in the short term and everything's underhyped in the long term, right? So like I think everyone's, it's exhaust. to hear AI as much as we do, but I think over the next five or 10 years it'll be more impactful than we ever dreamt. And so it's this balance of staying in curiosity and testing and trying and not getting kind of lost in the hype. You know, we spent millions and millions of dollars

building probably one of the more advanced data lakes with power of AI and pulling in from APIs. And I just went through 20 hours of advanced AI training and learning. learned a lot more. Like, I use Chatsubit 80 times a day. It knows me. I do complex, IRR, all this stuff. But now I'm starting to give it way more complex things. And you've heard of N8N. And we're going in, and I'm hiring the top minds, I can't pay $100 million to get one guy, but I'm paying the top minds that I could get. Because speed is everything. Speed of implementation. Who's going to go first? Who's going to fail faster? And we're building Chachabit Enterprise over the top of all of it. And that's, you know, I know a lot.

of private equity. I know a lot of these guys doing venture capital. They're looking at this stuff, but lawyers are going to be out of work. I'm so glad 20 years ago I fell into garage stores. I didn't know that it was going to be, because everyone was going to be a developer, go into dentistry, da-da-da-da-da. And I'm like, man, I don't really like what I do. But now we're essential. I mean, during COVID, we were essential. Now everybody, I know that's a developer, most of my real estate buddies, a lot of the people, even doing SaaS products are like, we want to go into HF. We want to go into Roofing.

We want to do this. Because I don't think even though Tesla is going to have the robots next year, they're not going to be doing skilled labor anytime soon. But that's what's scary to me. And I'm not considered the smartest guy in the room per se. But when I just heard Elon might be doing a home service fund, those aren't the type of guys I'm used to go in against. So I got to move quick, quick, quick.

The one thing I found in our industry that you'll really appreciate is private equity guys, can never build this company. They don't know. They kind of look down upon blue-collar people. They don't know how to keep the culture. I would argue that private equity looks down on operators because they're not. And so they still, private equity doesn't exist with the practitioner who's an operator. And that's, you'll want, I was at this panel and there's five of the top people guys in the world.

And they said, what we've learned is you got to figure out how to keep the founder in the business and still excited. And I think that they think, well, you can't cut your way to hire profit margins in EBITA. And I think that that's what they just said, hey, how hard could it be? We're replacing garage versus and age vac units and mowing lawns. You know, we can hire anybody out the street. If they're not on time, fire them. And it's like, no, there's a lot more to this. But some of our people that didn't have a mom growing up, you know, some of them passed

10th grade, but they're really good, faithful, like, hardworking, loyal people. But you're right. I'm very nervous. I'm skeptically, I guess I'm cautiously optimistic. I was at the founder of service stand. He goes, I'm so sad because my kids won't have a purpose like I do to build something from nothing. Like, what do you think is going to happen? I mean, AGI.

When is this happening? Nobody knows. What's your speculative, what happens to society and wanting to grow yourself? That's a very, you know, open-ended question that no one actually knows the answer to. So the one thing that I do know, and again, I'm an optimist, and I think we have to be to be entrepreneurs. Like it's not a choice. It's a DNA thing. So one is I would go back over 2,000, 5,000 years of recorded human history.

And, you know, the printing press fundamentally changed society. And knowledge was gate kept by scholars and the church. And when the first books were printed, it allowed for literacy at scale. right and then the you know the railroad and the the engine right there's been these dramatic jumps in productivity if you actually read headlines from you know the eras of when this happened it was the end of the world as we knew it because these jobs were being eliminated so one is I think we're a tribal species and what that means is we crave human interaction so I think as certain repetitive jobs go away. And when you look at any advancement in technology, it's

normally that. It's some logical process. So I think over time, we will over-index on human experience. And I was recently about six months ago at an event with a bunch of private equity and some of the biggest direct-to-consumer brands in the world. And it's super interesting because the capital allocators were investing in real-life events from sports teams to arenas to non-replaceable human experiences, and then the direct-to-consumer brands were actually investing in similar opportunities that had direct-to-consumer live events, meaning that doesn't mean people are going to want to gather. People, well, and do stuff that machines just won't be able to do. Like live venues, live music, live performances. What you're having this

week. Exactly. Exactly. And, you know, let's talk about the last couple of hype cycles you and I've been a part of. I live in Miami. That's the epicenter of the crypto hype. Oh, yeah. Michael Sailor. Five, six years ago, I couldn't go to anything in Miami and have some tech crypto bro tell me about how everything was going on chain.

NFTs were going to replace all smart contracts. And like, again, I live in the epicenter of it. And like six years ago, it was like, oh, this is happening. And then someone would come up to me and me, say, title insurance and settlements won't exist because everything's going to be a smart contract. And again, kind of like you just said, just fire them. I'm like, do you realize that titles kept across 3,500 disparate municipalities in this country with different rules and states? And do you know that that's all like government regulated? And like, there is no magic button wand anything.

And so when when I hear, you know, we won't have a purpose all. like a i don't see it from a technology standpoint um and two like we designed the stuff and we built it and i think we'll still crave certain parts of the human experience so um i have a a habit of not worrying about stuff i can't control well that's smart i mean it is it's tough i mean when you think about aGI when you think about this code is smarter than all human's combined. And people think it's 10 years. Some people think it won't happen in our lifetime. But I still feel like it's the best opportunity I've ever had. 10,000 baby boomers today retiring, 12% of the moment of business. Most of them don't have a next of kin. There's so much

opportunity. But it is to me is like I enjoy myself. I go on vacations. I do fun stuff with my fiance. I'd never been married, no kids. So I haven't started that chapter yet. But it's a race and it's speed. And I'm out learning all the time. That's what I love this podcast because I'm learning so much from you. Have you seen all that show about Uber? yeah is they had to cheat what did they call it the gray gray zone or whatever where they used to get around regulations in Portland in some other areas like you got to break glass to get these things through but somebody's always going to figure it out I was watching this investment panel some of the smartest people in the world on AI they said I wouldn't invest in what's hot today you're not probably going to rebuild Chachibati but there's something next coming and that's what venture capitalists do that they take 20 shots and hopefully one of them score and those are the big The way I verbalize it to someone this morning when we were talking about AI, I said, listen, we're playing with Napster and MySpace. I don't believe Instagram and YouTube have showed up yet. And so what I'm encouraging everybody is to stay in curiosity, try, taste, right?

I like that. I like that analogy. Like, look, MySpace was first, and Facebook improved upon two or three things. And, like, you know, my kids and folks that are Gen Z have no idea what I'm talking about when I say, Napster or MySpace. Or LymeWire. And let's just go down to that analogy. Limewire and Napster failed because they didn't understand copyrights, right? It was simple stuff like and then YouTube basically, right, a distribution of content came up about and said, hey, we're going to only do it with unique stuff that you give us the rights to. And then boom. But Limeier and Napster were first

before YouTube. And then, you know, Facebook and Instagram, MySpace was first. So go back to the end of the 1800s with the Gilded Age in the United States, we had 118 railroads. And then like 30, 40 years, we had three, right? So there's, there's this like crazy boom in opportunity, right? I like to say that capitalism, I said about the removing friction, but the goal to create opportunities or a lead funnel in any business is to have an outsized return on effort or dollars, right? Meaning, if I spend a dollar and I can make $5, whatever a funnel is, whatever customer acquisition channel you go after, you do it for as long as possible. And to quote Gary Vaynerchuk, marketers ruin everything, right?

Because if you do it very successfully, every other competitor goes, well, Tommy's crushing it with this one strategy. And you will be able to do that for 3, 6, 12, 18, 24 months. And then everybody else will catch up or the platform will monetize it differently, right? Like, you sell data. That's what I think a pizza hot 20 years ago said they make most of their money off of data. So I heard this stat yesterday that when a lead converts through chat, GPT, it closes at like 600 times better than Google. And the reason, intuitively, people trust it more.

Intuitively, we trust it more because as of right now, they haven't put sponsored ads. Right. Right. But they will. I promise you they will. Why wouldn't they? They haven't figured out how to make money yet. So when you look at almost every product, go to market, you know, land and expand, get as much reach as you can.

And then you try to figure out the optimization for monetization. But I'll give you a sample size of one question. In your sphere of influence, Facebook and LinkedIn, probably the two most prolific ones for this example. Have you noticed in the last six months friends that, you know, couldn't string a sentence together or now Shakespeare? I have noticed that. An instant, like intuitively, right? Like, you can, you can see the person's name and then all of a sudden you read the first two sentences, you maybe see the M-Dash or you see the emojis. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

How quickly do you go, you just skip, like, you don't actually read it. Well, the way you do that is, right? You teach ShabbyT out of a right like you. No, no, hold on, hold on. I'm going somewhere with that. Okay. Immediately, you invalidate the robotness. You're right.

Exactly. So right now, the reason leads convert so much higher from a chat GPT response is because we still trust it. Like, we will build a reaction. So 1999 email open rates was ridiculous. It was like 20, 30, 40, 50 percent on a cold list. We loved email so much. Tom Hanks made a movie about it. Yeah, no, 100%.

And do you remember how excited you were when you got a phone call? Oh, man. Like in 2002? Or even the doorbell rang. The doorbell, text message, email. like, you know, we're all over bombarded right now. We're like elder millennials, right? Like they said we were the first generation not to see the sidebars in a browser, right?

Because to the left and top were the ads in Google, right? So this is a moment in time. Nothing lasts forever. No, you know, funnel conversion metrics. Because what happens is if somebody hacks it and figures out how to get a five to one return, that's called arbitrage. Everybody runs towards it. Either the platform monetized.

is at a better clip, right, Facebook ads, YouTube ads, Instagram ads, or everybody does it, and you'd get down to like a one to two return, a 1.5 return, and then that's diminishing insurance kicking. Well, yeah, you know, in the garage door industry, you know, I studied, 2017, I decided I'm going to go study HVAC because it was a $250 billion market cap. GarageVor's was a 10 at the time. And I said, who's got all the private jets that I know? They're all HVAC guys.

So we went to every $100 million shop in the country. I learned what financing meant. I learned service agreements. I really studied arbitrage and EBDA, EBDA, IbaDA. And that's, so we built in the same framework. But now we're building all these tools like AI dispatch. Like now it can do regression testing. It could actually dispatch for dollars, put Tom Brady in the Super Bowl at the right time.

It could understand the best person to run that job. Like if you're an elderly person that was a vet and we can match that up, we know we're going to be more successful. It's really not bad things to do. This isn't like black hat wrong things to do. And I'm trying to stay above board with everything we do. And it's a race, I think. And you're right.

A lot of people try to rip off and duplicate. But it's very hard to, I always say we're a technology company that is garage doors. The problem I have with most of my vendors is it's very hard. If you think about a garage door, how many different variations, permutations, and just you can get different sizes, different installation, different styles, different window sections, different radius track. So a lot of it's made on demand. And you can't, there's no small machine that can make your gutters.

Like these are massive, 25, 30, each machine's a $30 million machine. It's got to be warehouse. Somebody might come up with something to keep it a little bit closer like Amazon did. But that's why I like this industry because of combinations and everything else. So it's like, how do you get the product quicker, better, faster for your clients? These are all the things I'm thinking about. This is like right up my alley. I've always loved industries that have a higher barrier of entry or legal complexity.

A higher barrier of entry. That's the problem is anybody can start a garage door company off the streets. They're not much licensing. But maybe for the installers, right, versus the manufacturers versus how much you can vertically. Yeah, you're right. There's not a lot of great manufacturers that can compete. Yeah. What I like, what we're trying to build right now is systems to talk to their systems.

Like, I want to know what's on hand. Did you have a mess up order? Like, then I could call my client and be honest with them and say, this was a order that messed up with the manufacturer. I could get this in the ballpark you were thinking because they're selling to me for pennies on the dollar. And those are like the advanced thinking. I love this stuff. Have you ever heard of a guy named Greg Hague, 72 sold? Yes.

So Greg lives down the street in Paradise Valley. Known pretty well. He's starting a company. He's all over to the TV only here, I think. He used to be. Mostly, yeah. But he's like, you know, Tommy, he's like, the way I'm running this is I'm not going to take any fees to sell a house. He goes, I own the title companies.

Most of the time, they don't have to use my title companies. I also now own, you know, the pest control companies when you move in. I got access to the pool company. He's like, I'm playing the long game, but he goes, I'm making it a lot easier. You know, sometimes they'll use my lender. And so, and he's like, even if they don't, he goes, eventually someone's going to do it. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, no, I believe in capitalism.

If you build a better mousetrap, good for you, right? I think, especially specific to our industry, we actually have had multiple forms of doing things, right? There's companies that do it for a flat fee. There's companies that will do it per per percentage. There's companies that will do it a la carte fee. It's pretty straightforward in business, and this applies to your business. If you are too expensive, you go out of business. Right.

If you do it for too cheap and don't have that magical Ibit of word that neither one of us can pronounce well. you go out of business right and and there is a happy medium between the product and service you're willing to render a consumer for the product and service they're willing to accept right so both walmart and whole foods will sell you ahead of lettuce or blueberries or paper and you know at whole foods it's going to be like organic and you know disintegrate when you're trying to wipe your hands versus bounty at at Walmart and both are phenomenally multi-billion dollar business and you know Right. They serve a different consumer sector. It's a different experience level, right? Front of the bus or a PJ versus Spirit and Frontier. Right. Both get you to where you're going. They service a different customer. And I think the argument of like, I'm playing the long game. I'm like for a certain segment of the market. And this is the one thing I love. And it's, it's very an American ethos. Right. So Canada, the top four banks in Canada service 80. percent of the purchase mortgage business in Canada. Wow. Four banks, 80 percent of the market. Number one in the U.S. is Rocket, right? We all know who Rocket is.

Yeah, my cousin works there. They have 8.6 percent market. Are they out of Detroit? Out of Detroit. Yeah, that's where I'm from. By the way, remind me, if you want a tour of their campus, it's Disneyland for entrepreneurs. It's one of the coolest physical campuses on the planet.

I haven't been there, but she gives me the, well, I can't even say, but yeah. Yeah. I will. I'll remind you. But let's go, U.S., right? 88.6% is number one in market share. We have thousands of lenders and then it goes down from there, right? So no real estate company, no garage door company has 100% market share.

No, it would be a monopoly. Well, forget that we have the Sherman Act, but by the way, which is 70%. Yeah. That's why you need a strong competitor. That's why Bill, or Steve Jobs gave Bill, or Bill Gates gave Steve Jobs the money. Right. And when, I don't know if you know the story of Japanese cars in the U.S., but like when Honda was growing so fast, they actually launched Accura as a subbrand to create a competitor. So it's part of our American ethos as a culture. And so I don't, I don't like, good, let him create a differentiated product. And, you know, again, one of the things that we do is a company is I look at myself as a platform. So like I want to be the iOS in the app store. right and let my agents build their own apps right versus i'm not trying to build a super app and so

72 sold has their own mousetrap and they'll capture some market and so will other agents you know with ranging business models you know i always talk last week i was in front of my own group 1,500 people and i said listen um make donalds is right across the street from our office you go there feed a family of four for 40 bucks but if you go to stake 44 you got to wait a week to get in there and it's going to be very very very expensive and you cancel you still pay the down payment i'd rather be but man if you go in there they greet you by your name they sit down a manager stops by you're halfway down with your martini they reshake it it's an experience so how important is the brand yeah and so brand especially um i just listened to something gave

Intercheck, that's the second time. I'll quote him today. It resonated and hit very personally with me. He said, when you talk to skilled salespeople, they kind of disregard brand and marketing because they're really good at closing. So it's like, can I generate a lead, convert it down the funnel, and turn it into business, which again applies to everybody, versus companies who very successful have leaned into marketing and brand. And then it's more of a pull, attraction versus hunting and gathering. Right. And so, you know, the answer is both. But it's, you know, it's that branding experience that differentiates. Like you have this little thing on here that

just sold for a billion dollars to Coca-Cola. And it was a brand play that appealed to a specific consumer demographic that made them infinitely more valuable than other commoditized products. Right. So I think a brand differentiates a commodity. in a you know typically for an for for to make it a premium product have you ever heard of the wizard of ads no his name's royal williams he was the first guy to build the ad for rolex and it's not of something like imagine yourself and he's got you know you're going to the mission impossible you've got a quest you are going up this impossible goal set and he goes through it And he's done it for me live, and he knows it by heart.

And he goes, you've reached the pinnacle. You've accomplished Mount Everest, Rolex, Rolex. You deserve a Rolex. And it's just like that whole brand. So he did every major jewelry store. He's doing a little bit of home service. But what I found is people want to do business with me, even though we've got a thousand people, my coworkers that we work with,

is they want to know that I'm going to back it up. They want to know that I'm going to make you happy. They want to know that the story. Instead of being transactional, like, We can do it for less or we're slashing all prices or, you know, it's these are our values. And now I've realized more than ever I need to be up front and center. I do all the radio TV billboard. And it's not a, it's not a vanity thing.

It's just I wanted to get to, I'm not going away anytime soon. No one could quit and say, hey, I'm taking away all of my clients that I help build with you. So do you think you need to be as a CEO more doing Instagram and LinkedIn? post at, you know, call it TikTok X, whatever. What is your theory on that? Yeah. Yes, 100%, right? So, and, you know, I joke that I blame Elon and Zuck for this, right?

Because I felt that before that, I couldn't name too many publicly traded CEOs, right? But we've moved our attention, right? And TV killed the radio star, right? and then Google did it to TV ads and social is doing it to every other form of paid consumer push media versus consumption media. And the thing that I think is extremely exciting is we are switching from a social graph to an interest graph across every one of those platforms. So when social started exploding 10 years ago and I was told very much to my face I needed to do that and I ignored it. Yeah. But the game was create a following and then sell to that audience. The algorithms, and by the way, the reason the algorithms have been able to move to a social, an interest graph versus a social graph is because the AI inside of the algorithms is getting much, much better at pairing people. Right.

But you can open up a brand new Instagram or TikTok account today, which, by the way, this didn't work 18 months ago, where you hit the right product market fit on message and you go viral. and so what to answer your question is where is the attention that is the most basic construct of lead funnels and conversion in commerce and i don't care what industry we're in or what century we're in right you need like 200 years ago you needed to be in the town square yeah because there was there was no direct mail so if you weren't at the right block no one saw you right and once upon time it was the billboard on the highway then the the right instagram ad the audience And again, I'm in the real estate industry and my goal is to partner and attract the best agents in, you know, the world because we operate in 27 countries. So what better ROI as part of my time to speak to the audience I'm talking to, right? So, you know, I've been very focused on social and yesterday in front of the whole group. Somebody said, take out your phone and see, you know, what is the views on your content over the last 30 days? And it was at 394,000, right?

And at a minimum, we post once a day from my Instagram account. We post the same content on LinkedIn, Facebook, X, threads. And we do a lot of, I say yes to a lot of this because then we repurpose this same content into shorts that drive to another, you know, CTA. But think about that. If I open up my Instagram right now, it says in the last 30 days, there's been 394,000 views on my content. What would you and I pay for that? Oh, yeah. That's organic.

That is, and it's hyper-targeted. It's to my sphere of influence because the people that like it, non-followers, it's because the algorithm is showing them or it's being shared quite a bit. And so how much longer will, you know, the platforms let me get away with that level of free viewership? I actually don't know, right? Because meta's got a pretty good track record of putting some paywalls behind it. But like, why wouldn't I? Well, you take advantage while you have it, but I know a guy.

that's like smartest guy in the room. He's a developer. He controls 800 million queries through Google. Like he figured out kind of knows Google's algorithm better than them. And he goes, Tommy, can you imagine an organic you're going against every major programmer in the world? Because their job is to get you to pay something. That's how the, that's how the platform makes money.

So you could make it work, but it's not long lived usually. Like, that's what's so hard about building a budget is we're so good. It used to matter of domain authority, right? And now it's crazy, but things are changing. And so we've got to be willing to learn and adapt. And I think it depends as to, you didn't ask me the question of like, what is the goal? What is the goal? In my role, because you asked me specifically as a CEO, it's visibility, right?

And the speaker we had at our event yesterday said visibility trumps ability in today's attention world. What was the speaker? His name is Jared James. He's a good friend of mine. That's awesome. visibility trumps ability right and i'll ask you this is there a chance that there is a better technical garage door installer in a local market than you oh yeah yeah but do they know he exists no right so visibility trumps ability 100% of the time well a lot of uh companies that spend

there's better products in silican valley and then the network effect but i mean somebody could come up with a better facebook but they got the network effect but you know the fact is no No one knows who they are. Marketing is like essential. If I had to pick one skill that trumps everything. Sales and marketing are like. Does that Rolex do anything better than this $600 Apple Watch? No. Tells time. This actually tells me text messages and emails in my heart rate, right? Function. This actually does more. But if I had to Philip Pateek, you know, right, like that that tells society something about me. And that's where you're paying for brand and status. I will say that those watches amazingly not the last two years, but they go up and value to. So they can. to hold their value. I bought these two amethyst rocks, massive amethyst. And my cousin's a geologist, he sourced him through Uruguay. And I said, how long he goes, it'll take me a year to get these. I said, all right. I think I paid $70,000 for both of them. He said, I get selling each for $100. And he goes, they're only going to go up. Those aren't like rocks you find very often. So everything I look at is like, is it going, I have some fun stuff. But rarely, I, I, I,

I showed Scott, I got Kit from Knight Rider. There's not a whole lot of those out there. It's kind of a collector's piece. So I hope it goes up in value. That's a whole different topic. But where do you spend your money? I mean, literally, like, you've probably got enough money where you don't need to work. So the fun part about being a human is like there's no rule book or rule set that has to happen.

Right. And I'm a husband and a father and my kids are 10 and 8. And one of the thoughts that I've been really hyper aware of right now is that there's seasons to life. Yeah. Right. In my 20s, all I cared about was awards. Like, I wanted to be the number one agent on the planet. Right.

And I actually achieved it by the time I was 28 at the largest company in the world. I wanted, you know, 30 under 30. I wanted number one in the world on this list. And like, I was actually very highly driven by that. And the craziest thing is I actually The dog caught the car Like I actually did it And it was the most empty and meaningless feeling

Of my entire life Because I didn't feel any different My EBITA was not higher Right It was actually probably lower than other years Where I was optimizing for net net profit And so I feel very lucky that I got my ass handed to me in my 20s

Right I lost everything and rebuilt it Before I had kids And what it put me is in these really interesting relationships and rooms at a very young age. And I asked every single older man or woman who had made hundreds of millions of dollars what they would do different. And they were all super clear. Like it didn't even take two seconds that it was don't screw up time with your family and your loved ones. You can't get it back. And so the other thing they told me is

there is an indifference point past a certain number. And I've had friends exit from 20 million to a billion dollars and by the way as long as you don't have a car watch or now i'll add rock i mean rock habit um so you know we the last two companies my wife and i exited um we already had the house we have in a very nice neighborhood in coral gable of miami you know we i have a model s with everything on it she has a model x with everything on it our kids go to one of the best schools in miami nothing changed like past a certain indifference point what is that point the reality it's it's for the lifestyle that you optimize for so one of the things that I can tell you as an entrepreneur I held resentment to the words lifestyle business or S&B because it felt not big enough

and then I went and did one where I raised a bunch of money and had big numbers involved but the reality is I think most of us and again this is like I blame the culture and the glorification of the entrepreneur and the massive eggs and the massive raise but at the end of the day it's like how much money do you actually need to live the life you want to experience the things you want to experience? And so I, and I am eternally grateful for the stuff I can't control, meaning like my DNA, my IQ, the parents I had, like, the stuff. Living in the United States? Exactly. And I actually lived overseas for six, or six countries before I was turned, turn 15. Okay. So I have a lot of context to that statement. And so, you know, I don't think we can control certain parts of the DNA,

but I like I don't need or want for stuff right like I don't I don't have sports cars I love spear fishing in the water but I don't buy a boat because I've done the math and like charting's cheaper so that that question I think is like how do you how do you prioritize time and effort like for me time with my 10 and 8 year old and my wife my siblings my parents my cousins is actually the most valuable thing on the plan it for me. And back to the DNA thing, it's probably because I'm Latino and I was bred to do that. But it's how I prioritize things. So for me, it's experience over things, right? Like we spend two to three months every summer on the road with the entire family. And I run a global company,

so we spend time in the south of France and Barcelona and wherever we want all the way to, you know, the West Coast and surfing Costa Rica. And again, like that is expensive, but I don't, you know, have a Ferrari habit. So, yeah, I think it's, and by the way, there's no right or wrong. Yeah. Like, this is, like, there's no rule set here. And, um, the one thought I go back to all the time is in two generations, no one will remember you or I've lived. Oh, yeah. So just really enjoy the ride. That's really good, man. I really like that. So, but you still, you know, Gino Wickman, you're familiar with him? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Um, he was on a podcast recently. And he said, I sold my EOS system, 87 and a half percent of it, and he goes, Tommy, a massive pot of gold.

I won't even go into the numbers, but I felt so empty. And a lot of people have that when they sell their business, they got freedom, they could do whatever they want, but they kind of lose purpose. There's a great book of Man Searcher meeting. I talk about it in every podcast, I think, but I still want to, like, like, some people are like, man, I retired for a year. And I just was like driving myself nuts. Yeah, so, so A, I love his stuff, and we actually have a partnership with the OS that we, we preach in our, in our ecosystem, B is part of the entrepreneurial experience is that it becomes your identity. So I've exited three times. And, you know, after the first one, it was painful and traumatic. And then the second one, you're like, okay, now I, like, no one to expect. Simple things like, hey, my email is now Leo at leopraha.com. It's no longer at the business. Right. Right. Because that's, that's, like that email was with you for five, 10, 15 years. Like even just little things of how you log into the bank,

you have to change that email because that domain no longer belongs to you. Right. Yeah. Right. And so one is identifying who you are outside of the identity you've built as an entrepreneur. By the way, I spent about six months spearfishing. I got really good at it. I'm a rescue diver. But, you know, as I was on my third spearfishing trip of that week after we sold the last

business and I was contemplating buying the spirit fishing charter. I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Like my brain's doing that thing where like I think when you are a builder. Yeah. You that's your thing, right? So look, I know people who sold their business and buy a ranch and become like really good at that. But then they optimize and love and play and do that. So again, most things you you can't know it without experiencing it. Right. So like that famous gym. carry quote is to that. It's like, I wish success and money and fame on everybody so they know how empty and meaningless it is. Right. Right. Like you don't know what you don't know. And there's a principle that I talk a lot about. I did a keynote about it yesterday where I said progress over

perfection, progress over destination. Yeah. Um, because like there is a body of psychology that says that the only commonality on happiness comes from progress. Right. So take take the woodworker who can take a piece of wood and turn it into a chair. Take the steel worker who can take, you know, raw and turn it into a sword, a hammer. There's actually a documented amount of happiness in manual labor and blue collar work of taking something that's raw and turning it into a completed product. And, you know, I view myself as highly creative even though my canvas is business and sales and conversion. Like if we can go from X to Y, I like that. And it's that. And it's that iterative process that I enjoy. And so, again, I've been pretty fortunate to do it in

multiple industries and experience it. But once you zoom out and you understand like demand, CTA, KAC, LTV, Ibitra, margin, gross, net, all that stuff. Like to me, it's like colors in a palette and I'm painting. Yeah. Right. And so like, and I say that because I have an art degree. And so I actually did paint and do sculptures in college. And then I went into the business side and enjoy that 10 times more. So I think it's just finding out what gives you joy and passion in the season of life. Like I don't miss my kids jujitsu when I'm in town. Like I travel very little.

And when I do travel, I concentrate and try to do as much as possible, like fitting this in because we were in town. But what I care about in this season over anything is making sure I can take my son to Jiu-Jitsu, my daughter to her singing class, and make them breakfast. breakfast and dinner. Right. We have people who help, but I choose to. Yeah. Right. Because I have a, and math drives everything in my brain. Like my daughter's 10 years old. I probably have, I don't know, 700 put her to bed nights. If you're just like, dad, leave me alone. I got it. Like, think about that. And so that's a finite resource that I can't buy more of. I love that, man. Yeah. Well, I was on the

stage and I said, listen, guys, when I die on my casket, I don't want to say best garage or guy, best entrepreneur, best leader. I wanted to say best dad. And I don't have kids yet. Well, I would want up that and said, when I take my last breath, I want those people in the room because they care enough to be there and hold my hand. I love that. I love this, man. I want to talk just a couple quick things. Then we'll get you out of here. You know a lot of people. Who do you look up to a lot in the business world and why? Because a lot of them are frustrated. They're just not happy people. Yeah, no, I think that is a fantastic question. And I've been asked that a lot, like, who are the two people historic and all that stuff? And honestly, the question I always go back

to my dad. First of all, we are all flawed human beings. Yeah. Right. So do not put anyone on pedal still, including me, right? Like I'd say to my people, we're like, oh, you're this and that. Or like, look, at the end of the day, we're just trying to figure this out as we go along. And And you shared fatherhood as a goal. And by the way, it's like central to my identity and what I love to do most. And I was super clear I wanted to be a dad from the, like, since I was six years old,

I was talking about my future wife and kids. Yeah. When you take that child home, that is the scariest moment of your life because you, like, there's no manual. There's no nothing. Yeah. But the comforting part is

100 billion humans have done it in recorded homo sapien version. of the species that we are right now. And so to me is like, look up to the folks that you can learn from, but don't put anyone on a pedestal. Like when I look at someone I would admire, I want to look at, like, how are they seen as a father, husband, brother, son? That's way more interesting to me.

Because everything else is just a skill or attack to occur system, in my opinion. You know, there's a guy you should meet. He's 80 now, 81, Robert Chardini. I don't know if you ever heard of him, wrote the book, Influen. He's an amazing guy, amazing dad, amazing grandpa. Is there one book that other than the Bible, the E-Mith, the richest man of Babylon, I'm just going through a few here, but is there a book that's kind of out of the norm that really just changed your life?

Yeah, you have a couple. So, again, real estate, right? Like the one that, and by the way, the question asked differently is like, did you remember reading the picture of Doreen Gray in high school or college? it was by um oh my god i'm forgetting the name of the author but um it's it's a book about a character who reads a book and it fundamentally changes the course of his life um and for me it was rich that poor dad by robier kiyosaki right super basic real estate book a lot of people in real estate said that that business changed their life because again being millennials like we didn't

have the glorification of entrepreneurs growing up like we were basically told go to college and get a good job and hopefully climb the ladder. Yeah, the corporate ladder, yeah. But that was the first book that explained leverage of people time and money for me. Yep. So, you know, kind of almost in that category of like, that's too easy. But I'll give you a fun nerdy systems one that fundamentally changed everything in my brain, which is David Allen's getting things done.

And it's really like a framework of how the brain works from short-term memory to long-term memory storage and how to create a – for folks who have – the schedules we have where I've officially ran out of time right I lead an organization of 83,000 agents in 27 countries with 2300 staff people I will never get anything everything done right and so it's the radical prioritization of do delegate delete yep and being at peace with stuff not getting done I love that man I would say I got to delegate to elevate I'm working right now getting ready to start with um oh man and my let and I was used to listen him say I could work three shifts in a day. And I just always looked at him and I always say,

I'll out delegate you all day. Like, I don't want to be in control. Like, and I want my people to fail fast. I mean, failure is not an option. We need to fail. We just fail quicker. Why, there's to load in the gun, we've missed the target 80 times. Now we're hitting bullseye every time. But again, going back to my seasons, like when I was 21, I did work like eight in the morning to 10 p.m. a night. And that was the right season for that. Now I, like, don't want to and don't care to. And that's okay. Yeah. Right. Could I be more productive or more successful? sure. But, you know, I want my kids to be there at the end. That's so cool. How do people get a hold of you if they want to reach out, Leo? Um, social, Instagram, my name, at Leo Preya.

I'll let you close us out, man. I know we should have talked more about EXP and everything, but I just kind of went with this and just wanted to know more about you, so. No, absolutely. And, and that's the beauty of this era, right? Like, once upon a time in order to get to know people, like, we happen to be able to do it in person, but even the ability to be in each other's orbit is because of this visibility trumps ability. So I would tell people to stay in curiosity and taste and play, right, whether that's AI or social. I think there's this paralysis by analysis of I have to get it right. And in this era, I think volume trumps everything. And that's probably true in every era, but I'm hyper aware of it in this one. Well, it's a pleasure to have

you on. I really appreciate it. This was killer. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. All right. Hey there, thanks for tuning into the podcast today. Before I let you go, I want to let everybody know that Elevate is out and ready to buy. I can share with you how I attracted a winning team of over 700 employees in over 20 states. The insights in this book are powerful and can be applied to any business or organization. It's a real game changer for anyone looking to build and develop a high-performing team like over here at A1 Garage Door Service. So if you want to learn the secrets that help me transfer my team from stealing the toilet paper to a group of 700-plus employees rowing in the same direction, head over to elevate and win.com

for slash podcast and grab a copy of the book. Thanks again for listening and we'll catch up with you next time on the podcast.