In this first‑person narrative, the speaker recounts meeting a real‑estate agent in 2015 while house‑hunting, signing a buyer‑representation agreement, and forming a close friendship that evolved into a business partnership. The agent quickly rose to prominence—earning a Top‑30‑under‑30 spot with the National Association of Realtors, being named Inman’s most innovative agent, and speaking internationally. Together they developed a client‑relationship “playbook” that treats clients as long‑term relationships rather than transactions, outlining touchpoints at day 1, day 7, day 12, and day 30. Recognizing the manual effort required, the speaker leveraged a decade of tech experience to automate the playbook, creating a button‑press solution for agents. They validated demand on stage with a Jotform survey, discovering agents were willing to pay more than anticipated. Within two weeks the speaker quit his prior job, and the agent left real estate to launch a startup that automates the playbook for agents nationwide.
Chapters
I met him because my wife and I are looking for our first house in 2015. She says, do you have an agent? I'm like, no, I'm using Redfin. My wife's like, I told him we need an agent right now, right? Yeah, yeah. She says, I got the guy for you, he's going to be your best friend. I literally said, I don't need a best friend, I just apparently need an agent because she says so. Yes. Drive across town, go into his office, he makes me sign a buyer rep, which I'd never even heard of before. He was so passionate about, look, I'm going to be working for you, you need to do this. I gave him some crap on the agreement, I think it got me noticed. Um, And the next thing you know, like, this, this lender was right. Like, now here we are, 9 years later, we're, you know, best friends and business partners. We just, you know, I was the best man at his wedding. But anyway, so I got to see what was happening with him. So we become close friends. I'm watching him do this. So what happens is when he implements this in his business, he goes from being kind of a big deal in Orange County to top 30 under 30 with NAR, to, you know, most innovative agent with Inman, to— and he starts speaking all over the country, all over the world, as far as South Africa, right? And literally all he's doing— and I would go, I'd help him put these talks together. All he's telling people is, hey guys, treat your clients at a whole different level. Treat them like it's not a paycheck, like it's not a transaction, like it's a real relationship. Right. And here's what I do. You give them the playbook. Here's what I do on day 1, on day 7, on day 12, on day 30. And all these people in the crowd are like, I'm going to write it all down. Take notes. And how many do you think actually did? None. None. Literally none. So he's— I forget what talk it was. But he's— we've been talking about what should we do? Like, and I said to him, hey, I've got a team. I've been doing technology for 10 years. Like, we can automate this. We can make it so every agent in the country can push a button and this happens, and their clients will think it's coming from them. But really, we're doing everything. Yeah. So he's like ready to go on stage at some talk, and we put together a quick Jotform, says we got to get some validation, get people— would you do this? Would you pay for this? Goes on stage, hey guys, go to this website, please let us know, answer these questions, you'll be on the early, you know, admission list. Answer these questions. Everybody said, yes, I'd pay for this. This is what I would pay. They were willing to pay more than we thought we were going to charge. Um, and then within 2 weeks I quit what I was doing and he was stepping out of real estate and launched it.
