Production Mastermind - Production Over Noise

Let's share wins.

Adam, you go ahead.

Hey, I, I was just saying, man, I was just saying things are good. We got a couple under contract and, uh, couple new listings coming up. This thing seem to be rolling smoothly along, which is great, but also not time to take our foot off the gas pedal. So we're just, uh, plugging right along, man. It's, it's good though. It's good. Awesome. What do you got, Kim?

Yeah, no, I'm kind of the same. I'm plugging right away, plugging along, doing all the consistency. Right. And just even when I don't want to, just forcing it and just, you know what I mean? Today you got, because I know what happens when we don't, but I'm excited because I have a couple of agents coming May 4th, Lars, that I want to put in front of you. So yeah, we're going to, we got, I got lots of good things going on.

Awesome.

You guys should reach out to every RE/MAX agent, you know.

Yes, I've actually made a list of that today.

Hey Lars, can you talk a little bit more about that merger and how to position ourselves to grow some of those people in order to get them to meetings like that?

Yeah, and I would also make sure you guys go to John's Thursday call.

Yep.

Yeah, I know it's not the topic for today, but we can talk about it. I mean, it's such a small group. But also it'll, it'll, the dust will settle a little bit. People will have a little bit better handle on like what it means. And the, the thing is I'm doing a talk at Jessica Wade's event. I think it's a week. Is it a week from today?

Next Monday.

So, and the talk is gonna be about signal to noise.

Okay.

You know, so, so It's all freaking noise. None of it is going to help an agent sell a single home more. Like, the agents that are like— I mean, there's a lot of RE/MAX agents that are like completely not tech-forward that are gonna puke at the prospect of even being remotely attached to a cloud-based, tech-forward company. Um, RE/MAX was in severe decline before this. I don't know enough about the inner workings of REEL, you know, to know if, um, I can't really positively spin this if I were trying. Um, I've processed it a lot on AI. It's the, the net net for agents is that it's just uncertainty, you know? And so from an agent attraction standpoint, it's like, It's almost like call your RE/MAX friends and nice and just say, told you, I told you cloud-based brokerages that were tech-forward were going to take over the world. They're literally taking you guys over, and the last 3 to 5 years have been crap for you anyway. Decline in the US. In Canada, it's a different story because RE/MAX is super strong in Canada, um, but here in the US, I, I worked for, it was 8 years in doing acquisitions for an aerospace company. So, and it's like legacy, completely legacy industry. You know, there were probably 15 major suppliers 50 years ago, and now there's like 4 main suppliers, like Boeing, Lockheed, Airbus, and then maybe one other. And so it just happens in really mature industries that it just happens. The irony, if you read that, because I used to do this literally for a public company and I was the guy putting numbers into the spreadsheet that the CEO of the company would then go tell Wall Street that we think this is going to be accretive, meaning the earnings is going to go up for the combined entity. And You see the word synergies and pro forma literally in their press release, and those are the made-up numbers that I would put into a spreadsheet that the Wall Street people doing the deals would then, you know, use to support and justify the go-forward earnings. So on the bullish side, if I were real and I had— I don't know if they have 15,000 or 12,000 agents and you're 10xing your company. If they can pull it off, it would be amazing. Like, if they could get like 70% of the agents to fully adopt their platform and their, their platform is ready for the kind of scale that, you know, and it was full integration and RE/MAX agents got excited about it. And I think that's a 20 to 30% chance it's going to like completely crush it. If they do pull it off, I think it could be amazing. But they're picking up a colossal amount of debt. Like, RE/MAX was massively debt-laden, a sinking ship that you could have just let them be for the next 3 to 5 years, and I think they would have gone away. So this is not like two strong players coming together and like doing something great together. It's if you were to tell me, like, what it would— if I had a million dollars invested in Compass and that thing, Real, and RE/MAX and that thing, or eXp, all day long I would choose eXp. Of the three, there's no debt, there's cash flow. You know, where do you want to be in a, like, massively disruptive time in a legacy industry, you want to be the person that doesn't have debt and we have cash flow.

And what is the appeal with Real? Just that it's cloud-based? I don't know. I mean, it's growing around our area, and I'm very curious, do we approach Real people, Real agents, as well as RE/MAX, or more so RE/MAX because we think they're going to be—

well, here's the reality, is that when you have a conversation with an agent, it's like, has your bank account gone up in the last like 2, 3 years? Has your net worth gone up? Are you living a reasonable amount of work-life balance? Are you investing outside of— like, none of that changes with any of this shit, right? That's like the backdrop to it. Like, a real conversation with a real person. Yeah, it's like, do you really think you're going to be better 12 months from now with all of the integrating and the noise that's going to come your way via this merger? Or does it make sense, you know, after I've been talking to you about eXp EXP's only gotten stronger from a leadership or from a tech or from an operations standpoint, while other companies are really grasping at straws in a legacy industry to try to throw a bunch of agents together and justify to Wall Street— not to the agents, no one checked with any of the agents at Real or RE/MAX if this was a good idea, right? Zero. I, like, I can guarantee that not a single agent— I mean, maybe, maybe if they had ownership or they were on a leadership team or whatever You know what I mean? So none of this is for the agent. And we happen to be at a company that hasn't had to make a move like this, that is only focused on helping. Like, have you guys been on a call with Leo? The granular, um, like he's actually like trying to get leads for us and he's working in fast cap. And like these other, like, um, Robert, I don't know the guy, obviously he's not a stupid guy, the Compass guy. But he's not playing that game. Like, he's not talking about like, how do I make this single agent— they invested massively in their tech platform. But I was a Compass approved coach. Um, ironically, they didn't realize I was with eXp, and they went, took us through their tech platform, and they told us that 5% of Compass agents use their tech platform. Wow. They built this shiny Crazy. Yeah, mousetrap that nobody uses.

And Wendy was there, right, for several years, because I've known Wendy Forsyth since we met in 2014, right? And I know she was there for many years, but I think that's also what appealed to me, right? She came back to eXp.

Yeah, I just don't think If you were to ask any Compass or the other, all the other brands that merged together 12 months from now, if their business got better as a result of that happening, it's still like what you do every day. You pick a lead gen lever or two, double, triple down on it, eliminate all the noise around you. That's the entire game because we each have an individual license. To use within the boundaries of the laws of our local market to sell real estate. And the reality is, I mean, I, I never really leaned on my brokerage for anything when I was in production, all the brands I was with. So there's still a lot of agents out there that think the brand has anything to do with, um, you know, with, with their, their business, and it just doesn't. So to me, it's like, you know, reach out to everybody and all the time and say, you know, we're, we're not participating until we do. I guess we're not participating in, you know, in that sort of distraction because we don't have to. You know, we are— our balance sheet is super clean. Our cash flows are really strong in a really down market in terms of unit size. We had to right-size the company, what was it, a year ago, and we got rid of a bunch of people because the units, we got caught like everyone did in every industry when interest rates flipped and the unit recession came on. But I think this next phase of growth, I think it's going to do a lot for eXp. It can only shake things up at those companies where agents are going to have questions. Is this where I need to be for whatever reason? Versus like— I was talking to John this morning. It's like the net-net is most agents can't interpret something like this in a rational way. Either irrational, like, this is going to be awesome for us, it's like it's the best thing ever, we get to plug into that, we get the balloon, you know. It's like, uh, that's not going to help your business, I promise. Or they're like the opposite, like, this is going to kill my business. Like, I hate Real, I've told everyone Real is stupid, and now I'm a are real and it's like, I got to change. And they don't. Like, they're going to be fine either way. Like, it's like, just keep the signal is like, what did I do today, even though it was announced? And am I going to spend the next month worrying about something that I can't control anyway, that's going to have zero impact on my business? My license and I transact deals with a brokerage. If I get some value for the amount of money I pay in, great. If I don't, then I should be changing brokerages anyway. Yeah, so that's kind of how I interpret it. But then, you know, you just keep your head down and do what you need to do. And if it does get in your way, you know, if you stay at Real, you stay at RE/MAX, in the next 12 to 18 months, if something does change in your business that makes it not a fair value exchange or harder to do business or whatever, then you can, you know, make a decision to leave. But a lot of agents instantly, you know, like, worst thing ever or whatever.

Will it affect their splits? Like, when— as they merge together, do all those contracts with the individual offices and agents, do those change?

Do we know, or still status quo and they should I mean, just like, yeah, it's a good question. Who knows? Um, big picture, you know, they acquired a public company, RE/MAX, that has a bunch of franchise agreements. And no offense if you're older, but I've got to imagine that the average RE/MAX broker owner is in mostly his 60s. He is not tech-forward, um, and I'm generalizing. I owned a RE/MAX for 5 years, and this was only like 8 years ago. We submitted our monthly numbers on a fillable PDF, a fillable PDF, and they just trusted us. We did the right numbers. There was no internet connection between our production and any information system at all. Wow. So you're taking a company like that with a real— or it could have been eXp acquiring RE/MAX this morning, and I would have said the same thing, like, oh my gosh, that's going to be a shit show. Like, you know what I mean? And RE/MAX brokers have like typically, you know, 15 to 25 agents. And if you're— if you— if you stayed at your RE/MAX office with all the other options available, you stay there because of the relationship with your broker, right? Yeah, you know, and so I don't— you couldn't pay me enough to, to take that deal. Like, I just think it's the worst culture clash ever. But who knows? Like I said, there's a 20, 20% chance, you know. For RE/MAX, it was probably, uh existential move. And for Real, we don't know. It could have been as well, you know. I don't know the inner workings of Real and how dire their situation was. They're not doing great financially, you know. So, but if they can pull it off, you know, why not 10x the size of your company and shift 70% of their agents over aggressively? I mean, I think they'd have to come at it really hard But it's just noise. Yeah, I agree. Right, right. So more wins. What are some production wins? But I would definitely go to the Thursday call because that'll be the topic. Yeah, I'm planning on it. Chris, what's your production win? Debbie? Widget production.

Alrighty, so I've been focusing a bit on the, on the wholesale side, um, because I have a telemarketer that she's helped me find cash type of transactions, which most of us end up being listings anyways. Um, but I picked up a couple deals, one's already locked up where I could be able to assign it and make maybe 30, 35, or partner up with somebody that'll buy it and just finish the rehab because 90% of the rehab's already done. So yeah, just dabbling with that.

And, um, yeah, I just heard someone scream in my house. That's not good. Um, yeah, you know, um, you know Chris Craddock? Yeah, he's a— I was with him in Cabo a day that he closed the deal at 300 double-sided in the morning, and then he closed it the same day for $390,000. And it's like, so you made 6% on— so $18,000 at closing, and then closed the same day and he made $90,000.

Not a bad day.

That's crazy. And he partnered with a local wholesaler that doesn't monetize the leads that aren't looking for that, um, that are not investable. So that is the real opportunity. If you go down that path, it's like, how many of these can we list, you know? And you have a 30-day fast, fast sale program that, you know, involves exposing it to every buyer, not just, you know, the person looking for the delta in between. The cars are the same way. They wholesale and then they retail. And it's like, you know, you're like flipping— you can flip couches. I mean, there's, there's this aspect in every freaking market. Just with real estate, there's like a a big delta. So, because before there was—

I'd have conversations with sellers to where they would say that they wanted X, and I said, but I can list it for this much. And I, I couldn't get why they would just want to take less. And I'd kind of pass on those deals— not pass, but lose out on those deals. And now it's like, I can help a seller however, in, in whatever shape or form, however the negotiation, whether it's assisting them with whatever expenses they have going on personally, just whatever, whatever it takes to make the deal happen. Yeah, assuming that it can all make sense, and then that just opens a lot more doors.

Yeah, it's good. What other wins you guys got?

I'm slow. I, uh, I had an open house cancel on me Friday, um, and, uh, mailer response. I'm getting people that are hitting it, but just difficulty getting them on the phone, and texting brevity's kind of blocked a lot of those.

Wait, where's the positive focus? Is there a positive focus coming?

Uh, yeah, yeah, that I'm still driven with it. I see it. I'm just looking at how do I increase the—

oh, it sounded super neg— did everyone pick up on the negative aspect of It didn't sound positive at all. What's the win? We're doing wins.

Okay.

All right. Yeah. What's the win? See, now you gotta find the win.

So, so the, the win is I'm getting great interaction. I'm just not getting people moving forward. So there's a positive. I can see the steps there. I'm getting the responses. I've made the right choices. Um, I just need more.

Awesome. Yeah. Marry the process, divorce the result. That's a good one. Okay.

So I just did an open house. We had 50 people in 2 days. Um, and I put together a process of text, voice, that's 21 days. Um, so I'm using that as a follow-up to follow up every day for 21 days.

Awesome. Yeah, that's great. Yeah. 50 people. There's probably a deal or two there.

Hopefully.

Yeah. And then you just keep improving it, and then you do it long enough until every open house turns into a closing.

Yeah.

You know, that, that's, that's the level of focus that you need on any Legion lever, unfortunately. Like, I don't, you know, and we covered it last two weeks, I feel like, just the, the amount of intensity and focus that anything takes now and there's just so— there's so easy to get distracted. It's just so easy, and it feels so good. I'm like, I'm in the YouTube rabbit hole all the time. Is anyone else like go down that? Or TikTok could be one. I don't do TikTok, but, um, and it's like all of a sudden you just start looking at a couple things. I'm redesigning my wife's podcast studio And like now I'm looking at like desk, like under desk cable management videos. There's a whole like, and reorganizing. And I'm doing her, I'll take a picture of her studio when I finish it. It's going to be so beautiful. But like we're doing acoustic paneling and like all of a sudden I've spent like probably 25 freaking hours watching these stupid videos. And then you just, yeah, so, but it's for my wife. So it's, she really appreciates it. All right, who didn't share a win? Anyone else have a win? All right, so now, Jim, let's go through your challenge. What was the challenge of, uh— oh, Jim bowed out. He didn't— oh, unmute yourself. What was the— so, so restate the challenge in your, uh, when you were talking earlier.

Yeah, so the, the challenge is just how do I increase this, right? And so it is Obviously slow moving. The open houses seem to be the better return. We're just at, you know, month 3 without a paycheck coming through, and we want to make sure that that is going to be short-lived. And so looking for how do I increase the closure rates or With the, with the open houses, would you suggest doing 2 of them a day at different locations, like a morning and an afternoon?

All right, first and more importantly, I have to share my wife's podcast. You guys have to go on here and subscribe.

Um, and I'm just dancing because I have a bet. I did something to my back, and so I'm, I'm being tortured as I'm, as I'm here, so Man, you and me both.

I, I had a traumatic experience lifting my 1-year-old son. He's 18 now. I pivoted one time with him, holding him, and it nearly took me out for like a year. I'm not even kidding. It wrecked my back. It was just totally fluke. I had the same feeling yesterday when I was moving crap around my house. Luckily, it bounced back, and, um, but I, I sort of vaguely can, uh Can sympathize. Okay, so, so what's the real issue? So the real issue is, um, how do I get paid as quickly as possible? Or is it like, how do I use open houses specifically to get paid as quickly as possible?

Both.

Okay, so if you were to coach yourself, um, and you've been, you've been at the shift from new homes to, um, to residential For 90 days.

Yeah.

If you were to pick on yourself, um, what's been the level, and there's no criticism in this. Well, I guess there is because that's literally the point of this call, but hopefully constructive.

Sure.

Have you been, did you pick the right thing to start? Have you been distracted? Have you spent time doing different things that haven't led to Better question: if you can go back 90 days, what would you have done differently? 3 things you would do differently if you could go back 90 days.

I think it— for me, it's kind of determining the use of time. Um, all of these things are really important, right? And so when I went through and kind of picked the pillar art— so open house seems to be the best exposure, the best, you know, ROI. Um, I I tried to team that up specifically within the areas that, that were part of my farm, um, as opposed to going out to like Somerville, which is about an hour away, where the price point is about half. Most of my stuff is at a million bucks that were here. And so it is, I think, picking the location and not being so specific for those homes, um, and then prioritizing my time with these calls because I feel like there are a million different calls to jump on and they're not revenue-producing. And so trying to prioritize those would be the, uh, that would be the direction of correction.

Yeah, so, so we can't go back in time, so the only— and, and that, that is the— that is part of it. You meaning you and every other agent that's not producing at the level they want, it's, it is highly likely, myself included, that we're spending a bunch of time on stuff that isn't the signal. So if the signal is, and I agree that if you put me in production right now and you and I had to sell in the next 6 months, I had to close 10 homes, it would be open houses. And I would, I would pro— I would call in those neighborhoods. Cold. I would door knock more doors than I wanted to. I would do more social media videos than I probably wanted to or felt comfortable with. Um, and I would put out yards. I would put out more signs than I probably wanted to. Um, I would build out, to Debbie's point, I would build out a follow-up, uh, thing. I would have on-site, like, you know, the sexiest sounding thing that they just needed to opt into. Like, hey, real quick, I've got a gold brick, you know, 10-ounce gold brick available. If you log in, you just give me your contact information, I'll make sure it instantly sends it out to you. And you can do that on any CRM, uh, super easy. Create a form and just have it do it. So I would do all of that, and I'd probably hold more open houses per week than I would want to. Okay. As if my life depended on it.

Yeah.

And the way I put it, like, like, let's say 6 months from now, if you don't close 10 to 15 homes from open houses, like, someone will cut off your left hand. You're probably in, in front of your family, you're probably going to figure out a way to sell 10 or 15 homes, right? Because that, that is going to be horrible, you know. Um, It's better when I use that analogy with a young dad and he has young kids and the thought of like his 2 and 5-year-old is like, oh my Lord, I would never want them to see my hand get cut off. Because you're not going to die, but you'll just be without a hand. Right? So pretty bad.

We don't even have to include the kids. I don't want to see it myself.

Yeah. So that's the, you know, I remember I was thinking of this as I'm preparing my presentation next week. I worked one lead source for 2 and a half years. It was the only— I only did buyers, and it was a very— a couple variants of the same thing, but it was literally just a simple anywhere I can put an ad that had, um, like, for distressed sales was the title, um, for a free list of homes, go to cltdistresssales.com. It was an all-text landing page, and I just acquired their contact information, and I called them, and I got their— what areas they were looking in. I tried to close for the appointment, but then I just set them up on some kind of search, and it probably wasn't even in— I didn't even start with BoomTown until October 2008, like a year and a half, you know. So it was very one-dimensional. I think I sold out of the first 71 homes Yeah, so my first 22 months in the business, I sold 71 homes and 2 were listings. Everything else was a variant of where could I put— and it was on Craigslist at the time— and a cheap ad in a classified newspaper at the, at the end of the newspaper. And it was old-school Craig Proctor marketing. And I didn't— and I had a buyer presentation that I loaded into Top Producer that I customized with their name in it, and I would just go through the buyer presentation get them to sign a one-page buyer agreement, and off we went. It's all I did. I didn't start my database touch blueprint. I didn't let my friends know. I did nothing on social media. And so, I did that for a long time. Yeah. You know, and it worked. And I closed a lot of deals very quickly, but I didn't like any of it. I wasn't very personable and I was working with buyers and I was working out of bounds. You know, I only hired my first agent August, September 2009, and that was 2 and a half years, uh, after I got into the business. But I built that lead gen lever, so now he can kind of just do the same crap I was doing and take over all the buyers and show— even show my clients. So how many open houses have you done in the last 90 days?

I have probably done 3, 3 a month. It's been about the average.

Okay, so 9 weekends.

Yeah, because the— we just haven't had that— the eXp in the area that, that was here, with the exception of driving out an hour plus, really hasn't had them. And I hadn't reached out to other brands to do so. Um, one of the weekends where I couldn't find one, I did it with a builder, um, because they allowed me to go through and go do that.

So, um That's another angle too. You can, you can modify the new construction. Did you watch the new construction training that's in the— you could probably do versions of open house or just basically own new construction in your market. That may be— that's another thing in my market. It's similar. There's just a ton of new construction everywhere. All the big builders are here.

Yep.

I would basically act as if I owned all that inventory. And I would just develop like 10 or— and that's a natural for you. So the question is, should you do open houses or should you do the new construction pillar? Your background is in new construction. Um, you could essentially run virtual open houses on all these new construction, build relationships in a world that you came from. So that's another thing that I would consider doing if I were you, but be careful to, to go all in on either one. I think if, if I can use it, if my life depended on the next 12 months, me selling like 30 to 40 homes from one thing and all I could do is new construction to do it, I could do it.

Okay.

I would just, I would find like the, the, the reps that were a little bit business-minded and they could give me Like when deals fall through, builder closeouts, like I would have enough tentacles out there where they would let, you know, whatever I could sort of advertise or send to my database or, um, you know, you do it in conjunction with open houses and then you've got fresh inventory, you know, to bring people to. If there's not something, I've got builder closeouts, you know, that I have access to. Would you, you know, or do you want access to builder? So it's, it's all, you're making offers to anyone that you meet with and open houses just give you, to Debbie's point, There's not— there's no other opportunity where you can meet with, potentially meet with 50 people in a weekend.

You're right.

Zero. Like, there's just nothing that, that, you know, I, I guess you can, you know, you can call expireds, FSBOs, or, you know, probate, or, you know, and you can have 25 to 50 conversations a day, but not like actually meeting somebody. Um, see who's coming in here. Anthony. So, and then just sticking with something long enough until you get traction. I mean, Anthony told his story in here, like 3 years on Instagram and now it's finally sort of building some momentum.

Yeah.

You know, but most people will do 3 months on something and be like, well, this doesn't work.

Yeah, and that's why I want to continue with the open houses and the agents. And it is, um, it is funny when I call them and they, they didn't realize I've made a change. And so, um, but yeah, I appreciate the input. Thank you.

Yeah, for sure. And then also, I feel like everyone— my camera went out. Um, And process this stuff with, you know, through ChatGPT also. Like, I'm struggling, I'm whatever, you know. Everyone should have a project on ChatGPT where they're working through business issues in real time. You know, I go to this weekly call and he keeps picking on focus or prioritization. Is that really happening here? Or open house is stupid in my market? You know, describe your market. It's infinitely smarter about your market than you are. Yeah, so I wouldn't— I mean, I process everything that's going on with Revshare, you know, that being my primary income stream. I process everything through Revshare, through that project that has probably like, you know, 70, 80 conversations at this point. Now it has all of that that it has access to as it's telling me, you know, knowing me and how I want to live this next season of my life and less stress and less striving and performing. You know, it's like there's nobody that knows me better at this point that can give me better advice, you know. So make sure you take some of this and feed it into ChatGPT and you're constantly having conversations.

That's a great idea.

Yeah, for sure. What do you got, Kim?

Are you using Claude also? I know you use a lot of ChatGPT, but I was curious. There's— I'm hearing a lot more about that it is— can help us with a lot of admin stuff. And so I'm curious about that.

Yeah, I mean, I don't have a lot of applications for it, although that's another rabbit hole that I go down quite a bit. Cowork. And, um, I definitely have it. I'm like, I don't think there's any— unless you're building an app, which I don't think you'll need an app. You don't need code. Um, here's my view on it, and this is going to sound like an old man view, and I won't give the name of this person, but I may have mentioned her last week. I had my main admin, best VA that I've ever had, and we have a— I have a third of her available if anyone needs an amazing admin. Um, I said hire this admin to figure out the AI stuff for you, and her answer was that no, I'm gonna— I, I'm gonna figure out Agentic AI and all these 'You know, Agent AI things are going to do all the work for me.' I'm like, 'It could be, but when are you going to figure that out? You're already like completely maxed out. Your bank account is negative. You know, you're not getting taken care of yourself as it is. You don't have time for anything.' So, and then we've had, um, what's his name on here? The young kid, 24-year-old. I just—

Preston.

Yeah, he does. He's not thinking about AI. I know, kid's 24 years old and he's cold calling for the most part, and he has a shot at selling 50 homes this year and he has $170 grand in the bank.

Who still cold calls?

Come on, it doesn't matter. Choose anything.

He just does it.

He's just focused.

Yeah.

And like, I think there's a part of his personality that allows him to focus in a world that is— it's completely impossible possible, quote unquote, to focus right now. And, and he is— he has just— he has the ability to. I think that's the currency that's going to win in the future, right? You know, so, but, but to your point, I, um, I follow this guy that was a crypto guy, and then crypto went to shit, and he became an AI influencer. Um, Miles— I forget his name. Anyway, he, he was ChatGPT all in until Claude had that one upgrade. Now Chat has one-upped Claude, so it's like He just made a video that he's back to ChatGPT now. It's like, okay. And then of course in between there, I paid for a year subscription of Claude. Claude seems to max out very quickly in a conversation.

Oh.

Like I'm like deep in a conversation about like my daughter's going through this major thing and this, I uploaded like 3 books and it's like, you are, it's 7:00 AM as a process. Like you're, you can't, you have no more credits until noon. And I'm like, I like, we're in them. It's like stopping a conversation and I've let my whole heart out to Kim and Kim's going to tell me the answer, like, I'll tell you in 5 hours. It's like, what are we doing here?

Sounds like therapy.

And then, and yeah, and then the prompt comes up. It's like, you got to pay $100 a month to get access to the next level. It's like, oh great. So I was a little annoyed with that.

Yeah.

But, but there's no doubt that all of this stuff is going to, like, agents are going to be out of business if they're not using AI on a regular basis. Yeah, you know, so I mean, I use it all the time for everything. I had someone come back, they chose— this was like 15 months ago— they chose a financing option for our $10K 90-day program, completely satisfied. I had all the calls recorded. They've referred people to us. They stopped paying their bill, and now the bank wants to come back on me and say client satisfaction makes you pay us. I uploaded inside of my Google Drive, uh, and using Gemini because it's Google Drive, I uploaded my agreement with the bank, my agreement with the processor, and then I said, analyze all this for me and give me my position in an email that I could send back to them. I'm telling you, in 5 minutes it's like, this is complete BS, here's what you need to say, and gave me the email. And then like the whole thing went away. And normally— and they sent me an invoice, just pay the invoice. Normally I would have been like, man, this is a big deal, a bank's coming back on me for a client not paying their bill. I didn't have a personal relationship with the client. The coaching company shut down. Normally I would just would've stroked it. I would just wrote a check for $10K and like in less than 10 minutes it evaluated every call that the guy did with us. And it, and I said, give me 10 points that I can send them specifically time-coded in actual calls that say the client said. So like you can't, not be using it to advance. Like, there are people using it 10x that I'm using it and advancing so much quicker even than I am. I don't have the need to right now. So I, I still think pick a model and stick with it because you can, um, you guys know Cal Newport, he wrote a book called Digital Minimalism. The, the one of the cool things about that book is that It doesn't say don't go down the AI rabbit trail. It's like you, a better example. It's like, um, you know, Apple has native calendar, native email, native notes app, native reminders app. You could spend an unbelievable amount of time researching the best solutions in all of those and paying for them, or just deciding that you're going to use native Apple apps and, and forever be done with— and just come up with a simple system to, to have that manage all of your productivity and be done with ever testing out an app. So Cal Newport in Digital Minimalism would say pick one model and just stick with it because there's going to be another one and another one. Now there seems to be just 3 main ones, but Elon's not giving up. He's the 4th, you know? So if you're constantly bouncing between them, like, you're never going to build traction. And so I still find myself going back to ChatGPT because I have all of my stuff in there and it seems to be just fine. So, but I paid for an annual subscription of Claude based on the big push there. And then it is, it's a funny, it's a funny world. I did feel like, Lars, what's that, Anthony?

You're chasing squirrels, right?

Yeah. And I wanted to ask, and it's kind of like, you know, watching a video about a guy's morning routine, you know, like Alex Hormozi's morning routine, when the guy's like worth $100 million and you're like, oh, I gotta do that. I'm in a position where I've ground the heck out of my life to get to the point where I can only work a little bit now. So some of the stuff I say You know, I have to remember that I have to put myself back in a crappy market where I focused. Focus is still the currency, even more so now than ever. Getting out of admin. I still think hiring an admin when you can afford it is the next step, you know. And Tristan is living proof of it. 24 years old. He's focusing on dollar-productive activities as many hours a day as possible. He's delaying his— he doesn't even have an admin yet, you know. So yeah, what do you got, Anthony? You've been patiently waiting. Yeah.

So I don't know, maybe this is a little bit of a tangent here, but I'm curious what people's perspectives are of open houses in this market. I just did one yesterday. I did another one at the same house not that long ago, and It just doesn't seem like a very productive path.

Funny, you came a little bit late and Debbie's positive focus was that she had 50 people through 2 open houses on the same property last weekend.

Maybe it's just my area or me or something, but I only had 3 in yesterday.

Yeah, I guess.

Yeah.

You guys can tell me, anyone that's run an open house. I mean, I think there is a way to create some demand for it and make it a big deal. And, you know, you probably do all that stuff, you know, have your Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Leading up to it and your lives and your all of that stuff that kind of lead up to it, you know, 40 to 50 signs, you know, if you're out in the middle of nowhere and there's no main roads within a gajillion miles from where you are, the chances you get people through are, are really low. Um, I've— yeah, I didn't use open houses. Deb, did you have something to add?

Yeah, what I was going to say is, Anthony, I mean, you always want to make sure it's a good house that it's well priced, the pictures are good. That's really important. And if it's the opening weekend, that's even better.

Yeah, this one wasn't. My client just really wanted me to do one and I was like, well, fine, I'll do it. I'm not a big fan of open houses.

I feel like they did a lot better back before COVID Well, you missed the whole part. Like, Anthony, if your life depended on you making a living only by holding open houses, your attitude about them would change.

Oh yeah, totally. And it doesn't at all. Like, I, I don't— for me, I don't feel like they're worthwhile. I'm not saying that they aren't.

Yeah, but you're— you, you— yeah, unless you're going to make it a lead gen lever, I wouldn't even worry about it. Um, if you were going to make it a lead gen lever, knowing the way you play the game of real estate and the way your brain thinks, you could turn it into a legit lead gen lever. Being sort of like quote unquote forced to do one, and you probably didn't market it and you didn't have heart for it I, you know, of course there's no surprise that it wasn't successful.

Yeah, no, I, I did a little bit of marketing, but certainly I, I could have done a lot more. I just didn't have time, honestly.

Yeah, it's the only way. Yeah, so if I had to spend a year doing open houses, I, in my mind, I know that I would be building it for a junior agent to take over and get 2 to 3 deals per month on it. Yeah, it would take me a year to build it, you know, but it would be a hard year, like, and I probably the only thing that I would focus on, and I obviously I would use social to promote it, so I'd be working on my digital footprint, and I probably would have the capacity to build my database at the same time, but it would be that third lead gen lever, you know, it would like only you can only really work on one other thing besides social and your database. If you want to get to 3, 4, 8 deals per month, it's going to be from not doing a bunch of things, you know, very shallow. It's going to be going deep ultimately. So, yeah. So, there's— and Anthony, your personality is probably more like mine where, you know, the thought of talking to 50 people on a weekend is exhausting.

It is.

So it's, it's— you'd have to really like really psych yourself up to, to put yourself in a position to make that work.

I'm dreading someone walking through the door, but I really want them to walk through the door.

Yeah, exactly. And that's the cool thing about real estate, we can all build businesses that fit our personalities. Yeah, you know.

Yeah, I'm great one-on-one stuff, particularly with people I know.

Yeah, and that's, that's where I, you know, whatever system I was going to put together, it was just to generate some kind of interest in something that gave me the ability to call someone and say, hey, you asked for this thing, I just sent it over, how long you've been looking? Like, it's just not very complicated. So, so they bothered me, so I felt okay calling them. And then I just provided value to them, you know, and I just did that as many times a week as possible. And I organized my database in a way where I had separate time blocks for new calls and for follow-up calls. And I just set all my tasks in the database. And that's— the business still continues to be that today. So there is no AI that's taking over all of it. There's no Maybe some agent is smart enough to put all the agents to work and they're setting appointments and closing deals and signing listing agreements. But we're not quite there yet, you know.

How much time do you spend managing all that, too?

Exactly. I think it's going to drive, you know, I've mentioned it on this call before, the book Thank You Economy by Gary Vee. You know, he The net takeaway from that book was like, unless you're the person that is like, you're developing the AI tech app and like, that's your lane and you're like, your life is dedicated to that and you've got financing and whatever, you don't need it in these, whatever with AI, but you better become the business that operates as if it were in the 1950s where relationships really, really mattered. You know, and it's like you, it's like that small town, like everybody knows Kim, you know, she is just in the community. She's doing the, she's advertising the, you know, the Donate or Dump or the Coffee and Shred. And like, there's like all the time I see Kim talking about everything on social that's just helping the community. And she gives whatever to this thing. And she loves the Humane Society. And she's always, I always see her with like stray dogs and, You know, so like that is the way, and that's not my personality, you know, but that is the way that you can just, I think you can have a defensible business that way. I think that's the only way, you know, you still need leverage. So I'm not saying ignore tech or not have an admin, you know, someone that's running signs around for you or, you know, like you can't afford to do that stuff, you know, so all the same principles around leverage apply, but It's just going to become easier to get your content out there. Chris, you look confused. Okay, he's doing another deal. He didn't like the counter. All right, what other challenges you guys having or questions? Nothing?

Anyone else having a lot of deals fall apart? No, I've had, I've had 5 this year so far. It's been rough.

Lars Hedenborg, I'm curious because you speak to a lot of, a lot of agents. What's the consensus like throughout the country with markets? How, how are most markets doing? Because I'm in Miami and the single-family home market is really strong. Um, condo market, not so much, but what are you hearing from agents in other parts of the country? And when you say strong or like units are increasing or increasing, but just more of like a stable market to where the market's not going in the opposite direction and agents are complaining about, you know, uh, again, their business dramatically slowing down, that kind of, that kind of thing.

I mean, I think you're gonna appreciate this answer. There, there isn't a massively— like, for an agent that's focused and like they know how to make money in real estate, when I talk to those agents, their businesses are not suffering, you know. So the question is, if you're not that person, like, how could you move closer to become that person? Um, but most markets, I mean, we're still not where we will be hopefully in the next 2 to 3 years, or 1 to 2 years, or, you know, if we get a new Fed chair and we get a 3-point reduction in rates or whatever crap, you know, uh, our current administration might pull off, I think that might help things, you know. So a lot of agents have left the industry, so I think we're, I think we're right-sized, you know, for the amount of 3 years into a unit recession. But yeah, I don't have our top agents complaining. It's the weaker agents that have no idea how to go get business. They're not focused whatsoever. They think they're being productive when they're doing a webinar on AI or something, where it's just like, how many productive conversations can I have today with decision-making adults about real estate, whether it's like complete strangers and I'm just working expireds, FSBOs, or probate, or geo leads, or you've got a RedX account and you're trying to do something in there every day. Or do I actually— have I lived in this market for 12 to 15 years and I owned a business prior and I'm building a database and I'm just reaching out to all those people? But, but the, but the same thing is like, if you did that for 90 days, you know, then your business is super strong. But if you didn't and you don't know what to do, I think it's the, the agents that are like, I don't know what to do. It's like, but are you doing anything? You know, like, you can open up a ChatGPT account and say, hey, I'm in Charlotte, North Carolina, just south of Charlotte. I don't know how to generate business. Can you give me the best 3 or 4? Like, I don't have a great big database, you know. Is it expireds or FSBOs or probate? Or should I door knock or do open houses? Or get into something and then just follow that one thing for as long as it takes to generate business, or as long as it takes for you to get out of your own way, to get the fear, the anxiety, or the— your crappy skills dialed in so you can know what to say to 50 people when they come into an open house. Debbie's been doing real estate forever. There isn't anyone— nobody can walk into the open house and not— a neighbor or a first-time buyer or a trade-up buyer or an out-of-town buyer or Like, there's no conversation that Debbie can't have, but a new agent's just like, I don't know what to, you know. But you can even now roleplay that with ChatGPT. Roleplay these 4 types of buyers came through last weekend. I was completely— didn't know what to say. Can we roleplay someone living in an apartment, some out of town, a nosy neighbor? You know, what can I give away at the open house where everyone's going to sign up for it? You know, is it best to do a paper signup or a digital form or You know, so I guess part of it's— yeah, so to answer your question, I just don't see competent people struggling in good markets or bad markets.

If the market's— if a market is good, let's call it, there's just more leads, period, right? There's more deals happening. But when a market's suffering, that's when agents have to, in my opinion, is figure out how just to talk to more people. If you're used to talking to X amount of people per week, you just need to increase that Yeah, because you ask agents, you're having a really hard time, okay, but how many people did you speak to today? How many did you speak to yesterday? What activities are you doing?

And as we sit here today, for the next 12 to 24 months, maybe even more, I don't think that single thing is going to change. You know, like, in the last 90 days, on average weekly, how many conversations did you have and what were the types of conversations? Did you hold 2 open houses a week? Did you, you know, so, and I know I'm like, I'm annoying myself with going back to the same point, but that, that is literally the entire game of anything. You know, it's, it's like, we want to eat crappy food and not work out and be fit, but that doesn't work. You know, so like, I've never been more fit in my life, but I've also spent like 3 years focusing like crazy on my physical body, you know. So is it any— am I surprised that I'm completely— like, my— it annoys my wife, you know. She can see my veins and my arms and she's like, you're too skinny. Um, but I'm not surprised by it because it's like been a 3-year journey. I've never focused on my health as much as I have over such a long period of time, you know. And I'm tracking— for 3 years I've tracked everything I've eaten, mostly every day. You know, so it's same thing with business. If you're not tracking, if you're not committed, and if you're not like completely dedicated to the signal is meaningful conversations. That's the only number I would need to know from any agent that was struggling. How many meaningful conversations? Where's your tracker? Where are you tracking your numbers? And how many meaningful conversations are you having on average per week over the last 13, 26, 52 weeks. And then if you're having a lot of conversations and you're not having consults, then you just suck at whatever you're saying. And there's, there's no reason to meet with you. You know, so, and when I did all those buyer deals, it was literally the offer was the Craig Proctor Universal Follow-Up Script. It was, hey, Debbie, would it be helpful if I sent you a list of off-market properties, builder closeouts, distressed sales, you know, properties that, you know, most agents do. Would that be helpful for you in your home search? 100% of people say yes. Great. When's a good time we could sit down for like literally 10 minutes and I can get your exact criteria so I can dial it in specific to what you're looking for? Can't you just email it over? I have found— I've been doing this long enough— emailing it over is not going to give you what you're looking for. There's no obligation when we meet to sign anything at all. But if we get together, you will get deals before other buyers get deals. And deals in this market are going fast. I've got Monday available. I've got— we can meet at a Panera by your work, you know. So just the next thing. And I haven't used that script in a gazillion years, but it's still embedded in my, you know, so I could navigate that script with anybody and I can make the thing sound so freaking sexy that you will figure out a way to meet with with me because I have a gold brick. And I said, Debbie, I get it. You think I'm a salesperson, but this is going to potentially make you tens of thousands of dollars, save you money, get you in front of properties that you wouldn't have access to otherwise.

But that was, that was your hook, right? That was your hook.

That was on the phone. That was my hook.

The reality is the bulk of the properties you're going to send over are from MLS. I mean, there might be the off chance you have. I mean, the chance of you having the off-market for exactly what that person is looking for is slim to none.

100%.

But what you're getting them is to commit to you with the buyer agreement and through the process, and they're going to appreciate the buyer consultation because nobody else is doing the buyer consultation that they would stick with.

Yeah. And we all have access to off-market properties. Expireds are off-market properties. Right? So, if they want to be in like Hunter Oaks, and they're looking for this property, like, yeah, you can go door knock that one house that, you know, so off-market properties, builder closeouts. If you have like one or two builder relationships and they agree to send you like deals that fall through that they need to offload quickly, that's a builder closeout. You have access to short sales and foreclosures in MLS. So all the things are like motivated sellers, like distressed sales, homes that go quickly. You know, they can only access through you. So I would argue a little bit more that I like, I definitely knew what I was, I definitely could give them something of legit value. Um, yeah. So you just have to have that level of conviction to be able to drive them to take the step that you need them to take, which is to meet with you in person.