[Inside Whissel Realty] Letting Your Systems Run Your Company with CEO Kyle Whissel

Here on Real Estate Team os, we.

Do something completely unique for you. Every single week you meet a new team leader or operator and get their.

Stories, insights and hard learned lessons from.

Their team building journey. We're about to embark on something even more unique.

We're going inside Whissel Realty Group based.

In San Diego, California. Of course you're going to meet founder and team leader Kyle Whissel. You'll do that right here in this episode. Of course you'll also meet their coo, Chris Vanderba. But we'll also introduce you to their director of operations, their director of sales, their agent success manager, their heads of media and of marketing, and two of their top agents to find out how this team is operating successfully and profitably.

What we now know as Whissel Realty Group started with an unforgettable postcard and.

10 laptops that were bought on sale even though there were no agents yet to use them.

Today, they're the number one team in San Diego. Consistently a top team in California and in the United States and consistently a top team globally.

Inside Exp Here in this first of.

Nine episodes, Kyle Whissel shares that origin story. He also helps you get past vanity metrics to focus on profitability in your business. He shares ways that they're building leverage around agents to keep them in their.

Three most dollar productive activities. He shares how they know which agents.

To keep and which agents to cut. You'll learn about the elusive power of.

Brand building and how they built theirs in their market.

Kyle breaks down seven key inflection points.

That characterize their team building journey and.

Speaks to the of EOs, the entrepreneurial.

Operating system for getting the team on track and keeping them on track.

Here's episode one, inside Whissel Realty with founder and team leader Kyle Whissel.

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No matter where your business is today or where you want to take it, you'll get there faster and more profitably with an operating system. Welcome to Team os, your guide to starting, growing and optimizing real estate team. Here's your host, Ethan Butte.

Kyle, thank you so much for having us. I'm really excited to dive into your organization. I know a lot from the outside. I've known you and Brian a little bit for a little while, but it's just really an honor to be able to spend so much time with y'.

All. Yeah, I'm excited today. I'm open book, so I don't know where we're going today, but I'm willing to Go wherever you want to take it. So let's do it.

Yeah, I got that vibe for you, obviously. So you were like, hey, is there anything I need to know? I'm like, no, there's nothing you need to know.

Just have a conversation. I wouldn't read them. So.

Yeah, that's funny. Well, I have a standard opener that I ask everyone, which is what is a must have characteristic of a high performing team.

So I would say this is one of the biggest things that we've implemented in the last few years that's allowed us to perform at the level that we are. I think we have a day coming up this week. We have 42 transactions scheduled to close.

Wow.

That'll be the biggest. I don't know if we've had that in a week before, let alone in a day. So I'd say the thing that makes that possible is actually running a business on a system. I think that it's one of those things that's not taught in high school, it's not taught in college, and it sure as hell is not taught in real estate school. And so actually having a system to run a business on is what allows us to perform at the level that we do.

Yeah, obviously you all are on eos. I operated via Scaling up, which is like a.

It's Burn Harness's version, right? Yeah, yeah.

Some denominational shift or something. Yeah.

I mean, I thought about taking EOS and like just adapting it and making it a real estate version. I'm sure. I don't know if EOS copied Scaling up or vice versa, but they're from the same route for sure.

Yeah, yeah. And it's that quarterly cadence I have found to be, as the core of it, to be enough time that you can get a lot done. But this idea of constantly throwing forward, you know, 10 years, five years, three years, one year, one quarter, how did we do against the way that we looked at it last time, and where are we going next step like that. The constant cycle is so powerful for you. I mean, I'm sure it's difficult to do, but think about maybe a year before implementation versus a year after implementation. Just for someone who is not committed to some form of a structure because we're resistant to it at some level. What was life like before? What was life like after your EOS implementation?

Yeah. So before, I would say the two biggest things that changed. One, we had meetings. Just to have meetings. There was no agenda. It was just like, well, we should probably talk once a week. And we would hop on these Meetings. And it would be like, all right, who's got something? It was just such a fricking waste of time. So there was no structure to those meetings. And so now having these meetings where, like, I've had people sit in on these meetings, then we do these every week, and it's 90 minutes and people walk out, and I'm like, you do this every week? Like, holy shit. Like, it's. It's intense. It's a lot. We get so much done in those 90 minutes, and it's so structured. Exactly what we're going to cover, how we're going to cover it, that. That's probably been the biggest change. And then the second biggest change was for me to. I kind of look at Veruca Salt from, like, Willy Wonka, like, I want it and I want it now. I've had plenty of those moments, right? And you go to all these conferences, all these events, and you come back with, like, pages and pages of notes, and you come back to feel like, all right, we're doing this, we're going to do this, we're going to do this. And not being able to get what I want where before I would come back and I would just, like, throw all this shit at the wall and like, hopefully it all works. And now I come back with these ideas, but I don't get what I want. And it's kind of been a tough pill to swallow. At least in the beginning it was. And I just have that mind. No, I want it. I want it now, damn it. And I don't get what I want all the time. That was a big shift for me, but it's the right shift for me because I realized that going to these events, I mean, there's an event coming up next week that's like four days, right? People are going to come back with so many freaking notes from that they're going to come back and they're going to puke all over their team. These, like, you know, 400 new things they're going to implement in their business, and they don't realize they're doing more harm than good. And so having a system that filters all of my ideas before they make it out to the team is protecting me from causing that damage to my team. And so that's been big. And me accepting this and getting rid of my Baruch assault syndrome, and it's okay to not get things now. We have to prioritize. What do we need this quarter? And not that those ideas aren't good ideas. They're just not the right idea this quarter. And maybe it's next quarter, maybe it's the quarter after that. And being okay with that. That's been a huge shift from implementing eos.

Yeah, it's a really difficult thing from the leader seat in particular, especially because of the change that's involved in it. But this idea, there are a number of factors you mentioned. One of them is priority, another one is like scoping.

Right.

So you come back with this idea and you bring it to the team and they're going to, well, this, this, this, this, this. That seems like it's going to take, you know, 80% of my time for the next X amount of weeks, which say nothing. My two team members like that in general. Inherently, you're kind of blind to some of that at some level. If you, if you built the organization up.

I mean, in a perfect world, I should be blind to things within my organization. Like, if I know every little detail about every little thing, then that means I'm not empowering my people to run the company. And there was a thing we learned in EOS is that the, the systems run the company and the people run the systems. Right, Right. Like, I have to, I can help build the systems, but I have to trust the people to run those systems. And I think that's been a huge part of this thing. Um, and then I kind of look at it like it's like the shape of an hourglass. Right. So, like, I go to this event and I have these 400 ideas, and then I can puke them all over my integrator, or COO, as they're more commonly called. And he sifts and sorts through all those ideas, figures out which one makes sense, and now it comes out the other side of the hourglass and it fans out. But now, because he's the one who rolls them out, as opposed to me, the beautiful thing now is the questions don't come to me right now. The questions come to him, and then he sifts and sorts the opposite direction, and I only get the things that I need to know. So it's this really nice filter in the middle that is. Is kind of insulating me from the team and the team from me. But that's a good thing. And because he will take the time to think about how does this affect that and how does it connect to this. Right. Obviously we're working with you guys. Like, there's a million things that are connecting. I think last time I looked, I report every week we're doing over 30,000 zaps via Zapier a week. Right. Like hundreds of thousands of zaps a year. So it's like I don't think about that. I don't know all the 30,000 zaps that are happening. Like if I come in, I'm like, we're doing this. And then I break everything. Like I do. I cause way more harm than good doing that.

Yeah. So it requires a lot of discipline. We're going to be spending time. This is going to be a nine episode series Inside Whissel Realty group. As we talk with the other eight folks in the series, what do you expect that people will see or hear or what do you hope people will see or hear from a style culture focus? Is there anything that people should expect or anything you hope to hear as you see what turns out from all these conversations?

I mean, I know EOS will get mentioned by almost everybody. I can't stress enough how you have to have a system because nobody's teaching it. And whether it's scaling up, whether it's eos or whatever other system, you have to have one. Because none of these coaches teach this stuff. They know that if you go to their conference and you walk away with 40 pages of notes, you're gonna be like, that was a good conference. I heard about the new AI, the new widget, the new app, the new lead source, the new channel partner. Like you're gonna walk away feeling really good if that's what you come back with now you come back to the office, now you start telling people, oh my God, it was so good. You guys gotta try this, you gotta try that. And coaches know that and that sells. But that's not what helps an organization grow. It's. It's the down and dirty stuff, right? It's not the sexy stuff that we need, but the sexy stuff is what sells. So I think that's such a big thing is the eos. I can't stress that enough. So I think you're gonna hear that be an overwhelming constant from everybody that you talk to. I think I would hope that my people will say that I do empower them and I stay out of their way. I let them do their thing. I get involved if they need me to, but otherwise I let them do it. I'm big on delegating. I've actually been accused of over delegating more than under delegating. So I'm somebody like, I just, in a perfect organization, like I just point in a direction and they go, I don't need to go with them. And hold their hand and like micromanage them. In a perfect organization, I can just be the visionary and then point and they go. And that, that's what I would hope that most of them would say is that I, I really like it's. What is it? Eyes in, hands off. I think is the saying. Like that's, that's the way that I like to see is like I'm watching what's happening, but I'm not like in their day to day, like, what about this, what about that? Like, is that actually I caused things to slow down. I stall the progress out the more hands on I get. So again, just having that weekly check in via the EOS level 10 meeting, like I just get my update once a week and otherwise I stay out of their way.

Really good. Well, I'm sure that will come to pass. The way that you hope it'll be interesting.

I don't know what everybody else is saying and none of us know.

It's a fun thing.

I mean, it's like, you know, when, you know, I am asking a lot of you all welcome us into your place, allow us to use this beautiful media investment that you've made. And in exchange for what? Well, at a minimum, you get a look into how these people react when you're outside the room. So you've been in the business for what, a couple dozen. Sorry, a couple decades.

Yeah, I got licensed in 05, so coming up on 20 years and I was in the industry before that as well. So I bought my first investment property when I was 20. So I was still in college before I got my license and then I got licensed a few years later.

Cool.

When did team occur to you, like, at what point in your journey were you like, oh, team, that seems like an interesting idea and one that I should pursue and just take us to that kind of window.

For sure. I'm gonna make you throw up in your mouth a little bit as I share some of this. So I got in initially in the commercial side, I worked with my dad, he was the broker. We were just kind of a father son team. We did a lot of selling apartment buildings to people who would convert those to condos. So they would buy an apartment building, kick everybody out, renovate the units and sell them off individually. Make a crazy amount of money. The city in San Diego ultimately shut that down to where they just. There were too many of them being done, so they're like, okay, that's enough, no more. So problem was nobody was buy apartment buildings anymore because the cost had risen so high because of all these condo conversions that they didn't make sense to buy if you couldn't convert them anymore. So that market just stalled completely. And then at that same time, I started getting things in the mail of, like, all these short sales and REOs and stuff like that. And I started looking around, and I'll never forget there was an agent here in San Diego who sent something and said, like, we sell a house every day. And I was like, bullshit. Like, that's not even possible, right? Like, you can't sell 365 houses. Like, that's crazy. But then I looked around and like, that guy had like 300 REO listings, and this girl had 400 short sale listings. And I was like, man, that's. That might be the play. Because nothing was happening in commercial, and I wanted to get out from underneath my dad. So I saw this as like the perfect opportunity to kind of spread my wings, leave him and go do my own thing on the residential side. Because I saw this opportunity to get hundreds of deals, and so I left him. I dove in. Reo, in short. So, like, that was all I did in the beginning, you know, and here we are years later, and now we're selling like three houses a day, which is pretty crazy. So it's funny to, like, look back at that moment, remembering that postcard. I could literally tell you exactly where I was. I have a weird photographic memory. I can tell you exactly where I was when I read that postcard too. Like, it was that impactful for me. And I've become very good friends with that guy ever since. But yeah, we made that shift over into the residential space and just dove into REO and short sale. When we did, I started to handle everything on my own. I got to a point I couldn't handle all the buyer opportunities. So, you know, when those REO and short sale was all listing side. But then I started having buyers come in. I was like, I can't handle these buyers. Like, I don't have the time for it. So initially this was my lead distribution strategy once a week. And I use Diverse Solutions, which Zillow bought many moons ago. That was my original CRM. I would take an export out of Diverse Solutions and then I would just email it over to my buddy who owned a brokerage weekly. And I was like, here you go, man. You have a bunch of agents. Like, if you guys convert anything, send me a referral fee. Like, it was terrible. Like, once a week, that was it. Like, these leads would inquire and I would do nothing with them. And just once a week I'd email him a list like, so nothing ever closed that way. So then I was like, okay, I should probably have some agents on my team. And so I hired two buddies. But like, I didn't train them, I didn't give them Systems processes anything new to the industry. Newer? Yeah, pretty new. So I hired two buddies and I was like, all right, it can't get any worse because nothing happened there. So I was like, I'll just have my buddies take them. Same thing. Nothing, like, cause I didn't train them, I didn't give them Systems processes anything. And so we never closed anything that way either. And then I was sitting around on a Black Friday one day and computers were on sale and I just was like, screw it, I'm ready to go big. Like, I'm ready to build a team. And this is only two years in, by the way. Like, I'm only two years into residential. And I bought 10 computers and I was like, okay, I have a 10 by 10 office and have 10 computers. Like, I need a bigger office. So I got, I bought the computers, then I bought, I leased up an office and I was like, okay, I have computers, I have an office, I need people. And then similar to when I got my first loan, they put a mirror under my nose, I fogged it. They gave me a half million dollar loan. That was basically how I hired agents.

Wow.

I was hiring anybody and everybody to be a part of my team. And that was my least profitable year in history because I spent more time teaching people how to log into their email account than like how to follow up with a lead. So I was hiring people that were 20 and 120 years old. And not that the 120 year old agent can't be successful. They're just not a fit for our culture. And so, like, my biggest learning lesson that first year when, like, I built a true team was understanding culture, understanding the avatar of who's the right fit. And it's okay to say no to people, but I think a lot of us get in this, like, desperation mode. Like, I just need people. I just need people. I just need people. And you hire all the wrong people for all the wrong reasons, and that does way more harm than good.

Okay, you've given me so many directions I want to go. I guess I'll pick up exactly where you left off, which, you know, you hear that there are some models that are designed to literally bring in anyone all the time. I don't know how well those Models will hold. But you and I both know a number of people who are running relatively successful businesses, really just hire anyone. The discipline, the way that I think about a team really scaling is based on agents going from just beat this up in just a second however you like, or add to it however you like. Some of the people that we're bringing into our team. I need you.

Yeah.

I'm either new to the industry or, you know, I was underproductive or unproductive, you know, in my previous 18, 24 months or whatever. I didn't sell anything or I sold very little. I need you. Yeah, Kyle, Your systems, your team, whatever. Then it's the I'm not sure if I need you. And if I get my first, you know, $1.8 million listing, that might be the last strawberry go. Like, I'm gonna go get more of the split. And then there's the I don't need you. Any team in this market would love to have me or any brokerage would love to have me. I could do this anywhere, but I choose to do it here. And some of that is financial, like you've designed. You, Kyle, and the organization have designed something, have allowed me to grow with you, and it makes sense for us. It's equitable. But the other side is kind of cultural. And I think the cultural piece is like, I like it around here. I like the people. I feel at home. I fit here. And part of that is in like you knowing as the organization, Kyle, who your avatar is. And your avatar can have a lot of different qualities to it. But A, do you buy that structure approximately, and B, where are you on that kind of avatar, kind of cultural side? Like what. What's the thing that you think has people stay here even if they could get some. You know, there's a race to the bottom, literally in every market. And so. So someone wants to give them more of something.

Yeah.

But they like it here.

Yeah.

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So there's definitely not a one size fits all approach for this. And I think that's so important for people because a lot of times, and I've been guilty of this, you go to a conference, you see somebody on stage, and they're like, I sell $500 million a year and I have all these agents. And you're like, oh, well, if I want to sell 500 million a year, I need to have all these agents. And so people just go. They hire anybody, and everybody's similar to what I did. And that's just not the answer. So you got to decide one. Like, do you even want to run a giant team? Like, because that's not for everybody, right? Like, if you don't truly get a high off helping people grow, like, of building, like, because where my high is is, like, I love to build a plan, right? I want somebody to come to me and like, hey, I want to do this. I'm thinking of this and this. I help them craft a plan, and then they go and they accomplish the goal that they've set with that plan. Like, I get a big high off of that. Like, I love winning through other people. Like, if you don't get a high off that, like, you should not run a team. But there's this pressure to, like, run a team that maybe is not right for people. I've actually had people who have turned their teams over to me. They're like, this. This is not my jam. Like, I don't want to do this anymore. Can. Can my agents just come be on your team? I'm actually acquiring teams right now actively, because that's the case for some people because they. They thought they wanted this thing they saw on stage or on a podcast or YouTube video. That's not right for everybody. So I think that's important for anybody watching this is, like, just because we have 100 agents, like, doesn't mean you need 100 agents. That's not right for you. I love it. I love the organized chaos that we have going on. I love watching the new people, the up and comers. Like, I just put a post up yesterday in our group, like, the class that just graduated last month. I pulled the sheet, the call report in FUB, and of all the agents of the top 10, like five of the top 10 agents were in that new class. As far as like the ones that are making the calls, like that fills my cup. I love that. And other people would be like, who cares? So like if you're a who cares person, like maybe it's not for you. For me, I see these new guys coming in, hustling and I frickin love that. So I want to throw that out there. First, I think people really need to hear that. Second, as far as like what type of agent, I think it depends on the organization. Like I have a full time trainer, like 40 hours a week, right. 52 weeks a year, full time. Like that's her job is to train. So a new agent is a great fit for us. But if you're running that smaller, like five, 10 person team, you probably can't take the new agent on. Right. You're not structured for that, you're not built for that. So I think you got to figure out like where are you on that spectrum of what's right for you? But if you look at my top five agents, almost all of them were either new or one year in the business when they joined us. So we've had much better luck taking the newer agent and raising them from the ground up because we're not having to break all their habits and stuff because the speed that we move and the amount of tech that we use is really hard. I've had people that have been in the industry for a while and they see everything we're doing and they try to plug in and they just can't keep up. It's, it's, they're so used to like their paper calendar and you know, all that. And then they come over here and it's like there's a system and a process for everything. It's, it's a little much for people. So the agents who come in that are new or newer tend to be the ones that thrive the best in our environment. But we freaking hold their hand. Right? There's a two week training program, there's a mentorship program, there's a learning management system, there's a FAQ system, there's a Slack that's like the most active Slack you've ever seen. Thousands of messages every week in Slack. So it's like the support system that we have is built for new agents. If you're running like a 5, 10 person team, maybe you're not built for that.

Yeah. So we're going to include in this series two of your top Agents Carly and Adrian.

Perfect.

And I think they're both. They both kind of fit this mold a little bit.

They're my top two agents, and both of them. I think Adrian is now in his third year, and he's going to do north of a million dollars in GCI this year. Carly is in her second full year, and she'll do north of 500,000 in GCI this year. So they're perfect examples of people who came in here brand new. I think Carly was, like, maybe a year in, but came in here and just plugged in. And they're the kind of people. I learned this back when I used to play a lot of sports is like, just run the play that's called. Run the freaking play that's called. The agents who come in here and try to, like, do things their own way. Like, oh, I know they said to do it this way, but I'm going to do it that way. They bomb out quickly. The agents that just run the play that's called. They're the agents, they're the Adrian, they're the Carly. They're the ones that crush it. Because it's like, look, I've done this for 20 years, guys. Like, I've personally, personally sold over 100 homes a year. Like, trust me. Like, I've been in the living room thousands of times. Right. I've been in the car hundreds of times. Trust me. Like, and if you don't trust me that the way that I'm teaching you is the way to do it, then you probably shouldn't be here. So as soon as we had the agent who's trying to just, like, resist everything that we do, we just get rid of them. They're just not a fit. So if you're not bought into what we're selling, you shouldn't be here.

Yeah.

And that's.

That's at some level incumbent on the team in the, you know, recruiting, interviewing, hiring process. It's also incumbent on the agent themselves to be reflective before they commit to something.

Yeah.

And be honest with themselves about that. You listed a number of benefits to this agent avatar. My assumption being on this side of this table and microphone, is that you just, oh, gosh, we should probably do that. Oh, I think we would have been better off if we had this in place. And this kind of. You just slowly build over time. Think about the mentorship program, the onboarding program.

Yeah.

What were some of the drivers of some of those programs? It's just slow and steady. Let's just keep adding things. And then Also, this is, I think, the where the real struggle is. It has been for me and other. I mean, I've been worked in other industries, but the struggle is, you know, we did a good job bringing this thing to life, but how do we go back and iterate on it six months later when we're also bringing three new things to life? So talk about this process of building this infrastructure that makes agents new to the industry and new to the organization so successful.

Yeah. So I'm going to go right back to EOS again. Right. The business I have today was not built overnight. It was built a quarter at a time. Right. So we set rocks, which is the term for your quarterly projects in eos. Like, we're just, you know, each person in the organization typically has like three to five rocks every quarter. So you take my leadership team, I think there's six of us. So let's just assume everybody has three rocks. Like that's 18 things we're going to focus on this quarter. Right. And we're going to see those things through. We've all determined that these are the, for each individual, these are the three most important things that you need to focus on over the next quarter to stay on track with our one year plan. And so it's just built a quarter at a time, right. And now even if you're a solo agent, like, okay, you're just gonna have three, but you put three things in place this quarter and then three things next quarter, and then three things next quarter and three things next quarter. You've now put 12 systems in place by the time the year's over. And these are full systems, right. Where you've thought through from A to Z every single thing that needs to happen. Like, that's how our business was built a quarter at a time. Nothing was built overnight. Don't think you're gonna watch this and be like, I'm going to build an organization that can have 100 agents overnight. It's not going to happen. Like, it's taken years and we're just slowly adding new things on, going back, retooling things, figuring out what's needed. Our biggest thing is like, we just want the agents doing the three things that make money, going on appointments, prospecting, and negotiating contracts. And I used to say writing and negotiating contracts, but I don't even want them writing the damn contracts anymore, to be honest with you. So we actually have a whole team. We call them our international team. Subtle word change, big impact. Yes, they are VAs. They are overseas. But when you Call them international team versus VAs changes everything. Like, I legitimately have people on my team who didn't realize our VAS were humans. Like, they thought they were robots. Like, it's insane. Like, on my own team. Like, it's crazy. But now you call on their international team, it changes things. So, like, they're writing offers for the agents, they're scheduling showings for the agents. They're taking a debriefing phone call from the agent when they leave an appointment and just brain dumping everything that happened at the appointment. And they're scheduling the next appointment, or they're writing the offer, or they're updating the CRM, they're adding the TO dos. Like, they're doing all that stuff for the agents. So we obsess over how can we strip everything away from our agents? So they're just focused on those three things. And the beauty is they make more money and they have more fun. And it's really fricking hard to leave when everything is done for you. Right. All you do is the things that make you money. We strip everything else out of the equation, and you just focus on doing the things you got into this industry to do and make money.

Yeah. So I think a team leader listening or watching might be wondering, gosh, that sounds like a lot of service to provide. How do you. How do you preserve your margin and get what you need so that this is equitable on both sides? Because that's a lot to provide an agent? I think everyone can understand the value of it. They may not be able to execute as well as you all have, but I think the on its face like that sounds expensive.

Yeah, I mean, that's probably how I reacted originally. But once you start to understand the cost of having international team members, it's crazy. And now some of us have been to events, and you go talk to these vendors and they're like, oh, yeah, we'll hire VAs for you. It's $12 an hour, $15 an hour. Like, I'm sorry. Like, I just want to call those companies out. Like, you are skimming so freaking much money off the top. Our VA's are typically making three to six dollars an hour. We pay them directly, no middleman. Three to six bucks an hour. So just know if you're paying 12, 15, or $18 an hour, that company is probably skimming close to 10 bucks an hour off the top. And you're stuck if you ever want to get away from them. Like, you either have to be shady and violate a contract that you sign or some of them have like a buyout clause now and you can pay them like thousands and thousands of dollars to buy the contract out. Like, that's crazy. So because we have, I think around 30 or so on our international team. Like it's not that expensive, right? Like I'm paying somebody that's doing that job four bucks an hour, which mathematically is like $8,000 a year. So we preserve margin by utilizing international staff. We have anything that's like client facing, that tends to be stateside staff, but anything that's not client facing, almost all of it's international. So they're doing all the behind the scenes stuff so that our stateside people just dealing with client facing, communication.

Yeah, really good. So you mentioned, you know, not everyone needs to build the type of organization that you've built. I would put that into the category of one of the myths or misperceptions about teams. I think you also mentioned more of an agent side of it. Agents make more money. I would also add agents have a better quality of life and lifestyle on average.

Depends.

Yeah, that's probably more personality driven than anything else. But you know, I would put those both into the category of myths and misperceptions around teams. Are there any other that come to mind, like when you're, you know, sitting in an audience and someone is on a stage and they're saying something about teachers, like, oh, not this again, because this isn't true from my experience and. Or it holds, but only in 20% of the cases. So why are we acting like it's the rule rather than the, you know, some kind of a decent exception?

I'll take the question, I'll go a slightly different direction is when's the last time you heard somebody introduced on stage where they talked about anything other than their units and volume? Right. When. When have you heard somebody introduced, here's what their GCI is, here's what their net profit is, here's what their margin is? Like, have you ever been to an event where anybody's been introduced that way? Because I haven't, no. It's always these vanity metrics, like, and that causes people.

Agent count among them.

Yeah, agent counts up there. But they never talk about the profitability. So people think like, oh, I want to run this big team. Like this year my goal is a 10% margin, right? I'm targeting 10. Now we're working toward 20. Like that's where we're going. But understand all these big companies, right? You start at a low margin and then as you scale, the economies of scale kick in and your margin increases. So it's like, ask somebody next time somebody's on stage. Meet up with them afterwards. It's like, hey, that's awesome. You're selling, you know, $100 million. Like, what's your. Your GCI on that? Because there are some people do 100 million, but it's all at, like, 1%, or it's like a flat fee model where they're making no fricking money. So first figure out, like, what are they even grossing any money? And then ask them what their net profit is and if they even know, because most of them have no fricking clue. And then if you ask somebody their net profit, if they don't follow up by asking you a question first, if they just spew out a number, that's a red flag, because there's a lot of different ways to calculate net profit, right? Like, do you take a salary? The net profit number you gave me, does that include your salary? Does that exclude your salary? Do you still produce? Okay, if you still produce, are you on a split? Or does every deal you do go 100% to the company? Like, you got to ask some questions. So if somebody ask me, what's my profit? I'm going to ask questions first. Which number do you want? Right? So if somebody doesn't actually ask some clarifying questions when you ask them, like, what's your net profit? That's a huge red flag, too. So I would just challenge anybody who's watching this, listening to this, like, ask more questions and understand that, like, you're just hearing the Vanity metric on stage. Most of these people make little to no profit, and some of them are not profitable and don't even know it. They have no freaking clue. They don't even have books. They don't have a P and L. They don't have anybody managing their finances right. They're just winging it.

You and a number of your peers, including, like, the Lawton team who invited us into their office in Phoenix, are pioneering this way of building a real estate business. It's not completely novel. We've seen it in a variety of other industries. Let's have specialists at different positions and everyone in the team is doing what they're really good at instead of having an office with a bunch of real estate agents, each responsible for a thousand different things and really good at a few of them and average at a bunch of them and terrible at a bunch of the other ones, which creates kind of a situation that we found ourselves in and while it's been on the come up for a few decades, versions of teams accelerated by things like MREA and other little milestones on the journey. Where have you turned as you were trying to build this organization? Where have you looked to? Obviously you're out and about a lot, you have a lot of networking but in the true connection and true learning sense of it. But where have you turned because you're doing something that isn't the norm, you're actually pioneering something. A, do you accept that characterization of a scaled real estate team and then B, where have you kind of looked to help make your next right decision or take your next right step?

Yeah, because we're effectively running a brokerage without being the broker. Like that's the, that's really what we're doing. And I think I used to be the broker before we went to exp. So it was like I was that person and I realized like that I what I boiled it down to, it's been six years now. When you are in the brokerage business, you are in the loss mitigation business. That's all you're trying to do is not lose money, right? You're trying to like put this fire out, that fire out depositions and settlements and E O claims and all this crap. It's all loss mitigation activities when you're a broker. Now that I'm just a team leader even though I'm four times as big as when I was the broker. I'm in the income generation business. So I got out of the loss mitigation business and I got into the income generation business and that's been huge, right? So now I don't have any of that liability. I mean hell, just in the last week I probably had like four things where people have brought it to me and just like call the broker, call the broker, call the broker. Not my problem. My favorite key on the keyboard is the F key and Gmail that's forward so I can just forward this stuff to the broker. Like that's been huge to take a lot of that load off my plate so that I can just stay focused on running the business. And then for me it's just the rooms that you're in. Who are you surrounding yourself with? The amount of times that you know the law and Hobbs like that they've come here to learn from us and what are we doing and we've flown out to their office and shadowed each other like so learning from the other people that are, you know, at the level we're at or above it. Right. Gary Ashton, great friend of mine, Justin Haver, like all these people, Chris Lindahl, these guys that are all selling, you know, what we're selling, if not more. I want to go learn from those people. And I've just learned that in my whole life. Like, and our group that we have at EXP is called Fast Forward. And it comes from the fact that, like, I believe everybody will accomplish every goal they set for themselves. But if you can get yourself in the right room around the right people that are at or above the level you want to get to, you can Fast forward your ability to hit that goal. And so I live by that. I have a group about that, but that's how I live my life too, is like, I need to get in the room with those guys. So I realized, like the coaching I was with before, I didn't have those. I was the biggest fish there. One of. Right. I needed to get into different rooms with people that are at a higher level than me. And now I'm doing a lot of development and infill multifamily projects. Like, I was like, all right, who's the person, right? Who's the expert in this field? Oh, it's Kent Clothier. Okay, I need to get in his room. So now I'm getting in this room and I'm with these people that are have been building for 20 plus years and I can learn from them. And like, my wealth has grown. I'm like, well, where do all the high net worth people go? It's tiger 21, so let me get into that room. So I'm all about getting in the rooms with people that are at or above my level. And that's how I've gotten to where I am, and it's where I get to where I want to go a whole lot faster.

Really good. You came out on my radar years ago. You were doing. You were essentially the media mayor of Santee is how I would think about you. And so I met you and Brian. What was obvious to you at that time that was obviously not obvious to everyone else? This kind of like media mayor approach, investing in Brian and the team that he built out. What has that done for you over the. At least it's probably about a decade since.

Since like nine years. Yeah.

So, like, what has that been about and how has that been helpful to where you are now, allowing you to do things like infill projects and other things that are interesting to you now that maybe weren't approachable back then?

Totally. Yeah. I mean, it's all brand. I think brand is one of those things. It's the most under. One of the most under talked about things in the industry. People just don't talk about brand nearly enough. They're just worried about the next lead app, which it all stuff we've hit on. Brand is so important. And so I watched what all the other realtors were doing and it's just like, new listing, open house, just sold, blah, blah, blah. Like nobody freaking cares about that. Like the amount of your audience that cares about that content is so small. Right. Like that's a needle in a haystack that actually cares about that. And so I was thinking, like, what kind of content could I create that people actually care about? And at the same time, this was kind of as REO and short sale was disappearing and so we were transitioning over to a more traditional business. I was like, what's the content people care about? And at the same time, I had just moved to a new city, Santee, and I was like, you know what? Like, this is my new city. I want to learn about this city, but why don't I just learn about it on camera? Like, why do I want to just learn about it myself? Why don't I share that journey? And so we just started interviewing businesses and I didn't, I don't know who said it first, I don't know if Gary said it or we started this first, but they were right around. I think we looked at it and it was within the same year, but we just started going around and interviewing every business owner. And within two years, Santee is like a 55,000 person city. I had interviewed a hundred business owners in a two year time period. I knew every single business owner in the city of Santee within two years. And I became the number one agent over that same two year time period in Santee, having sold very few homes in that area prior to that. So people got to learn about this community on camera and that was content they cared about. Because everybody's driven by the new restaurant and like, oh, what, what's it like in there? What do they do there? Oh, I saw this personal training studio. Like I've been wanting a personal training. I wonder what it's like with. His name's GI Joe. Like, right. People have driven by these things 100 times, but they've never been inside and.

Or they're you. Yeah, they're brand new and orientation.

Yeah. So like I gave them what's behind the. What's behind the windows. Right. Like I gave them that peek in to what all these businesses are and everything that our community has to offer. And that's content people cared about, Right. We have tens of thousands of views, like, right out of the gate, and we're like, this is it. Like, this is what people want. And so now I became the media mayor, right? Like, I became the local expert to where literally the mayor's hitting me up to go grab coffee. Like the actual mayor, right? Because he sees me as like the media mayor and he wants to hang out and get to know me because he sees what we're doing, right? So that was huge to build my brand because I just became synonymous with Santee. Like, Kyle knows everything about Santee because, look, he's interviewed every business owner. I had all the relationships in the community too. So it was like I created content that the people in the area cared about and consumed. Not new listing, open house just sold. And I got 100 relationships with the freaking business owners in the community. So you take the two of those together, it's the biggest no brainer in the world.

Yeah. And you extended that to East County.

Yeah. So we ran out of businesses in Santee. Like, we started interviewing like, CPAs and stuff. And I was like, God, how do you do B roll of a cpa? Like, it started getting painful. So then we expanded it to an entire region. So Santee is one of the cities within a region called east county, which the eastern part of San Diego County. And we still do that show today. We just don't do it on a weekly basis. It's now on a monthly basis. But I love it too. I'm very passionate about it. I love meeting business owners. I love analyzing businesses. It's a toxic trait. Like, my daughter is doing cheer now, and I'm analyzing the business of cheer. I can't help it, man. Everything I analyze it. But I love going into these restaurants and I often try to help help them. And like, hey, have you thought about this? Have you considered that, you know, I've now interviewed hundreds of them. I can probably run a restaurant podcast just because of everything that I've learned. In all those interviews, you mentioned this.

Idea of it's hard to know the value of it, but you're investing valuable time. You have hard costs associated with it as well.

Yeah.

Talk about that leap of faith or that trust that if I do things that I feel are inherently right, they are going to. To pay off. I mean, I think, gosh, it probably goes back to Frederick Taylor's industrial measurement and scientific Management, like all these foundations that are Henry Ford era, that we become enamored of the things we can measure. This is one of those things that's difficult to measure. And while you're analyzing businesses, you probably like to know, if I put in X, I get X plus or X times. But brand is not one of those things. These gifts that you're giving to these local businesses and ultimately to the community are difficult to measure. Was that like, what was that about for you? Like, just from a headspace perspective.

I mean, brand, that's why people don't do branding, because it's so easy with like lead provider Z, I pay them this much per lead and I get that many leads. So like, that's easy for people because I pay this, I get that. Like, so people like that.

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This is not the same. So also like, you think about all branding. Like what if you're doing billboards or bus benches or TV or radio? Like those are really hard to quantify because it's not like people call like, hey, I saw you on a bus bench, will you sell my house? They'll call and be like, oh yeah, I just, I see you everywhere, right? Or like I've heard your name or whatever. Like you don't know the exact impact. It's hard. But I just know that it's worth it because you're not going to track all this stuff in the CRM. It's not going to come up. Which I've. I wanted to share something on CRMs too that I think would be beneficial for people. You just can't track that stuff. But, you know, it's worth it because your brand becomes synonymous with that community. Right? I can go anywhere and I'll be in restaurants like, oh, hey, you do that show. You do East County Eats. Oh, I've seen your videos. I love your videos. People will take pictures with me. Places will give me free food. Like, I'll be walking down the street. People will honk like, so, you know, the impact is there, but you just can't measure it. And so that ties into. The second point that I think is so important, is I think most of us don't track and measure our leads correctly. Because here's the deal. Like, if I generated a lead on Craigslist, we used to use Boomtown back in the day. Like, 10 years ago on Craigslist was a great place to generate leads. But if I generated a lead 10 years ago on Craigslist, but then they come by one of my open houses and we end up selling them a home. Most of us today on the P and L or on our ROI report, that's going to be a lead from Craigslist. What does Craigslist deserve it? Because a 10 years ago, the lead came in that way. But, but all of our, all of us right now, all the systems currently, they're gonna attribute that credit to Craigslist. Why don't we give any credit to open houses or think about so many other things in our business? Retargeting, right? You're never, ever gonna think that retargeting makes any sense, because no lead is gonna close because of retargeting, at least the way you track. Because the lead had to have come in from a source for you to retarget it. So if the lead came in from Facebook and two years later, they saw when you're retargeting ads, clicked it, and ultimately converted. You gave the credit to Facebook. Why didn't you give credit to the retargeting? So I think that's a flaw. There's. I think there's a big opportunity there for whoever chooses to solve that, that most of us are not tracking this, but in other industries they do. So that's another thing. Like by being in Boardroom with ken Clothier and Tiger 21, like, people think at a much higher level in some of the outside real estate CRMs, they actually will go so detailed as to waiting every interaction, and you'll give 0.7% to email and 12.2% to this and 46.2% to that. Like, they're actually tracking leads at that level. And I think that there's a big opportunity for us to all level up there, because otherwise, Brand, you're never going to give anything to brand. You'll never give one thing to brand. But if you get a call and you go in and somebody's like, oh, yeah, I see. I see you everywhere. I love your show. Like. Like, I should be giving credit to the show because they didn't call in. Like, I see your show. Will you sell my house?

Yeah.

But they mention it in the conversation. Like, it's never going to show up on any sort of ROI report because we're going to track it back to whatever it was. So it's tough. Brand is a tough thing, but I know that it works. I. I witness it every day. And it. There's. Brand is valuable. Like when my agents call the listing agent on a property and they're like, hey, it's Adrian with Whissel Realty. They're like, oh, you work with Kyle? Like, that's brand. Yeah, that's brand. Right now they already got ahead of the competition because of the brand that we built at Whissel, where people are like, oh, whistle. They're good. They're good agents. They're honest people. Right. They work hard. They're not going to play games. Like, we build that brand, they make that phone call, and instantly they get a leg up on the competition. Like, that's brand. But, like, how do you measure that? Right. Like, it's tough.

Yeah. First touch, last touch. Those are the two most common attributes spoke to the challenge of that. But this idea of some kind of a formula that's slightly tweaked to your preferred lead sources or your most common ones, or your touch points, I should say, because it's all influenced.

If you're sending an email every week and they open it every week, that matters. There's credit for the emails. If we could prove that this person has been opening my emails for the last 36 weeks and then magically they pick up the phone and call. Like, email deserves credit.

Yeah.

But otherwise we would say email marketing makes no sense because we can never.

Track anything back to email, because no one opens emails. Kyle, haven't you heard that?

Yeah, our open rate's almost 60%.

Right. And the other thing that will that even, like a nice weighted blended attribution model will never do is what you talked about is, like, the way someone feels when they hear your name or see you because of the warmth that was built through all the video content you've done.

Yeah. They get a postcard in the mail, and they're like, oh, he's the guy. He's on the billboards, or he's the guy I see on, you know, Instagram or whatever. Like, and then they call. You're tracking, and you're saying, that's a postcard credit. But, like, the. They probably wouldn't have called if they didn't know who the hell you were, because they didn't know who your brand was. They felt comfortable calling you because of your brand. It just happened to be that piece of that. That was that time and point in their life when they were making that decision and that piece showed up. But if they didn't know who the hell you were, they probably wouldn't have called you.

Yeah. I'll also say, as someone who receives a lot of direct mail, not a lot inordinate amount, but, like, you know, it's never that first one.

Right.

It's the third one. And all the other things. When you look back at the journey of Whissel Realty Group in particular, are there, like, inflection points? Like, when you look back at it, you're like, gosh, I. I wish I didn't have to learn that lesson. That was so difficult, or I got so lucky with that person or that situation. Like, what were some. Or you just lined it up and you had to make a really important decision. And of course, there are pros and cons both ways, but when you break down the history of where you've been over the past several years, what are a couple of the key inflection points?

Yeah, so we've kind of touched on a lot of them, but I'll just recap them. Like, one, getting out of commercial because there was nothing selling, like, that was a big inflection point. And shifting over to residential. And again, residential just sings to my heart. Like, I love. I love making people happy. I love handing the keys over to a buyer. I love a seller feeling great that I put, you know, a million dollars in their bank account. So, like, there. That was a big thing, just getting into residential in the first place. And obviously, as I mentioned, we jumped in and REO and short sale was everything. But there was an inflection point of view of seeing that that ship was sinking and abandoning ship. Because these companies at that time were like, oh, there's inventory. It's coming. The inventory's coming. The inventory's coming. And I watched a lot of my friends go down with that ship because I'm a data guy. Like, I was I'm looking at the data behind the scenes. I'm like, there's no freaking inventory coming. Like, they're just telling you this because if they get something, they don't want to have no agents to send it to. But a lot of my friends, they died. Their businesses died when REO died. So seeing the writing on the wall that, like, Aria was gone and I need. There's Jack Welch has a quote, like, change before you have to. So it's like I had to change to a traditional based business, otherwise I was going to go down with that ship. So I would say that was a big inflection point there. And then the inflection point of understanding as I started to hire all these agents when I had all my computers was like, understanding the right avatar of who's the agent that's the right fit for Whistle. Like, I lost, you know, six figures that first year. And six figures then was a lot, right? Like, that was 2010. That was a lot of money to lose. 100,000 at that point. So that was a really big inflection point there. I would say the next inflection point was getting a really badass CRM. Like the year that we got a badass CRM, that was everything, right? It was, I shouldn't say CRM a platform more. So that was the website, that was the lead generation. That was the CRM on the back end. That was it. The everything communication system. That was a huge thing we went from. So those two happened simultaneously. Understanding my culture and the CRM, we went from 82 deals to 242 deals in a year. So that was like probably our biggest leap year we've ever had. So I would say that was a big inflection point. I would say we had a big thing where we got an account with Zillow when they were buying homes. So we were their broker here in San Diego. And that relationship didn't work out. Just our operational style, their management style didn't jive. We got fired. Like, I'll put that on camera. Like, we got fired. And that was actually one of the best things that ever happened for us. Because I had hired, I think I had 14 people that I had hired to run that operation. And then I just got fired. Like, no warning fired. All systems shut down. I had to walk into a room and tell 14 people, like, you don't have a job anymore. Like, that was hard, man. Like, as a leader, to just walk in there and just say, it's gone. Like, they're like, what do you mean it's gone? Like, the account, it's gone. We don't have it anymore. Like, that was a big moment for me as a leader. But coming out of that, the person who's now my director of sales, Rachel, and the person who now runs my company, my COO or integrator, Chris, came from that. So that was, like, a Phoenix moment. There were, like, good things rose from the ashes because that whole thing burned down, and those two came out of that. And though they've been huge for my organization, so finding, like, this silver lining in what was otherwise a disastrous moment in my career to find, like, there was some talent that I had on that team and to see them, they were so bought in. Like, I told everybody, like, it's over. They showed up the next day. It's like, what are you doing? They're like, no, we're not going anywhere. We got work to do here. And, like, they showed up. Even though I fired them, they showed up the next day, which was huge. So I'd say that was a massive moment. Implementing eos, obviously, we've hit on that a million times. And then the other one that's probably my biggest over the last two years is if you think about women in particular, if their hair, like, most women's hair, will grow to a certain point and then just stops. And if you ask any woman, like, how do you get your hair to grow farther? They have to cut it off. Which, like, for us, like, for me, I'm just trying to hang on to every bit of hair I have. But for women, like, yeah, just if my hair stops growing, I cut a couple inches off, and then it grows, like, four more inches. It's weird, right? Like, that doesn't make sense for us as men. But for women, like, that's what they're used to. I've learned that's how you grow your team, is you got to cut a couple off to grow further, because you can only grow so far. So one of the best things we've done over the last few years is we've cut more people. Like, we've gotten way more comfortable cutting people, but the more we cut, the more we grow. It's, like, counterintuitive. And I've met so many people that run teams, and they'll brag and say, like, I haven't lost a team member in three years. I'm like, you're soft. Like, that's not a good thing. You actually shouldn't brag about that, because the probability of every one of your team Members, hitting all of your expectations and doing everything that you expect out of is not. It's just doesn't happen. So it's like you're scared to cut people, right? You're operating from, like, a scarcity mindset, and so you're holding onto these people that are often doing more harm than good to your organization. So I've learned, like, we just have this constant funnel of new people coming in. Like, any given month, we have five to 10, maybe 12 new agents coming into our team every single month. So I'm very comfortable cutting people because I know I'm going to have another class of really talented people behind them. And I'm okay. I don't need to bat 100%, right. Like, in the Major League Baseball, if you bat.300, you're one of the best hitters in baseball. So. And that's. That's probably about where we end up two years in, probably 30% of them are still here. But the 30% that we have two years later are the Adrians, are. The Carlis, are the best agents. And so what I found is my agents, they love watching us cut people. Carly and Adrian ask, like, they love seeing us cut people. We actually put the number up every quarter. When we do our quarterly EOS meeting, we put up the headcount of how many people we cut, and it's 15 to 20, most quarters. My top agents, that's their favorite slide in the presentation. And it's because Carly and Adrian, they don't want to be surrounded by a bunch of people that are just leeching off the system, not putting in the work, not progressing, not, you know, pushing them, just that are just there and sucking up their time and doing nothing beneficial. Like, they want to be surrounded by the next Carly the next day, which, you know, we have Jenny, she's crushing this girl. First year, she's on, like, probably close 20 deals. Like, they want Jenny. They love seeing Jenny come in. And they actually, the culture here is like, Adrian took Jenny under his wing. He sees that she's crushing. He's like, hey, come over here. Let me help you. Which is really cool. But he knows that she's going to push him. She's great, and she's going to push him to be better. And my top agents love that. They love seeing us just cutting the bottom off and seeing us grow and bring more talented, hungry people into the company.

Cool one, Follow up there. Is this on. You mentioned the word expectations in that pass. Is it like standards? Like, if you don't hit these Things. Then you, you get a performance warning and you know that this is potentially coming. Like, what are the characteristics? I assume you're not, I assume you're not just sitting in a room with a couple of your other leaders going like, okay, we have to get rid of 10% at the end of the month. Who do you know? It's not one of these voting people off the island. I assume that it's through their own behavior and their own activity that they self select out.

There's two things. They have expectations for activities and then they have production minimum. So both. And so when somebody onboards with our team, it's made explicitly clear what the expectations are. You have to get on this many role plays a week. You have to show up to this many huddles, this many team meetings, office meetings in office role play. Like right outside this room right now, there's like 40 agents role playing their presentations. Like in person, not over the phone. Like, because if you're not role playing, what the hell to say at the kitchen table right now, you're dead. So there's expectations of activities that they have to hit. Additionally, there's minimum standards for production. And what I find most people do is, and I was guilty of this, I used to say, like, well, if you want to be on this team, you got to close a house a month. Okay? Now one thing too, is anybody's watching this calibrate, like one house a month in San Diego is like $10 million a year, okay? So calibrate to your market. If your average price is 200, like, it's going to be different there. So one house a month in a $200,000 neighborhood, you can't even live off of that. So that's something I've learned too. Anytime you're comparing yourself to other teams is compare on volume, not units, because it's different, right? So the production minimums, where most people screw up is it's one a month if you want to be a part of this team. But if somebody closes 10, am I going to terminate them? Like, am I going to cut them if they close 10 and not 12? Hell no, I'm not going to terminate somebody who close 10 deals. So what we decided is we needed to have a true terminable number. And so we adjusted those numbers down. So our number is you got to close two in the first six months and then six every 12 months thereafter. And if you're less than that, you're gone. Very simple. And so if we get to five months in and you haven't closed your two deals. Like, there's a conversation. Like, you have until the end of the month to get two deals under contract. Otherwise they're gone. And then the beauty is they do that whole like, you can't fire me, I quit thing, and they walk out the door before we can fire them. And that's. That's fine. So there's a saying that's always stuck with me is expectations without enforcement are simply suggestions. Expectations without enforcement are simply suggestions. And I think there's a whole lot of teams that have a lot of suggestions, but they don't have true expectations.

Really good. I think we're going to wrap on that. But before we call it a conversation, I would love to know from you, what is your very favorite team to root for besides whistle? Or what is the best team you've ever been a member of besides this.

Real estate team talking real estate team or sports team?

Any team you want.

I mean, I'm a Buffalo Bills fan. Like, my whole family's from Buffalo. Like, I love Buffalo, man. I would never live there, but I just love my Bills, man. I've been born and raised a Bills fan my whole life. My parents are born and raised there. They raised me a Bills fan. My daughter and I make an annual trip every year back to Buffalo to go visit. It's like a cool father daughter bonding thing. We go to a game like, so the Bills, for sure. Real estate teams I'm rooting for. I got this kid, Payson Robertson. He's out in the Palm Springs area. Young kid, and he listened to one of my podcasts where he talked about doing an open house every day. And, like, I never met him before. And then I said, you got to do 30 open houses in the next 30 days. And he called me on, like, day 31. I've never met him. He's like, hey, I did your 30 open houses in 30 days, and I pended, like, six transactions this month. I was like, I like this kid. And I've just been watching him grow, and he's exactly that thing. Like, point him in a direction and he just fricking goes. So I'm rooting for him. His team name's Obsidian Group, so I'm a big fan of his. And then what was the second part of the question?

Oh, the best team you've ever been a member of.

Best team I've ever been a member of. Ooh. I would say I didn't realize it at the time, but when I played volleyball, like, that was my sport growing up. I didn't realize at a time I hated my coaches because of, like, all the running and stuff that we used to have to do, and running stairs and track and all these things. And I was so disgruntled at the time, like, this is stupid. I just want to go play. But when I would realize we'd get into, like, the later part of the game and the other teams, you know, just couldn't even perform. They were dead. They had no legs, they couldn't jump anymore. And we would just slaughter people in those later sets in a volleyball game. Like, I came to really appreciate what I hated at the time, but later I've now reflected on how valuable that stuff was. And I think in real estate, we have to do that same thing. Like, that's role play now, right? Again, they're role playing right now in the other room. They role played on the phone this morning. Like, that's one of those things that, like, we don't love it in the moment, but years later we realized, like, I wouldn't have sold half the homes I did if it wasn't because I practiced all the time. And so I would say going back to my high school volleyball coach, really good.

Appreciate it so much. I wish you continued success. You are impacting a number of people. In fact, an episode we just released a couple weeks ago with Kyle Draper in la, he brought your name up a number of times. You're obviously having a tremendous impact within your team, within your community and within the industry, and I appreciate you.

Sweet, man.

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