Keys to Customer Centricity with Follow Up Boss Co-Founder Dan Corkill | Ep 040

Over the past 10 or 11 months, we've brought you 70 in depth conversations with real estate team leaders and operators from across North America. All to help you make the next right decision or take the next right step in your business, no matter where you are on your team building journey. And it's all made possible by Follow Up Boss. But it's not called the fubcast. It's not about the product, it's about people, it's about the community, it's about you. It's in this way, Real Estate Team OS is a wonderful reflection of the customer centric culture and customer led education that Follow Up Boss co founder and CEO Dan Corkill has been committed to for years. Dan joins us here on episode 40 to talk real estate teams, real estate, tech and agent, staff and client attraction. You'll also get a preview of our five episode month long Tech Timber series that we're kicking off next week. It's all right here right now. Dan Corkill on Real Estate Team os.

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.

Dan, thank you so much for believing in Real Estate Team OS as we'll get into. Thank you so much for spending time in this episode. Your appearance is overdue but the timing is great cause we're about to kick off Tech Timber and you are someone who has spent the past dozen plus years immersed in the ecosystem of real estate tech. So welcome to the show.

Thanks Ethan.

Yeah, thanks for investing in it, I really appreciate it. And we're going to kick this off where we always do, which is a must have characteristic of a high performing team. What comes to mind for you, Dan?

Yeah, I think they've just got to be really strong at a lot of things, but in particular I think marketing, attracting people to their team and then also attracting consumers to want to you know, be part of that experience of working with that team. And I think that's something which you know, I think sometimes I think especially when people start out maybe they're not like over planning that culture or and you probably shouldn't over plan but like I think you should have some, some vision of like this is what, what I stand for as a real estate agent. This is what I want my team to stand for and then really build in line with that vision so you don't sort of end up like having like Half your team, which just, you know, is not aligned with what you're trying to do or the level of service you're trying to provide. And so yeah, but again, I think it's a lot about attraction and I think even specifically right now, you know, like times are a bit tougher in the market or a lot tougher and they're a lot tougher for consumers as well. Right. So it's how do we, you know, show the show leadership and attract people and like we are solving a really valuable problem here, like helping people have a home to grow their families in and shelter and all this kind of stuff. Like it's a big part of the American dream or whatever country you're in. It's really important. So again, how can you just align yourself with also kind of the dreams, I guess, of people in your market and the consumers that at the end of the day you're serving.

A few themes that I heard in there that I really appreciate. First, of course is this idea of attraction. This idea that it's not about getting people at a trap and shoving them where you want to go. Like, like general funnel concepts. Everything goes better when you attract people to you based on kind of who you are, what you're about. Also what I inferred from what, what you said there was like this intentionality, like really who are we and what, what are we about? Who do we want to attract? And then a word that you use that I think is really, really important, especially in this kind of tech conversation is experience. So there is like, we are helping people with these problems. There are all these stages and we can leverage tech and people and systems to make sure that all the steps happen in the right order and about the right way. But ultimately this step back or this layer on top of it, or what people are really paying for is that experience of going through those steps. So it's not just the mechanics. There's this other layer and so this kind of cultural component, this motivation, this, this why and how are people attracted? Is all those all kind of like wrapped together really nicely for a vision for customer experience and what we're really trying to do here with people with tech and with systems. I typically ask folks on the show early on to describe their team as it is today for context. Going forward. I'd love for you to describe the follow up boss team as it is today. However you like, structure, culture, size, whatever.

Yeah, you know, I guess we've become a bigger team over the last few years. So it's been interesting to See how things change and added a lot of great people like yourself to the team. I think, you know, to sort of like my earlier point, like I think we did start off, maybe not super intentionally, but again, like that was sort of very important to me is like tech is here to solve problems and then also the customer service aspect is really important as well. Because if you just throw tech at people, a lot of people are not, you know, they're not as technical as the people that work at fub, right. Like, because they're just, you know, that's just not their day to day thing. And it's kind of like, you know, I guess I was always the guy that like, you know, was like broke in the house. People like even last night, like my wife's like, my Internet's slower, it keeps dropping out and like, oh my God, that means I've got to go and like work out what's wrong with the router and stuff. But it's sort of the same in business, right? Like again, you can't just throw these technical solutions at people. As simple as we try and make follow up boss and all of that kind of thing. Like, that's what we're always aiming for. But there's always going to be this component of again, like, how can we make this experience of switching to follow up bus really easy. And then when you do have a question or you need support, how can we also make that feel really good? And so that's why I invest in things like phone support and like making sure we got people like seven days a week because, you know, we don't want our customers to sort of like have this, you know, technical solution but then not be able to get help with it and feel good about it. And you know, I think that's something which really helped us a lot over the years. And again, like sort of attracted people to us because then because we're providing that service, you know, we're able to earn referrals and you know, I think again the same things like very much like applies to real estate. If you are doing a great job, you're going to know that because people are going to get referred to you. Right? So yeah, you know, I think we've always had a pretty customer centric culture and you know, I think again that sort of developed, you know, a little bit from the start from sort of us as the founders. But then I think as we brought on people we could sort of see like, okay, these are the kind of people that fit with that. And then occasionally like we'd hire some people that didn't fit with it and we're like, okay, well you know, this is probably just not the best place for you. You probably find another like environment where you know you're going to enjoy it more or thrive. And I would say like probably the last five years, it's like being a very self enforcing thing from the team. Like it hasn't been me needing to say like, oh, this person doesn't fit or this person isn't looking after our customers. It just becomes something which everyone understands. Like that's really important to us as a company.

Yeah, customer centricity is definitely fundamental to who this company is. It was one of the things that attracted me to the company. Like I had known Follow Up Boss for a while, but as I started to get to know more people inside the company and had the opportunity to join, that was one of the things. And as someone who hosted over 270 episodes of a show called the Customer Experience Podcast, I refer to Follow Up Boss as the most customer centric company I've ever interacted with in any way. As a consumer, as someone interviewing people from all kinds of companies, and certainly as someone who has seen the inside and the outside of this company over the past probably decade or so, I've been familiar, various levels of familiar, of course, a lot more familiar. Today I want to get into real estate tech at a high level from your perspective and how you chose real estate, which by the way, if there's any industry where you need seven day a week support it. Certainly real estate because they're providing seven day a week service. But before we do, I want kind of one follow up question in this zone. I mean people who watch and listen to real estate Team Os definitely struggle with kind of this zone. So I'll just kind of describe it and you just take it wherever you want to go, which is like, when should we invest in hiring people? Who should we be hiring? Like the timing, the structure, the pace, like, you know, there's a seasonal flow to the business. There are so many considerations for like whether it's agents, but even more importantly staff from a real estate team perspective, because that's a hard cost. You know, generally agents, you know, cost in return based on performance. So it's a little bit less of a risk than bringing out a full time staff member. Talk about any philosophy you've developed over the past dozen years or so about when and who to hire. Just like, how did you think about that relative to like primarily from a financial perspective really, like, anticipated revenue and the hard cost of doing it today versus a month from now versus six months from now.

Yeah, you know, I think we, when we're getting started, we just really, like, waited to see where the pain was, you know, like, oh, like, great. I'm spending all day like, you know, setting up customers and it's like, okay, that's a valuable activity, but there's a lot of other things I need to be doing. I do think that's one of the jobs of like the business owner and entrepreneur is like, where do you focus in the business right now? So it's like things are running and there's no way, like, really any probably, like department or area is running it, like 100% as amazing as it can be. So you're kind of spinning these plates and I think it is a bit of a choice, like, where do you focus? But again, I think mostly where the pain is. If something's going, okay, maybe leave that alone for now and like, focus for this thing. That could be a lot better. I think we definitely, especially when we're getting started because, you know, finances are tight and like, this is really like the biggest business for sure that I've ever started. Like, other things were more like freelancing, really that I was doing. And so, yeah, you just don't have a lot of money and you don't have a lot of even experience managing people. And so I do think there's a bit of hesitation to, like, play it safe and just hire sort of like maybe some, you know, overseas help or some of the lower cost help you can get. I do think if I, you know, did it again, I would sort of definitely try and like, just find the best people I could, you know, and try and find a way to like, maybe stretch a little bit to afford them. Although I do see sometimes, like, entrepreneurs make the mistake of just bringing on a really expensive person, like 200 or $300,000 when their business is like very, very small. And then they may be leaning too much on that person to drive and grow the business. I think that can also be a. Be a real challenge because again, I think sometimes maybe they're like, trying to outsource some of the pain to this person. And that person also, by the way, may have been amazing at other companies and bigger companies, but maybe not at a startup. So I do think you just, you should try and find, like, really great people, you know, again, that can maybe complement some of your strengths. If you're sort of like a lot of team leaders. Like the face of the brand. You know, you're sort of, again, you're out there, you're doing all the business. Maybe you need to have a great admin, right? And like, I would say you could also try and like, hopefully find this great person who is sort of like up and coming and maybe like paint them a bit of a vision where you want to go. You know, hey, maybe this job starts at like 50 or 60k a year, but this is our vision to grow the team and this is how you will play a role and this is how your compensation could be increasing as we achieve these things together. So, yeah, that's what I'll be looking at. And even the same thing with agents, like you mentioned, it's commission based. But again, do you have too many leads? When you do, that's probably when you need more buyer's agents. Otherwise maybe it's a bit premature depending on what the strategy is. So again, I think you just got to look for where the pain is not over. Commit yourself to some massive salaries on one person and then, yeah, just try and find the best people you can. And I think being a very local business, I think there's lots of talent out there. And I think that's also, by the way, in this remote world, right. Sometimes people want to be part of something where you go to an office and they're just doing everything over zoom. Right? So again, I think again, that becomes part of the culture and how you can attract people, you know, to these opportunities.

Yeah, that's great. You reminded me with this kind of like, where is the pain? It reminds me of a bottleneck conversation I had with Nick McClain. I think that was something like episode 24 or 25 of the show. And you know, and that's it. Like feel the pain, recognize it, define it. And then is there a tech solution? Is there a human solution? Like, how do we alleviate this? Also just your talk essentially, what to leverage when and how is something that I know everyone listening to the show has struggled with, no matter their seat in the organization. And I also appreciate this recommendation that we've talked about a number of times on this show, which is that admin you brought on, who's there when you need him or her, when they're doing the right stuff, they do everything they say. They're starting to do things proactively before, you know, whatever shows up on a task list or a request list or an sop, they're developing the SOP even though no one asked them to, like that. Those are the foundations for someone who can grow with the business over the long term. And I think Most of the COOs I've had on this show started as an admin alongside a team leader at some point early when the team was in the. So many good tips in there that echo throughout these conversations. Okay, real estate tech, you've been fully immersed in it. I mean, there are hundreds of integration partners with Follow up boss. I'm sure you know a lot of people from a lot of those companies, certainly not all of them. But I'd love for you to go back to do kind of two main things here. One, go back, like, how did you identify real estate as the zone that you wanted to build software for? And how has this ecosystem or this world changed, you know, over the past dozen years or so?

Yeah, we, you know, when we got started we had this idea for like building a small business CRM and initially we hadn't focused in on the real estate niche. We ended up doing a course. It was called the Software Roundtable. And the kind of, the goal was to like sort of teach you how to really get your first 10 software customers. And by the way, you know, I think this is, the thing is like, we haven't done something before. I really do think it's a massive hack to like, obviously listen to podcasts like this one, but also like, if you can get coached or you can find a business owner that's been through it before and either get coached by them or even just talk to them and ask them these questions like, hey, when should I hire someone? When should I do this? Like, it's, it's, you know, it is a shortcut. And the guy that ran that, he actually had a successful product in the real estate space. And I think real estate has a lot of these attributes you're looking for if you want to build a tool. Because it's a very profit orientated business, people are very willing to try new things. It's very easy to reach the decision makers. It's kind of interesting. You can sometimes even talk to, you know, a team leader and they would like switch out their CRM and their website solution and all their marketing, like in one phone call to like a different provider. Right. It's like if you met, like it doesn't really happen in other industries. Right. Like it's, it's pretty rare. And yeah, you know, so that was, I think, what we found attractive about the industry and then went from there. I started talking to a lot of people and just trying to understand what their Problems were, like, not trying to sell them anything. I'm just like, hey, Ethan, so what's your biggest problem? Like, running this podcast, right, and just listening and then trying to go deeper and then deeper and then just really try and see, like, what painful problems do they have. Which kind of goes back to before, like, you want to solve the pain, right? You don't want to be this, like, oh, like, I don't know, like this nice to have little solution that makes, I don't know, whatever the email signature look better. It's like you're buying leads from, you know, portals or generating leads yourself, and you're investing money in that. And then you don't have a system to follow up with them or to hold your agents accountable. And then at the time, a lot of things weren't even really automated. So, like, they would literally get an email from, say, Zillow, and then that would go to the team leader, and then they would just manually forward that email to their agent so they really had no tracking. This is like, back in 2011, you could just see that, well, that's a massive pain point because you're paying this money, but then it's also a massive opportunity on the ROI side, right? Because obviously we can do these things even a little bit better. You're going to be making more money on these leads. And so, yeah, once we sort of, like, heard that problem, like, I did a little bit more research into, like, okay, well, some of these companies are public, so you can see how much, you know, leads are selling and revenue they're generating. So that was kind of like a positive sign to me because, like, okay, that's growing. Like, I mean, it's kind of obvious as well, like, online leads, the Internet, like, it's just going to get bigger, right? It's already pretty big in 2011, but it was only going to get bigger. And then also I just looked at all the other tech solutions and I was like, well, why don't you guys use this one? Why don't you use this one? And like, they just didn't like them. They were. They were pretty old school. I think they were built more for, you know, referral relationship, you know, build your database and business like that. They definitely were not built for teams or really for online leads because those things both evolved after these, you know, companies and softwares were created. And yeah, like, from there, you know, we chipped away at, like, getting our first customer and then our first 10. And then honestly, after that, it's like, I almost feel like I woke up and then now I'm here. You know, like, it's, it's because it is just sort of, you know, it was just after that first 10, you get your 100, then your thousand and, you know, you're just growing. You're doing the same thing. You're trying to grow the team, you're trying to make the product better. But yeah, like, once, I think once we had that very clear problem going from like, oh, we're just going to build a small business CRM for everyone, very unfocused, very unclear what to do, how to market to people or any of those things. Once we got like focused on this problem, then it just became a lot clearer of the, well, this is our niche. This is where we're going to focus. These are the people we're going to serve. And then I would say it's also been like very much a collaborative thing. Right. Because again, even from that start, obviously we were, you know, collaborating, trying to understand the pain of what people need. And that's what we've tried to do over the years as well. Okay, like now, now you've got 100 agents and you've got full op boss, and you've got all these leads. You know, what are the next features you need? And you know, those things, A lot of those. Like still today, I would say we try and drive a lot of the product development through, like either the pain or the opportunities for our customers.

Yeah, yeah, that niche, the word that you use there, of course is a caution back to people about being really clear who you want to attract, why and how. One of the things I've always respected about Follow Up Boss is that when you're talking about features, you're talking about dialing in to make it easier, faster, better or better yet automated to do all the things that the core CRM should do. It's not, oh, let's also build on this whole other tool set. Let's build on this whole other product. It's, let's be expert at what we're expert at and part partner up with people to fill in, you know, the rest of the gaps and opportunities that we're hearing through some of this customer exploration. It's really interesting too, the episode 37, I had Greg Harrelson on and his organization did almost like 4,000 transaction sides last year. And I asked him, because he's been in the business for 30 years, about the past, present and the future of teams. And what he said about how they emerge was, of course, some cracks in the traditional brokerage model. And again, people can go listen to episode 37 for that. But what you identified at that time, I think is kind of tees up where I want to go. He said that's what allowed teams to emerge out of brokerages, but what really allowed them to accelerate was this movement toward online leads in general, online buyer leads in particular. And so having these produced by a variety of different sources, some self produced by, you know, the team leader, these visionary folks folks you and I have known for a long time, like Justin Haver, Gary Ashton, who've been on the show, got very good at generating online leads or acquiring them in whatever way they prefer. And so that really drives the need to manage it well and get a return on that investment, whether you're paying another company or whether you're paying your through your own time and energy to, to generate that lead flow. And of course, what too much opportunity produces is the need for a team, which is something you've already mentioned too. So I'd love to know from you, when did teams come onto your radar? Like when were you talking. Because you've been talking to customers the whole time. But like when did you start realizing this is what they were doing and the kind of the models that they were building?

Yeah, you know, I think it was starting to emerge in 2011, 2012 really, when we were getting started. But it was funny because even our first customer, like, yeah, he was a brokerage and then he kind of had a team within his brokerage. And like I remember being so confused at the time, like, because, you know, just in some different states they call it different things as well. And it's like, I'm a brokerage and I'm a team and then, you know, all these different things. So yeah, it was a little bit confusing, but again, I think it was starting at that time really like Greg said, because driven by, you're getting these online leads at some point or, you know, probably pretty, pretty soon, especially if you're managing this brokerage as well. Like, you just don't have time to like call the leads and to go on the appointments and all this kind of thing. So yeah, really from the start. And I think again, like that's, that's what helped set us apart from the start as well, because we were able to just really the first feature in FOB was we could put the leads in the system and route them to an agent. So now you no longer have to do that as the person paying for the leads. And then of course it's so much better for speed to lead and like, you know, all these kind of things. So yeah, it was really at that time, I mean we certainly had solo agents signing up as well. But I think, I think this was just really starting to take off and you know, it was kind of luck really, I would say is like all the solutions were mostly built for single agents. And from the, from the start I think this was also something just because I came from Australia and I didn't know a lot about the industry, you know, so it's kind of maybe if I'd know more about the industry I would have built it for a solo agent because that's what everything else was kind of built for or for a brokerage. But you know, I just, you know, had some business background and experience. I'm like, well this must be like other businesses where you know, you have a team of people and you know, you're working together and some people have different roles. Like someone's an admin, someone's an agent. Obviously like ISAs became like, you know, an important thing as part of this online lead generation puzzle, I would say. And so yeah, you know, I think coming from the outside I just do think that helped a little bit because otherwise it's sort of otherwise maybe, yeah, you would have looked more at what other people are doing. And then sometimes even customers give you that feedback like, oh, I want this feature that is in this CRM that I have already, you know, and it's like, but if they really wanted that then they would just be totally happy with that. Right. And like they would have all their problems solved by that company. So yeah, we just tried to look a little bit deeper like what was happening and I think the team trend, yeah, pot lock on the timing of that. But it just, it really did just accelerate. And then you know, again people, you know, I think companies like Zillow helped accelerate it. Right. Like they're, they're sort of one of the, you know, obviously the largest consumer site in the US and so you know, they're out here educating people on like, hey, you should be buying online leads. We can connect you with consumers. And then so you know, and there's many other companies doing it as well at a smaller scale. And so that was kind of the thing as well that I think helped follow up us. Right because we're like, great, now you've got these leads from all these lead gen companies, you know, now we can help you with the other part of converting them.

So yeah, and the other thing kind of tucked in there is this idea that like none of the teams that are growing aggressively just have one source, right? They're doing some of their own thing. They have different buckets of things. Some of it's paid, some of it's with you know, partners and these types of things. So this idea to bring them all in, I remember Justin Haver talked about, you know, he had several front facing websites. He was dominating his local market from like an SEO perspective but his agents had to go log into the back ends of all these different places and so FUB just allowed him to point them all into one place which then creates this massive efficiency in the organization. You already highlighted several of them. But also this transparency. He has a better handle on what's going on across the business because he can point them all into one place, which is of course especially critical for a team leader. And here we are now with 32 of the top 50 teams per real trends using follow up boss, that was my instinct, was that your constant and our team's constant being in touch with our customers allowed us to be team supportive, team friendly and really honor their challenges and help them capitalize on opportunities better than a lot of other systems would. And I didn't know how much was by design but I think it just goes back to this customer centricity and a little bit of luck just based on timing. Is that about right?

Yeah, yeah. Again like I think if we were starting today right, like it would just be a totally different landscape because teams already very well established, they probably would already have solutions and you know, online leads have been around for a long time. So it's again I think be a lot harder to do exactly the same thing today. So again it's, it's interesting like yeah, there's some luck, you know, mixed with like customer research like we're saying and understanding them. Even, even I would say another trend, you know, was mobile, right. And it's like a lot of these apps at the time didn't have great mobile apps, you know. And so it's again you sort of this looking for these new technologies and I know we haven't brought up AI yet but maybe it's a good time to bring it up is like, you know, it's obviously that's sort of like one of the trends that's going on now and then like how can we take this and apply it to what we're doing and you know, create some value for our customers or efficiencies or automate things and just on the automation like that Was that was I think a very early customer insight where it's like these people are super freaking busy. They're, you know, they're not in front of their computer all day. They're out showing houses doing meetings with clients and you know, marketing themselves. And so any, anything we can automate we should, you know, it shouldn't be left up to like you to have to go to a CRM and log in and click sign can do something. So you know, I think some of that stuff as well is just like user empathy or customer empathy and understanding. Like again they're busy. How can we make this as easy as possible? You know, and again like maybe that's, that's, I think that's a lot of where AI is going to, you know, obviously help us a lot in future as well.

Yeah. Share any other thoughts? You have AI High Level. You know, we, we recently tested with thousands of customers and then released, you know, a call summaries feature that's AI based. So you know, it turns your call into notes for you and or it turns an agent's call into notes that you know, a team leader or a sales manager can coach with an agent alongside AI in general. High level and or AI in particular. Anything you're particular you're especially excited about here. And I guess just out of courtesy for someone that isn't super tech forward, you know, talk about maybe a little bit of the difference between AI and automation. I think some people are mislabeling AI features. It's actually just automation. So talk about AI however you like and maybe hit on that a little bit for the people that aren't as deep into it.

Yeah, yeah, I'm trying to think if I'll even do a good explanation of this. I do think sometimes as well people like, oh, let's use AI for this. And there's a lot of things that could just be like basic automation. So automation is more like if this lead in Follow Up Boss or whatever system has been contacted, do this thing and then if it hasn't been contacted, maybe do this other thing. Right. So that's sort of like that's existed for I don't know, 10, 20 years now. Like it's, it's been around quite a, quite a while. And that's, that's more like what's existed say in Follow Up Boss and you know, other marketing and CRM tools in the past. AI is more, you know, using these large language models to like take these inputs and then output something which like seems a lot more like I guess is a lot more like reasoning and like, you know, it's less straightforward than just like offer on, you know, automation. So for example, call summaries. Yeah, it's like listening to an entire call between you and a consumer and then distilling that down into like, what's the most useful notes of the call. You know, it could be used in future when you're referencing back to it. And I mean, other applications outside of say, like, you know, within the CRM. Like, this is like doing a lot for, you know, developers. I was just playing around with the tool the other day, like, I'm not a developer, but essentially it's an AI editor and you can just literally describe in like plain English, like, build me an app that does this. And then you can highlight the part of the code that you know is maybe like the interface or whatever and be like, oh, could you make this look, you know, whatever, more stylish? Or could you make it look a little bit like this? Or you can even take an image of an existing like website or app and be like, can you do it in this style? And so, and then it'll just go and code the whole thing for you. And so it's, I think things like that, you know, are gonna really change, you know, tech a lot. I think it's really just the start right now. And you know, the other example that probably comes up a fair bit is like, you know, all these Teslas self driving around, right? And like, again, you're probably not gonna fully let go of the wheel and you know, trust your car to drive you around today. But in, you know, five, 10 years, it is very clear those things are coming. And you know, I think it's, it's just pretty exciting, you know, I think yes. So I'm sort of like, I would say, like, I'm not an AI expert by any means, but yeah, we're really looking how we can leverage that. Zillow has like a very big AI team and like they're helping us understand how we can leverage like these new models and things. But yeah, I think it's all pretty exciting. And I think really what you're trying to do as a small business, like what we always tried to do for ourselves and for our customers is like, there's this new tool. How can I use this to kind of get an unfair advantage right in the marketplace? How can I use it to create value? I think there's going to be. We're still working out all the AI applications today, but yeah, I really do think the people that stay on the sort of like cutting edge of that. Yeah, probably going to have a big leg up on the people that are not using any form of AI.

Yeah, really good in this. The automation that's been baked in for a long time. Again, just basic rule sets. You get to define all the rules. If this is true, this is true, this is false and that number is between this range. Do this thing and you can do it natively. In Follow Up Boss, you can set up an interface with something like a zapier and have things happen in Follow Up Boss based on what's happening in other tools if there's no direct integration. But this is like a whole new level and it's. I mean I think the term most people are familiar with is generative, but it's that there's something more creative happening inside the box than you setting up rules in the machine, executing the rules. And it's super promising. So one of the. I'm a bit overdue in having you on anyway. But one of the reasons I was like now's the time. One the the episode number is divisible by 10, which makes it, I don't know, some kind of a milestone. In addition, next week we kick off tech timber. I decided to turn September 2024 into Tech Timber. So I've got Justin Benson of Bara Agency, Lee Adkins of Amplified Solutions, Shea Herron who runs ops for the Highland Group in Arizona, Lisa Vo, who's an expert transaction coordinator and ops manager. She works at a variety of capacities. I can't even summarize it with one. Chase Whitney, who's an agent in a small family based team who also runs marketing and finance with them. The Whitney team in California. A, what do you think about the series? B, any fun stories about any of those folks that you want to share? But as we're getting into that series.

Yeah, you know, I've known, you know, all of the people there and they've been very important in the FUB community. I think Lee I've known the longest, I'm trying to remember when I first met him, but I think it was a real estate tech conference in Atlanta and I can't remember the exact year, might have been 2013 or 2014. And I think what's interesting about Lee and I think this is maybe what a lot of these teams end up needing as they scale or as they get a bit bigger. And also some of the other people fill these roles I think is like they need someone who gets tech. And again how can you apply it to make our business better? So I do think sometimes team leaders go out, they get excited, they got the credit card and they sign up for all the programs. Right. But again, there's got to be a strategy. There's got to be like, what are we actually using this for? And then how can we also make sure it's like simple enough and we train our agents to actually use it so we get the value out of it versus just like we have this subscription setting there and no one's using it. So, yeah, I think those kind of roles are really important. The other thing I think is exciting and probably a bit more of what Justin does is like a lot of custom development on top of Follow Up Boss. So I think even in the case of AI, Follow Up Boss is really because we connect with everyone and have so many integrations and we're sort of like your central hub for your database. It's a really good place to build tools and AI and automation on top of. And so I think that's also what's been cool to see that Father has become this platform within the space and we've had a lot of integrations. And then, you know, Justin's business, I think almost, not exclusively, but almost exclusively is like building tools for like mega teams on top of fab. And you know, I think that's pretty cool to see that, like, you know, we've been able to like help, you know, these other businesses specialize in fab and even a lot of the other people you mentioned, like Lee, like a lot of what they're doing is like helping people with their Follow Up Boss account. Yeah. So I think that's exciting and I think it's also like, you know, a bit of how FAB has become, you know, again, a bit of a platform community versus just like, hey, here's this tool you buy, which I also think, by the way is like a little bit supported by the real estate community or a lot supported. Like, I think it is a community of people that are often very open to sharing. Like, we know with this podcast, they're sharing what works, they're sharing their challenges, they're sharing, you know, maybe how they overcome them or they're looking to overcome them. And yeah, so I think it's been just a cool marriage of all those things. Whereas, yeah, maybe there's some other industries where you just wouldn't be able to create the same kind of community or bench of experts like that that can come in and help all these, help all these customers. Get more value out of. It's very cool. And yeah, I look forward to seeing the tech. What do you call it? Tech Timber or September?

Tech Timber, yeah, it's either going to be Tech Timber or techtoberry and September just worked out better. So it's Tech Timber. And I love the top of that response in particular because it essentially talks about the themes of all five of those episodes, like what is our business plan? How do we shape our tech to match our business plan? How do we audit what's in place? Because everyone has tech in place and very few people are building from the ground up. So like, how do we assess what's there, make it work better together, Maybe ditch some things, add the right thing? How do we use it to enhance operations in general, how do we use it to enhance transaction coordination in particular, how do we use it to enhance marketing? We cover all of that ground. But it all comes back to what you said off the top of this episode and off the top of that last response is like, what are we really all trying to do here? Who are we? What are we trying to do? And then let's solve some of our own problems on behalf of our clients and the value we want to create and deliver. And some of that's going to be through tech. You already kind of previewed a little bit of a response to this, but I'd love to ask it out just straight away because I think it's so important and unique to what FUB has achieved as a platform and as a community. So several of those people who are in Tech Timber are moderators or the part of the mod squad in the follow up Boss Success community on Facebook, which is now over, I think 22,000 members strong. Lee hosts a regular series called Office Hours where he partners with some of our team members and or customers to go inside accounts and teach people how to do stuff. We offer Bosses in Action, which is kind of a success and advocacy program about a variety of topics. Conversion University, which helps people with sales and sales training. Obviously you make real estate team OS possible, which is, you know, follow a boss comes up, but it's not the fubcast, you know. And so like when did it occur to you or is it just natural to you to invest in education and community beyond Follow Up Boss Software itself? I mean obviously you need a support team, you need some documentation, you need a support site with some how to answer so people can find them. You want to do some product videos to show people how to set this up or to tweak that thing. But the assets I just mentioned are so far beyond that. Is that something that naturally occurred to you? When did you start investing this way and why?

Yeah, I think pretty early on we knew that content marketing was one of the best forms of marketing, you know, but again, like, that's more like you're doing it, you know, with the double usage of educating your customers and also attracting more. Whereas I guess some of those resources are a mix of that as well. But some like, for example, like, yeah, the boss is in action and conversion use, like, these are things that are very specific just for our users. So it's not about, like, getting more sales or anything. It's just about educating our users. Yeah, I think we always knew it was important. I think it was really probably when we started Buses in Action a couple of years ago that we really started just to invest in people doing it. Because I think the early days probably I was doing some of that content and webinars and things like that, and that was great. I think I could see the need for that and even just to teach people how to use the software and so on. But I think as we got bigger then maybe we handed off some of that to our success teams and things like that. But I think where we saw this opportunity was we need to make sure that we're not just telling people how we want to do it. We're hearing from our customers. So, again, that's why Team OS podcast is obviously so great. And again, we sort of brought on people to run those things that were very in the industry. Like, Dale's a sales coach in the industry industry. You know, Tiffany, our realtor in residence, runs a team in the industry. Tristan, who runs Bus in Action, like he has a team. So it's, you know, we thought, I think as we got bigger, it just became obvious, like, I'm not the right person to be, like, telling you how to build a real estate team, because I've never built a real estate team. Like, I can. I can talk a lot about the tech and marketing and all of that from what I've seen. But, yeah, you know, I think that's. That that was just sort of like we reached the sizes of. As a company where we're like, cool, let's find some people that are passionate about this and then they can create this content. And it's going to be much better than Dan sitting there for an hour trying to tell you how to build your real estate business. I think it's really something that if I was going to do another tech company or startup. Today I would be thinking about community and this kind of customer led education from the start, really getting them on as, you know, advisors almost or you know, positions like this. Realtor in residence. Yeah, I think it's, I think it's really important because again it's. Well, you can get caught up in your tech world where you're, you're wondering all about worrying all about the tech, but then you get a bit further away from like your customers and you know what their challenges are. So really good.

By the way, I am remiss in failing to mention Tiffany Galzenis, our Realtor in residence and also real estate Team OS guest back on episode five of the show. Dan, this has been awesome. It's an absolute joy and privilege to be part of your team. It's a joy and privilege to be able to host this show in spirit of this vision that you've communicated throughout this conversation. For folks watching and listening, this is typically where I go to three pairs of closing questions. But fun thing, Dan and I were on a very, very large stage, the largest stage I've ever been on, just from it's like a football field wide. And I asked him those three questions. So there's a link down below. If you're watching in YouTube, it's down in the description. If you're listening in Apple Podcasts or Spotify, it's in the description. If you're@realestateteamos.com watching or listening, which you can do for every episode, it's down below in the description. Click that link and it'll jump straight to those three pairs of closing questions that we ask every time on the show. Dan, thank you so much for making time for this. I know how much you've got going on. It's a joy and privilege to have you and to be a part of what you're doing.

Yeah, thanks Ethan. Always love to chat. Yeah, appreciate you making the pod.

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