Ideas Mean Nothing Without Execution | Leo Pareja - CEO of eXp Realty (EXPI)

0:00 I think in the summer of 05 or 06 my account told me I was worth $5 million at 14 rental properties and then within like a 6mon period that same account said I was worth negative a million at 19 he was selling homes by 28 he was the number one Keller Williams agent worldwide closing 4,000 deals over his career he built Washington Capital Partners a $2 billion private lending Giant and co-founded remine very early on in my college process I was like I

0:27 don't want a job I want a path that lets me be in control I read a book that changed my perspective which is Rich that poor dad I turned for one opportunity where knocking on doors and Co calling say hey I'll want to do some of this stuff they asked me to do these things which paid like 40 bucks but we did like a 100 of them in 30 days after two major exits he took his expertise to

0:45 ex realy where he now leads as CEO shaping the company's growth and vision at the worst year ever we sold seven homes and then within 12 months it was like 99 homes and within like a 4-year period we did 603 homes too many people Tred to learn sales into like how do I get you to do something versus identifying like is there a want or a need 99% of everything we fear or keeps us up at night at some moment in life is

1:11 literally irrelevant at a later dat Beyond business his Pera Family Foundation is opening doors for minorities in Tech helping them break barriers and build better Futures a Powerhouse in real estate a visionari in leadership a force for change this is Leo pan welcome to success story I'm your host Scott Clary the success story podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast network but HubSpot doesn't just have great podcasts if you're an entrepreneur if you're a builder they've got your

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5:38 think of an inflection point it could have been somewhere along your career path it could have been when you're growing up it sort of pushed you down the path you're on today pushed you into real estate push you into entrepreneurship what was that point so I I feel like I've had a couple of them I remember being like 14 15 years old and just understanding the traditional path the I was like wait I got to work

6:00 really hard for 30 or 40 years and then I have like six years to play golf in South Florida and I was like that doesn't sound like a lot of fun so I think even as early as high school something about the traditional path was not that interesting but the the real inflection point was college so I went to College in the year 2000 and my plan was to become a graphic designer and interestingly enough I was being

6:33 recruited from like career even my freshman yearor College by companies that don't exist like Worldcom and AOL in their original form because I grew up in the northern Virginia area and that's what the Tech Corridor was D dllas Corridor that was really interesting because that was the first time that I felt my cheese get moved because I was told that if I finished my college degree because 20 years ago needed a college degree I could make $150,000

7:03 as a graphic designer or design website a lot for a graphic designer well and adjusted for inflation that was like $300,000 right but in a six-month period I saw those same opportunities disappear or turn into like $35,000 jobs right so very early on in my in my college process I was like I don't want a job I I want a path that lets me be in control was it

7:33 did you did your parents have influence on on your thoughts at this time or in the opposite direction both my parents have phds and my dad very very much the opposite direction yeah my father worked for the same company for 208 and a half years so no one in my family had Gone the entrepreneurial path okay so your family then was very similar to my very very safe risk adverse family so you have this thought and you realize that

8:01 these jobs that you're lining up aren't so great but now you don't have a playbook for entrepreneurship so what were the first steps that you took yeah so freshman your college I I thought I was going to become a graphic designer and go work for a big tech company I actually took an entrepreneurship class in college where they made us write a business plan to see what it would look like if I went and started a a design

8:28 company and back then you had to buy servers because there was no AWS and basically the punchline was I did the math on just basic gear it would have been like $400,000 to get the the type of Hardware you would need in order to be able to host and create web content which again sounds crazy that does sound crazy and based on what you could bill which back then you could charge quite a bit to to build the websites that are

8:56 basically now self- served on like GoDaddy right but it would have been like three years before I even got to like break even and so very early on I was like I'm not sure that this is going to be it but I read a book that had a very kind of a picture of Dorian Gray effect on me that kind of fundamentally changed my perspective which is a very cliche answer in real estate because of Robert kiyosaki's Rich

9:22 Dad Poor Dad right and what it fundamentally shifted for me was the concept of Leverage of people time and money right it it it was the first time I understood that there is an alternative to trading dollar for time and you can leverage whether it's it's high commission right of you're not being paid per hour but for the service you're rendered and then when you hopefully go from the S quadrant to the B quadrant now you are leveraging other people's

9:52 Talent so you're not limited by hours in the day and then eventually when you go from the B quadrant to the I quadrant you become just a cap allocator and you can actually leverage other people's businesses and time so you had this idea before you even started as an agent well at that point I'm assuming that means that if I'm just like reading between the lines agent was never the main objective it was broker it was building my own business in real

10:16 estate it was it was actually being a real estate investor right so I read the book and go to the last quadrant yeah and then decided okay real estate seems like a interesting path I kept reading every book I could could on real estate at that point Point my father met a gentleman who try to use a very traditional real estate prospecting script on him which is would you like to invest passively in real estate and

10:41 my dad said no but my son's obsessed will you go to a coffee with him I went to coffee with him I came prepared to offer to work for free and he actually turned me down and he said if you want to learn about real estate you should call this guy in Colorado he can teach you everything you want to know I called The Stranger in Colorado and he said I can teach you everything you want to know about real

11:04 estate but it'll cost you $10,000 and so unbeknownst to my parents my friends I sold my worldly possession of my car and entered a contract with a stranger and wired him all my money I was 19 years old or 18 years old and it turned out to be one of the best decisions of My Life One one who was like I think I for the first time bet the farm right like the perbal farm and I did it super young

11:29 and it was a high commit right but unlike some other high ticket things that exist in the world today this was a legitimate relationship where he actually taught me the art of selling in the sense of like hey all human beings make emotional decisions and then justify them logically right like you know I think too many people try to learn sales into like how do I get you to do something versus identifying like is there a want or a need like ready

11:59 will and enable and like I think that's actually the best part about sales is first of all is to identify if the person needs the product or service and get to a no very fast versus trying to sell somebody something they don't need but if they they are already willing enable and qualified then it's more like problem solving and Advising so I mean your your sort of insight and wisdom around sales that was like exceptional at a very young age even I mean even the

12:28 people that I speak to about sales they don't they don't qualify or disqualify they you know it's almost like trying to beat this person into submission and manipulating them with everything possible to try and close the deal so I think that's probably why you were so successful you learned this very very early well it's very different right if if if you actually focus on qualification upfront then you actually have a much much higher chance of having a successful transaction but

12:53 more importantly than long-term referral you know what's interesting so what you're describing about sales is how I learn sales in Tech and this is I think this is like very forward thinking salesmanship I don't find that this idea permeates real estate I think that there is negative connotation between real estate and sales to some degree and I'm curious why you think that this Maybe I'm Wrong you can challenge me on anything by the way this is just my very

13:19 uneducated opinion but I feel like true salesmanship is not properly taught with real estate agents I would argue the true salesmanship is not taught anywhere right I I think sales in general has a bad connotation right I think you know there's all kinds of terms for like commission breath like it doesn't matter what we're talking about cars life insurance policies you know and so you know and and and again I I have a different approach because I feel

13:50 sales is one of the most honorable things that can be done in the world and if you actually look at like potential income you know to be verified but i' I've read a couple places it's it's typically like you know aess celebrities right athletes and movie stars followed by public company CEOs and then typically right behind that is the top salesperson at that company right and most scaled Enterprises especially on the smaller side the top salesperson will probably

14:20 out earn the executive team and or the owner because there is no business without the sales F how did you apply that when you first started so now you you go through this $10,000 program you understand what true sales is how to identify pain points how to qualify disqualify so you were I mean give me numbers because I have I have numbers that I found on the internet but I mean tell me real numbers yeah so number one

14:45 so so the the journey was interesting in the sense that I did not want to be an agent I wanted to be an investor right I I didn't I didn't see that that was an interesting path and so I was I was learning how to become an investor halfway through the the one your program you said you have to get your license so you can at some point buy and sell yourself without having to hire somebody

15:06 you will get access to the MLS you'll you have you know it kind of like you and developing podcasts like how much of it do you need to do yourself versus Outsourcing so I get my license I have a you know pivotal experience in the sense that I I had to find a new place to live my landlord and I disagreed on acceptable volume on a Tuesday and I'm in the office because at that point I get my license and I was

15:31 looking for a rental on the MLS and the owner of the office says you should buy a house I said I'm a child I can't buy a house I'm 19 at this point and so I get into a conversation with a loan officer and in the US we have the FHA loan which is a low down payment loan product that has a flexibility for something called a non-occupant co-borrower so someone that can be the loan and title with you who's

16:01 not going to live in the house so for qualifications for a traditional mortgage you know to be owner occupied you you have to be on title and in the house s not to be considered investment which require much larger down payments but this one government backs debt instrument allows an immediate blood family member so like your parents an uncle to to either gift a down payment and or be a co-borrower so I asked my parents to co-sign my Lo but

16:29 more specifically to lend me the down payment for basically the day because as a licensed agent my commission was about the same size as the down payment so I get qualified I had bought this car and paid it off after I sold it and so I was able to qualify for $184,000 purchase I negotiated the seller to pay all the concessions all the closing costs and then effectively bought the property no money down with my own commission and paid my

17:00 parents back but more importantly I rented out three rooms of the four for enough to cover the mortgage and that was the aha I had right so it wasn't you know I think when you hear someone's story or you read stats on the Internet it's like well that was kind of a very straight line it's the opposite right it's it's hey I need somewhere to live because my landlord doesn't like me anymore well hey I actually qualify in

17:25 this regard but once I had that one singular experience I I only had the one proof point or one script and that became you know I was a college kid and I wrote down a little script and back to like asking the right question or identifying the right need I said to my fraternity Brothers I said let me talk to your parents about your housing needs for next year and when I got them on the phone and I knew I only

17:53 had 30 seconds I would say how would you like me to show you to pay for your kids housing for the next four years with the money you're going to spend next sem and I like I was like okay I'm listening right and at at that point 3% on anywhere between 250 to 350 was about one year's room and board and so I said you're you're going to deploy that money one time they're going to rent out all

18:17 the rooms and in four years when you sell the houses you'll probably pay for the entire tuition and again timing is everything I did this between 2002 and 2006 so a lot of my fraternity Brothers you were able to either sell the the house and make six figures and go home start a business like go on to a pretty U pretty good head start but the part that was crazy is I only had one transaction and it was myself I'd never

18:45 sold real estate I was I had barely turned 21 and at that point that summer I sold a about 11 houses so in in a time where you know most kids are working at mall I made about $660,000 in Gross Commission in my summer vacation that's amazing I think it's I mean when I look at sort of the the framework that you deploy for yourself and now for all your fraternity Brothers I mean that's that is almost showing Mastery of real

19:16 estate and the different levers and mechanisms you can use at a very early stage because I've worked with a lot of different real estate agents and between government programs and I'm not a real estate investor I don't pretend to be I don't pretend to be knowledgeable but I'm just I always find that real estate is the one category of investment opportunity where there's so many systems and opportunities that are actually built to support it like there's all these creative financing

19:41 rules there's all these government programs like it just seems like everything is built to help Real Estate Investors succeed but the the real estate agent that I speak to is not knowledgeable about or they don't bring these things to light like if I have ever had very few people have ever told me when I'm looking at a house oh these are other ways to finance it or have you thought about buying a fourplex and living in one of the units and then

20:03 renting out the other three so I think that I mean part of your success just outside looking in is the fact you just had like you immersed yourself in not only the surface level of the industry but like all of these again not just selling but investing and that investment actually LED you to become a better salesperson but it's just interesting why I don't see that happen quite often in in real estate even for like mature 10year experience stages

20:29 so the the one thing I figured out early on that I still preach is that the riches are in the niches right like you know Blue Ocean strategy like I I much rather become masterful at maybe just a couple things that resonate and then I can actually be an expert at it right so like do I want to compete with Walmart no thank you because like if everyone's going after the same product or service then you're you know competing on price

20:53 consumer Acquisitions expensive versus like hey let me become really really good at a couple things and demonstrating value to be picked is much easier at that point yeah and that's what you did so so 11 homes 60 Grand in commission so I blow it on a BMW because I'm 20s something but by my senior of college I was I think my senior full senior that year right because I graduated and then still had more time I did about

21:20 $300,000 in Gross commission as a full-time real estate agent and that's like now like a year and a half two years into this it yeah two two years in right so and and like I mean just tell the audience about statistics I mean that seems like that is unusually high for two years into real estate that is unusually high for today's standards right so I think the average agent in America makes about 42,000 so it's probably like 8 to 10x especially back

21:46 then with the average agent full-time professional made now eventually this obviously ends up turning into like thousands of homes and real estate transactions completed so what was the what was the sort of the Playbook to sort of expand on those whatever first 11 first $300,000 of commissions and then now you at one point you were number one agent at Keller Williams okay so what's the journey to get there that's the like the Highlight on the internet right of course the journey is

22:13 that you know or is it just hard work and and repeat it's also a lot of this right so the journey is like I'm not that special at all $36,000 happened in o5 right I was a licensed real estate agent with a heartbeat in the greatest bubble in history of the world and so what that translated to is I went and bought as many properties as I could with a ton of Leverage because it was available no income no asset loans

22:42 you know the the the real pivotal moment was I think in the summer of 05 or 06 my account told me I was worth $5 million I had 14 rental properties I had an X5 I thought I was God's gift to real estate and then within like a six-month period that same account said I was worth negative a million dollar and in the subsequent like 24 months I gave all that back to the banks after doing a lot

23:06 of crying in boogers and so that process was you had achieved last quadrant you you had turned into a real estate investor very very quickly actually but with without any of the fundamentals in place right like not real free cash flow and real sustainable fixed debt versus variable debt and all all of the the the things that we're skipped through in the in the exuberance of the moment in the market so the the you know legislative safety

23:36 measures and the Ling system didn't exist that exists today right you can't do that again today because we collectively as a country learned that was a bad idea but did you hold on did you hold on to any of that no no it was all it was all hit the reset button but what the lesson was learned is like hey there's a whole lot of crying and then you it's it's it's one of those moments in life which is is again a philosophy

23:58 prescrib to it's like hey the rules of the game changed you can be mad about it or you can just decide do I still want to be a market participant and I feel like this this thought process applies to everything right you know email marketing worked really well in 2001 right they made a movie about it you got mail and like people get excited versus like we just don't even open it anymore and so whether it's a marketing tactic or hey

24:28 this this rule change by the federal government where you can't do that anymore do you decide okay I I could have big feelings about it for like a day and then you have to make the decision it's like okay do I still want to be a market participant and learn to play Under new rules of engagement or I do I just move on to do something else and you always always like as a human being you always have that free will to

24:48 say I want to participate I don't want to participate so for me it was okay the World Ended as I knew it what do I do now do I want to get out of real estate or say in real estate and at that point it was like Hey people have lived before me let me try to get in front of older wiser folks who've seen this before and as soon as I did they were like hey this movie's played

25:09 before right like 1992 the SNL crisis there's going to be these things called foreclosures and on the bank Ledger books they're going to called reos so now you need to find out where they're at right and you know Ariana my amazing wife she was in the business and she had been to a settlement with an agent who had a bunch of Aros and she's like hey they told me a lot of these banks are in Dallas you you need to go to Dallas and

25:38 go get some of these contracts for us and I turned for one opportunity where again showing up and knocking on doors and co- calling say hey I I want to do some of this stuff and they asked me to do these things called broker price opinions which paid like 40 bucks for an opinion to Value but we did like a hundred of them in 30 days and then they're like hey you want to sell some houses and then it went from

26:01 like at the worst year ever I think we sold seven homes and then within 12 months it was like 99 homes and then that turned into 280 homes and within like a four-year period the best year we had we did 63 homes in a 12mon period in 2010 which by today's standards there's teams that do much more than that but back then before the accelerant of high-speed internet and the technology that we have available today I think

26:28 our team was number five in the Wall Street Journal of all teams in the country you know most people that that I speak to that now look very successful from the outside and there's always they've achieved a a significant marcraft success and then seemingly lost it all at some point in their career and this is like not this is a story that plays out again and again and again like it always seem it's a r of Passage it is

26:51 a right of passage it's always like oh I made a business and it's always you know a million dollars for most people is especially people that are not entrepreneurial if you're entrepreneurial usually you have the the the foresight to say okay if this goes well I'm going to be making well over a million dollars my business will be making well over a million but for the average like 9 to5 W2 that's like a big amount of money a big sum of money to

27:13 get in one year but most people that are entrepreneurial I think what happens is they achieve this Milestone they achieve money that they've never thought possible and then there's sort of two paths they can go on there's going to be a point very rarely will that first success ever turn into the success that you're going to talk about in 20 to 30 years from now usually there's some hitting the fan moment when it all goes to crap and all goes to hell but I think

27:38 that that that point that moment when you again like what you said just a par it you can choose to be a market participant you can choose to opt in or opt out you can choose to just complain and cry and and and you know like wo is me like I can't I can't continue like all all these different all these different negative feelings you can have at that point you can choose to take those lessons those learnings and just

28:03 continue to build or you can opt out and I think that's actually the the the biggest indicator of success what you choose to do in that moment so I I heard a quote once that said in order to acquire a great Fortune you must first lose a small one right I like that you know but you mentioned also like so this happens in every industry so I mean in in in podcasting Apple podcast where majority of podcast downloads come from

28:27 they used to Auto download so when I used to upload as well as every other podcast in the world used to upload a new episode all the people that subscribed to your podcast automatically downloaded it onto their player so Apple updated this feature about a year a year and a half ago where you don't Auto download anymore so if I subscribed to you five years ago and I haven't listened to you since it doesn't make sense that I'm still Auto downloading

28:51 because downloads count towards Advertiser but yeah well it counts towards Advertiser downloads and CPM and it that that fuel RS the whole commercial model of podcasting for every podcaster in the world so when Apple did this I mean that's on a on a low end about 20% of downloads and then Revenue were cut overnight for every podcast in the world on the high end like 30 to 40% so again this is something that you just have to

29:16 deal with in every it doesn't matter what you're doing it could be Drop Shipping it could be you could be you selling on Tik Tok shops if you're in this space now it doesn't really matter it's always going to happen to you where whatever you've been building eventually the rules are change and you have to find a way to persevere in spite of it so I hear a lot of people say that they think the American dream is dead what is

29:38 your perspective on the American dream after going through all these ups and downs and highs and lows yeah my advantage point is someone who didn't grow up here right I I didn't get here till I was 12 so you know my dad worked for an NGO so we moved around to six Lattin American count so like I actually did kidnapping Dr as a kid right like I fundamentally believe if my story was in a different country someone

29:59 would have kidnpped my family because that's what you can do when you get mad at your competitors when there's no rules right in in foreign countries so like just like simple things like our legal system works if I get mad I sue you and performance or non-performance or you know for payment right if I fail horribly I hit bankruptcy and no one puts me in jail like there's there's debtors jail in other countries right so to to me this is still the greatest

30:28 system on the planet is it perfect no is there a better one show me like I just I haven't seen a better system so you know cost of living everything yes it maybe it's it's a tough moment in history and I don't want to take any anything away from that because I'm hyper aware that there is a lot of pain in the system postco with inflation but I don't know of a better system on the planet than this one if you fast

30:56 forward from from where you started to to where you are now what is one belief that you held about entrepreneurship about about success that has radically changed after you've gone through all sort of different iterations of building success that you've gone through the one that I think about and again it's because of the moment in in my journey right so I I truly believe there's Seasons to everything in life right so when Ariana and I because we've been

31:22 together our whole lives like there was a very prolonged period of time where we stayed in the office till like 10 o'clock every single day right and it did and like youth is a superpower of energy right like I tell young people like the thing you have on everybody is stamina like you can work 12 hours a day for 5 10 years straight and still have a social life and go out and St till 2 in

31:47 the morning and wake up the next day like at a certain point either you like you have kids and then you have to make the choice of like do you not want them to see you or you just don't have that level of energy right like if I don't get 8 hours of sleep now and you make fun of me because like you know actually no okay so I make fun of you but I was actually thinking about it

32:08 when we went for dinner at like 4 in the afternoon that was the perfect night so I actually take it all back it was actually great like but if you ever texted me like after 9: right you know I'm not going to resp but I respond to you at like 6:00 in the morning right but like I just know that to perform at the level I perform at today I probably need to not have a cocktail

32:30 and go to bed at 9: and have like eight hours of energy because for me to do what I could do at 22 I just don't physically have that anymore but you also recognize yeah so to your point Seasons Seasons to your life right like you don't want to be you don't want to be absent from from your kids and yeah but what I was going to say is that the season it's like also know that what

32:49 you're doing like I am going to sacrifice the next season to have a type of season I want right so also know that like I think a lot of successful people don't realize it's like it Sprints are in moments right for the most part it's a marathon and but just know that there are going to be times where you have to Sprint when you okay so if you think about sort of the the the seasons of

33:12 your life so you were Keller Williams and then you were remine and then you were Washington Capital and now you're exp those are sort of like the four yeah but it was Keller Williams washing capitals REM so when you think about when you think about that season that you're building after Keller Williams so it was Washington Capital partners and then remine Washington Capital and remine you were still going in thinking like I am entrepreneur I can work unlimited hours

33:39 per week I want to build things is that where you were at when you were going to those two vress well and the cool part that I think again from The Outsider in River miror it looks like this chapter ends and this one starts yes what entrepreneurship normally like looks like is like you're always testing stuff like you're always saying is this in a creative side business to what we're currently doing and sometimes it's a tremendous

34:03 waste of time and money or it becomes so successful it dwarfs the previous thing that you were doing where you just have to let it go because it's like I'm gonna sell that you know that's how Yosef started boxy charm of course he was doing U like a he was doing he was like shipping and and selling off like liquidation merchandise right and then he started only focusing on Beauty and cosmetics as as one of the

34:30 categories of merchandise he was liquidating and then he found out that that was outperforming all the other categories and then he just spun that off into bcy CH which is which which I think is the the best way to build businesses right where you have you it's it's it's it's almost a less risky way of finding product Market fit right and and the times I've seen it be done successfully is purely bootstrapped right it's it's it's it's an

34:53 entrepreneurial itch that's being scratched versus I think you know we just live through a decade of ideas being backed by dollars that were not you know held accountable for product Market filing I don't think that's done I mean we're an AI we're in we're in the age of AI right now we're in the next phase you tack AI onto your business and all of a sudden your valuation goes through the roof I don't think it will

35:15 ever be done I think that that will all I think that as long as there's people that are trying to push and break things and create bleeding edge super disruptive products and there's some you know hype around technology they're using there's always going to be some Capital that flows in just because of absolutely yeah I was just saying the ones I've success are very successful in from my vantage point it's normally been like they Tron Sol a problem as a as a

35:42 doer Market participant expert domain expert and those seem to be the best Solutions so if you think about how you graduated from Keller Williams into Washington capital and Washington Capital and remine you built with Ariana and for listeners that's your wife yeah and some other co-founders but yes yes okay so what was the goal and we can focus on either or whichever one is like more meaningful to you from like things that I've learned building this

36:09 that I can teach the audience but which one we can focus on either what was the goal going into either of those two companies it was always like is there is there an opportunity to solve so Washington Capital Partners was in 2012 post Financial reform so post frame and cfbb so before the financial crisis we could walk into a bank and borrow a line of credit and go buy real estate based on the valuation an asset

36:37 based loow meaning if the house was worth 500,000 a bank would lend me up to 250,000 against that property but there was no ability to repay baked into it which again with development or refurbishing that's not a thing so too too many people brought too much money with no ability to repay and so that was a foundational thing mostly for like owner occupied loans where it's like you can't borrow money unless you can afford to service the debt through

37:04 cash flow so that single rule change affected a lot of investment based loans that don't have the same goal as owner occupied but it was one of those unintended consequences that come from changing rules to protect the whole there was a small segment who was like well now we can't borrow money either even though our goal is not to service the debt it's to fix it up and sell it so it was again and when you see a a

37:31 finished product you know that entity's lent billions of dollars and then start like that it was like hey we were borrowing money to buy fix and sell houses we stopped buying and fixing during the bottom of the financial crisis and then the investors who were lending us the money said hey can you keep using the capital said well let's try lending it to other people and so I went from like hey let's do a couple loans to let's do more loans to like

38:00 okay this is becoming a business now we need to raise money well now are you still are you still like likeing you're still selling houses you're still buying fixing flipping while simultaneously running like a loan business on the side it was like an Excel spread sheet and we're doing a couple loans okay and then it's like okay now we probably need to take and the beauty of the journey it's like we had this office that incubated

38:23 the next business almost always sequentially and then that's is would eventually like led to a remine as well and so in the lending business we needed an losos a loan origination system but hard money lending was very niched so it wasn't like a a robust Marketplace because the total addressable Market is not big enough so we we started specking went out and hired some Engineers to build it for us and one of the solutions we one of the the the inputs we wanted

38:50 was public record data and so we went out to the marketplace and said hey where can we buy this data and we were quot voted some egregious pricing from the couple of companies we called and at that time we heard that Zillow was advertising a public record MLS API and we had to compete in in a hackathon to get access to it and so we we attended just purely because we wanted the data but we had to present a product that was

39:19 a a UI and we actually won the whole thing because we actually understood the the realtor journey and and when we won Zilla said why don't you keep the API and build a a product that could be deployed to mls's and four months later we were invited to do a presentation at a summit you know we we came up with the name over a weekend bought a URL made a PowerPoint and a three-minute pitch we just happened to present to

39:47 some of the the biggest msers in the country who then said hey do you actually build this we would be a customer and so then that took us on the next Journey a big thank you to indeed for supporting success story because hiring people is one of the hardest things you're ever going to have to do as an entrepreneur as a Founder as somebody who's trying to build a business it's important to hire well and find the right person but it takes so

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40:54 juggling multiple platforms or waiting weeks for the right candidate and how fast is indeed in the minute I've been talking to you 23 hires were made on indeed according to indeed data worldwide there's no need to wait any longer speed up your hiring right now with indeed and listeners of success story will get a $75 sponsor job credit to get your jobs more visibility at indeed.com Clary terms of conditions do apply just go to indeed.com Clary a huge thank you to

41:22 neted for supporting today's episode now what does the future hold for business if you ask n experts you're going to get 10 answers bull market bare Market inflation up inflation down honestly at this point you just need a crystal ball but until we get one over 41,000 businesses have found the next best thing they future proofed their businesses their operations with Nets Suite by Oracle which is the number one Cloud Erp imagine having your accounting your financial management your inventory

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42:17 biggest opportunities and speaking of opportunities they put together the cfo's guide to Ai and machine learning at netsuite.com scottcare this is the playbook for understanding how to use AI for your business the guide is free that is netsuite.com scottcare so a lot of a lot of the the businesses you've built I mean to your point so it's almost been like this natural progression it's not like you ideated on 50 different business ideas and then you went out into the market

42:48 and then you pressure tested these ideas and got feedback and and spoke to people then started to build one and then tried to take it to Market and find product these were all these natural regressions of all the activities you were already doing and and I and I I think that's how most you know especially bootstrap entrepreneurs right like if I were to quote Michael Gerber's emth right it's like you're a really good doer and then

43:10 all of a sudden at some point either you're like I can do it better than the owner does or I can do it better than the the franchisee does and so you then have this entrepreneur fit but when you've been an entrepreneur your whole life I think I feel like you're always testing stuff right and like some of the most successful entrepreneurs I've ever met in any industry it's like hey like you know I've met a a gentleman here in Miami who

43:35 builds like these phenomenal large scale projects 400,000 square feet hotels mix use like how'd you start he was like I was literally a painer I was painting Then I then then like I figured out how to make money and most of these guys didn't and I was actually getting a line of credit from the bank and they get like they told me this drywall gu is about to go under you should probably call him and so the bank put put him in

43:59 touch with a drywall guy and he's like well I already do the pain I might as well get drywall business and so he upstreamed his flow a little bit yeah and he's like well he like marginal increments not yeah it's like well if I got the paint I got the drywall I might as well get the framing right before you know it he's like he's a developer and so like he just kept going a little bit

44:18 upstream and downstream in any direction where it's like okay why why don't we vertically integrate a little bit more and so sometimes it's adjacent into your point about our mutual friend he's like wait this outperforms everything with more margin right so and that's that ideating and testing is what's important right because you know the the real estate teen sales was the cash flow that created the space to go test stuff right because like the part that's not on the Internet

44:48 it's like all the stuff we tried that didn't work right like or well like hey let's do assisted living facilities and we lost 400 Grand and it's like we tried developing some stuff early on we lost $750,000 and it was like but like none of it was an end of life moment because thankfully we had a cash flowing business that allowed us to take risks and I mean like that sounds like large sums of money for people that never

45:11 built anything before never invested to us it was a large sum of money no okay sorry yes my point is it is it is still a large sum of money for anyone to lose but I mean if you have that cash flow then again it's not going to it's not going to end your life you're going to wake up tomorrow you're still going to be able to new things it's it's also a risk tolerance that you build over time

45:30 so it's a risk tolerance it's the ability to bounce back from risk and for failure that I think is again like a Hallmark of a good entrepreneur so if you lose $400,000 because you put money into crypto not not this week not this week but in the past if you lost money put money into crypto I mean you you you're taking an uneducated investing opinion and I think that that's actually what causes people to to make emotional decision as opposed to

45:58 logical ones but if you have built things repeatedly and you understand that there's potential product Market fit for the solution that you're trying to create and and you build it and it doesn't work I mean you can take a less of an emotional stance on it and I think it allows you to take more risks and not let those failures like completely destroy you mentally because again like you you you sort of like expose your I

46:19 think a good entrepreneur like gradually exposes themselves to more and more risk over time so couple things you said one is I actually say a s that I think is very important in sales is that all human beings make emotional decisions and then justify them lot correct yes right so that's why I focus on qualification but then secondly like the tolerance thing is it like we're parents to younger is kids like our daughter turned 10 you so it's not feeling

46:42 younger anymore but seven and 10 and you know when you have a toddler like if they don't get the banana or the toy in the second they want it it's the end of the world and then by the time they're like you know tying their shoes like that can trigger them and then it's like I got picked on at school like and in that kind of progression of Entrepreneurship take that as the same thing it's like oh I couldn't close the

47:08 deal oh I lost the deal or oh that marketing campaign returned zero doar right like we invested $110,000 in a mailer and we got zero in Roi is it because we didn't do it long enough like did I actually have to do that eight times before I got the return I wanted or on a CPM or anything like that and then it's just through experience you start to have that tolerance it's like okay most things have a risk reward quotient that

47:37 I'm solving for and you know how much risk am I willing to take and then also I think the one that I think the superpower that comes from those small failures that lead to larger failures even though in that moment it was everything is did you die and that's a crazy concept right like you just said most like every entrepreneur you've ever interviewed had an ass whooping super early on if you choose to get up which is not

48:02 always the case right some people I've met try it get their ass whooped and go get a job and never look back and then actually tell others a cautionary tale of don't risk anything but the ones that get back up you actually have very real tangible experience that like it didn't kill you right like did you die do you still like the next day you wake up and your your wife is safe your kids are safe your parents are alive you have

48:32 roof over your head you have food in the refrigerator was it really that bad and what's the worst that can happen you have to go get a job that's always the worst and I think that when you I think that when you look at the skill sets that you've built as an entrepreneur and you realize how employable you actually are it really takes a lot of the stress and the fear out of it because what's the worst that can happen a company

48:54 wants to a company will always want to hire somebody that's able to build something from scratch where nothing existed now a couple years later whether or not it was successful you built that whole thing from scratch you figured out sales marketing offs HR Finance you figure out every single business unit that is a very valuable skill set to a company that's going to pay well over 1001 152 $200,000 to employ you so if that's the worst case zero to one I

49:15 think is probably the hardest skill in business yeah I think that I want I want you to teach over a lesson for like entrepreneurs that are listening because you you sort of evolved your business into different businesses based on based on like what the market was telling you to do like with Washington Capital with remine the market was saying we need this and then you built it so I I think that's even too much credit really yeah I think why

49:44 do you say that because it was like well I was gonna I'll tell you what I was gonna ask you so I was gonna ask you what do entrepreneurs do wrong when they start businesses yeah no for us it was always like we need it we we're just literally building it for ourselves I don't think you're giving yourself enough credit and then we showed it to a couple friends and they're like oh that's pretty cool friends that has

50:03 significant impact on the market but whatever yeah but but I go back to sample size of one right like I think human beings undervalue their own their own vantage point and attention so like the amount of times I've sat down with an agent who's like hey I'm going to try this for marketing what do you think I'm like would that work on you like how do you part with I I don't think enough people stop and go I'm a

50:26 sophisticated consumer of products and services like does that work on me right like and I don't think enough marketers put themselves through that lens like hey I'm G to try this like okay would you click on that I agree with that completely would you open that envelope would you pick up that phone like this second I hear hey is this lonardo I'm like click you don't know how to say my name you have no business talking to me right

50:52 so but like the amount of times I've clicked on a funny product ad had on Instagram lately in the last like two years because that's where my attention for my demographic lives it's like oh wow like I just need to see the right ad at the right moment and I am a ready willing to enable consumer well I think there's so much waste in in marketing spend and marketing effort because I agree with you I I've actually

51:17 so I want to talk to you about about average because you speak a lot about what what average is and and I know that for example you throw out most of the Flyers that you get to your house before they even get inside the house you FL you throw them out when you're right beside your mailbox but I think that and I I've never really understood this because again I've never LED like a Fortune 500 marketing team but if I look

51:44 at their socials or if I look at their flying or if I look at the majority of the marketing campaigns that they put out I find it to be like really half-ass like I it doesn't hit home with me it doesn't resonate with me most of my buying decision is based on my research now maybe those marketing campaigns those shitty posts on LinkedIn those flyers that you know like overwhelm my mailbox that I throw it just as quickly

52:09 as you do maybe they're just meant to keep them top of mind but it almost turns me off from the company like I ra i i defer to somebody who is innovative who doesn't suck at marketing who is like a little bit against the grain from somebody that's doing it for the past hundred years because I feel like they have my best interest in mind I feel like they think more like me and this is whether or not they do this is the

52:32 perception that I get so I bank with a different kind of bank I bank with Mercury I don't bank with like a Chase or a JP Morgan and I I I like Mercury because they're very convenient and the features they set up are great for me but I'm curious if you have opinion on why do companies put out such average content such average marketing effort companies have seasons right so a startup who's being Scrappy and creative and against the grain has a

53:03 limited budget right and and I think you know you also have to appreciate like you are their ICP you're their ideal customer profile for what they're selling and so the bigger an Enterprise gets the more less specific ICP they have then they just like the general population is my chases in cities ICP is America right like we 20% of America because at that point they've just Acquired and conglomerated so many business and services where like

53:34 the lifetime value of you is not just the bank account it's all the other auxillary products that'll cross- sell you and when you are you know double digit market share of a country at that point it is top of mine right it's Coca-Cola right like I just need you to remember that when you're at the restaurant and you're about to order and they say Coke or Pepsi you say Coke right because at that point you're competing just for top of Mind attention

54:00 versus like Hey we're an aggressive startup we have a niche and like we're going to focus on that be world class at that and so you like again also like I try not to you know even let the poor marketing bother me in a sense of like hey I'm going to choose to do like for example we bank with a local Regional player where what's most important to us is that like I can walk in ask for the

54:24 manager and like I can send a wire remote when we're traveling like it's service versus features like I can I don't actually care what the tech looks like if you give me the service I'm looking for well by the way the the feature set is like the service is tied into the feature set so one of the things I didn't have in Canada was TD Bank I had to walk into a branch to send a wire I cannot stand walking

54:44 into a branch to send a wire so now I can send wire I can send a from my desktop from my laptop whatever just it so service is now congruent with the features they've built up but yes sorry yeah so and again depending on the the product and service and the phase of life you're in and the like the what the value proposition and to me that's the beauty of capitalism everybody gets to compete on all that stuff and I think

55:06 the what I would say to most entrepreneurs is like you don't need everybody like we're the single at exp we're the single largest real estate Brokerage in the United States and I'm and I have 4.2% of every agent is licensed in the US yeah in the US and like you know long term I want to get that to 10 or 12% but even if we absolutely absolutely not it out of the park and you get to 10 or 12% that means

55:30 90% of the agents will never be with me and that's okay let's talk a little bit about what exp does differently because I think a lot of what we're talking about can dovetail into that quite nicely because exp does things differently than traditional real estate firms I mean if I if again you you make a point of saying like the average consumer is very smart sometimes I think Legacy institutions I do not consider exp to be Legacy by

55:55 any means I think it's very new and Forward Thinking Legacy institutions do not consider how smart the average consumer is becoming because of access to information is that something that I think you hold that belief to be true how does that impact like what you what you do at exp or what you do differently so first like this is my first job so I I did not found the company I didn't set the vision from the

56:17 beginning but it's a 15y old company we turned 15 like a month ago and and I think Glenn was way ahead of his time the founder and and and and it was born out of an entrepreneurial itch it was born in 2009 post financial crisis where he goes I can't afford rent anymore like I mean they're going to I've got a business or I create a cloud-based model and so when he created a cloud-based brokerage never

56:41 been done before like there was a can I ask why because it just seems like that it's like reducing a ton of costs so it makes a ton of sense but because now it's normal right like in 20 in 2009 the thought was foreign and by the way legally speaking there was a bunch of states where like we still have to have like a 500t office somewhere and put the license on the wall why is that just

57:06 you know it's how it's been done right so we were able to legally comply with State rules and created an environment and a platform that allowed us to go fully virtual but it was like hey we can get rid of the single largest expense on everyone's BNL which is awful space because real estate was dominated by franchises which was literally a store on every corner right so he was able to eliminate the biggest expense and the

57:33 the biggest hindrance because before exp no one had ever recruited without having a store on every corner no I know I mean like if you think about like Legacy Industries I mean like real estate is right up there with banking I don't think it's changed that much in x amount of years I I through in it I don't know for a fact but I mean I feel like outside of exp before exp like it probably upated pretty much the same for like 100

58:00 years 100 year like it does not change significantly so this was Glenn's Vision what were the what were the biggest issues that you dealt with say I mean or that he dealt with even before you joined that sort of emulates like market like how did you get how did you get agents to get on board with this how did you get people to trust listing you know the biggest purchase or sale of their life life with somebody

58:27 doesn't have physical offices when again hasn't been done for like this years I think the overcoming the objection was purely to the agents because what Glenn understood is that consumers pick the professional they want to work with no matter what Jersey you're wear whether it's kellams or Remax or centry 21 or exp like they had a relationship with Scott and like your cell phone like they didn't have you saved under KW or exp or it was just Scott yeah so like you could

58:57 have switched companies between your last purchase and this purchase and they're going to use you regardless the over the overcoming the objection was convincing that the agent didn't need the physical office and again Glen very creatively did it by like we have an Enterprise relationship with Regis so like we have more office than anybody else does right because you can walk in and use a regist office anywhere on the planet but you know exp's journey is no different than every

59:21 other one where it's like hey it was a fist fight for like 10 11 years and then there was an inflection point which for exp's Journey was Co right where the world went into a Collective experiment of becoming virtual and I mean they went from like 10,000 to like 70,000 ANS it was crazy exponential growth in a two or three year period and now in 2024 going into 2025 every new National corporately owned brokerage will look

59:52 more like us than the Legacy players what is I mean we just established at real estate the majority of it is is very outdated and it's a legacy industry what would be one belief it's still held in real estate that could be harmful well I think one of them still that physical office space like again we're only 4.2% of the market right and if you were to take every copycat brokerage who's modeled us they're probably maybe

60:16 1% together not even 1% do you see do you see Legacy companies copying you now no it's mostly new startups so what so they don't so they haven't they haven't said oh we don't want to be Blockbuster you're you're the NF so so I think that's a A reduced statement that doesn't give credit to the like true baggage of any Legacy incumbent competing where it's like wait like everything we have is built around this Legacy thought process so to

60:46 disrupt this one thing that seems kind of like obvious in the rear room mirror might be completely and fundamentally disruptive to our entire model and so so do do you burn the bridge and decide to reinvent yourself or you know are you either Apple jobs with the iPod to the iPhone which cannibalizes its most profitable product or you Kodak where you say film is everything we're not going to touch this digital thing then Canon needs your

61:13 luxure yeah that's interesting what it'll be interesting to see what what they do well and again I I'm I'm of the opinion like it doesn't have to be binary right it's like we'll get a piece of the market they'll keep keep a piece of the market and everyone coexists but because in most Industries you still see Legacy folks coexist I know that you're saying that but there are there are case studies of people that no longer have any market share there are

61:42 but again The Brokerage business is a service fulfillment business for 1099 entrepreneurs right so at the end of the day like I I view what we do as a platform to allow real estate entrepreneurs to build their businesses on top of that so like for me we are operating system we're a platform and some other companies have a different model right so we tend to attract a very entrepreneurial type of agent who who our platform is ideal

62:09 for but there are other agents who like are probably more attracted to a brand and they're like hey I'm going to join this company because of the like maybe tens of millions they do consumer spending f for facing which we are not but I think that I think that a platform that enables a a realtor to become entrepreneurial or something that a platform that attracts entrepreneurs I mean I think the agents at the end of the day are going to be most successful

62:35 when they adopt an entrepreneurial mindset because I mean again I feel that my perspective outside looking in if I'm going to be in real estate and I'm betting my entire career on a brand that I'm missing the mark on what's actually going to make me successful in real estate I feel like I'm I'm over investing in Legacy player versus sort of taking that external locus of control putting it inside and saying I'm

63:06 responsible for my own success let me like partner up with an agency that supports my entrepreneurial vision for whatever I want to build I think that's probably a fundamental sh it's a very scary shift but I think that at the end of the day the agents that are entrepreneurial that understand that their success is yes supported by the broker but executed on by them they're going to be the ones that make way more money close more deals correct and and

63:30 the entire industry is entrepreneurial right because every agent is at$ 1099 agent so every single one of them whether some realize it or not own a small SMB business yes and they need to trat like gross dollars as Topline Revenue which should have a portion allocated to reinvestment whether it's technology or marketing or staff or something else if you plan to make it sustainable not you know kind of s quadrant self-employed practice what makes the best agent in your mind

64:03 you know I feel that in my journey it's like what makes the best entrepreneur right it's like hey and it's it's pretty clear to me I think you need to have a lot of introspection figure out how you're wired right like most everything can be learned right I I I truly prescribe to that if you have at average or above average IQ you can actually learn anything and especially in this era where like I just going on YouTube and I don't even get to

64:30 pay people for it but where where my my thinking is very specific and probably a little different than most is like anyone can do anything outside of like brain surgery or like coding really complicated things but if you can actually figure out how it is that you're I'd make the argument that coding is becoming more obsess too but 100% with AI but when you figure out what you're god-given gifts are and then actually lean in on

64:59 that so like for example if you take like the disc profile which is like a personality profiling test that I'm kind of obsessed with I know statistically from the results of the test that there are things I'm better at Natural State meaning I can actually get on stage be handed on microphone as long as I'm in my like in my cohort in my domain and freestyle like to 5,000 people for an hour

65:29 and by the end of that hour I'll probably have more energy than when I got off stage when I got on stage because like I'm in that's when you know you're doing your best work and you're in the right spot because I'm in my gift yeah a I had a predisposition for it but then I have actually spent 23 years of my life honing it right the opposite of that is like the snc like the detailed

65:52 and the spreadsheet part what are you by the way you're a 99 99 I is that most Sal is that most sales people not that pronounced but some variation of that and then like a 10 10 on S andc and so like once a month I have to do consolidate financials for three hours of a public company right I can do it I can pay attention but that actually drains my like for me to take a sales

66:16 call after that is not a good idea right I'm not going to show up with the same level of energy with the same level of attention and like that night I probably don't want to do date night or spend time with the kids where I have to be super present like hey let's you know maybe watch a movie right where you don't need my level of Engagement because I might not show up the way I want to show up yeah it's it's not your

66:37 it's not your gift so so t to the the question it's not a I didn't forget the question is how do you how do you get to live in your gifts because I think that's how entrepreneurs show up passionately right when people like Liv in your passions it's like what are you good at so vers and and I think that's how like people get confused about the passion statement right like you don't have to be passionate about selling houses you

67:04 have to be passionate about spending time with people or even like let's just go into leg gen right like and whether Fillin the blank real estate agent or anything it's like okay there are many forms of lead genen right like in person if you were not high ey it's probably not going to work right if like you're super detailed and you can build funnels with clickthrough rates and a call response to action like that's not me

67:31 that's a very successful way of doing it but I'm really good at like pitching a room which statistically speaking for a good percentage of humans is scary to die right so if you don't have that eye don't do that because you'll probably create anxiety create fear create failure because you're fearful and then you're like I had a bad experience sales suck right versus like sales suck that way for you versus like if you're highly introverted and highly analytical it's

68:01 like figure out some funnel stuff on the internet and you might make more money than you ever dreamed because it's actually living in your gift whether or not you're an entrepreneur or an agent who is an entrepreneur what is the what is the wisdom for them to figure out how to find out what their gift is so they can live in it and they can Outsource the rest as as quickly as possible yeah so I I think it's both you

68:27 know maybe taking tests and taking a bunch of them until like how did you find George outside of doing a disc profile I luckily like inside the killer room system like they taught us that very early on so like I started taking discs when I was like 19 in avas and Myers Briggs and like strength finder so like once I kind of figured out that this is something I want to learn I went and found more

68:51 then the cool thing was like I started doing it so young I actually saw my change over time right like if you study this stuff it says like it's fluid through your format of years and typically kind of like you said the entrepreneur has a ass whooping that normally is when it sets so like my eye was at 50 and then the financial crisis and we had to start over and my D went to 100 right it was

69:18 like I survived a traumatic event and it could be personal or it could be business and then it's like okay now the thing set of stone like that's how I'm wired that's how you want to operate and that's how you are wired to operate but like I've also noticed is like my when I'm low energy and like I get stressed my eye drops dramatically so I like I don't have as much patience I don't I don't show up as friendly as possible

69:40 and and so like to me operationally like if I know this about myself it's like hey don't schedule meetings in the afternoon on a Friday where I need to be a high eye because it's not going to be a good experience for the people receiving and hearing me and it's not going to be a good experience for me either because I'm not I'm not going to be having this is like this is beautiful it's a self-awareness I don't think I mean

70:07 yes a fair amount of people have self-awareness at the level that you do but I don't think that everybody does I think that everybody especially if you are entrepreneurial you just do everything and you try and apply the same amount of energy to it and you can't understand why some things are giving you energy and taking energy away and you're spending your time over a course of years doing things that you shouldn't be doing so I think that it's

70:26 actually very smart to understand that like a lot of this sort of this self-awareness and the tools to discover the self-awareness they exist and there's really no reason for You' Tod be suffering through things that you shouldn't be doing well if and if you go down that rabbit hole and like you preach it and believe it organizationally like once like I remember we had a small team with Ariano in in real estate where like we not only

70:46 had the discs we actually had you print yours out and put it by your space you remember that no so like I know how you're wired oh okay okay I understand I understand right like to compensate so like this is a perfect one like Arian and I both are high eyes and D's and like we wanted to do good things for our people like hey let's give them variable comp on bonuses because like we make more money we want to pay them more

71:14 money well for an sc I just ruin their life like a detailed oriented stability driven person actually wants stability in their income and so by me saying hey I'm gonna take away your guarantee floor and I'm gonna share my food and Bounty with you you're like you just rocked my world and what's important to me right so even becoming a student of how other people are wired I think makes

71:44 you show up as a better leader right where it's like hey instead of a cash bonus you know we spent more time asking questions like hey Ariana winning got her a gift of something she would have wanted but never spent on herself and that was a much better way to celebrate somebody or like you take someone who's in detail and support go hey you crushed it this week let me bring you up to the front of the room

72:08 and have everyone clap and they're like why are you torturing me right now like some people would love it some people would want want to just die in a corn you're like hurting me like you're you're like I may quit because you made me so uncomfortable maybe that person just wanted you to take him out to lunch and celebrate them oneon-one and not make a big deal about it but give them attention versus if you don't have that

72:31 if if if you don't know how they're wired because some people show up a certain way as a defense mechanism it's like hey I need to be social because I don't want to not get recognition at work but like it drains me I actually don't like it like it's a act do you have a just thinking about the environment that you're working in right now with exp because you don't have brick and mortar and you're not in

72:53 office with people I've I've worked in in Virtual environments as well but I always found it hard to build relationships virtually I always was fine building relationships hiring onboarding in person and then moving it to Virtual but I found it very hard to start a relationship with somebody virtually so if we're talking about getting to know people in the most intimate sense that you can actually serve how they want to be served and and engage with them in the way that you

73:23 know they want to be engaged with how do you deal with that in a virtual environment so a big distinction that I learned right like Ariana and I were both like in office only like you know when we were at remine Ariana's office was where she could see all the Enterprise salespeople and she could hear their calls and she could walk past them and same for me and then we were forced to go to this virtual world that

73:47 company reman was not born digitally it was very much in office like I can hear and see you and we go to events very analog company right versus like Glenn's entire Vision was virtual and like he was an early adopter of the metaverse which was like way ahead of its time right like I actually have a different appreciation for like our metaverse technology now which which again was once a client server and like hard to render and but now it's like

74:13 really fast asset light browser based but it's it's for what he was driving towards that he created in the metaverse was we actually have this serendipitous moment right like if I like the other day I needed Glenn and before I called him on the cell I just popped into the international room where he I know he spends most of his days and like I walk down the hallway he chills in the metaverse oh yeah no we operate very

74:38 much certain teams completely in the metaverse and what my point was I saw Felix who runs growth internationally and I just popped in we had a 10-minute conversation as avatars in his office was completely Serendip right and it was like hey real quick like like you know my actual call with him was going to be in eight minutes and I was just there and I walked in said hi to Felix asked how the launch Peru was going and so you know

75:07 and you know there's very recognizable data that like we you go from ver in office to Virtual productivity spikes but over time it starts dropping because people get detached from okay so I was my my followup sort of like going back to the question I asked was do you not feel friction building relationships for the first time and engaging with people in a virtual environment so again like there is the human element of it but our

75:33 entire DNA was born in Cloud as a business so there is a much different expectation of like I can actually pop into your office digitally and and like welcomed well it's expected yeah it's not only welcome it's like it's what people do like it is not uncommon for someone to call you on a video format where your phone rings and it's Workplace video right that that in another format that's kind of intrusive right but it's like hey from 9 to five we're teammates

76:03 if I call and you're available pick up in a digital format like it's the expectations you're you're work this is the this is the alternative to me walking over to your desk and saying hi exactly so you have to build I mean so I think that that's probably the best implementation of of virtual digital remote because if not then you and again I I can't back this up with data but intuitively I think that's where like

76:22 we're probably the most skilled Enterprise that runs the kind of Revenue we do in a fly in a fully virtual world leveraging the type of virtual tools that we leverage a quick shout out to the HubSpot podcast Network for supporting success story now if you like success story you're going to love other podcasts in their Network one of my favorites is create like the great it's hosted by Ross Simmons obviously brought to you by the HubSpot podcast Network

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78:44 to transform your life through language learning what would be some lessons some okay so let's let's think of like one positive and one negative that came from your background in entrepreneurship that impacts how you run a public Trader company like what would be one thing about an entrepreneur that does not translate into pu Co leadership and one thing that definitely does well the one that does and I think that's why Glenn wanted me involved was it's like

79:10 the actually I watched a Steve Jobs Speech to a class at an Ivy League from 20 years ago that was actually really same as viral clip right he's got many but the one that he was that I'm referencing is he was kind of like lecturing a bunch of young people who are about to become Consultants right where it's like and and this is analogous to maybe just going up the corporate lder like if you've never had to live with the

79:40 outcomes of your decisions that's a very different wiring like whether it's you're consultant or you're actually just you know a participant or contributor into a very large Enterprise it's like hey you've never like me and Ariana like hey if we kind of mess this up we just blew through our entire savings and we got to go create five or 10k of excess capital a month to get back to the 100 we just blew on this idea right so the

80:13 entrepreneurial fearlessness or being committed to your decision-making process and it's like hey not only am I going to make the decision like even if there's backlash I'm going to I'm going to be okay with it for a her long period of time just you that's it and so that's that's to me what translates really really well in the sense of companies are collection of people and whether it's we have a five person team a 20 person team a 50 person

80:43 team a 300 person team or a 3,000 person team at the end of the day you're just you know navigating human interactions harnessing people's disperate Talent sets that you know collectively contribute more than others and then it's just operating human interaction so that like I think the the the downside to come going from a small company to a big company is forgetting that right like it's like oh now we need to do things differently

81:13 it's like how much how much of it do we like could this have been an email like do we need to go through these like three meetings to get to the outcome cuz I think the biggest problem like and even when Glenn asked me to join he's like hey just because something is done in certain way question everything be willing to break it a such a rightful mindset right it's like if you see bureaucracy or inefficiency just question like why why

81:42 do we do it like this why did we do it like this and like because we've always done it that way he's never the acceptable answer and sometimes I I mean sometimes memory is short sometimes a a company can grow and creates all these inefficiencies and people only remember like people only remember like last week so they actually don't even know where these inefficiencies came from so this is the other thing I've learned about leadership whether it's you know someone

82:08 being the leader to me or me than being a leader to somebody it's like also remember that how humans learn and whether it's your kid or your employee sometimes you have to let them go through like hey I want to do it this way I'm like that's a terrible idea and and and and sometimes you say hey that's a terrible idea but go ahead do it anyway or you can say hey I wouldn't do it that way but I'm going to let you

82:32 make that choice and they're most likely going to do it anyway and the decision tree is like how how detrimental is this learning experience for them to our Enterprise like if it's no big deal and they get to like I said my piece it wasn't like I hung you out to dry it's like hey I don't think it'll work because you know I've tried it 10 times last 15 years and it's never worked but go ahead as long as it doesn't detriment

82:57 the Enterprise at scale no it's going to be a learning experience and they're going to be and like even me more educated person to exp I was like Glenn I want to do this he's like yeah it's a this not going to work but if you think you can do it go ahead and then like three months later exactly what he said was going to happen happen I'm like okay I get it but that especially for someone you know

83:18 coming up in business or entrepreneurship like you want to test and idate and iterate and that and like and that's the difference of Education versus wisdom right and there's just some things that are exponential and whether it's mat at 7 years old or me at 42 running a business is like sometimes I just it doesn't matter how much someone tells me or I read it probably gonna have to try it and learn it and experience it and then have a very firm

83:42 conviction of why I believe that one thing that I think you've done really well and I've asked you how you've done this before because you've handled I mean you jumped into exp at like tumultuous is putting it lightly it was not a easy time for the industry and I really know nothing about what happened in the industry at all I just know that it was on the news a lot it was on the real news yeah was it in the industry news so

84:04 when it's in the real news I figure that it's like a like a gray hair menum a lot of them but one thing that I found you do remarkably well is and I've asked you this before how do you manage all these situations that are kind of unprecedented and how do you make smart decisions because it seems like you've made some very smart decisions that have worked out very very well and feel free to go into as because I'm not going

84:29 to I'm not going to ask you on in detail like about things that you cannot speak about but so teach what you can but talk to me about how you first of all some of the things you navigated with sort of like the ups and downs of the real estate industry in the past year sort of just a brief disclaimer for what happened because I think that some people don't still understand what actually happened if they're not in real

84:51 estate but then also your decision-making process because I think that's I think whatever it is it's worked out very well so yeah so again going back to like boiling down to like what is the downside if something happens versus something doesn't happen right so specifically your referen some of the decisions you make there's massive downside yeah yeah so the the specific thing you're referencing there was a class action lawsuit basically against the industry right so the

85:17 National Association Realtors and then Cod defends the biggest broker is including us and so there was massive delation which ours is still not personally settled so I can't speak to the specifics on that but through it you know there was there was some moments in time where it was like hey I need to go live in a couple hours and and make some some very big decisions on behalf our our agents and potentially the industry and so just like everything

85:44 else it's like you have to have a decision tree right like there's the stuff that like I'm going to make a decision in a vacuum whether it's myself and a couple other leaders based on my Collective Journey and that's actually why you end up in leadership where you're willing to make that decision and live with the good or bad outcome as the owner which is why that entrepreneurial experience definitely helps and so that that that one just that's the wisdom part of the

86:07 journey right we're like hey when I was 22 I was just not equipped to make that decision and then as I've gotten older it's also understand that like there's you're not the only human necessary to make the decisions be be as open as possible to many inut points as possible and so then it's like like ins outside Council inside Council top you know leaders you trust that are experts in that domain and then also saying okay

86:36 what's the worst that can happen what's the best that can so for us it was our industry collectively chose to be Quiet Retreat let attorneys speak on their behalf and kind of like batting down the hatches and jump in the hole versus that one week where it was very pival in our industry we were on with general counsel we were on with Glenn and I said hey I think I need to get very loud and become the calming voice for our space

87:05 in this moment and more importantly for what was the signal that made you think that the hundreds of text messages and emails that I received from our people with genuine fear in the voice like I'm not sure I'm going to be able to feed my family and I'm the bread winner I can't sleep like please tell us what's going to happen or what we need to do next and so that was one of those where like I I told Glenn I was like I

87:30 think we need to get really loud but like if I get really loud I could affect our negotiation position I could affect our our outstanding liability and that's that's you know I I can make the decision of like I think this is what we need to do but at the end of the day you're the majority sh shareholder what do you think we should do and to his credit he said get as loud as possible and we'll deal with the potential up or

87:53 down because that's the calming voice for our people and like the the leadership position is more important than the downside so everything every every every problem that you solve is looked at through the lens of agent first this is who we serve so that that that is the exact tagline that is his North Star right so like again and for me I've always been the founder CEO so right this is a different role where it's like

88:22 I I I joked with him I said I get to be the fun uncle your dad then you know not that long after he gave me the the dad roll he gave you the dad but the difference is it's it's you know I've never had a job and I was like hey I'm not sure I know how to have a job he goes it's super straightforward I only have one one North Star and it's I want

88:42 to build the most agent Centric real estate company on the planet so that's the prism that we look through every single thing and it actually makes it very simple right so it's like if I'm stuck on a problem in my head and I'm like should I be building this and it's like am I solving this for the right ICP and sometimes I'm not it's like oh no I'm trying to attract independent Brokers well that's not my ICP I

89:08 actually that's not who I'm building your company for it's for the actual agents who are here or maybe the agents I'm going to compete with for or her so at that point it's like as long as I remember what the Northstar is it actually makes the decision- making process very simple so in these moments where I've made very bold decisions in the last 12 months like we made one about changing policy companywide that ended up in the news and it was like a

89:36 rough couple of weeks and I remember one day I was quite stressed out about it and AR could tell my face and she goes but are you right I said I'm I'm more right I feel more right in my head about this than just about anything else and she's like then see you through and in a couple of weeks the the the chatter quieted down and a couple of weeks later just about every other major company

89:57 followed our lead and like couple of months later entire states are adopting our position so you know it's like did you die do we have the ability to to recalibrate and change our position yes we do and so and again if you're you're the prism is is this the best thing possible for the people I serve then it kind of makes it super easy to go down the decision tree so two thoughts first of all super important to

90:24 have a supportive partner when you're making your s decisions I think that's like half the battle in entrepreneurship to have somebody who's like just like sort of checking your checking you and checking your your thought process I find that to be one of the mo I mean Gina is again like you with Ariana is one of the most important I pie of my life like I tell young people I said the person you marry will dictate most of

90:46 the happiness in your life because whether whether they you choose to have them be your business partner like I have or not it's still like the entrepreneu r is a hell of a roller coaster and so if someone if your other partner depending on who who's on the entrepreneurial side of the spectrum is not prepared for that or is not comfortable with that risk it's going to create a lot of friction and and you know whether you're doing it together or

91:10 one of you is the entrepreneur you you need somebody like I remember in the toughest moments of of REM because there was lots of ups and downs is like we took turns being the one freaking out and crying right like our rule was like we both can't cry tonight it's your turn to cry and I'll be your rock and the next day it's my turn and so you have to be able to have those very clear boundaries of support

91:36 system and and and like even be okay with like hey I I I you you you might need to go get some some advice from somebody else because I'm I'm going through it too as well so and then just having super open communication I it's so smart everyone who I know who's built anything meaningful I mean this you can't have any trauma or stress in your home when you're trying to build or or if you do it's just going to make

92:00 it 10x harder I think that person is super super important now my second thought on on the sort of that that decision tree framework that you just discussed what would what would be again just trying to pull some lessons for people that are trying to understand how they can apply what you've done to their own story so you have your ICP you have your avatar you have your lens that you look all all these problems through

92:22 what would be some other Just Thoughts around a decision tree framework that someone listening to this can apply to how they navigate in their own business the first one in the simpler one that I think most people over complicate is decision fast especially like we're not talking about like industry changing hundreds of millions of dollars liability like I'm just talking about like the amount of people I see get stuck in paralysis by analysis at any facet of BU business building is the

92:51 most dangerous one like I I think Aim Shoot readjust Aim Shoot readjust is so much better than aim aim aim aim let me get it perfect like let me get the best copy like just get copy out there if if it sucks the market will tell you because you spent 100 bucks and nothing happened then you adjust the copy a little bit or have 10 versions of the ad which now you can ask AI what's going to work better

93:19 but you should test like I was just listening to Gary ve keynote yesterday was like the cool thing about social right now in this moment in 2024 so for context end of 20124 is that the it's it's less about like who you follow but like what interests you so like if if a organic post gets a lot of Engagement then turn it into an ad right versus like if an organic post gets zero ads you're missing a message yeah I mean this is

93:48 half of my my content strategy so like I have my my my testing ground is like Twitter and threats I can put out 10 ideas a day and I can in in you know in under an hour or two hours I can immediately see feedback from the market from the audience then I'll turn that highest performing tweet into it well I don't run a lot of ads but it would I would turn it into a newsletter into

94:09 solo podcast I mean you like there's all these different signals you can look for I think that's actually very smart I mean it's so funny how people don't like there's so many ways to test for free your marketing and people don't take advantage of them and they for some reason think that all that great organic social they're putting out has to be different from all the ads that they're running I mean we can talk about like

94:28 why companies suck at marketing all day but that's besides the point but no I want to I want to just sort of sort of tie bow and like sort of the EXP and real estate conversation what would be some what would be some views that you have on the future of real estate that may not be popular views or may be like Against the Grain things that you think are going to change that the rest of the industry you're going to be

94:51 making predictions now and hopefully we can like clip this in like 5 years from now be like oh my God look at how look at how right Leo was so what are some things that you believe that are not like generally accepted right now so answering that question is probably a little different than you would probably expect me to say it because I've actually been in the business long enough where I've seen probably two big shifts the first one was high-speed

95:14 internet right so you're dating yourself D very much very very much so I got licensed in 2002 but like for the folks who remember that or not are young enough like highspeed internet was not something you had at home like the first plugs for high-speed internet went directly into Office Buildings cuz that's where they were necessary so like the first up and down so the real estate industry evolved from books where they were dropped off once a week with all

95:40 the listings for sharing of properties to these like portal Mainframe things you would log into for the first versions of MLS where you can actually browse from home so like you had to physically drive to the kind of like why exp never was invented previously it actually was the Catalyst of the combination of the two things I'm going to talk about where I remember seeing the acceleration of a real estate transaction so when I started selling

96:08 real estate 2002 the fastest you could sell a house if you were lucky to get like an offer was like if it was a hot hot market and it was a lot of interest it would probably be about a week right because I had to log into this portal hit print call a bunch of landlines leave a bunch of messages people would call me back the seller I would tell the agent when I wanted to see the property

96:30 they'd have to call the agent on a land line get a call back take me like two or three days to schedule a showing then I'd have to drive back to the office I'm really dating myself these these contracts that had perforated Ripa aways and one was white one was pink one was yellow and I had to press hard in blue ink and rip it apart and either hand drop it off or stick it in the fax

96:51 machine hope the fax machine didn't eat it which I did half the time then I had to go get another one and start over and so like the best case scenario it was like a week or two on a hot property the internet sped that up quite a bit because I could now do that from home and then like that just accelerated everything and then the the the second accelerant was about three four years later when the iPhone came out right the

97:18 the true smartphone where it was like oh I don't need to I can just call the agent I can just look up the same MLS information on my phone and so now the agent can answer emails while they're showing a house as opposed to wait until they get back into the office or exactly so today if I list a house that's hot it will be syndicated through hundreds of websites simultaneously which will trigger save search criteria that will

97:46 notify via an app and the consumer can now collaborate with me through a shared calendar and schedule the showing directly if I'm available we could physically both be available and see that property within one to two hours and then the agent can write up a contract on their phone get you to digitally sign it with a digital signature tool and it's delivered within hours of the property going live so the two fast the the two transformative

98:15 accelerants I saw one was high-speed internet and Then followed by Mobile in every one of those shifts I've seen agents not make it right the internet didn't put real estate agents out of business mobile did not put real estate agents out of business the agents who adopted these massive shifts in technology and Society put the agents that did not out of business so the way I see that to answer that question is I think AI is as

98:46 big or more transformative than those two other ships I witnessed in my lifetime you know I've seen some people exaggerate and say it's like it's fire it's not fire like fire was the one that made us change as Homo sapiens but I think it's as powerful as either one of those or more and so how it affects it I don't know that's the part that's super fascinating to me because like I have the iPhone 16 and so do you iPhone

99:12 one was nothing more than a toy like it was it was like Blackberry was for grown-ups that was a toy but that toy was an iterative process that's become like it's the remote control to the car I drove here it's the key to the car it's my banking app it's my credit card like I can actually just leave the phone the leave my house with my phone you can do everything and I don't need anything else anymore you don't need a wallet you

99:41 don't need a iPhone one was not that yeah right so when I see large language models or or Tech that enables me to go faster stronger there are Parts like I can tell you that right now we are doing stuff in the last six months internally that will streamline processes to to a dramatic point where like when I look at per un cost to fulfill a transaction to say that over time I don't know how long I'll drive that cost

100:11 down by 80% in efficiency is not out of the question anymore which a year ago I couldn't have said that right like there are you know the technolog is evolving at a speed that I think things that we we didn't think Could Happen two years ago are going to happen in the next five years so the the the the confidence statement I can say is the the companies Andor agents Market participants and removed industry from it who adopt the

100:38 accelerating tools that are driving down costs and efficiency are going to be transformative right so like there's early indications that you know contributors individual contributors at companies who are using large language models fill in the blank your favorite one on a daily basis as a like a a sidekick are like 25% more efficient right are removing like 40% are adding 40% more accuracy right like perfect example for me I don't read or write

101:12 well because I'm pretty sure I'm undiagnosed dyslexic but in the 80s we didn't have labels like that it was just like he does he doesn't read good versus like now I can actually write and post without asking for any help at scale from a marketing standpoint or like a social media standpoint because like I'm very articulate so I can voice the text and then have chat gbd check for grammar and spelling and then all by all of a

101:34 sudden I'm like hey I can talk a lot in multiple formats versus like confidence-wise I was probably limited to public speaking versus like I don't enjoy writing because now you can have a newsletter and you can trans you can translate that newsletter to multiple languages multiple languages and it's all you and I can just and like can write what I'm trying to communicate and I can say hey changes of tonality for LinkedIn versus Instagram versus like

101:59 and it's like all of a sudden I'm a marketing genius but but it's not like write me a post about this like no I wrote the post in my own voice and like one of the things is like learning to use the technology correctly in the sense of like my prompts say proof free for spelling and grammar but keep my tone and voice I train so whenever I use any sort of llm for Content I I

102:21 actually train it on that I've written myself so it knows my my own voice but it's interesting I find that people when they when they approach and adopt new technology or when new technology is presented to them they I they either over index on it and use it as a crutch or sort of pushback against it and under index and don't use it at all and I think the actual answer is somewhere in between in the Middle where you use all

102:45 these tools to just optimize and improve and help but ultimately none of these tools especially in 2024 can replace a human if I just say LinkedIn post ad copy newsletter copy for a listing whatever on chat oh a copy for a listing pretty rough listing so maybe it would do better than some but for the best for the best in class which is really what everybody wants to be nobody wakes up and wants to do a shitty job if you

103:12 use these tools it's the first step in a creative process or it's the first step in whatever you're trying to accomplish but now you can spend your time and your energy to take it from from just okay to exceptional because you're applying that human touch to it as opposed to doing the the the really difficult creative the the first concept of creative work or the first draft of something like that's what gives that's what chat GPT with all these different

103:39 llms allow you to do it allows you to spend time focusing on the things that actually matter well and and where I would say to people especially living through a couple big shifts it's like whatever is in in year one or two it's like ultim Ely that might not even be the highest and best application of it so the the the the suggestion is to play and test and try stuff so it's not just like hey it's not just for writing it's

104:07 you and I were out at a restaurant and I took a picture of the wine list and said hey for price and value and quality pick a big body red for us yeah and it did right yeah and it was like order that one and we were both pretty happy with it it was great yeah yeah right and so you can actually just snap a picture of an image and ask it to do analysis and and like funny enough

104:30 you were pulling out your phone to start googling and I was like I beat you we're ordering this one yeah no it's listen I think that in all Industries people get nervous about AI because they're going to say well okay so now the the seller can do x amount of research on selling their home and they don't even need an agent anymore and I put push back against that because all of these listen any sort of transaction

104:58 business is just transactions it's repeated transactions there still is again they they make they make an emotional decision they justify with logic there still is a human component to a transaction so even if I did all the research in the world I still want somebody that's been doing that for 20 years and I want their experience and I want their wisdom because I can look at all the data points as to what I should do and in theory maybe I could sell my

105:22 own house but I still want somebody who can guide me through that process because you can't you can't Google and you can't AI wisdom and experience you you really just can't yeah no I I so a couple things because I'm sure people bring this up with you all the time every time yes so and so the reality is everything has to do with the context right buying and selling real estate is highly infrequent the average American

105:46 moves six times in the entire life three times as a tenant three times as a as an owner and they don't sell their homes on average right now every but nine years right so if I don't move every nine years first of all I probably forgot what happened the first time everything's different right like literally like nine years ago you probably used paper like we don't actually have physical paper contracts anymore right they're all digital right

106:11 and so every everything about the process is different now and it's full of friction like it's buying and selling a house and not not from the practitioner standpoint but literally from like trans transfering title indebting the property taking an insurance policy making sure like getting Insurance in South Florida did you get wind and and flood right like it's not a simple process and it's full of friction and it's highly emotional because one thing is like hey I'm buying

106:39 a business on behalf of my company as my job versus it's like hey this is where I'm going to raise my children with my partner and this is going to be home it's highly highly emotional so the the ology I always give in today's world that I think is super applicable is is how we learn YouTube has democratized learning in a way that's never been done in human history and I'm a huge fan of it like I learned to cook different

107:05 things or I basically learned to spear fish watching videos but at the end of the day like once I jumped in the water I wanted to go with someone who'd done it before who knew what to do and the best analogy I always give people is today if I were to want to summon Mount ever I would do a lot of research on the internet and you know I could get all the training videos I could watch the

107:27 how-to videos like don't do this don't do that I could watch reviews on like the best waterproof gear the best camera the best like radio in case it was an emergency like that doesn't mean I'm going to get to the bottom of Everest and be like all right I'm going at it myself 100% of the people probably should or do hire a sherpa 100% Who was born and raised and has done it 400 times right so like

107:53 that extra layer of like you want someone to hold your hand and go you know that's that's not a big deal it's just hanging out it'll pass or yeah let's get out of here right right now right now let's go right now so and then I think that's what an expert guide does on any difficult High friction transaction right like the the the promise that like we would have gone the way of the travel agent was a fallacy in

108:17 the sense it was that's a highly commoditized government regulated you know pork belly if you will it's it's it's a commodity versus like hey real estate is hyper local and there's nuances to neighborhoods from like the school the zoning what you can and can't do like is it an HOA is it not an HOA like what I don't know what I don't know about something super expensive that I only do a couple times in my life I want

108:41 to I want to finish this up with just some last sort of words of wisdom from you because I pulled some sort of core entrepreneurial beliefs that you have and you can just sort of like rip through these and give just a couple thoughts on why you believe these things I think these are these will be like great little reals we'll clip them out to sound bites but I I love sort of all these ideas so let me just go

109:02 through them and tell me just a couple words about why this is so important for an entrepreneur so first one is Success comes from consistency rather than special talents so how do you want me to respond do you want me to repeat it and no I mean no no no no you don't have to actually format it for for real we do have good editors no no just why is this why is why are these so important I'll

109:23 read through them and just tell me in your mind why is this good insight for an entrepreneur yeah so the first one is Success comes from consistency rather than special talents I think so much of the world assumes that when you see someone talented that we're gifted and even entrepreneurs it's the exact same way like not using like those are filler words that I beat out of my own communication style through lots of reps right repetition is the best teacher and you

109:56 know whether someone is extremely talented they will almost always get outw work by someone who's consistent and I think that applies from you know Sports very easily in your head but everything in life is like that I love that why should you focus on operational excellence and removing friction I go back to the analogy that I said that most human beings don't give themselves enough credit as a super sophisticated consumer I obsess with operational excellence and removing friction because

110:25 I think that's the goal of entrepreneurism like the reason I am all in on the Apple ecos system from the watch that's on my wrist to the phone that's in my pocket to the airpods that's in my other pocket and and like five other products is because it's frictionless it makes it easy for me to communicate transfer my contacts upgrade pay it's a seamless ecosystem we vote with every single day of the year in every moment of our

110:56 existence in capitalism and so if you focus on removing as much friction as possible from the system you become the no-brainer answer to the selection for product or service why should people prefer painkillers or actually let me rephrase that why should entrepreneurs focus on painkiller products versus vitamins yeah one thing I learned very painfully is that most consumers of a product will always pick the easy butt right like one of the

111:27 things we learned while building remine was that it would have probably applied to people that were super like-minded and whenever you're building a product service in your own Echo chamber you actually get a false positive right so it might resonate for your peer group but you always need to understand the total addressable market and someone pulled me aside and sat me down he's like your mistake was you built a vitamin regimen versus a painkiller and again like in

111:53 2024 the best example of that is like I heard some crazy statistic like 8% of Americans are aric now statistically and logically every single person knows how to get fit avoid high sugar intake and high fat intake and be in a caloric deficit whether it's by working out to create it or you know putting less stuff in your mouth like you actually don't need a train it or you don't need to Google it like I think just about the average

112:22 human human being knows that just from being alive today but OIC got to 0 to 8% in like 24 months they have a larger market oh I just I'm gonna I'm not going to remember the stat live but whatever what there's like this one company and go everyone listen go Google it because it's Absolut wild the market cap of whatever leading company creat zic is is now like surpassing some of like household name brands that you know

112:51 so I don't know the exact number on it but there's one company that's just blowing it out of the water and again like under two years they they accomplish this like product Market fit yeah that's it why is it important for entrepreneurs to understand their time value and focus on high Roi activities I think that's the only way you actually progress right if if dollar productive activity is relative to your skill set right so I think the entrepreneurial

113:17 journey is figuring out where you're talented at figuring out if that's actually a high dollar productive activity and continue to constantly do a math prop so you know if I'm if I'm meeting with entrepreneurs I would say take your revenue from last year and divide it by 2008 especially if you're an army of one that'll give you according to the labor department what a full-time gig looks like in entrepreneurship it's probably higher than the 20080 but just for simple math

113:45 do that right and so you will get a result right it'll be like okay I earn $50 an hour $75 an hour $150 an hour hour and then for the subsequent week write down what you do every 10 minutes like a lawyer would keep track of a notepad then you'll actually see what you do every day right and so the math problem is first of all identify what is a dollar productive activity and then the first point of Leverage whether it's

114:11 VA in another country or a in-person assistant everything that's not a high dollar activity and you can almost you can pencil buy it what that costs right like is this data entry that could be $4 an hour right is is this something a large language model can WR for you right like did you spend two hours editing and you're not good at it right so and then you're constantly refining that activity and in my again especially how I'm wired in my

114:41 brain works it's like I never let go of lead generation activity because that's always always always the most important thing to do in a business but maybe you optimize by hiring a phenomenal lead generator where you know the big company's called a crow and the small company it's they like head of sales yeah right so but like as an entrepreneur like to me it's always product Market fit and how do you scale that and and and whether you're you are

115:06 in the beginning of the journey you're a product an army of one I would always be willing to learn every role before you hire it it's like how do you manage someone or hold somebody accountable if you actually don't know what they're supposed to be doing what would be you know it could be be one last one last Insight One Last Word of Wisdom or even like a question I should have asked you that I didn't what

115:28 would be one last thing you want to leave with the audience look if if you choose the entrepreneur route it is painful it can be very lonely at times but the reward of just the experience has been one of the you know outside of being happily married and having children like the best experiences of my life right sometimes I describe it as oversimplifying to my highs or higher and my lows are lower than most people can imagine but it's it's it's that for

115:57 me it's been a different form of like artistic creation right like building businesses can be a very creative process that is very fulfilling I love it okay where should people connect with you if they want to I mean obviously you have exp website but where do people actually connect with you Instagram by the way you have a podcast I found it on on the website ours is targeted to Realtors and you know what I I try to make sure to

116:24 Showcase is that zero to one process for realtors because I think a lot of people come into the space and this failure rate for realtors is very high right so it's 66% in the first year most Realtors don't make it to a year five like 90% fail within five years so you know one of the things I Tred to always show them it's like how did you go from zero to one in our world and not over

116:45 complicated and get yourself out of the way but the best ways to connect with me are on Instagram LinkedIn Facebook okay cool we'll drop everything in the show notes last question I ask everyone you know you've had multiple Seasons to your life if you look back and you want to define success like what does it mean to you right now right now is being able to spend time with the people I care about because having had you know several

117:11 moments that externally are defined as success I think Arian and I kind of redefined it it's like it's the people that you care about that you spend time with is actually what matters right so whether it's the moment in recognition from a role or an exit or a success what what you learn over time is like a lot of that Fades and you know I had a very singular focus in my early 20s of certain titles and then when I achieved

117:41 them it actually felt like an empty meanless M moment so the the for me personally in this season it's I don't want to ever miss out on something I can't undo like for example I'm never missing daddy daughter dance last night was Natalia's birday and like I had to be a very very important event but it was like I'm leaving at 1 o'clock and I will get home when she's walking in from her music class maybe I was an

118:09 hour late but it's like I'm not missing that and it's non-negotiable so and again that's spoken from a place of privilege and I recognize that but in this season that's actually my decision tree I I I love that and by the way you I I know you're saying it's spoken from a place of privilege but I think the beauty of what you're teaching over is like also understand what you're optimizing for so there's there's levels to this game and you don't have to be

118:37 playing at the level that you are at or that you have played at or that many of our mutual friends play at to achieve that and some people I find they over again they over index on titles financial and they realize they actually don't need all of that to actually live the life they want to live so I think that even when you're young just starting out or if you aren't where you want to be financially like understand

118:58 where you want to go and optimize for that don't always optimize for what you think success looks like I think it's very important and the only downside to that because I completely agree is you don't know what you don't know yet right so most like the rigor of which we protect our time is only from the wounds we created from not right like Arian and I spent years where I was on the road for 200 days and she was on the road for like

119:26 150 days like years where we missed stuff like we don't remember certain moments like did we even go to that like did we even see that versus now like that's the non-negotiables that go into the calendar for 2025 before we agree to anything else and so and and that's you know there's another quote that I love it's like youth is wasted on the young like you can tell like I was given very Sage advice many many many times in

119:56 my journey and I was like yeah whatever old man you don't know better I'm smarter than you whether like parent Mentor yeah anyone else so that's kind of the the beauty of the journey like you actually don't know what's important until you kind of fumbled that ball and make sure you don't do it again once you have another opportunity I know I said that was the last question but I lied what would be one lesson I you I'm going

120:20 to change this question because my question I usually ask is what would be a lesson you tell your 20-year-old self which is a great question but I actually want to reframe it and you would be the first person that I'm reframing it with and the question will be what would be a lesson that you want to leave your kids with I think I would answer it the same way yeah because sometimes I'll tell you why I'm Contin because sometimes people

120:39 say I wouldn't change anything because all the the hill The Hills And The Valleys it sort of led me to where I am today and I I don't want like the same clip from every single person so no and that's that would be my answer but I will answer differently because you put question it differently which that's why I said I would have answered it the same way which is enjoy the ride whether it's my 20-year-old self or

121:01 my kids I think especially when again like maybe I'm wired differently but like it was like I need to achieve X by y right it's like no you don't 99% of everything we fear or keeps us up at night at some moment in life is literally irrelevant at a later day like if I look back at those moments where we made a Bad Bet and we lost the 350 or 750 or 400 or whatever like I remember

121:32 both of us up at night crying or freaking out or losing sleep or like that feeling in your stomach where you think you're you know going to lose your mind now I can't even pinpoint what triggered it or how it felt well like it's like it was no big deal like so you know are you spending time with the people you care about in the moments that are important and outside of that's it's like you'll be okay enjoy the ride