บทถอดความฉบับเต็มของ The Billion-Dollar Real Estate Journey | Parker Pemberton

to a small team. Small team grew into a medium team, large team. We ended up becoming the number one team in the entire nation for exp realty in units and volume. And ⁓ once we did that two years in a row, I said now it's time to go and and branch out. Now it's time to go and get into a bigger environment. Yep. ⁓ which I'm a which I'm a big proponent of putting yourself into bigger rooms that you can continue to grow into. So ⁓ yeah we went independent Loving it so far. I don't know if I'd be here today if if it weren't for that, so speaker-1: Yeah. Well we've got lots you know, you y you you touched on a lot of things that I wanna hear about. But let's let's talk a little bit about ⁓ before real estate. You know, y what did you do before that? Did you always expect to end up in real estate? What was the original plan? speaker-0: Never, ⁓ like most people, never really expected it. I was the son of a realtor, so I ⁓ I I got to see all the good the good sides of it and then all of the bad sides, right? The good sides were dad was able to be at all of my hockey games, my golf tournaments, my baseball practices. ⁓ the downside was he'd have to shovel in dinner at five o'clock and then run out to show houses or list homes. ⁓ constantly on the phone. You'd look up into the stands at hockey, and although I appreciated him of course being there. Always on the phone. And so I think just like subconsciously you've formed this like this this decision of like I'm not gonna do that. Right. So peeling peeling back the onion here, ⁓ I was an athlete growing up. I played all the sports. It came very natural to me. Hockey was my number one sport. Came up here, got our asses kicked against the kids kids at the range. We found out we weren't so tough, to be honest. ⁓ I'm from Apple Valley, Minnesota, which is a suburb of the south side of the Twin Cities. And ⁓ and then as I got into high school, golf started to become a big part of my life. And ⁓ I got very good at it. I was one of the top players in the state. Again, it just it came natural to me. And ⁓ I ended up going on to play at the University of New Mexico, ⁓ two thousand six to two thousand nine on a scholarship. And that was my driver. I mean, it was like every day was a competition. I loved it. I loved competing against other people. And ⁓ golf played a very important part of my life ⁓ then and it still plays a very important part of my life now. That's speaker-1: lot of people do real estate I think, right? So they can just golf all day. I that's the lifestyle speaker-0: They think so. Yeah, like they wanna just make millions of dollars and have total freedom of time, right? Yeah. speaker-1: Just just take a call every once in a while. So, you know, once you got through college and playing golf, what what were what was your initial career and what direction were you headed in? Okay. speaker-0: I played professionally for five years after. Okay, well. So that was my that was my driver. ⁓ and for anybody

listening that knows mini tours, I always like to joke. It's not so glamorous. You're driving small small town to small town, a clothes rack in the in the back of your Nissan Ultima with your entire wardrobe. Yeah. Staying at every ⁓ every small hotel and and you know, the pro is I know every gas station in America basically. But that was great. I got hurt. I tore my labrum in two thousand and thirteen in my left shoulder. And I never came back the same. But if I'm being honest, it just wasn't good enough to get to that next level. So I had a really good mentor in my life and I met him throughout the the journey of golf and he just said, Parker, you know, you're you're a really talented person. You need to set a goal. ⁓ and if you don't a timeline and if you don't hit your goal by by that certain date, you need to move on with your life. And it was the first time anybody ever told me that. Normally people just say like, No, never give up, never quit. And I support the speaker-1: You can do it. speaker-0: I support that in a lot of different things, but I'm so thankful for that because I would have missed getting married to my wife, having kids, growing businesses, living the life that I have now in pursuit of the tour. And maybe I would have made it, maybe not. But at the time that I that I ⁓ retired, I I wasn't I wasn't good enough to make the big tour. Right. So that was a that was a real hit to your ego. You're like, you know, you spend twenty seven years of your life doing something. And then all of a sudden you move home and you're like, Yeah, I wish I would have cared about college a little bit more speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and and it can be tough because you're heading in that direction. You know, there's been lots of times in my life where, you know, the change isn't even that big of a deal, but it's it's all uncharted because I was going this way. This is what I was gonna do. And it changes, and then it can be really disorienting. And and then you have to reorient yourself to to something else. speaker-0: It was the best thing though. It it it knocked the ego off of me because when you fail like that, you have to come back to your small town. Or, you know, Apple Valley to is a small town, but a and all your friends are like, ⁓ you failed. Yeah, what are you gonna do next? And you just have to suck it up and you have to move on. And I I didn't really care about school and college, which is a big regret of mine. I cared about getting to the golf course and playing and competing and loved it. I just I loved competing against people. And so I just did what I what I knew when I was a kid. I grabbed a lawnmower, I went on Craigslist, I put an ad out. And I I just in the middle of the night I came up with this idea of I'm gonna name it go to guys. I'm just gonna be the go to guy for any homeowner in Apple Valley that needs something done around the house. I think I can make some money that way. And so I just door to door with a lawnmower and as a twenty seven year old, you know, man knocking on doors saying who needs their lawn lawn mode. And then I would take inquiries from Craigslist and I would go to those houses and convert ⁓ and ended up building that business to be five hundred accounts, plowing now. We're plowing snow, now we're doing ⁓ I would say small to medium sized land landscaping jobs. ⁓ and we're cutting a ton of lawns, a ton of churches, did the Chick-fil-A's. And ⁓ it was something I was proud of because I built it back up, right? Right. And now you had an identity again. And ⁓ I got to the end of year three and I had a business partner at the time and I looked at my ten ten ninety nine and I'm like, I think ⁓ I think Kathy deserves better. Like I can't I can't continue down this path. I'm either doing something wrong Or this industry just doesn't provide enough for what I'm looking for. And ⁓ the dilemma, this is the second time that I would consider failure, even though it probably isn't, but I failed to get off of the mower. We might have to unpack this for a second. Okay. So I would I would run the business, I would grow the business, I would I was the main salesperson, I was the customer service, I was the guy running the invoices. But then I'd also go on out every day and I'd mow 15 to 20 lawns. Or in the winter I'd plow a hundred driveways. And speaker-1: Yeah. speaker-0: Getting off that mower would have allowed me to go all in on the business and grow it the way that it needed to be grown. And I could have I could have just simply hired somebody. And at the time, probably for twelve to fifteen dollars an hour, that that number has now moved up to probably twenty two to twenty-five, right? To simply take my spot on the mower. And if I would have taught them properly, I could have replaced myself. Yeah. And so I always I always talk about to our agents, get off the mower. Stop doing the things that are under your dollar per hour activity. speaker-1: And and it's hard because there's a little bit of a pride thing sometimes, like I'm I'm really good at this. I need this I need to be the one doing this. And then two, ⁓ even just having that control, but then in doing that you're not adding value to somebody else. You're trying to keep it yourself. Like you you save pennies to miss out on dollars later on. speaker-0: Yeah, and you're not you're not being the best version of yourself for the business either. And so you're calling clients at eight PM for invoicing or for that's the only time you had. And if if you put yourself in the homeowner's shoes, well, you and your wife are sitting at home, hopefully at eight with quiet time, ⁓ and you get a call from lawn care guy, like you don't want to take that call then. Yeah. But it was because I had a failure within the business that I failed to get off of the mower and you know, the way that I've scaled the real estate company now is really because of the lessons I learned then. Yeah. speaker-1: That's when you got

off a mark. speaker-0: So I am thankful for it, but that knocked me back in my ass and then I I ended up selling off half the accounts and I gave the rest to my partner and the rest is history. Yeah. I can still mow grass really well. Really well. speaker-1: The nice lines and all that. From there, did you go right into real estate? speaker-0: Yeah, lightning bolts, yeah, for sure. I was ⁓ coming up on my thirtieth birthday and I was like my dad had got sick, so he he had cancer and and he was down at Mayo and I was like, Look, I might not like this industry, but there's opportunity here to springboard maybe into something else. Or maybe I do like it. And my dad was going through treatment, he had bladder cancer, and and I'm like, I don't really know if he's gonna make it or not. ⁓ but my dad's been around for forty years in this industry. He's got a book of business. I can come in and at least help him. Yeah. And so thirtieth birthday was March twenty second. ⁓ two thousand sixteen, which means I turned forty in roughly twenty days. Yeah. ⁓ so we're looking back on a decade, almost to the day right now. And ⁓ I went and got lic I went I went and took the test. ⁓ I passed and then I got into to real estate. And I'm like, now what? Right. Dad's in a hospital bed. What do I do? He had some clients that needed some assistance that were like that that were in pending status, you know. And ⁓ he he gave me this list like what you got in front of you right now. And it was six pages of Zillow leads. Old Zillow leads. And any any real ⁓ real estate professional that's invested in leads before knows those are the dead leads. Yeah. Those are the ones that said no to you, that said F you, that said. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And they're they're on that list for a reason. And I just said, all right, let's go through it. Because I was used to converting leads on Craigslist, right? Yeah. And so I just went through every one of them. Hey speaker-1: Probably multiple times. speaker-0: I saw you inquired on one three one two three Banana Street back in June. I was just curious, did you ever find your home? Did you ever lock one in? And ⁓ people would either say yes or no. Yeah, yeah, we did. Awesome. Super happy. I'm gonna go ahead and take you off the list so you don't have to worry about getting contacted again. I felt like I was at least doing them a service there, right? Yeah. Or no. And then we would go into, well, what is it gonna take to get you into that house this year? What are your goals? You know, or have your goals shifted to the next year. And I just went through all those leads. I ended up selling seven houses from that list. And I it like the i y you've had this this moment, but you go you go meet somebody, you connect, you have rapport, you help them, you sell a house, you're like, That was awesome. Yeah. Best thing ever. speaker-1: You took ⁓ from it's not happening and you got them to to refocus or determine their goals and then you helped make it happen. Yeah. speaker-0: Yeah, and off of the dead list you're like, Well, if they bought a house, other people are probably gonna buy a house. speaker-1: Like what if the the lead actually had a pulse? You're like, okay, what up what can I do with that then? speaker-0: I I made it a goal though, because somebody told me you got to call every lead 10 times. I'm like, I'm gonna 10X this. So I'm just gonna call every lead a hundred times. So that was my list. And that's all I did when I came into the office. And I would prospect and I'd get through my calls and then I'd go hold open houses. And then what ended up happening in there was a period of time between 2017, 2019 where there was a pretty good opportunity with expired cancelled and people thought the market was gonna crash in 2019. Right. Rates started to go up to five percent. People started to kind of panic a little bit. People were taking their house off the market. And I was listening to an old Mike Ferry ⁓ like webinar, you know, about expireds, calling them, calling them. I'm like, you know what? I could do that. However, why don't I just go door knock them? speaker-1: Which you were used to doing yeah with with lawn mowing. speaker-0: Exactly. And and in in in go to guys days, I would always carry extra khakis and an extra white shirt in the back so that I didn't go up to somebody's door covered in grass. Yep. And so I'd I'd always have a change of clothes because I wanted to be a little bit different than the other person. And so this was a this was a moment where I learned from that. If you got eighty other realtors in my market at least, calling expired cancels, how do you think a consumer's gonna feel? Yeah. They're gonna hate realtors. speaker-1: Telemarketing. Yeah. speaker-0: So I felt like if I show up clean cut with a smile on my face with my hand out trying to, you know, hey, I'm Parker, I'm a realtor, I understand you're probably getting inundated with phone calls right now. And it's because your house came off the market. I'm just here today because I want to let you know I'm a little bit different than the rest. And if you've had any consideration of putting your house back on the market, I'd love to interview for the job. And so the psychology of the consumer is now instead of somebody being annoying, I think that's pretty impressive. speaker-1: They already put time into it because anybody can make a call from anywhere and like, yeah, hey, this is a partner. Yeah, you yeah, I saw your house came off. Can I be your realtor? Just like everybody else. But if you make the effort to go there, stop by, see the house in person, you're already ahead of everybody else. Like, okay, I can see the home. You might even be able to, hey, I can see some of the reasons why I may may not have sold. speaker-0: Absolutely. And with the people that were impressed with me or wanted to talk, they'd invite me in. And then all of a sudden you're talking to somebody for an hour. And that net

that would never exist without going to that door because people just don't want to get inundated with those things. And now, you know, you look at our ⁓ the spam rules on our phones, even the tech stuff, yeah, where it goes to like unknown sender or fraud alert. That's what I would do if I if I'm a young agent now. But what ended up happening was I was moving at such a pace where I I came out of the gates. I didn't know what was good or bad, legitimately. Like The first year first twelve months from first sale to twelve months, I ended up selling ninety four houses. Which is Yeah. speaker-1: Yeah. That ⁓ for for people who don't know, that's off the charts really. speaker-0: Yeah. And and it was to me it's like I was just coming in, I was prospecting, I was holding open houses and I was door knocking, X bar cancelled. And then I was of course posting on social media at a time when other people weren't. And it was just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And so I kind of looked up after that first year and I was on a mission, Bridger. Like you fail in golf, you fail in lawn care. Like I'm not gonna fail again. Now I tell people, I'm like, Once you do that, you can't like turn back the the time and be like, ⁓ I'm gonna go sell twenty homes a year. Yeah. No, no, you can't do that. It doesn't you Yeah. Yeah. And now you have some some ⁓ financial resources to reinvest into the business, which is really a power position, 'cause now I can start hiring people. And and so piece by piece I built I started building the admin team, started building first thing was transaction coordinators, marketing assistant, personal assistant, and then ISA. Because those and ISA is inside sales, somebody that can make the calls for me because I knew that if I was in the field speaker-1: Yeah. speaker-0: I needed to keep up my call volume to keep up the number of appointments. speaker-1: And and you can I mean, just seeing that from the outside, I can tie that directly to the failure you had in the the lawn mowing business because you started replacing yourself immediately. That's that's a big difference versus like persisting on the lawnmower, persisting on the billing and all of that, because you can't leverage yourself. Yes. And and you're over leveraged. And so you see right away two things coming from the lawn care, both that sales. Like hey, being out there meeting people, presenting yourself in that way, and then replicating yourself or replacing yourself. speaker-0: Mm-hmm. A hundred percent. And then and then comes the people, ⁓ the people and the the human behavior side of the business. Yeah. And that's where you have to become an expert in it if you're building as a salesperson alone, you need to be a human behavior expert with your clients, right? speaker-1: This is a favorite one of mine, how to win friends and influence people. speaker-0: Yeah, that a classic. Should should be read every year. speaker-1: Like any good book, there's like three pages in it that really apply to where you're at right now. And then you can incorporate that and then you read it the next year. It's a different three pages that you can incorporate and take in. But but the human aspect on everything is so much bigger than ⁓ what's this three bedroom house, two bathrooms? That stuff is a a minor detail in the whole process. speaker-0: Yeah, and it and it's as little as just ⁓ putting yourself in the consumer's shoes every once in a while and just reflecting. Like we've talked about already today, how do you feel if you're an expired or canceled listing when you come off the market and get called 80 times? Not everyone's telling you your house failed, your agent sucked, you your your price was wrong. Okay, well, how does that make them feel? Right. So if you can go the opposite way and make somebody feel good. And open to to more conversation, well yeah, that's gonna open the door for them to get to know you. And if they get to know you and they like you, then that's gonna open the door for an opportunity to potentially have their business. Yeah. So that's just the way I look at it. And I look at it ⁓ today, I look both ways too. If I'm the agent at this brokerage, how do I feel about this? Or how do I feel about that? And I'm constantly putting myself in the agent's shoes because I am an agent and although I don't sell homes anymore, stepped out in twenty halfway through twenty twenty. I think about agents because The agents are what run the the company, truly. speaker-1: Yeah. They're the the machinery behind it. Yeah. And so yeah, this that's a great jumping off point into what does a a real estate team really look like? You know, 'cause I I think most people are probably familiar with ⁓ you know, one on one. They know a real estate agent, they call ⁓ you know, it's pretty much who they're interacting with the whole process. You know, they may be full time, they might be part time, but what's it really look like when you bring that into the context of an actual team or team structure and what you guys were growing? Yeah. speaker-0: And the in the that's a great question. The industry has this way of kind of making you feel like you should start a team when you become successful. So a lot I see a lot of producers at like 20, 30, even 40 units starting teams, but they haven't actually established a rock solid business of their own yet. And what I mean by that is they don't have consistently 30, 40 referrals coming in per year. ⁓ and if you do, that's probably a time to start leveraging yourself. But the the first variation of the team is The Rainmaker, so the lead agent with a very rock solid admin team. The goal should be how do you free up all of your time that's not at the level of your income? And if you want to know, anybody listening wants to know how to calculate your dollar per hour, take your ten ninety nine income divided by two thousand. So ⁓ million dollars a year, for example, which is pro well, let's just use a

hundred thousand dollars. Easy math, right? Yeah. ⁓ a hundred thousand dollars, ⁓ you're worth fifty dollars an hour. Divided by 200, $50 an hour. So if you're doing something that's less than fact check fact check me on that because I'm under the lights right now. But if you're doing something under $50 an hour that you could hire out to have someone else do, then you're actually just trading your time in a very inefficient way. However, if you're trading that fifty dollars an hour by hiring somebody that can do something that's worth twenty dollars an hour, and then you take a hundred percent of that time and put it into something that'll make you fifty or more dollars an hour, now you're growing. speaker-1: And you have margin in there. Yes. And and that's how you can grow a business. And and sometimes it it's hard to even think of, okay, I'm gonna get a a high performing person pushing into the thirty dollars an hour. But still that's less than fifty. You know? So being able to keep keep hold of that, knowing always what you're worth and who you can get to come in and replace what what's even nice is you can pick the stuff you don't like to do and the stuff that you're not good at. Those almost speaker-0: Exactly. A absolutely and that you should. Yeah. Yeah. Because if you if you truly know your strengths and your weaknesses, you should always hire out your weaknesses or get help with them. Mm-hmm. And and as an enjoyment factor of of life, which it becomes very important, you don't want to continue to do the things you hate to do. Yeah. 'Cause it's gonna burn you out. Multiple ways to do speaker-1: Yeah. Do it. And then you can get the longevity of being able to, yeah, keep doing the the money making stuff. Yeah. Or the stuff that I don't know there's some things that are you ultimately have to let go, but you can even hold on to the I like this at least. It's not worth my time, but I can hold on to that a little bit longer if I am smart with the other stuff before you have to give it up. speaker-0: Yeah, and and that that that kind of leads into the next phase of the growth, which was agents started to come over and say, Okay, like how did you do that? How'd you sell that many homes? And year two, I backed it up, I did it again. And year three, I backed it up and did it again. So people started to notice like this guy came right out of real estate school and started selling more homes than anybody in the entire county per year per agent. I gotta see what's going on. And I would show them and I would teach them and I I would I would lead them just like The lawn care company. By the way, we had we had like seven or eight employees for lawn care company, but I was still on one of the mowers. Yeah. Okay, just to clarify that. And soon what I realized is okay, I got my license. They gave me this guide to success book, which I keep on my shelf, just like you have your books, as a reminder that this industry does not lead the agent down the right

path from the get go. This industry has an eighty two percent failure rate in year one. Something's going wrong there. speaker-1: Yeah. Which I mean y th really the only thing you can tie to, especially since we're in the industry, is there's almost no support. And and so taking it from I mean it it's it's not even as simple as like what what we discussed, have an open house, door knock, call your friends and family. Mm-hmm. Like it's ⁓ it's almost nothing. speaker-0: Exactly. It's almost nothing. Yeah. And it's a real shame. And so, ⁓ your your ⁓ I'd say one or two, I can't remember exactly when, I jumped into the Tom Ferry network and I was starting to make a little bit of money. So I I said, Look, my dad's sick, he's in the hospital, I don't know if he's gonna live. I need to have somebody who's gonna guide me and lead me. And so I went and hired the best coach that I knew, and it was Tom Ferry. And that was that was a critical time ⁓ to jump into that network because I met Dozens of people in that network that are now good friends of mine today that have mentored me and helped me along the way. So all I was really doing was I was just jumping into a bigger atmosphere. And so I started to realize and that this industry is not made to help people succeed. You really have to do it on your own. And that was my mission. Like, if I can help other agents grow, then I can grow this company through helping other people while also succeeding in sales. And from the very beginning, the mission was just how do we help agents do better? How do we help guide them? So that they don't fail in year one. Because if we can get somebody to year two or three or four, they're gonna make it. speaker-1: Yeah. I I 'cause it opens up the the thing about real estate sales is so much of it is time. 'Cause you know, the work I do today, I don't even get paid for two, three, six months, nine months, sometimes longer. Some some s clients I've been talking to for three, four years before they buy something. So being able to get past those, you know, first years then then you get referrals, you get repeat customers, people are aware of you. So getting past that first hurdle, which is just surviving. Be one of the the one of five people. Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's not like even look to your right, look to your left, you know, two of you won't be here. It's it's like look to the two people on your right, two people on the left, they won't be here. speaker-0: Yeah. It and it's scary. And I just I personally feel like if I'm gonna invest my entire heart and life into this industry, that I'm gonna try to make it better while I'm here. And that f you know, it started with one agent. One agent comes in, he grows his his business from ⁓ ten ⁓ ten home sales. He came in ten home sales, sold twenty two the first year with us. I'm like, all right, now we have something here. He's doing great, he's telling other people about us. We bring another agent in, we do the same thing. And over and over

people are coming in and doing better than they would have if they were just on their own. And so I never had visions of growing something to this size by any means. Like I did not expect our company to be where it is today. And it's partly because I've just had my blinders on doing that work every day, just trying to help our company and the industry become a little bit better. speaker-1: And I think that's an outcome of trying to help agents is all of a sudden the people who are on the other side of the table are easier to deal with, more professional. You don't have as many problems in a transaction, things go smoother, you know, it's better for the consumer even. speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah, it is. I a hundred percent agree with that. The consumer is not gonna have a good experience of somebody that sells two homes a year. They they're not ⁓ they're not an experienced as realtor. speaker-1: I was just thinking about like I w I'd be really skeptical if I rolled into like a doctor's appointment, like they're taking off their dirty khakis 'cause they were just cutting grass, like, hey, I was just at my my full time gig. Yeah. ⁓ here let me wash my hands quick and let's take a look at ya. You know, 'cause we value our health, but for most of us, our house or you know, our commercial buildings, things like that, those are our biggest assets. Mm-hmm. It's the most money we spend on anything, usually ever in our whole life. And so y I would want I want the good surgeon when I'm they're working on me or looking me over after an injury, I'd want the same with my assets. speaker-0: A hundred percent. And I think everybody agrees with you. And and I just think that this industry lets lets the agent down and and I'm not ⁓ generalizing all brokers or all teams or all anything, right? But the statistics are the statistics. If you look at per agent productivity across the map, right, we're talking biggest brokerage to the smallest brokerage. This industry averages four to five sales per agent per year. Our company does fourteen per agent from the top to the bottom. speaker-1: Two three, four times more. speaker-0: Yes, which is something I'm very proud of because that means that all our associates are making full time livings and they're growing themselves through the process. We have seventy-five agents at our company that sell twenty or more homes per year. So seventy-five agents sell twenty or more homes per year. That's that is in itself something to be very proud of. And I'm and I'm passionate about that because they can now make decisions that better their lives. speaker-1: Mm-hmm. To the point where people are it's life-changing money. It's not just like a nine to five clock in, clock out, you know. So there's a difference in in the work lifestyle, but y it comes with other benefits. speaker-0: It does, yeah. And if you're going to take on the obligation and the mission of being a team leader or a broker, you owe it to the people that work with you and for

you to provide the best, the absolute best environment for them, the best tools, the best resources. If you're not backing that up and you're simply looking at them as as money makers, speaker-1: Skim a little off the top and let ⁓ do their thing. speaker-0: Yeah, you've you are essentially running a house of cards because it's a matter of time between those when those people realize it and when they leave the company. Mm-hmm. So you better be a damn good recruiter 'cause if not, fifty percent of your agent count's gonna leave. speaker-1: Well and and that's a great great jumping off point for the the next question I have. In this environment where we've seen in the last ten years really, we've seen the rise of cloud brokerages. you know, s brokerages are struggling or failing, independent brokerages are you know, it's kinda hit and miss on what that looks like. ⁓ in a lot of ways it's sort of a a race to zero in in that environment. And people provide bigger splits but fewer you know, tools and less help and and it can can vary in a lot of ways. You know, what made you guys want to make the jump from, hey, we're part of a cloud brokerage to we're gonna be a broker. We're gonna have our own brokerage going on and, you know, what what was the big driving force there? speaker-0: That's a good question. ⁓ because a lot of times the industry talks you out of going broker. And the funny part was that the month that we did it was the same month that Compass ⁓ solidified the acquisition of anywhere, creating a monopoly in real estate. So people were like, Are you sure you want to go independent right now? speaker-1: Which and and that's like some of the bigger brokerages or that people are are familiar with, Coldwell Banker, Century Twenty One, you know, those are some big names in in the environment. speaker-0: Yeah, Better Homes Garden, Corcoran, ⁓ ERA, and there's some smaller ones in there, but i some of them don't exist in Minnesota. But yeah, you now have one monopoly that has three hundred plus thousand agents. And so I said no, I actually feel like it's even a better time to go because not everybody wants to be a part of Wall Street. Not everybody wants to be a part of this huge conglomerate that that now all of a sudden you you're a a Century twenty one agent and now you have to be a compass agent. Not everyone's gonna agree with the leadership. They're not going agree with the style, the brand. And some people will, right? There's a lot of things that they do well too. ⁓ but I said at the time, I was talking to Liz, I said, I think that there's a really good opportunity here to be the other side of that, to be Main Street, to be locally grown, to be, we're from the Twin Cities. We built this from the ground up. So Main Street versus Wall Street. And and I think it gives agents another option, you know, with local relevant leadership that has been in the trenches doing this thing. not sitting in some C suite across the country or in some cloud

based zoom zoom room. speaker-1: And what's ⁓ yeah, what are revenues looking like? What how are we gonna change in order to to help our consumers, which in that case the consumers aren't people buying and selling houses. They're people in buying stocks, selling stocks. Correct. Which changes outcomes. speaker-0: Yeah, it does. And we were, back to your original question, we were basically a brokerage, right? Like we were at the time two hundred agents or so. We had thirty, five admin, like huge admin staff. And part of that is our our model, our services model. ⁓ but we're we are brokerage. We had our own internal broker because we were too ⁓ we were too big too for exp to handle. Yeah. And really for any broker to handle. Like the number of transactions we were doing. speaker-1: More going on. speaker-0: ⁓ was just too significant. Like we finished twenty twenty five closing ⁓ twenty four hundred homes and ⁓ twenty four hundred total units. And in twenty twenty five since Jan one we've averaged ten sales per day. Yeah. So now now we're looking at speaker-1: purchase agreements, ten sets of disclosures, ten sets speaker-0: Questions consumers, ⁓ arbitration, lawsuits, all the things, right? So it was just a lot. So now we're pacing for year over year hundred percent growth. And I just said I I saw it on the on the wall. I said, We gotta go broker, and with the money that we are paying that broker, we're gonna use that to build an incredible admin team and legal team. And that's when we brought in Ed Kaiser, who's gonna be joining us here today. We were able to get him, he's a rock solid real estate attorney that's worked for E Dina Realty and Remax Results. And so we went from a team that had broker issues to now we have a full time broker. We have a broker as associate that works for Cassie. And now we have a legal team through Ed too. So we went from that was our weakness to now that's our strength. speaker-1: And and then that gives you just options to take care of your people. It's a huge resource internally to to be able to you know, what's this legal reper you know, what what's this really mean? Because in contracts it can be a little vague or, you know, who knows what the scenario really holds. speaker-0: How many times do we get asked, Do you know a good real estate attorney? speaker-1: So many times it's like, ⁓ not really. I mean, there's not a lot of people that do it full time, especially in in smaller communities. It's hard to be able to find somebody and then you have a resource in house. speaker-0: Huge. Yeah. And we just had a transaction with a client. ⁓ this was last week. Agent was out of town, she was on vacation, and client got spooked. She just ⁓ client got spooked, called agent, agent was, you know, afar, blah, blah, blah. They had questions and she started to get really concerned. She got on a call with Ed, our attorney. Within fifteen minutes, she was back to normal. Like stress was gone, anxiety was gone. She fully understood what's going on. To have that resource to step in and help our agents is a huge thing, but also to help all of our clients too. So it's just another piece of leverage, right? Cause as we've built along the way, now we're just trading again financial resources for value. speaker-1: Yeah, and and being able to hand that Over to agents or people of your team part of your team, your brokerage. I mean it's huge because it's not the what is it? Probably ninety-eight percent of things go well most times. It's those two percent fringe cases that are like, okay, we've and it's amazing. When you're sitting at the the closing table or maybe after if you're talking to the closer, like, yeah, we ran into some stuff we've never seen before. Like this was like, you know, so many people were on title, or this was in Torrens and in Abstr, like all these different things. Like we don't know how this we don't even Know how this piece of land existed. Like it's crazy what we're diving into. And it's those fringe cases, having the right resources can really make a big difference. speaker-0: Absolutely. And it's the reason that we went this direction because I could have been the broker. I I could have been the guy that was answering this question. On the mower, right? And so I also looked at our company and I said, Well, I can hire brokers. I don't have to be the broker. If I'm the broker, I'm gonna be spending all my days and nights handling problems for agents. Why don't I hire that position and continue to focus on growth and focus on being in the trenches with the agents? I would rather, if I'm an agent, back to the the whole put yourself in their shoes. speaker-1: On the mortal. speaker-0: I would ha I would rather see the owner of the company, the CEO every day in the trenches doing work with me being a a common part of the of the business versus like I see that person once a year or once every six months. Because that person is either again up on the pedestal in the C suite or they're so busy handling problems at ground level that they don't have the time to to jump back in to do the things. speaker-1: And and when you're growing so rapidly, you have to find people to rela replace people who aren't even in place yet. You're already talking about you need new new staff, you need new people to oversee other agents or provide that ⁓ assistance or coaching. And so it's it's hard to scale ahead of time or plan ahead. So you and it takes a lot of time to develop those people or even identify speaker-0: Mm-hmm. Yeah, and and thanks for bringing that because that comes back to the getting off the mower again and the failure of lawn care or my perceived failure of lawn care. The way that we're set up now, all of our our leaders basically have assistants of their own. So Liz has an assistant. That was one of the hires that was ⁓ and I and personally I don't have an assistant. We have forty-nine employees at the company that take care of a ton of stuff, right?

Yeah. And a lot of that is Parker stuff. But I started to look at Liz, who is my most important person, and say How can I free her time up for her to continue to grow and her to continue to lead better? And I said, I would rather her have that leverage than me because almost all of the tasks of the business have been replaced by somebody else. So Liz has an assistant. And now we look at our transaction team, we look at our media team. We have everybody has assistants, whether they're virtual or they're in office. Everybody has somebody backing them up, doing the smaller tasks that are below their pay grade. And and again, I just would not have learned that unless I went through what I went through. speaker-1: You almost have to I mean, it's easy to read it in a book. We can read like, hey, buy back your tie, all these different things. But sometimes you have to come up face to face with that. I didn't do that right. I I did a ⁓ I I you know, tripped over that penny and tried to pick that up and missed the dollars. You know, yeah. That whole analogy. And so being able to roll your previous experience into what you're doing now is is big. speaker-0: Yeah, and it's something I take pride in is that I teach that to others. I teach that to the agents at the company. Because again, they might not have had those life lessons or read the the sixty books a year for ten years like I did or were were in business coaching. They're they're looking at me as that value. And so if I can teach that to them, I know that I'm helping them grow a little bit further. And if they resist it, if they resist it, that's that's human behavior. Yeah. Right? Like you can lead a horse to water, you can't make the horse drink. speaker-1: Yeah. speaker-0: But most people when they see the value there and they see what it's gonna do, they they start to transform into that next. speaker-1: version. And I yeah, touching on that even, ⁓ that's ⁓ something that I've seen that you spend a lot of time on is actually that training. It's not just, hey, here's a new form, look at this. But, you know, we you frequently have discussions on on time blocking, on on books that you're reading, kind of here, hey, here's the Spark notes, passing those important pieces along. You know, where where do you think that sets you apart as kind of incorporating maybe the coaching into the environment that you're building? speaker-0: Well, this concept is something that that I mentally have created over the years. And it includes three silos. It works for business owners, it works for team leaders, broker owners, it works for real estate agents. It's recruit, it's retain, and it's per agent productivity. So improving yourself, right? And and encompassing in that third one is and this is related to real estate, of course. So if you run an HVAC company, you're gonna have to kind of mold it to the other way. But how do I take my ten sales per year and go to fourteen or fifteen? Well, you have to improve yourself professionally and personally to go there, right? If you're a personal mess, you're not gonna grow your business. Yeah. If you're just in a bad situation in your life and you're unhappy and you have terrible habits, you're not gonna grow. So if we can start working on those first, it allows for business improvement too. But back to the recruiting. So as a s as a realtor, your job is to recruit new clients every day, is it not? speaker-1: ⁓ yeah. Yeah w mission ⁓ mission over, mission accomplished, puts you back at zero. speaker-0: Right. It back to the six pages of Dead Leads, right? Yeah. Retain. Your job as a real estate agent is to retain your current clients and your past clients, correct? Yeah. So what systems and strategies do you have in place to do that? Because that is where the gold is. And then third, what are you doing to improve yourself personally every day? Those three things working together, if you can hit on those, you're gonna have growth. Simple as that. speaker-1: Yeah, and and 'cause ⁓ so often we are the limiting factor in our daily life and our relationships and our business. And so being able to take those key steps, which you can identify whatever you're doing, right? Is but a lot of it is knowing your systems and processes and and maintaining those, keeping those in play. Mm-hmm. And you can even do that in your life 'cause we have our days are made up of routines and processes and we most of us do the same thing every day. speaker-0: Day. Yeah, and and I personally have a story there too. It's i in that third bucket of personal improvement. Like I ran into a time of my life where I had an incredible amount of stress, anxiety, and I resorted to drinking. Like a lot of people do. Alcohol has a way to quiet your mind. And you know, when you drink, you you don't necessarily feel or or think about those problems as you would when you're sober. And so it was never a daytime thing for me, but it was a it was a nighttime thing and it was for years. ⁓ earlier on in in my life. And when I made the decision to just completely stop drinking and start on this path of sobriety, that showed me a lot about compounding interest in life in general. Yeah. Because you you remove one thing or you do one thing and it can create an incredible amount of momentum. What it did was it's it removed the anxiety and the stress, number one. It forced me to deal with my problems head on. I had no other option. Yeah. And then what are you going to do about it? So you have to make a conscious effort to change your life. And it was really tough for six months. About a year it got better. Two years it starts getting better. And then after that, you don't even think about it. Yeah. And you start to physically get better, you start to look better, you start to show up as a better leader to others. And, you know, as a as a husband and a dad now, like I am for sure the best version of myself there, which is ultimately the most important thing.

speaker-1: Yeah. And able to show up there every day, leaving enough margin in your life where you can be there for for your family. speaker-0: Yeah, and and I know how common that is. Like literally eighty percent of the people probably listening to this are usual drinkers, right? And most people don't have a problem, but the ones that do, eventually it bleeds into something else. Your marriage, your kids, your your business, your finances, your speaker-1: It just personal will your your ⁓ mindset every day and in mind discussions with business owners. It's amazing how often I I I'd I'd be curio I should read into the the tie that there is, but there's a lot of substance abuse and alcoholism. And then I don't know if it's entrepreneurs or there's the create creativity or something quiets their ⁓ you know, active minds, but it's really a common thread that I see a a lot of times. speaker-0: And and it's just again human nature, right? It's a readily available substance at every single corner. It's as addictive as anything else that there is. And society just has a way of making you think that that's a good thing for you. Yeah, or it's fun or like you celebrate all the good times with it, you handle all the bad times with it. When you're bored, you know, it's there for you. ⁓ it's cold. When it's cold, yeah. When it's warm. Or if you have a personality deficiency where you might be an anxious person or you might be just not speaker-1: It's normal. speaker-0: Confident person, it can help bring that out of you. And then it artificially makes you feel a certain way when you're not. So I don't want to spend too much time here, but it's been a a huge part of my life. I watched my dad go through many rehabs and recoveries and which led to his bladder cancer, smoking and drinking. And I just had this wake up moment where I'm like 100% it's gotta go. So those three buckets and that story are how I lead the company. How can we do those three things every day? consistently because if you do it Bridger for you know this for a year, you can have a couple days off, right? You can you can go a week or two without doing those things. But if you're doing them every day, you're gonna create a consistent routine in your life, which is gonna build. speaker-1: Yeah. Well, and and what's tough is you can do it eighty percent of the way. You can make those nine calls, but if you don't make that tenth one, like we talked about to that lead, they'll go somewhere else. Yeah. You did all the work, you brought ⁓ along. You got ⁓ ready. And y if you don't make that tenth call, statistically, it's not gonna happen. And that's the hard thing, 'cause you can't always justify that call leading to this exact outcome. Mm-hmm. But you can, on the whole, you can tie those ten calls statistically to that outcome. So you you can't give up. And and you have to be able to incorporate that and it's really easy to give up if you don't build those daily habits or monthly systems processes

and having those in place. speaker-0: Yeah, and that's the that's the mission behind what we do is it's really not about the money anymore. Like I've made the money. I I have ⁓ I'm a s I'm just a very lucky person. Fortunate is an understatement, but it's more about like one day we're gonna die. And what is your legacy gonna end up being? Mm-hmm. Is it gonna be the person that just chased money and did it the wrong way? Is it the one that lost his family along the way or lost their kids along the way? ⁓ or is it the person that ends up impacting just as many people as possible? And that might sound cliche, but I know that that if I have a big list of people at the end of the road that I helped that can say, Hey, Parker, help me get into real estate or help me become more successful or Yeah, or help me get through that drinking problem or over my fear of this, like anything, you're gonna tie that memory back to something that I did to help you. And I'm I'm chasing that to be honest. speaker-1: Help me get through that first year. Yeah, and 'cause you can you can change lots of lives and lots of ⁓ the the people you impact can impact others. And and I I think we can go back to at least how I run my business. I've talked to people out of buying houses or out of selling their house. Like, well let's look at your goals. What are your goals? What can we align with that? So we make sure we're you know, chasing an outcome that works. And and if it doesn't work out, like, hey, let's not do this. You're not doesn't it doesn't work. The math, the timing, the you know, whatever reason it is. And that that applies same to those career goals. Like Hey, we can try to get you to sell a bunch or like really what how does that even line up with your your life? Are you unhealthy? Can we get you to that next level so that you can be there for your your family, your friends, you can show up every day and be your best version? Because that's gonna have other outcomes that impact well beyond, you know, some person you help buy a house. speaker-0: Yeah, and ⁓ you just said so many great things right there because I w in my statement it was it was towards the real estate agent and your statement it was towards the consumer. And yeah, you want both. Like you want to know that if you're the consumer and you worked with Bridger, that Bridger made your experience better. He made your outcome better, he was the best version of himself to help you through that stressful time. And the more of those you go through in your career, the more of those those literally, literal walking billboards you have around town. That are gonna talk about how great of experience it was and and that's gonna lead to referral business and for you to have the opportunity to help more people. But here's here's something crazy. Th this is wild. Twenty twenty five, ⁓ one point five million realtors in America. Seventy two percent did not sell a single house. Think about that. Like if you're the consumer

hearing that stat, seven of ten agents that you know probably didn't sell a house. speaker-1: Well apply that to apply that to any other thing. They're they're not actually a real real estate agent. That's CPA. They really a CPA? You know, s seven of those ten doctors didn't see any patients. Right. Well, are they really a doctor? speaker-0: They didn't run one tax return? Now give the agent community some credit, I guess, it was probably the hardest transactional year, arguably in the last thirty years. And you could argue ⁓ eight, ⁓ nine, depending on what side you were on, what city you were in. ⁓ but number of Yeah, but number of closed sales in twenty twenty four and twenty twenty five were at historic bottom floor levels. And so that just makes it harder for agents to sell homes because there's less homes to sell. And if you're an agent like yourself that had their career year, you have to look back and say, Wow, I must really be doing something to sta stand out from the crowd. What are those things? And you should take some time to reflect on this, Bridger. Yeah. What are those things that I do differently? I was at such a different level than all the other agents in this marketplace. So those things that you did are probably going to be things that will carry you through an entire career of being different. Yeah. And I I you I know you don't want this to be about you, but we were out to dinner last night and speaker-1: and double down on those. speaker-0: ⁓ we were at the Pines and ⁓ like I swear three people well first of all bartender recognized right when you walked in. Three or four people, ⁓ two people on dates, are like, Bridger, hey, Bridger, you know, they recognized you. And then the waitress and the server came over and was like, Hey, I I've seen you on Instagram. I've seen you on the podcast. Yeah. That's amazing. speaker-1: It's fun to be able to have those instances like, okay, I'm not just talking to the ether. I'm I'm doing something that people are enjoying or impacting people. And that's that's where I I think I've built my business or trying to build my business going in that direction. Like, okay, what value can I add? Because I try to add value to people who, yeah, you might not transact with me, you might not, but I could probably add value to your life in some way. And maybe you can tell somebody else about that and roll that in. But Adding value, it's su super easy to do that like every day. And and that can be even just a a positive interaction you have with somebody or a tip or a some piece of advice or like, hey, in my business I've struggled with that too. Here's a great book. Or like, okay, and then the book's great, but read chapter three because that's the one that's really gonna matter. Mm-hmm. And and I think if you your your goal is actually to add value, it's way easier than like My goal is to sell a bunch of houses. Yeah, but there's way more opportunities to add value to somebody's life. And then you seek those. And then it l usually leads to something else. speaker-0: Yeah, well back to that mission. What is the backbone of your business? And what you just said was it's to add value to people's lives, not accumulate numbers of of homes sold. It's a byproduct, right? Yeah, you're gonna sell a lot of houses if you provide a lot of value. Yeah, you nailed it. And if that is your your driving force through your career, you're you're gonna be able to do whatever you really want in your life. Like money w money won't be an issue, opportunity won't be an issue, ⁓ donating to charities and helping others won't be an issue. So speaker-1: Yeah, it's a by product. speaker-0: If we know that that one thing is true, then why are we not waking up every day? Not asking you this, I'm asking the people on the podcast. Yeah. Thinking about what can I do to help people today? What can I do to provide value to the consumer and to the agent today? If I'm in this industry. And if you're the restaurant owner, you've got your own parallels. speaker-1: ⁓ yeah. What can I what can I do to make this person's day memorable? Because maybe it's the one time they're going out, maybe it's their tenth anniversary, maybe it's the first time they're meeting, you know, and maybe some business is getting done. What can I do to make that instance memorable or a a a worthy night for that occasion? speaker-0: The book is unreasonable hospitality for the restaurant owners, by the way. Will Guerrero, I think is it is. ⁓ it's a yellow book. Unreasonable hospitality. So we did this this ⁓ thing where we told our realtors to to read it because if you own a restaurant, you own a real estate practice, you're trying to exceed their expectations every day, right? And and that's what it that that's what that restaurant last night did. ⁓ I don't know if you noticed because your back was turned to them, but the chef came out. And they took a picture, like one of the couples that was just eating there took a picture with the chef 'cause they had such a good experience. Yeah. Well that that's awesome. That's amazing. It's you know, small town ground rapids, like they're they're crushing it. ⁓ yeah. speaker-1: Yeah. And and and you can apply that to any business when you're cutting grass. You can do any number of things and like, okay, what can I do to make this the next level? Again, you know, the food could be great and you probably won't even remember what you ate. You'll remember it was good. But then like that night was marked in my mind as as a great experience. And that's what you want to do with when somebody buys a home. Yeah, the house is great. And that's what you want to focus on. You don't want to in the end, it's not all about me. It's making sure that like, hey, that outcome is remember, we got you in the right place. Or we sold your parents' home and we got them into the next phase of their life, whatever it may be. And you want to make it ideally I don't want to be forgotten,

right? Because I want to be their realtor for life, but I want the process to be forgotten. I want that to not be memorable, make it easy. ⁓ this was it was so hassle free. Those are the things that you want the the real reason to be the memory. speaker-0: Yeah. And by the way, that that is always changing. The goalpost is moving because of technology and the way that consumers buy and sell things. ⁓ yeah. So your hospitality or your service in two thousand nineteen is way different than it is now. So as an owner, as a realtor, as a anybody that runs their own business, you gotta be on the forefront of that change. And so that comes back to the personal development. Part of why we're running that event today. What's going on in the industry today is potentially very confusing and scary for the consumer. ⁓ yeah. I don't know if people know this. And and if you're hearing it from me first, go online and start researching this. But we've got Zillow on one side who is saying ⁓ who's in this portal war against Compass. And Compass is saying we want to hold these mark these ⁓ listings off market. They call them private private listing networks. So they withhold listings off the market from consumers so that you have to work with the compass agent in order to see them. Now Zillow is saying Zillow has 300 to 400 million. unique visitors per month by the way. 99% of people look at homes on Zillow are saying if you keep these homes off the market, we're not going to put you on Zillow. And this isn't a opinion. This is fact. They're in lawsuits over this stuff. But if this actually pushes through, and by the way, Compass just partnered with ⁓ Redfin because now they're doing the same thing with Redfin is what Zillow is claiming to do on other side. So now you've got Zillow, Redfin, Compass, you've got Rocket in the mix. Homes.com will be next, no doubt. Yep. Okay. W my main point here is if you're the consumer You're you potentially are gonna have to go on three, four, five different websites to see the inventory. In let's say Grand Rapids, right? Grand Rapids market right now, you can go on Zillow or any IDX site or anywhere, and they have an integrated agreement where all listings are shared. It's called a syndication. So that you can go on any website and see all the homes in Grand Rapids for sale. If these two conglomerates sitting on Wall Street are gonna put you know push around the industry and they win. speaker-1: Anything. speaker-0: You're gonna have consumers going to Zillow, Redfin, Rocket, Homes.com. Who knows out what else open doors in that mix? Now you're gonna have to go back to basically the nineties and say, now I have to go on five different sites. I mean, that is anti-consumer right there. Yeah. How is that helping the home buyer that that is just trying to buy their first house or their second or third or whatever it is in Grand Rapids? speaker-1: Who knows what else pops up? houses do I have access to? Did I see everything? Am I making an informed decision because I you know, I only saw these the houses on this side of the line, so to speak. speaker-0: speak. And the reason I brought that up was what you s what you said and then what I countered with, which is the agent has to personally develop and be on top of this stuff to best help the consumer. So if the realtor is studying this and and changing practice and pivoting in real time, you're more equipped to help the consumer navigate these challenges than somebody who doesn't even know what's going on. speaker-1: These are discussions we're having probably hours and hours a week it with with within agents in our office and in Grand Rapids here. And I don't know how you can keep up with it if if you don't do that. We're bare we're not even keeping up entirely on, you know, day to day. I mean it changes what what's happening, what's got the integration within ⁓ within the app or what new product is out there that's better than what existed before. And and that in and of itself is Well, that's why you guys have somebody in house who's you know, you have multiple people working on that basically full time. Mm-hmm. And and having that resource. It's hard when you're selling three houses a year, two houses a year, to be able to keep up on that. speaker-0: Yeah. Right, right. Yeah. So my goal is is number one, educate, ⁓ provide that value, but then allow our agents first to understand how to make these pivots in their business and stay ahead. Because if we go back to the nineties, ⁓ it's gonna be really bad for the consumer. But if that's the reality, then we have to pivot and figure out how to speaker-1: Yeah. And and one thing ⁓ I would I would say that I I think Pemberton has done really ⁓ a great job at is having people in place. 'Cause we can go to and that's another theme I see across all of these discussions, is people who find you know, you can go find great courses, you can find seminars, week long or weekend long, you know, retreats where it's eight hours of training and all of that. And you get kind of blasted with the stuff. It's like reading a full book, but really it's those two, three pages that have, you know, the gold that you need at that time. And and I think, you know, you you have a lot of those people in place where I can go have a five minute conversation and get so much out of it versus like 10, 12, it's 18 hours of digging into it myself because I can find it. I can find the right answer or try three different things. But having those five minute conversations having those people who can have those five minute conversations and locks unlock so much stuff in your business is huge. That's where like almost all the value is is five minute conversations. speaker-0: Yeah, yeah, a hundred percent. And that's that's our goal. Again, back to the value and what we're building. How do we be better and different than the competitors? And as we stand, we're by sales volume number seven in the state of Minnesota.

We're the number one independent brokerage in Minnesota. And we take that seriously. It's almost like back to the day the the golf days where we're trying to climb the leaderboard again. You know, it's like we we of course want to be number six and five and four and three and someday be number one. But the way we're gonna get there Is by staying focused on the mission, which is providing value and helping people. speaker-1: Yeah, 'cause if you add value every day, it the the rest is going to be a byproduct. speaker-0: Yeah. I I wish we had four hundred people here today. I w I w you know, if we have fifty or sixty, ⁓ we're gonna pour into those fifty or sixty people as much as we can and hopefully impact them for the better. But I want the whole marketplace to know about the things that we're talking about. And yeah, because you know, back to that that whole thing, what's gonna happen is it it's it's gonna push consumers to the GPTs of the world where they go into Chat GPT and they say, Show me a three bedroom home with a fenced in backyard in Grand Rapids. And ChatGPT doesn't have any barriers. So it's going to compile data and homes from Zillow, Redfin, and all of them. But now that just eliminated the consumer going from site to site to site to site. And so if the agent knows how to direct a client, now that's something you could teach them in a buyer consult or a listing consult. speaker-1: I would say one of my biggest jobs is educating people about the process. And that process is changing because it used to be, yeah, I can just s set you up with a search and you'll see everything. But if that changes over time, or even the approach changes over time, or how I want my listings to show up on these searches, that's changing. We're looking at that differently. And and being able to tool your processes and what you're doing to you know, changing those tools and the to meet the need. So you can best serve your clients is huge. speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah. So tha that's what I would just tell anybody that's listening is it's value and it's it's people first. You gotta think about the consumer always. And that's that's gotta be the the consumer has to be the north star of everything that you do in your business. And if you do it and you execute it well, you're gonna grow and you're gonna have great success. speaker-1: Thanks for dropping by. We're definitely gonna have some more conversations. I know ⁓ something that will tease some conversation in the future, but I'd like to hear how you guys are implementing EOS in in a your business and how those sort of entrepreneurial operating system and traction, those are some some great topics that we didn't have time to get into today. Some of your bigger plans for growth, what you're looking to do. speaker-0: Funny thing about traction is it's written by Gino Wickman, who is the son of Floyd Wickman. Floyd Wickman was one of the all time best trainers ever in real estate. But Gino took it and he said, If these principles work in real estate, they work in every business. And Gino was a was brilliant for that. EOS. ⁓ there's three books that go along with that. But ⁓ yeah, it's it's a it's a entrepreneurial operating system. speaker-1: Yeah. Sorry to cut you off. No, no, and and but that's a whole other discussion that I I know you guys have implemented and you've seen the fruit of that and stuff that I I'm seeing other businesses working into their their system. So that's a whole nother discussion. We'll have you back sometime and we'll we'll dive into that. And then also what your real specific plans are to grow in the future. You know, because we talked a lot about 2025 and maybe 2026, but ⁓ there's a lot more you guys are looking to do in the future. speaker-0: Yeah, well it starts with growing the number one real estate office in Grand Rapids here, which ⁓ we're getting damn close to and ⁓ and helping more people. We want we want to bring this model that we've developed ⁓ throughout Minnesota and and offer it to all agents that want to grow and do a little bit more. Yeah. Yeah, a hundred percent. But thanks for having me on, Bridger. speaker-1: And take it to the next level. Yeah. Yeah, thanks for stopping by and let's go learn some stuff about AI. speaker-0: Wonderful.