Good morning, and welcome to another motivational Monday. My name is Matthew Hodge, executive vice president here at LPT Realty, and I'm joined by Robert Palmer, founder and CEO. And if this is your first time on Motivational Monday, welcome. If you're a faithful watcher, welcome back. We are excited to have you and and discuss some new topics today, Robert. Well, let's start off by always catching up over the weekend. How was your weekend? Yeah, man. Good. Hang out with the kids. You know, we've been traveling, so it was nice to be home, sleep in my own bed, spend some time with the fam. But, yeah, we, watched, watched our Orlando Magic, unfortunately, lose game seven yesterday. That is heartbreaking. Watched McLaren win Miami Grand Prix, which is pretty good. Yeah. And, I think that's about it. You think prices on McLaren are gonna go up? I will see. I hope I mean, I guess I hope they do. Yeah. Right? That works out for you pretty good. Yeah. So excited me. Yeah. So, had a birthday this weekend. My daughter turned seventeen, which is which is crazy. I remember when Maya was so little. Right? Yeah, time has has flown, and, she spent the weekend doing her thing, which is when she was on a horseback, competition out in Grand Oaks. First day, she got second place. Second day, she got first place in all three of her runs, so we were super excited for her. She got reserve champion for that. So, so it was a great weekend. But, aside from coming back to seeing the Magic lose, which was disappointing. Kentucky Derby this weekend too. Speaking of horses Yeah. Horse racing. A lot of stuff going on. Yeah. And for all the people who were working out there, we were also working. So we are the weekend warriors as well too. So we know and appreciate your dedication. But, wanna jump right into some, updates with the NAR settlement. So as you guys have probably seen in some headlines that the proposed language is approved now, and so they are talking about some timeline. So could you real quick maybe just catch us up on maybe what the proposal language is is seeking to do and then maybe what the timelines they had put out? I know that they had originally talked about it being in December of this year or possibly early of next year. It sounds like they've revised that. So could you walk us maybe through what what that would be? Yeah. So, NARS general counsel sent out a letter, to all members kinda outlining the new timelines. Now they have preliminary approval from the judge. They're moving forward, which I think is smart. August is now the date that, NAR is saying that the the new rules are going to go into effect. They're transmitting those rules down to the individual MLSs. They've put out a pretty good framework. One of the interesting things is we talked a lot about, you know, NAR sixteen sixteen, and I swear, like, the language on this thing just keeps changing. And so the way NAR is now describing sixteen sixteen is like, oh, yeah. This doesn't stop with this at all. It it never did what we what people thought it did. Like, it's really it's been really interesting. So we're definitely diving into all that. We think we have everything in AR needs to put out kind of for us to make some decisions. The last piece is we do believe that they're gonna promulgate some model forms down to the individual MLSs and associations. Like, here in Florida, Florida Association of Realtors, FAR, BAR puts out the contract. You know, we think there's gonna be some language around buyer agreements that is put out kinda model language, and so we're waiting to see what happens there before we finalize our documents. One of the interesting things is, you know, Zillow came out with this, kinda seven day, you know, showing agreement or whatever. And then, like, two days later, Virginia Association of Realtors comes out and says, hey. We don't think that's legal. We don't think that meets the criteria. And so I think it's gonna be interesting as some people try to jump the gun on this and get ahead of it. You do run the risk of not being compliant with the final rules. And so, you know, we're trying to really kinda balance that line of we wanna be early, like, we wanna make sure we're we're getting this guy, you know, in your guys' hands as soon as soon as possible, but we don't wanna be too early to where we get it wrong, because this thing is still a moving target. And so, we're we're digging in with our legal team to kinda go through the rules now that that NAR has put out, kinda understanding where we think that's gonna fall. You know, the the definition of working with was helpful. Yes. But we have a lot of questions about open houses. And so now, basically, what NAR has said is it's a two part test. You have to be working with the client and prior to touring, and so what they're saying is if someone visits you at an open house, they are not working with you yet. And so even though they could be construed as touring because you're letting them tour the house, that the working with part of the test has not yet been met Okay. In that situation. And so, again, lots of things that we're we're working through here. You know, there there's obviously state rules and state laws that we have to balance. Then there's the the settlement language and and what the new MLS rules are going to be. But, again, August is now the the date. I expect to see things start moving kinda quickly now. I think we'll see some of these model forms coming out sooner than later. One of the other interesting things is they they also, I would say, strengthen the language around trying to prevent the alternate portals to show commission. Mhmm. And, again, we're still digesting this because all this just came out. But it looks like they try to strengthen it a little bit to where the way I interpret it is, any site being driven by IDX, is now a potential problem to have commissions shown on, and and so if it's run by a third party. And so we're trying to figure out, like, what exactly does that mean? Our brokerage is gonna be able to put this on individual agent sites. And if so, is it just that agent's listings? Is it brokerage wide listings? But it's interesting because NAR now addressed that twice in their most recent frequently asked questions. So I think that is going to be the big hot button as we see this kinda play out. So, again, we we are stuck in this messy middle right now. I think probably one of the things we'll do, Matt, is maybe next week we'll do a deep dive onto sixteen sixteen Okay. Now that we have the new language because that really is the piece that was standing in the way of us adopting these policies sooner. And I'm telling you, like, the way that that so it's interesting because, like, NAR puts out these, like, broad policies and says, like, hey. You it really just says, like, sixteen is, like, you have to comply with the spirit of cooperative relationships. And then they go deeper, like, well, that means you can't make an offer contingent upon commission, but that that was never in, like, the technical rule. That was, like, the interpretation. And so now these interpretations just keep changing. Like, NAR is good at it kinda like revisionist history when it comes to their interpretations. So we're we're gonna dig into that. Maybe that'll be a good topic for us to really go deep on next week is talk about, like, hey. This is where we believe you can immediately start to negotiate commissions in a way that does not run you afoul of NAR sixteen sixteen under the most recent NAR interpretation of sixteen sixteen, which is a part of the current FAQs they've put out around the settlement. And then, obviously, you know, we are we're moving along on buyer power tools and everything we're building, the new, the new portal to our a you know, you'll be able to work with your clients to get these buyer broker agreements signed. We just really wanna see some model language because the last thing we wanna do is is write something and then literally have it be, like, contrary to what the MLSs are going to. And while and while the MLSs may not dictate, it may just be getting modeled language or proposed. If those forms are there, we wanna utilize them. You know, like, I feel like that's what's gonna be best for the consumer is the more standardized we can make it or the more similar the more similar the language is across different brokerages, the better. But, yeah, we don't we don't wanna jump the gun and write something that maybe sounded good to the attorneys and then does not kinda comply with where things land, which I think is what what happened to Zillow, you know, kinda jumping the gun there on this idea of the seven day no compensation. You know, there there's all this language coming out. And one of the interesting things I saw come out was that if you if you enter into an agreement with a consumer and there is no compensation, that your E and O coverage may not apply. This was one of the interesting interpretations of this, again, all sparked by Zillow putting out their document. But if you enter an agreement with no compensation, then it potentially is not covered by E and O. You know, under certain state laws. It's not, an agreement because there is no consideration included in it. It's just very interesting to see, how all this is gonna play out. But then just know that our legal resources, our bright minds, across the brokerage are looking at this and staying in tune with this. And now that we have now that we have a a a date of August, we're gonna be able to get moving. And, again, now that we have this latest FAQ from NAR, the other interesting thing is, you know, there there's been a lot of questions around, what does it mean to have, you know, compensation that can be clearly forget how they word it, but basically, like, clearly calculated. Like, the idea is that they say you can't say all commission up to whatever the seller is offering. Like, that's the example they gave. But they don't give examples of, like, it's three percent unless the seller won't pay it and then it's two percent. Like, would that be compliant or not? And and there's all these questions now that we're digging into with legal team, and NAR did not do a great job of giving us guidance there. They really they literally just reiterated the one example from the actual settlement. And and it's like, come on, guys. We need you to stay we need you to take a stand here. Like, you're our trade group. We need you to give a little guidance over this. So, yeah, we'll see. But, we're gonna definitely staying on touch with that. Gonna be a big part of all of our conversation for the next couple of months and and just know that we're here to have your back. And as the framework becomes clearer and clearer, we're gonna make sure that we have the absolute best tools. You know, that's my commitment to you all. As this becomes clearer and clearer, LPT will put out the best tools. LPT will put out the best training. LPT will make sure that you are absolutely prepared for what comes next in this industry because that's how we all win together. That's right. When we came out the Monday after the settlement, we were we were one of the only brokers, I think, that took the stance of, like, hey. Let's embrace change together. Let's figure out how to win under the new framework, and our commitment to that does not waiver at all. And and we're gonna finally be able to go to work now that we're getting a little more clarification from NAR even though there's still some more clarification needed. Yeah. Still. Yeah. But it's getting clearer. And, you know, I think what you've said, which I think really resonates, which is, you know, listen. There's gonna be this murky period. So we have more clarity today than we did when it was first proposed. Yep. And so, you know, the best thing that you can be doing right now is starting to think like, hey. With every real estate transaction, ultimately, there was an interview that went down. It was largely on the the listing side of it. But what does that look like when it comes on the buying side of that transaction when you have to put your value proposition on the buying side because now you've got this kind of binding agreement to work with someone? And that's really what we should be thinking about now. I know that there's people who are trying to put practices in place, and we saw an example of that, like you said, with Zillow. And because things aren't perfectly clear yet, you can get it wrong, and then you gotta retract and go again. And so I know you're waiting to have more clarity so that we can just put out the the document that works. But again, as for our agents, you're gonna have this period of time. You're gonna have people who are misunderstanding this, and it's gonna be part of your transactions for probably the next six months to a year as people are getting the knowledge around this. So know that that is period of time is coming. Brace yourself. Arm yourself with the knowledge. Continue to check-in on Motivational Monday as we continue to guide you on this. But we've already seen people try to dispute things that are not really accurate. And, again, there's a lot of misinformation out there. So it's gonna be a little bit of a murky period, but we're gonna get through it together like you said. And I know that we're gonna create the tools, that really help our agents succeed through this environment. So one of the interesting things, you know, as I I really wanna be thinking about this, like, as you're thinking about what is your value proposition to your client as we're looking at this this kind of new idea of, hey. We're gonna negotiate commission with the buyer. We're gonna get it agreed to upfront. We're gonna have this agreement signed, like, what is my value proposition? And one of the things I will encourage you to really think about is it it's really easy to to get in the laundry list of the mechanical things you do, but I think it's really important that we hook into what are the emotional, you know, know, what are the things that are most important to that buyer emotionally? And that really is, like, get the house I want Yep. Or help me find a house that maybe isn't for sale. And and so, again, like, to kinda tie this back to LPT and things we do here, you know, one of the things we're playing with, you know, on the buyer power tools is right now and I'm gonna go off a little tangent here. But, you know, one of the reasons that the power pack is so effective, you know, it is a hyperlocal, you know, canvassing tool. Like, it's not a farming tool. It's not meant to replace direct mail. Like, there's a lot of things that it's not. Right? But what is the Power Pack? Why is it so effective? And what we know is that when a listing happens and then you can get out of that neighborhood and and door knock and and be seen as doing higher value activities. You know, like, when a postcard shows up in someone's mailbox, they're not like normally things like, wow, this agent I mean, a little bit like, hey, this agent sent mail. That's better than nothing. But when you actually, like, show up at somebody's door with somebody that's like, wow, this person cared so much about selling the house for the neighbor that they they went around and they put in their sweat equity. I've seen door hangers. I've gotten postcards in the mail. I got a handwritten postcard from them, which has a higher perceived value than just a a preprinted direct mail. Maybe they saw, you know, a flyer you put in that local coffee shop or whatever. It really is about this hyperlocal, like, wow, this person is working really hard. So how do we now go and apply that to the buyer side? And so what I want you guys to think about or imagine is you have a buyer who wants to buy a house. Right? They fall in love with one two three Main Street, but it sells. Either they got to make an offer and got beat out or maybe it just sold before they could even get an offer. Well, imagine now going door to door with kind of our version of a golden letter power pack where you're saying, hey, I have a buyer who just missed out on one two three Main Street across the street from you that really wants to buy in your neighborhood. Right? Now we all know this as a pretty normal tactic, golden letter, has been around for a long time, but think about the value that now creates for the buyer. Right? If you're talking to a buyer upfront and saying, hey, This is one of the reasons you should hire me. Like, one of the things I'll do for you is if there is a house that we miss out on, I'm going to go door knock and I'm going to go meet all the neighbors to that house to tell them about you because I wanna try to help you get another house. You know, this is not something you're gonna get from any agent off the street. And so the idea that we have this whole power pack now that's gonna help you try to get an off market listing surrounding a house that maybe your buyer just missed out on and communicating that value to a buyer upfront. Right? Say, hey, listen, here's one of the things I do. I'm gonna fight really hard to get you the house, but know that if we miss the house, right, and you can discern you can decide your own language around this, like, what's going to trigger you to take this action, but basically, like, commit to that agent and say, hey or commit to that buyer and say, look, if we make an offer on a house and we get beat out, I'm going to go door knock the the hundred houses around that house with my special LPT, you know, golden letter power pack to try to help you get another listing in that neighborhood that you really want to be in that maybe isn't on the market. You know, it's a way to show value in a way that will emotionally connect with that buyer because what do they care the most about? They wanna live in the neighborhood they wanna live in, they wanna get the house they wanna get, and and that is more important, right? In a world where listing data is readily available, that is not how we show value anymore. You go back thirty years ago and the way agents could show value was like, hey, I can show you the inventory. Well, now that's no longer valuable. Anyone could go find the inventory on a billion websites. How can we show value today? And I think this idea of, like, look, this is a way I'm going to work harder for you than the competition because if we do miss a house, I have this entire system built for my built for me by my brokerage that I'm going to take around to help you land potentially another house. And then guess what? You're gonna probably get a listing off of that. You know, you may get additional buyers off of that. Like, think about those neighbors saying, wow. This agent went around door knocked and made sure that that their buyer tried to get the house in here. Like, that's the kinda agent I wanna hire. Or, hey, if nothing else, maybe your buyer doesn't want that house across the street because it's too small, but now that's a potential listing for you. And so now think about in this world being able to leverage every missed contract opportunity to try to turn it into more business by utilizing this golden letter power pack. You know, again, these are the types of things that we're working on that we're gonna have in place by August to make sure that LPT agents can absolutely win, no matter what market conditions are. Yeah. That's right. And like you said, man, it's, you know, the value that was brought back in the day was, hey. I didn't have access to the inventory, and you brought the inventory. And now that that has evolved to where anyone has access to it, then the next layer of that is what you're talking about. It's not just setting someone up on the drip campaign. And I'm sure we're all guilty of doing that at some point, and letting that do the work on our behalf. But you're right. The landscape is changing. That is not gonna be perceived as value. And if everyone is using that, then what are you gonna do differently? And I think this is a is a great solution. So, I'm super excited that we're gonna continue the conversation. I know there's still a ton of questions around that, in terms I saw some in the chat. There's some answers that we just don't have quite yet. And so, again, that's what we're talking about. Don't try to be too early. We're still diving through this. There's still clarification that's needed for you to start enacting processes. So I would say, you know, business as usual today with the thought process of how do I start preparing for this upcoming change unless about making changes in the business right now until we've got that that clarification. Would you say that's accurate? Yeah. Hundred percent. And and real quick, the the product I just described is coming. It's not here yet. That's gonna be an August thing. And then also, yeah, if you find yourself in an area where you can't door knock, getting brightly colored envelopes that look like greeting cards and dropping, you know, those door hangers in there or dropping notes in there on the the the, postcards. Again, handwritten in an envelope that looks like a greeting card is gonna outperform, you know, the bulk direct mail just listed, just sold that we send. It all hitting together is going to be the absolute win. Right? When when they get the the just listed, just sold cards and, again and and we'll probably launch some type of golden letter direct mail as well. So, like, the again and, again, this is stuff we're building for August, but right now you go and you may say, hey. I had a client miss an offer, and then we would radius mail for you the golden letter with whatever those particulars look like, add that to the power pack. So they're seeing the the they're seeing the very clearly printed postcard bulk mailer. They're getting maybe the handwritten mailer from you that you take out of the power pack, and then they're also seeing a door hanger. Again, this is the type of stuff we're building out and, again, this is something we always could have done, but the creativity really got sparked around these brainstorming sessions we're having of, like, how do we show maximum value? How do we help everyone understand where we're going and how LPT is going to give its agents the leg up to win? So I I think, you know, I've admitted this, like, IDX really made us lazy marketers and IDX is when you get to show listings on your website. And so as much time as we spend sitting around, like, how do we help generate listings? How do we help impress sellers? We have not put that same kind of thought leadership into the buy side, and a lot of that was just because of, I think, the way these negotiations happened and and the way most people, they just go online, they enter their name into a website to search, but it's made us lazy marketers. And I think the piece I am excited about with these changes are, it has motivated, I think, an entire industry now, if not the rest of the industry, definitely us here at LPT, to really rethink about how do we reach buyers, how do we reach buyers in different new creative ways, how do we show up differently for our buyers. Because for the last ten years, it's been just, hey, throw out a website with a squeeze page that says if you wanna see all the photos and get all the descriptions, give me your name and email address so I can nurture you for the next, you know, twenty seven months. I think we're now as an industry gonna evolve beyond that, and we're gonna be at the forefront of that here at LP two. It's interesting to think, like you said, because, traditionally, that has been the hook for someone. Hey. I'm searching on whatever lead portal site. I'm curious about the house. I click on the house. Now I'm connected to you as the agent. I wasn't searching you as the agent out. Maybe there's some type of dynamic that changes because ultimately the way that we maybe connect with people changes as a as a byproduct of, this new this new design. So, okay. Well, if you're ready to move on, we do have, some operational, improvements on it that we've talked about. And we were a little ahead of schedule in the month of March that we talked about, and we knew that we had to do some staffing and some in internal changes to keep up with the volume that we were anticipating to happen in May. And so you've gone heavy on-site of that, of course, and you've kept your word. So walk us through kind of one of those, operational improvements. Yeah. So we've added a ton of staff, and we've more than, you know, doubled the staff across compliance support, the DA team kinda restructuring a lot of things internally, going more regional when it comes to compliance and things. And and we're really starting to feel, I think, the the impacts of that. The last couple days of April were were heavy. You know, I mean, this is a tough business because a lot of transactions do always close at the very end of the month. Okay. And so so we're always gonna feel the pinch a little more at the end of the month. But I'd tell you, like, the the the key metrics that I'm tracking, April was much better, than March, you know. And we're still, you know, we're, like, fifteen percent ahead fifteen percent ahead of, March and April. And so it looks like we may be, like, in that one point one five billion, maybe one point two billion number for for for April, which is is massive. And then May was really our target month. Like, the hiring we started in February was to get people in and trained and ready for May. And so I feel good about that. I feel good that we're gonna see, positive results, in May just kind of across the board, but then we have this other issue brewing, which is our single check states. And I I posted about this in the Facebook group this weekend, but I I actually have a date. If you wanna throw it up there, I'm gonna talk about it. So I I I posted about this in the in the official Facebook group, which is our Band Aid until, Connect two point o gets launched in the next couple of months. But, you know, we we found that there are some processes that really just broke in what I'm calling single check states, and these are the states where the title company is not allowed to write a check directly to the agent. And so, the majority of LPT agents are in states where we can send a disbursement authorization to the title company. They will write you your check directly, and then they will get you your funds however you want them to, and that makes life really easy. In other states, the money has to come back to LPT, then we process it and then we ACH it back out to the agent. And so what we found in those states are, we just found a lot of hurdles. You know? So there are title companies that don't wanna do wire transfers, and and there is a pretty lengthy wire transfer setup process to avoid fraud. There are title companies that don't wanna send overnight you know, they don't wanna pay the overnight fees, so they're they're mailing checks to us, and and part of the regular postage. Regular postal. And and part of the problem is if a title company in, you know, Virginia Beach mails a check to a real estate office in Virginia Beach, that may get delivered in one day. But when a title company in Virginia Beach mails a check to Florida or to Texas, which is our other processing center, that can take a long time because the letter has to travel across the country. And so we see delays, we see checks getting lost, and so we've been looking at, alright, how are we gonna solve this? The most successful thing we found so far is agents picking them check picking the checks up themselves. And so if you pick the check up yourself, you can take it down to a Chase branch or, a Truist branch. We're looking at adding more Are we back? We're back. Are we back? We're back. Okay. Cool. So, again, the best method we found is folks going to the title company, picking up their check, and then taking it to a local Chase branch, or a local Truist branch. We're looking at adding some more national banks, but the other thing we're now beta testing is the Chase app to where you can pick up the check and take a picture of it, and then get that deposited. You know, once once funds get to us, our turn times are really good. Again, there things go wrong. Right? We'll have, hey, we can't pay the agent because we don't have a w nine on file or, hey, there's something missing from compliance. But all in all, I track the metrics and the vast majority of our files from the time we get the money in, the money is going back out, in twenty four to forty eight hours. Like, that that team has been pretty on top of it. We are adding more staff there. We wanna make that as fast and absolutely paying this as possible, but where we're really seeing the the breakdown is that the way the money is moving from the title company to LPT in these states. And so that's where we're really focused right now. We're looking at building a system where, if you don't wanna have to pick up your check, you can we'll generate a potentially, like, a FedEx label and we'll email it to the title company along with the instructions so that that that we we pay for that and pass that cost on to you. Like, that's gonna cost the agent maybe fifteen, seventeen bucks, whatever a FedEx cost, like but we'll generate the label for you to try to make it seamless. The easiest is always gonna be you picking it up yourself or getting the title company set up for wire, but then you gotta pay those wire fees. Again, we are trying to balance this because we wanna have an absolute great, great solution for our agents. And so between lots of banks for you to pick it up and deposit it at, the Chase app, which were beta testing to where you can take a picture of it with your phone, again, you have to pick it up still, Pick up the check, take a picture of it with the Chase mobile app, and that will deposit it immediately. Again, there's a lot of different things that we're looking at. Brandon, I see your comment, but I promise you nationwide that maybe is not the case. I can I can point you to thousands of title companies who do wanna charge for wires? There are great ones that don't. I always manage to find ones that don't, but, across the country, there's there are def and that's what's been a struggle. Right? Like, we look at Florida, we look at our experience, and and if we're sitting as title company business, they usually will play ball with us. But then what if the other agent picked them because you're on the buy side or in some states, you're on the sell side and the buyer picked? It's really interesting to try to build this thing out to go into every single state, because there are states where title companies are like, yeah. No problem. Like, well, FedEx, we've kinda baked it into our model, and some of this may even have to do with how much they make. Right? So there are low title fee states and there are high title fee states. Like in Florida in particular, title companies make a whole lot of money. There are other states where title companies do not make nearly as much money because they have very low, like, very low title insurance rates. And so those title companies seem to be more sticklers about overnight fees. Or if they're gonna overnight, they wanna know in advance because they're gonna add a fee to the Ulta for twenty, thirty extra bucks. Again, we're we're having like, I think last month, we probably dealt with three thousand different title companies, you know, across the country. So, again, just know that we are very focused on this and and this there's a lot of solutions that you would think work, but then there are areas they do work in, there's areas they don't work in. What I'm most focused on is making sure that we have a potential solution for every little corner of this country so that no matter where an LPT agent is, they have the option to have excellent service and and to get that check back to us as quickly as possible so that we can do our thing, and we can go to work, and we can get that money turned back around to you via ACH as absolutely quickly as possible. One of the reasons I posted this is I really want people to understand that that if you're in a a state where you get paid at the table, your experience is much different than agents who are in states where that is not possible. And so because what I'll see is somebody will go on Facebook and be like, hey. I haven't gotten paid for two weeks and everybody else is like, I always get paid at the table. Right. And and inherently, that poor person is in a state where they cannot legally get paid at the table. And so, again, I just I want to address it so everybody knows, like, I I'm personally focused on this. The entire team is focused on this. We are continuing to try new things. We're moving that process out of the DA department because it's not what I would call a DA. It's more of like a commission invoice or a closing instruction. So So we're we're moving into the new commission concierge department. There's a lot of things we're doing behind the scenes, to try to get this smoothed out for you guys. But if you see an agent who is having a problem in one of these states, just know that they wish they could get paid at the table too. Unfortunately, they can't. The the biggest thing I think is is to encourage them to take control of that process, pick up the check themselves, and take it to the bank or, communicates commission concierge that they don't have a local branch, and then we'll get them in the beta for the Chase app. The goal eventually is to make the Chase app available to everybody in the states where we need it for single check. But right now, we're rolling it out slowly, so wanna make sure there's not bugs or kinks. But if you're in a place where there are no Chase branches, which Chase has a lot of branches, but if you're in a place where there are no Chase branches or no truest branches, let us know and we will work to get you, get you the the the the Chase app. Again, we want everybody to have a great experience. What we can control, we are working hard to make better and better, but the biggest thing right now is how do we most effectively get the money from the title company to us in all of the places where the title companies are not super cooperative. So, that's one of the big things that we wanna talk about. What else we got? And then we got luxury. Yeah. Luxury. Yeah. Alright. So real quick quick just to to recap that. So one, we understood that we're a little behind on where we thought on terms of, staff to process amount of volume that we're doing now. And so there's been a little bit of change for be caught. Like, again, we we plan to be in position for May. You guys crushed it in March. You crushed it again in April. And, again and look, that is not we're not seeing that across the country. Like, when existing home sales came out, like, a few days after I addressed this the like, right after we announced our billion for March, existing home sales numbers came out, and March was not a jump from February. I think it was actually down a little bit. Yeah. It was. So you guys are crushing the market and winning, which is great, but it does put a little bit extra pressure on us. And we're not gonna let that happen again. Like, we are at this point, we're gonna staff ahead. I think we got we got lulled into this sense of, like, you know, November and December were just so terrible, and then January was so terrible. You know? And we kept talking to the team, and and everybody's like, no. I think we're good. Like, we have excess capacity. Like, you know, and then boom. All of a sudden, everything exploded in March. And now we're seeing that again in April and May. We'll see where May goes. I mean but, again, I feel good about where we are. Look. We are new, and I appreciate everybody's grace when it comes to that. Like, we're a two year old company. I try not to use that as an excuse. Like, I I never wanna sit back and be like, oh, we don't have to try as hard because we're new. Like, trust me, that's not who we are. But there is a reality of, of being newer. Yeah. You know, we we we haven't had a decade to work these kinks out the way that other companies have. And and while we have a ton of experience in certain states, there are other states where we don't. We did not have a ton of experience with this single check state process, and we're now seeing that, and we're putting resources toward it. We're fixing it. But but just know, like, I appreciate your grace because we are a new company, but also know that we're not using that as an excuse here corporately to say, oh, it's good enough. We're new. Mhmm. They, you know, give us a break. We don't have to try harder. Like, I I want us to be perfect. I want us to be amazing, but it is harder to do it as a two year old company than it is as a as a ten or fifteen year old company. So we continue to work through that and and we are, you know, just gonna stay on this hiring train. We're gonna continue to bring in talented people, continue to get people trained. We know we're growing. This train is not slowing down. As we get back into state expansion mode, we're gonna make sure that we're absolutely staffed and ready for that. So just a lot of things going on right now. And that, I guess, is something else we didn't talk about before we sign off today is is is the thoughts on state expansion from here. But just know anything we do, anything we do as far as expansion will be tempered by, do I feel really good that we have the staff in place so that if we get another surprise like March, that we don't see service level suffer at all? Because that that's really important to me. Like, I don't want people to think, oh, well, because LPT charges less or LPT has a flat fee option, we're gonna get worse service. Again, that is not that is not what we set out to build here. The idea is that you get to define your individual definition of success on the comp plan that works for you without having to sacrifice service. And that is the long term mission that we are a hundred percent committed to, and it's not gonna be perfect. But what I always tell people is, like, we're gonna be the company that gets the gets the car out of the ditch and back on the road as absolutely quickly as possible. And so if we do get a black eye because we fall behind a little bit like we did in March, just know that we are gonna work harder and faster than anyone else would to get things moving back in the right direction. If we see a black eye because all of a sudden our single check states are suffering because mail is taking too long and title companies aren't FedExing and all these things are happening. We are going to go crazy with throwing resources at that to fix that, to get that car back on the road and back moving forward as absolutely, you know, quickly as possible. And that's Right. That's my commitment to all of you, and we will continue to prove that to you each and every day here. Awesome, man. I love it. I love that. First of all, we don't hide from when we are not great at something. We just, we just get better at it. So another thing, luxury collection, I know that there's been a lot of requests around the prospecting side of luxury collections, and we've been working on some things behind the scenes. I know you also posted that inside of, the official Facebook group. And so, what what's happened there? Yeah. So, again, a lot of questions here. We talked about this at Grand Prix. We are very close, to getting the new, the new luxury presentation tools for the luxury preferred network, out of the ground. We demoed that at at Grand Prix, which is about two months ago now, I guess. My hope is that we will be giving you a firm launch date next Monday on Motivation Monday. That is my goal. I feel like today is the day I'm telling you a lot of what's coming, but trust me, we'll get it out of the ground. We always do. It's a it's a really tough process. You know, building the tools is actually much easier than building the presentation part of the tools. And so one of the things I talked about on on Facebook this weekend is when we launched Listing Power Tools originally back in two thousand sixteen, we didn't write the active marketing plan, which is basically the magazine to explain Listing Power Tools for, like, three years. Mhmm. That came much later in the process. And if you look at a lot of our competitors, there's other companies. There are companies that offer luxury marketing, listing marketing, whatever these things are, but none of them have the type of presentation tools that we have. They may throw together a PDF. A lot of it, you'll see agents using screenshots and kinda have to go out on their own. I think one of the things that makes LPT special is we are committed to the presentation process because we understand how important that is, but it's also the harder thing to do. And so, you know, we've spent a lot of time, refining and trying to make this as perfect as possible, making that luxury version of the active marketing plan, making the the short form act short form active marketing plans with more of a luxury feel to add in the different tools, the billboards, the different type of mail, everything that we have as a part of the luxury collections. And so we've been working really hard on that. The boxes are beautiful, but just know that that is the harder thing to build. Yeah. And so it has taken us a little bit longer. As I mentioned on Facebook, the you know, we're getting into final review on the plans. The the box production, I think, just started hot. I think we finally signed off on that. So the boxes are now getting, you know, mass produced for that. The new billboard and luxury digital reports are being coded for production. So just a lot of things happening around the scenes, behind the scenes. And so, again, my goal is that Monday, we give you a good update on launch date, that we can commit to a launch date on Monday, next week's Motivation Monday. And then from there, the people who wanna join Luxury Preferred Network and start that process with a a firm understanding of actually launch, which, again, hopefully, will only be a couple of weeks. But I will wait for an update on Monday and then a firm deadline on Monday is what we're shooting for. But, again, as you know again, we, you know, we watch the Facebook groups. We kinda see what's going on. If we see similar concerns, again, we always wanna jump in front of it. Motivation Monday, Motivation Monday here is our absolute best place to do that. As I mentioned a couple weeks ago, we are, we are beta testing the the new billboard delivery system, which is looking good so far, which is gonna allow us to run billboards in all states, which is gonna be a a a big advancement for the brokerage. The early the early testing we're doing on that around Florida in our existing markets has been really successful. So we feel good about that. Some of the we've done some some luxury collection stuff now in other areas using that new system. So, again, that that's exciting. That's coming through the the ride. Just a lot of really great stuff coming, but it's all, like, right there. You know, Connect two point o is coming out in the next couple of months, Listing Power Tools x. And that was another thing I addressed. Under the new version of Listing Power Tools, there's gonna be options to do some a la carte ordering. So if you wanna just order a thousand door hangers, you wanna order just a thousand postcards, or you wanna order, you know, two hundred and fifty, active mark or not active marketing plans, neighborhood reports, we are gonna be adding that. And so, you know, if you think back when when we were just listing power tools, like, we did one thing. Right? We built the ultimate, in neighborhood activation box, and that was it. You know, we weren't a door hanger company. We weren't just a printing company. Like, that's not who we wanted to be. But now that we're LPT Realty, the brokerage, yeah, we wanna be able to use our tools to bring and our print facilities and our technology to bring as many options as possible to our agents. Now the problem is the way we built listing power tools, everything's on sheets of paper together. Right? It's like, literally, like, right now, we cannot just print a door hanger. Like, I think the sheet of paper that has the door hanger on it also has two side or, like, a small flyer or maybe a business card on it. Like, that's part of the magic of listing power tools is how we print those things. And so there's no way to just get a door hanger out right now. And so we have to rebuild the system to do that. And as I explained on stage at Grand Prix, Listing Power Tools was written in a different language, hosted on a different technology stack. We spent the last six months rewriting that to launch Listing Power Tools x into Connect two point o. And I made the comment from stage that that if if if our competitors think we're dangerous today, once Listing Power Tools is rewritten and we can make updates to it on the fly and we can add things like a la carte ordering on the fly and the new collaboration for listings and open houses, like, the stuff we're gonna be able to quickly build and get out once listing power tools is completely rewritten, which is almost finished and we're gonna be launching in the next couple of months, we're gonna be even more dangerous than we are today to our competitors. And so that type of a la carte ordering will be coming as a part of, of listing Power Tools x, which is launching a connect two point zero. Now it's not gonna be every single item. Right? Right. But it's the items you need, and it's gonna be bundles. You're not gonna be like, well, I only want a hundred door hangers. It's probably gonna be like a thousand because, again, we're doing the quantities that make sense. But we are going to give you guys more ways to get that stuff, from us, at at at a an a la carte or, you know, kind of the pieces you want to buy as add ons to your free power pack. And the core power pack will stay free. The core power pack will be what it is. We're not changing the quantities in the power pack, but to say, like, hey. Give me another thousand door hangers for x. Give me another hundred neighborhood reports for y. That's kinda how we're thinking about this process. The other thing I have seen a lot of requests for is a la carte, active marketing plan magazines, and so I wanna address this as well. Basically, the way we built that system out, when you buy the kit, I think it has, like let's say it has twenty five active marketing plans and then, like, fifty nine critical questions and then, like, a hundred short forms or whatever. All we're charging you for is the active marketing plan. Everything else in that bundle is free. Like, if you try to go to Vistaprint right now, it's if you try to buy twenty five magazines like the active marketing plan, they're, like, forty dollars a piece or thirty dollars a piece. If you get up into a decent quantity, if you buy at least, like, two hundred of them, you can get it down to ten bucks a piece. So for two thousand dollars, you can get magazines like the Active Marketing Plan for ten dollars a piece. We're selling them to you basically at the magazine price and then giving you everything else in the bundle for free. Right? But there are still people saying, hey. I don't wanna have to throw the other stuff away. So we're going to be adding a la carte ordering for the active marketing plans and I am critical questions, all those things. But just understand the pricing is going to shock you a little bit because when I built the packages, I believe in them so much. We basically did everything else for free. It's actually one of the items, in the print shop that LPT loses money on. When you buy, an active marketing plan bundle, like, we're we're we're subsidizing that because it is important to me. I understand how powerful that is. But if you go out there and price the cost of perfect bound magazine printing, it is very, very expensive and so that's an item that we actually subsidize pretty heavily because we want you to win with it. If you go out of the package into the a la carte, we're not gonna subsidize it anymore. But, again, we wanna give people choices. We're all about agent choice. We're not trying to take choice away from people. The bundles are not going away. We're gonna keep the bundles, but then we are also gonna add the a la carte option, and then you can decide. Like, hey. At certain quantities, the the a la carte may get a little cheaper than kinda where the bundle is, but at the current twenty if you're doing twenty five active marketing plans, the bundle is gonna be your better choice. If you can get up into, like, fifty or a hundred, they may get a little cheaper to where maybe you save from the bundle. I would still encourage you to do the bundle because those other items do create conversations. They do create activity. As much as everybody loves the expensive thing, the nine critical questions works. The little two pager works to try to get people to ask for the more expensive one. But again, agent choice, guys. Like and the only reason we haven't had agent choice up until now on some of this stuff is the technology just wasn't there. We had to rewrite listing power tools from the ground up to be able to bake this kind of agent choice into it because when we were listing Power Tools back in the day, we we had no one we were there was no there was no agent choice. Mhmm. It was like, hey. Take the box or go buy your stuff from somebody else. But, again, now that we're the brokerage, agent choice is one of our core principles. We are in the process of making that agent choice more broadly available across everything we are doing. So lots of, lots of choices coming, lots of expansions. And, of course, you know, as we continue to hear this feedback, it gives us the opportunity to make these adjustments. It just doesn't happen immediately. And so you guys are seeing a lot of detailed information and and seeing a very transparent view of us going, like, listening to the feedback and incorporating it. I know a lot of people really appreciate that. Maybe it's different for them. They don't normally get to see that or be involved in that process. But we're here at LPT. We We always like to take the feedback and then say, hey. Here's what people are asking for. Here's what they're struggling with. How can we do our part of of, helping them grow? And I'm not I'm not Greg, Matt. Like, I know we're out of time, but Yeah. You know, I I wanna believe that's the right thing for us to do. Like, I know maybe some people get frustrated, like, Robert, why are you telling us about this stuff before it's ready? Right. You know, like, again, I I guess, as a leader, I really wanna make everyone a part of the process. And so the idea of, like, talking about these things, you know, the alternative would be, like, we go in a hole somewhere and we build it when it's completely perfect and done. Right. Right? Then we then we roll it out. Right. And and I don't know. For me, that just doesn't feel how we build this culture and community. Like, I feel like it is collaborative. We want you to understand the process. We wanna tell you when things are behind, right, or when we're not getting the result we want. We're having to adapt and modify and why we're having to do those things. Because trust me, it'd be way easier to hide this stuff in a closet somewhere, and and it's, like, show up when it's perfect and and never have to show any of the wounds or the scars Right. Along the way or the delays. But, you know, I I think really making you guys a part of the process is important to me. You know, you're entrepreneurs. I respect you as entrepreneurs. I don't view you as our customers. You know, like, you're you're part of this family. Like, we're building LPT together. And so I think it's really important to me, and I I hope it's not a wrong choice. It's a choice I've made. It's a choice we are fulfilling here to really make everyone a part of the process and own when things are going well and own when things are not going well. But I know it can be confusing too because sometimes we'll we'll talk about this stuff. And, again, then I know we're gonna get blown up with tickets afterwards. Like, where do I get the a la carte door hangers? And I I they're coming. You know? I promise you they're coming. And so, again, so that that's all exciting stuff in the works. So quick recap there. Goals are, announce the luxury preferred network, which is the system that will have the sample packs, sample collateral, active marketing plans, everything for luxury. Right? Right? That will be part of our luxury preferred network, which my goal is to announce on Monday when we will be officially opening, and we'll probably open up joining as of Monday is my goal, and then have a firm deadline for, hey. This is when your stuff will get delivered if you join the luxury preferred network. The Listing Power Tools x, when that comes out, will have a la carte ordering in addition to the stuff we talked about at Grand Prix, in addition to the the cooperative marketing on listings, in addition to the open house system. Also, a lot more a la carte, ordering options will be available in listing power tools x. And then we are continuing to staff up and get ready for growth and doing lots of stuff behind the scenes to make our friends in the single check states where the money has to come to LPT and the agent cannot get a check at the table to make their lives easier. And then one day, I'm going to launch a national campaign to try to get a lot of these states to change their policies and go to split check. You know, look. If we can do the right lobbying in the right states with the right people, I think we can get that done. I mean, I I really like, it just it takes someone to challenge the status quo, and that's who LPT is gonna be. So that's on my that's on my long term plan to go into some of these states that are not allowing the split check and really make a hard push for why and show examples of of how tech forward brokerages like LPT can manage those processes in a way that do not create risk for the consumer, do not create risk for the title companies. And maybe if there's been some bad apples in the past or whatever it is, we can help pioneer a a a new era when it comes to this idea of direct disbursement at the title company. Last thing I will touch on, and then we'll we'll wrap up for the day. A lot of you guys know I was in New York last week, and one of those a big part of that was the meetings we had, at JPMorgan about, you know, investment banking and kind of our plans going forward. Early on, you know, we made the strategic decision to try to hold a lot of our state growth for later. And and the idea behind that was we wanted to show, Blue Ocean. We wanna be able to say, hey. LPT still has plenty of room to grow because we're not in this state yet. We're not in that state yet. You didn't miss it. You're not too late to the party. We have had so much success that we're now starting to feel like that's not as necessary, to be a part of our story. K? So the idea is because we have been able to create density and go deep in some of our early states, the fact that we have five thousand agents in Florida. I mean, we're the, you know, we're the second largest cloud brokerage by a massive margin in the state of Florida, the only state we've been open in for the full two years. And then you go over to Texas, and, you know, we're banging on the door of fourteen hundred agents right now in Texas. I think we're a hundred and fifty behind, the number two cloud brokerage in that state, and we've only been there for a little over a year. And and so the fact that we've been able to prove our ability to go deep. Right? This model is able to attract a lot of people in a single state. Because if you think about it, we could have hit ten thousand agents. Like, think about it. You own the fifty states. You get Right. Two hundred agents per state. That's ten thousand agents. Right? That's not what LPT did. LPT went in and dominated Florida and dominated Texas and then dominated Nevada and then dominated South Carolina. You know, like like, we've proven that this model can go very deep in states once they hit a certain level of of maturity, a certain amount of time that we're there. And so because of that, we're going to change that strategy. We're no longer going to hold out our state growth, for another eighteen months, two years. So we are going to get really serious about getting back on the state growth and state expansion. Companies like or sorry. Companies states like California, New York, and New Jersey no longer have to wait for late twenty twenty five. No people are excited about that. But we are going to temper this with operational growth and support. I am not going to let state expansion destroy our service levels. Because, look, March snuck up on us. Right? Like, I I'll take a little bit of grace for the fact that March snuck up on us. March was not supposed to be as big as it is. If I go out and open ten new states and we get swamped in volume, that would only be our fault. That's right. You know? And and so this isn't like, hey. Tomorrow, we're gonna open everything. But I want everyone to know, because, again, we are a family, that that strategy is now changing because of how amazingly we have performed over the last two years. So we are no longer saying, hey. We're gonna hold states for the end of twenty twenty five. We're gonna hold states for twenty twenty six. We are now going to add states as quickly as as prudent based on our staffing levels, based on market conditions, with probably now a goal of being in all fifty states by the end of twenty twenty five instead of holding twenty five states for after the end of twenty twenty five. So it's a big shift. So I want you guys to hear it from me. We're basically, we're taking the handcuffs off. We're gonna now be able to grow at a faster clip. But, again, the right controlled pace. We're We're not gonna get ahead of ourselves. We're not gonna damage the culture. We're not gonna damage, you know, service levels, but we are going to get more aggressive, the back half of this year, second half of this year about opening up new states. And now we've just gotta get on a hiring spree because we gotta have enough staff in place that we can do that respect you know, respectfully and and the right way. So Right. That's that's where we are. So that that was the most probably the most exciting news that came out of the trip to New York Yeah. Is is this pivot and strategy driven by all the success we've had. That's right. That's right. Alright. Well, we are a a bit over time today. Yeah. We went on. A lot of, yeah, a lot of information to cover. They're all great. So any final words, heading into the week? What should what should our entrepreneurs be thinking about as they're charging up for this week? Yeah. Look. You know, make it a big week. You know, we we continue to face headwinds as an industry. It looks like mortgage rates may come down a touch. You know, we we had a the the jobs report for last month wasn't as hot as it had been, so that that's kinda good. Just keep your head down. Keep doing the things that work. You know? Trust the process. Trust the tools. You know? Recognize that LPT agents are winning each and every day, and and we're winning together. And know that we have your back here. Avoid the noise, you know, and and just go win. I mean, that that's really what it comes down. It's like, we we're in our season right now. You know, now is the time to to do a lot of business, you know, to get those listings, to help those buyers get under contract, stay focused. You know, we are a seasonal business, and this is our season. So I appreciate each and every one of you guys. Keep working hard out there. Keep doing what's right for your clients. Keep pushing your personal business forward because that's how LPT wins. We are we are the sum total of all the effort that you put into your individual businesses, and we don't take that for granted. And so you push your businesses together, and and that makes us all win as a whole. And and I'm so excited to be a part of this with you guys. So go out there and make it a great week. Crush it, and we'll see you back here on Motivation Monday, next Monday.