Good morning. Good morning. And welcome to another Motivational Monday. My name is Matthew Hodge, executive vice president here at LPT Realty. And I'm joining you from LPT headquarters here in Lake Mary, Florida where it is actually a little bit cooler here today. It is, I think, fifty three is a high today and the lows were in the low forties. So that's cold for us Floridians. But let me bring in Robert Palmer, founder and CEO, who is joining us from Yellowstone Club in Montana, who I believe it's a little bit cooler, there than it is here. Robert, how are you, brother? Negative fourteen. Yeah. Negative fourteen. Fantastic. Yeah. That's I'm finally feeling better, though. You know? Like, it's too cold to go outside, but I'm finally feeling better. I've it was almost three weeks, and I had I think it was either two or three motivation Mondays I've been sick. That is I still a little stuffy. I'm feeling feeling a lot better today. It was I'm telling you what, man. It was bad all through the weekend. All last week, I was laid up. I don't know what's up. I did I did shave. Rates rallied. We had quite the the mortgage rate rally, at the end of last week. So, again, rates are still high, but they moved down pretty good. So I pulled out the razor and and Yeah. Nice. It's been formed. So yeah. Nice. Awesome. Cool. Well, I'm happy you're feeling better. I can definitely, hear it a little bit. You're still a little bit stuffy, but I'm happy that you're getting through it. And, definitely stay from outside because, your immune system does not need, any more attacks at the current moment, while you're while you're making your way through it. So, is this good weather for skiing? Is it is it does it make it better, or what ends up happening when it's this cold? Yeah. I mean, it's too this is not ideal. It's too cold to ski. Right? Like, this is not I mean, you you're gonna be people skiing. Like, they're opening the lifts late today. They're gonna open them at ten instead of nine, but people are still gonna ski. The powder is nice. We have tons of snow. Like, it's a great season, but I would much rather ski in, like, fifteen, twenty degree weather for cold, not negative, you know, fifteen. Yeah. I think it was, like, negative eighteen or nineteen overnight. So Yeah. Jill went outside. They were doing the snow removal from our roof, and, she Jill went out to talk to the guy, and she's got out of the shower and her hair froze because it wasn't, like, a hundred percent dry. She was out there for, like, thirty seconds. I mean, it's it's insane. Crazy. Yeah. No. It's good. You know, Reagan and Reagan loves the snow. They, you know, they live school today, so they're all going down to Bozeman and hanging out because it is too cold to ski. Yeah. Awesome. Awesome, man. Well, excited for that, man, and, happy holiday. So we'll go ahead and jump right in. I wanted to, you know, kind of go through some mindset things. So at the beginning of each before we get into the positive mindset stuff, we got a couple of Yeah. I got I got a little little housekeeping things? Little housekeeping negative we gotta do. Okay. Lead lead the way then. So, for the second time now in in LPT's history, we have another brokerage who is is ripping off the, the the the power pack, the the listing power pack. And, yeah, we we have both trademarks and patents. And, you know, usually, we I don't know. Usually, we don't get quite so aggressive. This one upsets me because it's like both the trademark and the patent at the same time. Like, I calling something listing power, like, that that crosses a line to me. So, we are hiring a litigation firm to protect our rights. I do need help from you guys, though, because I understand they sent text messages to a ton of LPT agents. And so if you could, we need you to submit a screenshot of that text message, as a ticket. So if I think it has to have those come into the executive, ticket bucket. Yeah. Executive concern. Clog up support with it. But if you will use if you got one of those text messages, please screenshot it. Let us know the number they texted to, like, whatever whichever of your phone numbers received that text message, and we need that to provide to our legal team. Yeah. Because, again, look, I I'm all for it. Like, I want all agents to benefit from marketing. I think all brokerages should do a better job of providing marketing. But if you're gonna put out a listing power box and, like, rip off our quantities and designs and everything, like, there is a point where we, you know, we have to protect our our rights and protect y'all's rights. And, you know, look, it's a part of of our intellectual property as a brokerage. It's you're all shareholders through the RSU you're in. And, like, we're we're gonna stand up for what's right here. So, so if you did get one of those text messages because, again, it's even more evidence of what they're trying to do because then they sent the text messages to all the LPT agents. So they're absolutely trying to deceive consumers, deceive our agents with the listing power box, not the listing power pack, which, again, trademark infringement is the a slippery slope. So, at least the last brokerage called it, like, a listing presentation box. Like, so that was that was only a A little different. That was only a potential patent dispute. This one's patent and trademark. So Yeah. We're gonna we're gonna protect our rights. So that that's going on. So I just wanted to kinda put out there but put that out there. So, look. Again, we're not trying to stop other brokerages from having good marketing, but there is a line you cross where, you know, it's just it's too much. And this this particular brokerage crossed that line. So if you get one of those text messages, do us that favor and submit it to the executive, executive ticket bucket. Thanks. And with that, we can move on to more positive. We'll move on. Yeah. Okay. Cool. Alright. So we'll move on. So, well, so thank you for that. You know, it's it's just interesting to see. I know, Robert, when you talked about, you know, Listing Power Tools becoming the brokerage and how that would move the industry forward and really solve some of the needs that agents had. Right? Because we wear so many different hats. It was difficult to consolidate all that into one service where you can have this marketing engine. And so I know that was a force for you said, hey. I know that we are going to make other brokerages react and that should positively impact, you know, all real estate agents and the consumer. And there's that. But then there's also, hey. We're gonna take your exact copy and then we're gonna charge agents for it, and then just, you know, it's not the spirit of what I think you were intending when you said, hey. We'll push the industry forward. So That's the interesting thing. Yeah. They they text message a bunch of agents who get it for free on their listings offering it for, like, a hundred and fifty dollars. So I Right. Again, I don't I don't and I know it doesn't It's just half the stuff we have, man. I don't know. They're it's just again, the the listing power box, that was the part that just put me in there. Was the part that made it through. Yeah. Come up with a better name. Like, you wanna give your agents a box of marketing material. Like, you you you poorly ripped it off in the fur so, again, the funny thing is because they did such a poor job of ripping it off, the patent infringement may not be a good a good claim for us because it's not close enough to our box. They didn't really get it right. They missed some of the key elements. But calling it a Listing Power box, like, come on. Like, we have trademarks on Listing Power Tools and all kinda and we have since 2016. I mean, that that's the I guess that's the part that really upset me. Like, because now you're literally trying to, like I think now you're trying to deceive consumers into the them believing that your agents have the same thing that our agents have, and they do not. Like, we don't need consumers thinking that that terribly produced box is in any way related to the original Listing Power Pack from Listing Power Tools, LPT. So damn it. Right. Awesome. Cool. Alright. Well, let's go ahead and jump into twenty twenty five mindset. At the beginning of each year, we really kinda take a look at what didn't serve us well in, you know, the previous year. What we wanna double down into the the current year and, you know, and and move that as a as a rhythm to move forward in our business. So, hey, I'm eliminating things that didn't work quite well. I'm doubling down on things that did work well and that should produce a better result as I move forward. And so I know at the beginning of the year, you have this exercise where you kinda go through that and you build this 2025 mindset. And then, you know, I'll kinda just take a quick second to level set us. You know, as you start to aim at these new goals, new obstacles present themselves. Right? So there's obstacles around us all the time. Right? But, you don't experience those obstacles until you try to purposely move down a direction. So if, let's say, I'm trying to gain two pounds of muscle. Right? The obstacles that are gonna be there, hey, eat a little more protein, workout, whatever. Right? But if I'm trying to gain ten pounds, right, the obstacles become a little bit different. And so you look at that exercise through, you know, your 2024, your 2025. So just curious, as you're thinking about your 2025 obstacle and you're setting these goals, how do you solve for the obstacles? And then ultimately, what do you use as I I would say your benchmarks to say, I'm gonna eliminate this and I'm gonna double down on on this? Yeah. So I think there's a couple of of concepts that I really look at it. And one is, I think a lot of people, we like to measure the results versus measuring or setting the goal around what we can actually control. You know, like, you don't necessarily control when customers are gonna choose to buy a house. You know? And even once you get a customer under contract, you don't necessarily control when that contract's going to close. Right? But you do control the the amount of outreach you're gonna do. You control the number of people you're gonna meet. You can you can control the number of open houses that you're going to hold. And so while I think having that ultimate goal to say, like, hey. This is either my monetary goal for this year or this is my production goal for this year, But then we really have to take that and we have to turn it into activities that we can control. Right? So how many open houses do I need to hold? How many times do I need to go out door knocking? How many power packs am I gonna need to empty? You know, how many times am I gonna need to engage with my sphere? How many customer appreciation events am I gonna have throughout the year? And and those are things that you can hold yourself accountable to. And, you know, we we we can as entrepreneurs kinda figure out, look, I I know roughly how much I need to do. Because otherwise, you're gonna wake up and be like, well, I haven't necessarily hit my goal yet, or I'm on track for my goal. Because there are things we don't control. You know, we don't control the fact that rates went up. Again, I shaved. Luckily, they came down down a little bit, but we're still we're still in a terrible rate territory. Like, rates are still a headwind. We're not moving into the world yet where, rates are trying to help us, you know, win. But they're not as bad as they were. I mean and and we're really trying to understand, like, the higher they go, it does seem to get worse. Inventory is obviously constrained. Like, there's all these different things that are completely out of our control, but what you do control is your relationship with your customers, the amount of outreach and output that you're putting out there in order to set yourself up to win. Because the cool thing we know is is that at some point, those activities do turn into transactions. And as the market starts to rebound, those activities get supercharged even if you did them before the rebound happened. And it's one of the reasons why I'm so big on the print material, the stickiness. Right? Like, we've all had this happen. Those of you that have been with LPT for long enough now, you gave someone an Active Marketing Plan a year ago, or you gave someone a 7 Home Buyer Strategies magazine with your face on the cover of it a year ago, or you went out door knocking with high quality materials a year ago, and they they show back up now. And and that happens. And and there's no way to go back in time and do that work if you didn't do it. And this is one of the reasons why, you know, I'm such a big, proponent of the the print collateral and why we invest in having the high quality print collateral, and why we do the perfect binding, and the way we put your face on the cover. All of that is built so that it's stickier, so the consumer will hold on to it because those efforts that you put out are wasted if it isn't sticky. Right? Like if you put those efforts out in a way that don't stand the test of time, so the consumer doesn't show back up with that collateral a year later or whatever it is, then the effort wasn't as as worthwhile. And so we're really focused on arming you with tools to get through this longer cycle. You know, the funny thing is when the market is booming, the tools feel like they're not as necessary because the consumers reaction times are are shrunk down. And and people are in this frenzy and they're like, alright, I gotta buy a house. I gotta buy a house. Like, I'm gonna miss the house. Like, we all remember it. Maybe we're starting to forget them a little bit, but we remember those days, right, from from 2020 and 2021. It doesn't feel that way right now. And so it's even more important to do the work. And so the way I think about it, the way I set our goals is, hey. These are the things we are going to do. Right? So we don't, like, we don't necessarily set goals around, hey, this is the volume that, you know, I'm not, hey, our volume goal is this. Like, we have an idea. What we know is for us to hit that volume goal as a brokerage, we need this many agents. We need this many agents to do this many more deals. We need this many agents who are out there using the tools. You know, we gotta break it down to the things that we can help impact and effect and help you be more successful with. And that's how we reach those goals. And so that's how I think about my goal planning is really about the things that I can control, that I can impact, that I can push forward. The other thing I I really want you guys to think about, and this is a a big focus that we're gonna talk about in 2025. You know, a lot of people look at LPT, and it's like, well, how how did you have so much success? How did you guys grow so fast? This is unprecedented. You know, the the the biggest brokerages before you took eight and ten years to do what you did in two. You know, we're gonna we're gonna set even new records in three. I think right now, we're already the the second largest, privately held independent brokerage by agent. Sorry. Number one by agent count, number two by transaction count. We'll know for sure when Real Trends comes out in a couple months. But, again, from the data, I can see we're most likely largest independent privately held brokerage by agent count and second largest privately held independent brokerage by, by transaction count. That means no one has ever gotten this big before without either going public first. Right? Which that's our plan, but we haven't done it yet. No one's been able to achieve this level of growth and success without the money from the capital markets and the intent or the the, the credibility from the capital markets. I mean, we hear it all the time. There are agents who will not come to LPT because we're not public yet. Our stock is fake. Like, all this nonsense. Like, well, what are you gonna say when that's not the case anymore? But this is a part of the reason why other brokerages had to go public before they could reach the level of success that we've not reached. The other thing, brokerages you have to do is start franchising. Right? So there are some other privately held brokerages out there, but they had to franchise. And so there's this, like, like, level. Like, nobody's ever gotten above. I don't know where the exact number is. Maybe it's, like, five or six thousand agents. It's probably, you know, somewhere, you know, whatever. Maybe, I don't know, maybe thirty five, forty thousand transactions, without having to make one of those choices and saying, yeah, we're going either franchise or or go have to go public to keep growing. Well, we've been able to smash through those those barriers. And so then you have to think once we do go public, how much faster will we grow? How much easier will the journey be? Because that's what the others needed in order to achieve what we've already achieved. And so, you know, you think about all this stuff and you boil it down. Well, one of the big reasons I know we were able to accomplish that is because of this deep commitment to agent choice. And really what that came in the form of, and I'm gonna get a little deep here, is respecting each individual person's definition of success. Alright? And this is probably one of the most valuable lessons that I learned as an entrepreneur. And this this applies not only to your own business, but it applies to how you do business with your customers. It applies to how you negotiate with vendors. Everything starts with understanding the other person's definition of success. Alright? And this is where the other brokerages all blew it. You know, because they assume everybody has the same definition of success. Right? I think, well, everybody wants to sell thirty five homes a year, a hundred homes a year, wants to build this team, whatever. And unfortunately, not not even as unfortunately, like, the beautiful thing about about our our country and our freedom and and our world and our our brokerage in particular is this respect for that individual definition of success. Because guess what? For some entrepreneurs, the definition of success is like, "hey, I wanna sell four houses a year and spend as much time with my kids as possible. I wanna spend four I wanna sell four houses a year because I'm over here working on my PhD. I wanna sell four houses a year because I wanna build a massive portfolio of rental properties". Right? And what we have to understand is is that person's individual definition of success cannot be wrong. Like, you can't be wrong about your own definition of success. And and one of the big mistakes that we tend to make is we project our definition of success on others. And so we think, well, look, well, I I wouldn't be happy selling four homes a year, so why would someone else? Like, that doesn't matter. It's not your definition of success. It's their definition of the success. You know, you don't understand their goals. You don't understand their dreams. You don't understand what's important to them. But guess what? If you take a step back and you do understand that, if you take the time to say you know what, and this is something I had to grow into as an entrepreneur. I can look back and see so many mistakes in building my other companies and how I interacted with people because I was always projecting my definition of success on other people. And even if I understood their definition of success wasn't the same as mine, I would like pull them up to mine somehow. Right? Like, if my definition of success is a hundred homes and theirs is four, I would project that, well, we'll get into at least thirty five, you know? Like, that that's good for them. Like, no. That's not their definition of success. And so I hit a point where I finally realized I have to I have to respect and appreciate and most importantly, understand other people's definition of success. Because I can promise you, when someone reaches that definition of success and and you think they haven't reached it, like, there's this massive disconnect. Like, imagine, like, you're running a race together, And and their finish line is here, and your finish line is here. And again, there's nothing wrong with where these two finish lines are chosen to be. But just understand that all of a sudden when you get here, they're done. Like, they did it. They won. They're they're taking the victory lap. Like, they achieved what they set out to achieve. They achieved their definition of success, and now what happens is you're looking back at them thinking, why did you just quit on me? Why aren't you running with me anymore? Why are you over here taking a victory lap, and I'm still climbing the hardest hill of my life? It's because I failed to understand their definition of success. And maybe they weren't honest with me about their definition of success. Right? Like, this is a problem too. Like, I think there's this need, like, people when they can tell that you feel like they should do more, they're gonna maybe tell you they wanna do more whether they do or don't. And so while I'm talking about this in the thread of of entrepreneurship. Right? This could apply to how you build a real estate team, how you hire an assistant in your business, but it also applies to how you interact with your customers. Because you have to respect and understand your customer's definition of success. Right? We as agents, we as folks in the industry, we are experts at this. Like, when we look at buying a home, we look at that process, Our definition of success is built out of all this expertise and years of understanding and market insight. Our customers don't have that. Your customer may not really care about getting the absolute best deal. Your customer may not care about negotiating that extra little bit. Your customer's definition of success may be, I want my kids in the right school district before the first day of school next year. I wanna move into a house during spring break or whatever that is. And so taking the time to understand your customer's definition of success is gonna clean up all these miscommunications. Because look, you're not gonna force them to do something that they don't wanna do. Right? If their definition of success is to, hey, I'm gonna deal with this in the summer because that's when I can win and I can get my kids in the right school district, you're not gonna motivate them by saying, hey, we should we should go shopping now because you may get a little better price or, hey, rates just dipped, whatever whatever. Like, you're framing your relationship with them in your definition of success, which is not theirs. And so, again, like, this is something we're gonna talk through this year. Like, this is a big topic for me because it was so impactful at LPT. Like, this is one of those things that I kinda stumbled across, really started to dig into, really started to pay attention to. I saw it start to have positive impacts across all of my business. Right? The way I did the way I understood customers, the way I understood vendors. Like, when you're negotiating with a vendor, understanding their definition of success, both at the person you're interfacing with level, the entire company level, like all of that fits together. But it's really been seeing the success of LPT Realty and how our model was based on this concept of go meet every real estate agent in the world at their definition of success, not our definition of success. And that's how we win. And because that has been so successful, I feel really good now about sharing this message. And so this is something we're gonna dig into a lot through this year. We're gonna talk more and more about it in the in the, you know, the lens of how you use it as an entrepreneur. How you use it to interact with your customers. How you use it even your own family. Right? Like think about that. Like your spouse. Like like do I understand Jill's definition of success? And yes, as as my wife, like, she's very willing to understand mine and come up. But if we don't really understand each other's definitions of success, like, if in her mind, when we hit a certain financial level ten years ago, I was gonna pack it up and be done. Like that isn't what happened. Here I am launching a whole another company because I wanna help ten thousand, a hundred thousand other entrepreneurs. Like she understood that about me. It's why our marriage is strong. It's why I was able to come back and do this. But I think framing everything in this lens and I haven't seen a lot of people talk about it that way. Like, I know people talk about like, you know, I I obviously understand the other person's motivations and feelings, but I think this idea of like boiling it down to this concept of definition of success. If I can take the time to start with understanding everyone else's definition of success, and I can help them understand my definition of success, then we can get aligned in a way that can drive so much momentum and so much success. And that is the secret to LPT. I mean, that that is why we are doing the things we're doing. It really comes down to that philosophy. And that's why, again, I'm gonna be very purposeful about sharing that with all of you throughout this year. And that's gonna be a big theme for us in 2025. Awesome, man. Well, that is, that is very much in line with how we first met. And and for those who don't know, when I first started in real estate, you know, my version of success at that time, and I talked about this on real estate first Friday, was I just needed to sell one house per quarter. You know, I would had a brand brand new wife and family, you know, we were twenty two years old at the time. I remember there was a time after after we met during that period of time and I was like, Robert, I'm getting all this pressure from my brokerage to sell more because I had this rapid kind of come up and you were like, Hodge, run your game plan. Like, do not go follow that plan. Do what you need to do to support you and your family. And then it's led me to where I am today. So and at the time, it was just, hey, man. I just need to make, you know, a little bit of extra cash here and there because I've got a brand new family. I wanna make sure I support them well and that was my version of success. And then as time has grown, my version of success changed, you know, and I did the right things to to align with that. But at that time, I would just remember that feeling of of that pressure of like, hey, that's not what's best for me. That's what you guys are trying to push on me and that's what you say my version of success is and there wasn't really this, I guess, group think or this common thought that everyone had their own version of success. So I very much appreciate that that is woven through the veins of, of LPT Realty. Yeah. And remember too, man, like, at the time, you know, you were you were big he was at you're T Mobile. You know, you were kind of this fast track for leadership there, and that was the focus. I remember we talked a lot about that. Because obviously, you know, the local market center of the brokerage was like, oh, you're the rookie of the year. Yeah. Do this, do that, teach all these classes, like, just, like, suck the life out of you. And it was like, no, man. Like, you you weren't ready to commit completely to real estate. And, like, that was one of the things I saw. You know, you you got there. Right? You hit a point where the success at real estate started to tip and the opportunities at T Mobile, while they seemed really big at some point, now they started to seem a little less because of the success over here. And I think that's the other cool thing is your definition of success will absolutely change. Like, no one's definition of success is static. And so I think that's another really important part of how we built this model. This idea of brokerage for life, it's it's respect the definition of success for where you are today, but then also be here for you as that definition of success inherently changes. Right? Because back to that customer example, the customer who's buying a home from you today and their only goal is maybe, hey, I need to be in between the summer. I need to be in this right school district. Five years from now, they may be ready to buy a much bigger house. And now their definition of success around that transaction is, I need the best price. Right? I need to find a deal because I'm trying to stretch up and buy the biggest house I can. You know, I don't need I'm already in the right school district. I'm already in the place I need to be. So that definition of success will change. And so I just think it's so important for us as entrepreneurs to stay conscious of that and communicate in a way that we are always exploring and probing and trying to understand what is the other person's definition of success. Is it changing? Has it changed? How do I meet them there? Because it is the one thing you will not change. Like, I can promise you I I have like, I've I spent a long time trying. Like, you're not gonna change someone's definition of success before they are ready. I think you can be a beacon. I think you can show someone that more is possible. Like, that's something I've really tried to do in my life for the folks that that are in my orbit. Right here on motivation Monday, whatever it is. Like, you know, I wanna be a beacon to show you what's possible because your definition of success can't exceed what you know exists. You know, like, again, I put myself back, you know, growing up single mom in in Lakeland. And, like, I think my my idea of, like, maximum success was, like, here, you know, and now, like, I I mean, I've I've achieved things that kid couldn't have even imagined were possible. And and so I think raising that ceiling or or raising that or being that beacon for other people to show them what's possible, that may help them decide to change their definition of success. But you're not gonna change it for them. You are not gonna make a decision or talk them into anything. Like, you're just you're never gonna move someone beyond their definition of success. And and whenever someone does reach it, like like for a lot of people, they may not decide to go up. Like there's there are those of us with this gene inside, like we just can't stop or hit one level of success, there's always another. There's other folks that that that is not monetary. That is not economic driven. That is not business driven. It's like, hey, I'm gonna reach this level of success. And then my successes shift. It's more about my kids, my family, my community, like, whatever. And again, these are all wonderful things. And this is why we are such a unique nation and amazing place and why this brokerage is so committed to agent choice because all of that boils down to what is their current definition of success. Are you gonna help them reach it? But do not do not have the hubris or the ego or think that you're gonna grab someone and just drag them beyond that definition of success. You cannot do it. I made those mistakes as an entrepreneur. I would try to take folks and, like, you know, top salespeople and be like, well, if if they're doing they're doing, you know, in mortgage world, a little more transaction volume because they're not having to go to houses. But, like, hey, if they're doing thirteen a month, if I can just get everybody to twenty six a month, we're all gonna hit our goals. And it's like, no. Like, they were already at their definition of success and I didn't have a right to try to put a goal on them that didn't align with that. But it took me a long time to understand that. And so that's that's one of the big things again that I wanna be that beacon here. I wanna help our agents avoid because we are all entrepreneurs. And no matter what level that is, if it's the entrepreneurship level, if I wanna sell four houses a year so I can do whatever else or I wanna sell a thousand houses a year and build one of the biggest teams in the country, like, you can do that here at LPT. And I wanna help you and see you do that. And it all boils down to this this respect of the individual definition of success. Awesome, man. Awesome. Well, I've got we are at at at time here, but I've got a little challenge for you. So we talked about this on Real Estate First Friday. If you guys aren't following Real Estate First Friday, please come. We go into some topics. Lewis and Firm and I, my co VP, really kind of talk about actual items that you can do, to help grow your business at a at a very macro level. But we did a challenge a couple of weeks ago with you where we said, hey. Boil down, you know, what the macro environment, the interest rates looks like in thirty seconds. And that came from Real Estate First Friday. The following week, we asked them to choose, hey, what topics would you want to hear from Robert? Like, if he had another chance to do either between thirty seconds and a minute, you know, he had to boil a concept down, what would you want it to be? So if you're cool with doing that today, I've got four questions that we'll put up on screen. We'll let the audience vote which one they wanna hear you answer. This came from Real Estate First Friday. Are you down for that exercise today? Let's go. Let's go. Alright. Perfect. Alright. So Dave, if you can launch this poll, we're gonna have four questions here. And so, it's a script challenge. So the first one is door knocking. They would like to hear a great door knocking challenge. The second one was inflation. Why waiting is not a strategy? Creative ways to use the box and overcoming an objection of past pain basically saying, is my house gonna be worth less the moment I purchase it? And that's probably going back to the to the subprime, crash. So we are gonna give you guys about ten to fifteen more seconds to vote. We'll then display it on screen what the result is and then, Robert, we will we will actually do something else even in addition to that. We've got a randomizer tool which chooses between thirty, forty five and sixty seconds. So we're we're gonna give you an additional challenge. We're gonna pick the top question, and then we're gonna have the randomizer tell you. Show aspect of this, Hodge. Like, that's we went from, like, I'm gonna hit you with a question to now we're gonna vote for questions, randomize that this is exciting. You know? We need we're gonna need, like, some little music. We should have music like Jeopardy music playing right now. We should. This is gonna be good. Okay. So we are about nine almost a thousand votes. So we're gonna cut it here. And alright. So Dave, if you could share the results, this is gonna be the top question. What do we got? Okay. So inflation rate Why waiting is not a strategy? Alright. Yeah. Why waiting is not a strategy? Okay. So Dave, you can hit stop sharing. We'll give you a couple seconds to gather your thoughts. Hey. How are you gonna how long am I going? Yeah. Yeah. I'm gonna I'm gonna while we're while you're gathering your thoughts, we're gonna figure out what time frame. And so, David, you could put up the randomizer. We're gonna pick which time frame happens here. Alright. Let's see. Let's see. Where is this gonna land? Oh, thirty seconds. Okay. Thirty seconds. Alright. So you have thirty seconds to describe why waiting is not a strategy. Okay? Are you up to the challenge? I'm gonna do the thirty second, and then we'll do a deep dive afterwards so that people can understand what maybe responses or things that come back to the, to the thirty seconds. Alright. So we're we're gonna do why inflation, why waiting is not an option. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Why is not a strategy? Like, hey. I wanna wait out the market till things, you know I gotcha. Let's go. Okay. Alright. So we got the timer up. Okay. Three, two, one. Here we go. Alright. One of the most beautiful things about the US housing market is the thirty year fixed rate mortgage. This is the strongest option, the strongest one-sided decision a consumer can have. You have lots of choices. Right? If inflation doesn't go down and rates go higher, you'll be glad you locked in a rate today. If rates do get lower, you can always refinance and take advantage of that lower rate. If rents keep going up with inflation, you can decide to become a landlord. You have so many choices, but you you need to get in the market now because inflation will continue to keep driving home prices up. And the waiter you late the wait longer you wait, the more you will pay. Nice job. Pretty for that one, man. Like, I feel like Yeah. I know. Five or a sixty type question, but I'm gonna step to the post. Right? Like, so what I used to do in my radio show, that was a big thing. Like, you have to talk to the second, and it's it's really hard at first. But after you do it enough, it gets really easy. And so while I may not be able to get the full point across, I am always gonna end right on time. Yes. That is so fantastic. Okay. Alright. So if you guys want if you guys want, we will do a second option. We'll do the either the forty five or the sixty seconds. So we'll put the poll back up. So if you guys are interested in it Let me go a little deeper on this one, and then we'll get so you're gonna let them pick a second one. Yes? Yeah. We'll we'll let them pick a second one. Yep. Let's go a little deeper on this one first. So I think the big thing here is, like, this like, the meme date that was it married the house, date the rate? Like, I personally don't I personally dislike the meme, but the concept is true because the thirty year fixed rate mortgage is in fact the most powerful financial instrument that the US consumer can have. Like, just think about these dynamics, and this is where you can go deeper with someone. Right? You buy a house today. I don't care what the rates are. Say the rates are seven. If a year from now rates are ten, guess what? You are cheering that you have a seven. Right? Like you did it. You locked in the seven and rates went to ten and no one can take it away from you. On the flip side, if you lock in a seven and rates go down to three or four, the consumer, the homeowner has a one-sided decision. Right? They have an option. They can refinance and take advantage of that lower rate where no matter high how high rates go, no one can take that mortgage away from them. Right? They can pay the mortgage off whenever they want, but no one can call the mortgage due. And there's no penalty to paying the mortgage off. It is literally the most powerful financial instrument. If you think about, like again, I don't know how how sophisticated some of our agents are with trading. Like if you look at options markets, where you can buy options on stock futures or bond futures, like I do a lot of this stuff and hedging on the mortgage portfolio side, it's very expensive. Like, having an option like that costs a lot of money to say, hey, I wanna be able to buy the stock at a price or sell the stock at a price, but no one can force me to do it. It's at my option, so you limit your downside risk. Homeowners get a free option when they put a thirty year fixed rate mortgage on a property. And this is why a lot of people who even could pay cash for a house will still take out a mortgage because of the power of that option. Imagine the people who instead of paying cash took out that three percent rate, and now they can invest their money. Right now, you can get a a five and a six and a seven percent yield on certain types of guaranteed short term fixed income. Even people who bought a mortgage at five percent can now invest the cash at more money. And guess what? If the market goes the other way and rates come down, the consumer at their sole choice can decide to refinance. And so the power of that option is what makes it to where there is no reason to wait. You don't need the rate and the price to align in order to have success in a real estate transaction because you as the consumer have that powerful option. If you rate wait and rates go up, you lost. If you wait and rates go down, you still lost because you could have refinanced. It really doesn't matter what happens. You lose by waiting in real estate. And we can go back to any period of time. If you held a house long enough, you would've won. You know, like, if you go back and you look at folks who bought at the absolute worst time. I have properties that I bought at the absolute worst time in two thousand eight at the peak right before the crash. Maybe it was 2007. Those properties are worth way more today than they were when I bought them. If you hold out long enough and the reason you can hold out long enough is because you have that powerful option, that powerful one-sided financial instrument that is a thirty year fixed rate mortgage. Guess what type of mortgage does not have that power? An ARM. And this is why so many people got in trouble back in from two thousand seven and two thousand eight is they took out the ARMs. The ARM, you don't have the option anymore. Now when the ARM period ends, the bank gets to raise your rate. They lower your rate. Like, they have control of that option now. And so this is why the thirty year fixed rate is so powerful. We're one of the few countries in the world that has that sophisticated financial instrument. But it is the sole reason why waiting does not matter. And why it's almost always important to to to put a mortgage on the house even if you can pay cash. I still encourage people to put the mortgage on the house because that gives you that option. And you can always pay it off later. Right? Like, if something changes, write a check, pay it off, get your cash back. But if rates do go up, you can't go back in time and lock in that low rate like a lot of people have seen from the the pandemic. That's, so we've got someone in the chat who said this is the best explanation that they've ever heard. They're like, can you can you record it basically so they can put on their social media? So we will have that, chopped into a clip and then put inside of Connect 2.0. What's that? It'll be a main stage. In main stage. Yes. On main stage. So that you'll be able to download that and utilize that for yourself. So, so I think we're just about at time. Robert, do we wanna try to do the second challenge or do you wanna hold it for next week? Because I know we I didn't expect to get on the tangent about everything else and today's a big day. President being inaugurated. Like, I think we'll wrap up motivation Monday when everybody comes back to everybody. But, yeah, next week, let's I mean, I'll do all three next week. I don't care. Like, I'm not afraid of any of these questions, man. Like, that's what I'm I think it is a cool exercise, and I think it is a great way for us to to, again, communicate that stuff out. So be on Real Estate First Friday. Be a part of choosing those questions. I'll start grabbing them every Monday. We'll do one or two or three or really whatever we have time for. So I think maybe we kinda make that the end of motivation Monday. If we're if we're ahead of time, we can do a couple. If we're behind time, we'll do one. But with that, today was great. We'll get these clips out for you guys. I wanna rewatch these again. Cheryl Museum. Again, we're gonna talk more about individual definition of success. Big theme for 2025. Other than that, keep doing the work. You know? Again, I know it's tough. I know we're in a tough time in the market. I know I sound like a broken record when it comes to that, but keep doing the things that matter. Keep putting in the work. The results will come and use the tools. I'll tell you, like, we we actually have a lot of agents at LPT who have not embraced the tools. Statistically, I can tell you the agents who are embracing the tools are doing more transactions. Like, they are winning. They are seeing the results. You know, if you haven't taken the time to understand the tools, take the trainings, jump and Connect 2.0, get out there. I wanna see you guys win. We're all here to win together. Make it a great week, and we'll see you back next Monday for another amazing motivation Monday here at LPT Realty. Let's go. Make no excuses now. I'm talking here and now. I'm talking here and now. Let's go. Your time and run it now. I'm talking here and now. I'm talking here and now. It's not about what you've done. It's about what you're doing. It's all about where you're going no matter where you