Good morning, and welcome to another motivational Monday. My name is Matthew Hodge, executive vice president here at LPT Realty. I'm joining you from LPT headquarters. And, as you guys know, we are under, construction on the studio, so I'm in a different room. So for many of you who have asked, like, why this setup has changed, this is not the new setup. This is actually in the side of another office, over here. Dave is gonna make some quick adjustments to the camera real fast. So we are working through that. Sometimes we are having some issues with Internet and stuff like that as they're doing construction. So bear with us. Hopefully, we're not gonna have any of those issues today. Also, happy to say hi to you, Dave. So I've got my green going on right here. I've even got my coffee in the green cup, so, no pinches for me today. I'm gonna bring Robert Palmer. Seems like he is on now. Hopefully, he is wearing green as well too. Let's see if he is, being festive with us this morning. Let's see. There he is. There he is. Good morning. How are you? The green LPT hat. I got the green shirt. I am definitely Saint Patrick's dad. Hey. I think you need to take your mic though and flip it out of your shirts. Oh, yep. It's there it goes. Okay. That's much better. Alright. Alright. Cool. Yeah. Sorry. I got his way down. From Montana. Awesome. Awesome. Good, man. Okay. Well, excited to be with you guys this morning. We've got a lot to go over, but excited for the holiday. I know it's spring break in many parts of the of the year. My kids are currently on spring break as well, so I know what it's like to try to fit that entrepreneur life and with the family life and kinda make it all fit. So I know many of us are going through those same exercises this week. So, I hope that you guys have a a blessed and safe, holiday. And, with that being said, let's go ahead and kick it over to you, Robert, to get us started. So where where are we starting today? We got a lot of cool stuff to cover, man. We're we're getting into the the busy season. We've talked about this a lot. All the work we do, all the prospecting, all the getting out there that we do in the slow times are about to pay off. And we've got some exciting LPT stuff planned to kinda help you kick start that busy spring season. So, I don't know, man. I'm I'm gonna kick it to you. We've got we've got kind of the three topics today. I'm good to start with whatever. You know, we Kick it off with the the spring marathon, or what what do you wanna do here? Well, I think we're working on that right now. We're getting some of that stuff uploaded. So we're we're gonna start off actually with a quick market update. So, again, we are in the final two weeks of q one. We know that q two, as we talked about last week on, on motivational Monday, kind of we're ramping up into our busy season. And so it's a difficult time. Right? Because you've got these personal things that are going on. You've got this, you know, preparation for the q two, and you're trying to get make it all fit. And just to to kind of rewind on last week's conversation, generally, what we see is happens in our entrepreneurs business is that this time of year where you're not doing as much work on the actual transactions. I don't have many as many things pending. I don't have as many listings or I don't have as many buyers looking. And so my day can be spent with doing more prospecting and building my pipeline. And then as we get into that period of time where our business starts to pick up, then we have to spend more time actually doing transactions. Hey. I'm physically showing houses. I'm going to inspections. I'm negotiating. You're doing something that is now, I guess, cutting into your prospecting time. And what ends up happens is that you have that great period of time. You do the business. Everything is good, but then you have the hangover. And the hangover is the period of time where you should have been prospecting, but then you were not. And so you moved over into this period of time of doing transactions and not doing the prospecting piece to keep your pipeline full, and so it creates this hangover into the second half of the year. And so what we are devising and we are looking forward to this year is say, how do we help you get past that hump? What can we do to help you look a little forage, prepare a little bit more today so you don't have a busy season followed by a lull, you have a busy season followed by more busy? And so we're gonna talk through a lot of the initiatives that we're doing through Ascend initiative and things like that to help you navigate those waters and those lows in the business. So real quick with that being said, Robert, kinda wanna turn it over to you for a quick market update. I know that we've had some cooperation recently with interest rates and things like that. Can you just give us a quick overview of kinda what's happening in that area, and then we'll jump on to the next topic? Yeah. So interest rates have been cooperating. They've they've kind of been holding steady. They're not continuing to improve, but they've they've been staying at a better spot. I mean, we're gonna see. There's a lot of, I guess, a lot of confusion or a lot of uncertainty right now about where the economy is going. You know, different economists have different ideas. You know, the stock market has been down recently, which has driven mortgage rates down, driven ten year treasuries up, which is good for our business. Remember, we're the we're the counter the counter business where a bad economy is actually good for us in a lot of ways, in the current market dynamics. Now too bad if an economy becomes a problem in the other direction, but we need a little bit of crack in the economy right now to bring interest rates down because that's what's gonna get these locked in home sellers to move. It's gonna bring more buyers off the sidelines. A lot of things that we need as an industry to get off of this four million annualized home sales floor that we've been dragging along on, which is like a thirty year low for a number of transactions happening in our industry. And so, again, if you're having great years and you're winning and you're using the tools, you are doing better than the overall market. Because, again, we are at a thirty year low as an industry right now for the number of existing home sales that are being sold. We saw a slight increase in January. Early indicators look like February is not going to repeat that. We think March is gonna improve because interest rates did improve. Again, this is on the the macro level. This is across everywhere, you know, in the country all trying to be added together. So, again, interest rates have been cooperating a little bit, but then there's other uncertainty, you know, on the other side as the economy starts to crack a little bit. So we'll see where things land. Obviously, we're watching it closely. We'll keep you up to date here. We are seeing, I think, an increase in buyer activity, this last little drop in interest rates. You know, mortgage applications have been up, which is a great leading indicator. Tours have been up, which is a great leading indicator. We do have more inventory, which is good. That's probably the one positive we have from the little bit slower q four, early q one is more inventory piled up a little bit, again, in most markets across the country. So this could be the perfect storm for us to have a couple of good months where we see annualized home sales get off of that kinda four million floor and and see where we can go. And, again, that little bit of wind at our sales is gonna be something we've never experienced here at LPT Realty. I mean, since we've since we launched, it's been going the other way. That was strategic launching into a bus, launching into a market that is at a thirty year low is a great way to build a resilient business that can serve its agents for a very long time and serve our shareholders. Again, you as our agents and our shareholders, like, we're here for the long haul. We're here to build something resilient and launching into this four million home sales, market was a great way to prove that. Because if we can be profitable and make it work at this level, imagine what we can do as a company. Imagine the success that we can all experience together as we get back to to normalized markets. So lot of exciting stuff going on there. And, again, we just need these interest rates to keep cooperating. We need those home buyers to to come out for the spring buying season, and it looks like we're gonna see that, for the rest of the season here. Yeah. Awesome, man. Definitely looking forward to that. And so we've got some things to help support our agents through this initiative. And so if we wanna roll over and kind of talk through, we're gonna tease some of the things that we're gonna be doing in q two that will help you prepare for that. Some marathons, you know us and our marathons and what we like to do there. So yeah. So we're we're gonna do some q two marathons to help you through the busy season and also prepare for the other side of that busy season. And so, Robert, I'll turn it over to you to kinda get us started with, with our marathon. Yeah. So you wanna tune in to next week's Motivation Monday. We're gonna break down all the specific details of this, but we wanna let you know what's coming. We are going to have a spring ascend marathon where we're gonna do daily zooms like we did for the BBA, you know, like we've done for some of our other important launches in the past. So this one's all about unlocking peak production. So our Ascend spring success marathon, we're gonna be coming to you every single day, during that marathon. Again, a lot of the details are gonna be announced next week. We want you to know this is coming. If you've got any friends or team members who aren't on motivation Monday, make sure they tune in next week so they can get all these details. We're gonna do, cash prizes. We're gonna do LPT prizes. We're gonna do some LPT swag. We're gonna do marketing bucks, all kind of stuff. So through the marathon, there's gonna be activities for you to do, like showing the box to to sixty people, you know, throughout that marathon, you know, making sure you empty the box on any of your current listings. We're gonna have actual actionable items, and every day, I'm gonna take you through pieces of the box. Hey. Why why do we put a a single property business card in the box? What's the point of that? That seems crazy. You know, why do we put photos on the sign rider? Like, no one else does that. What is this all about? So we're gonna take you through a lot of the LPT tools, exactly how you can use them with actionable items, things you can go do that day. Like, here's today's assignment. And then you're gonna be able to earn points based on undertaking those assignments. And we're gonna have, again, cash prizes. We're gonna have LPT Bucks prizes, swag prizes. We may do some tickets to the Ascend Conferences prizes. Lots of exciting stuff. We're gonna announce all those details, the actual dates of the marathon, what those metrics look like, what the schedules look like. It's going to be in the month of April, but, again, today is just the early tease. We wanna give everybody juiced up so we can have a a record motivation Monday attendance next week as we unveil the actual details of the marathon. So just know it's gonna be in April. It's gonna be when I get back from Montana. We're looking at putting together an in person component. So, hopefully, studio construction and everything is far enough along that if anybody wants to come to Orlando for the in person component of that, we're gonna be working with our hub offices around the country to potentially light up in persons across all of our markets. Really big push here for a marathon in the month of April to help you get going and get ready. And, again, dig back into those prospecting activities and really take a deep dive into all the things that LPT offers to help you be successful with a daily marathon because that's that's what we love to do here. Overwhelming effort is what we call it. So we'll be joining you every day during that marathon window to talk about how you position yourself for success. We're gonna have two tracks. We're gonna have one track for, individual agents and we're gonna have another track for team leaders. And so if you're a team leader, you'll have one set of marathon classes for you, which is gonna talk about how you grow, how you motivate your team, and then we're gonna have the bigger marathon class for everyone, which would include team members, solo agents, team leaders, but about the things you can do personally to drive success, through this April marathon. So again, make sure you tune in to Motivation Monday next week. We're gonna have details on registering for the marathon, the dates of the marathon, the prizes for the marathon, but we wanted you to know today that the marathon is coming so you can get as excited about it as I am. And, again, make sure that anybody that you think should participate in the marathon, is on next week mode next week's Motivation Monday to get all of those details. Yeah. Definitely looking forward to that. We are super excited for that piece. I'm excited to have you back here in headquarters. It's gonna be fun. I know we're gonna have, some live events that are happening. Dave, the man behind the camera as many of you know him as Davey, he actually is also a very, accomplished saxophonist. And so he's gonna be playing live for you when you get back. So him and his band will be here in person. So it's gonna be really fun, man. We're we're excited for that. So we'll we'll figure out a way to help you. Do you have any construction photos you can show me? I just Do we have any Do we have any construction updates? Yeah. Let's let's see if we've got there we go. That's the only one. This was last week. Right? Yep. That's last week. Let's see. I think we're we're cycling through. We got new carpet in. Okay. New carpet is in. Paint's looking good. The new bigger studio, I like it. Yeah. So that's that's where it's at right now. And I don't know if you can hear them. You can actually hear drills right now in the background. I don't know if you guys can hear it through the microphone or not. But, yeah. So we're excited to have that. It's gonna be a great opportunity for us to get together in person. Of course, if you can't, virtual, of course, as always will be available via connect and via Zoom, so you can still attend us. But if you have the opportunity to come here in person, we'd be happy to see you. Okay. So moving right along, every year we go through our real trends, kind of awards and our support. And we think about where we were last year and relative to where we are this year. We use that as a measurement stick for growth. We like to see how many of our teams are growing in there. Like, are were you, you know, team number three hundred and now you're team number two hun you know, we like to see that growth. And so we use that as a measurement stick to say, hey, we are helping our agents be more productive. So with that being said, we've got the new Real Trends Awards coming out, I believe, in April, is when the submission is due. And so, you wanna walk us through real quick what we're doing with Real Trends for this year? Yeah. So we we just submitted as a brokerage, and so it will start there. So we submitted as a brokerage this month, and the brokerage rankings come out next month. And then the submission for teams and solo agents will happen next month, and I think they get announced the month after that or maybe a little bit longer lag because it's a lot of information to tally. So if we can, throw up the slide, David, to remind us how we did last year. So twenty twenty three real trends, this was the first year that we announced. This was our first full year in business. Right? We weren't in business the full year of twenty twenty two. We didn't launch until March. And so twenty twenty three, we did over thirteen thousand sides, four point seven billion. We had seventy eight hundred agents, and that made us the twenty eighth largest brokerage in the country, by sides in our first full year in business, which is pretty outstanding. So we just submitted twenty twenty four. So let's throw those numbers up here. And these these are exciting. We had a ton of growth, guys. So twenty twenty four, our real trend submission now is up to thirty six thousand three hundred and sixty nine sides, which is two hundred and seventy five percent of twenty twenty three. Volume went up to thirteen point nine billion, which is two hundred and ninety six percent of twenty twenty three. And agent count went to fourteen thousand six hundred and sixty four, which was a hundred and eighty eight percent of twenty twenty three. So absolutely a ton of growth. And remember, through most of twenty twenty four, we still weren't in all fifty states. We didn't have the full growth lever available. We've had a lot of growth since then. But, again, this is where we sat. And so we're we don't know where we rank yet. We're gonna find out where we rank, here in the next month. I'm really hoping for top ten. Like, it's right there on the bubble. We know a couple of the brokerages in the top ten are maybe down a little bit in volume, so we're hoping we sneak into the top ten there. Again, I'll I'll be happy with anything going from twenty eight to ten, eleven, twelve. Wherever it is is absolutely fantastic for a a less than three year old brokerage. So, again, we're excited to see when that is. We're gonna get the official results. I think it's on, April fourth. So keep an eye out for that. We're all gonna be celebrating on April fourth. Yep. The announcement for brokerage will be on April fourth. So absolutely phenomenal growth. I wanna thank each and every one of you for that. It's it's your hard work out in the communities. It's the job you do, sharing the LPT opportunity with other agents, sharing with them how the tools can help them grow their real estate business, how they can achieve their definition of success, how they can receive multiple streams of income, how they can receive pre IPO stock, all the amazing things that make us who we are, and your ability to go help your clients. Right? Those of you that have seen growth in your business, those of you that are out there in your communities getting those extra couple of sales because you're emptying the box, because you're holding those open houses, because you're doing all of those absolutely amazing activities, that is what makes LPT what it is. So big thank you to all of you from the bottom of my heart. Again, no matter what rank we get, those numbers are absolutely phenomenal. No less than three year old brokerage has ever done anything close to this. You know, I think if you when they do announce the rankings, we'll probably do a graphic where we show how old everyone who is bigger than us is, and there's not gonna be a single company on that list who's less than eleven or twelve years old at this point, that's bigger than us. So what we're doing is is absolutely phenomenal. We stay focused on you. It's important to us that as we grow, we continue to offer amazing service. You continue to make strides in the back office, you know, restructuring. We've made some leadership changes, technology changes. We've got all this amazing AI stuff coming up, but it's all about empowering you because that's what allows us to have that absolutely amazing growth. So that's the brokerage side. I saw some questions. You can absolutely share that on social media. Those numbers will be public on Real Trends on April fourth. Go ahead and feel free to share it. We'll all share it again on April fourth when the actual rankings come out, but really exciting growth there. But on top of that, as Matt mentioned, we also wanna celebrate you and your individual accomplishments and team accomplishments when it comes to real trends as well. And so we've got a slide for this. If you were with LPT for the full year of twenty twenty four, then we know your volume, and we are going to submit you. Alright? And so if this is the thresholds we're setting. If an agent has at least twenty million in volume, we're gonna submit them for Real Trends. If a team has at least thirty two million in volume, you can see the minimum size over there. We're going to submit you automatically if you were with us for the whole year. If you were not with us for the whole year, we don't know your numbers. Right? It's very difficult for us to try to figure out through MLS data. Some of you do business in multiple MLSs. You may have done new construction business. So if you are not if you are not at LPT for the full year, I want you to get your numbers together because you're gonna need to submit them to us so we can then verify them and submit you to real trends. So again, if you're with LPT for the whole year, we've got you covered. If you are not with LPT for the whole year, then we're gonna have you're gonna have to help us. Because again, we we tried this last year. We tried digging around and we ended up missing units and we missed builder units and so we learned that lesson. And so here we are. We're giving you the next two weeks to get your numbers together. We'll put out an email of of where you can submit those numbers to for us to verify by four one, which will then give us a little bit of time to get them gathered up and for us to then submit on your behalf to Realtrends. Again, if you're with us for the whole year, we know your data. We have all of your closings. If you were not with us for the whole year, that's why I need you to do some leg work if you wanna be included. And, again, we'll send out an email, with where you can submit that, but you've got until four one to gather those numbers up because we wanna make sure that we celebrate each and every LPT agent who deserves to be recognized on that real trends list both as individual agents and as teams. Awesome. Awesome. Definitely looking forward to that. Alright. So, more details to come. You will receive an email, with that information on how to verify your information. And, of course, we will also be submitting to you, if you have been with us for the full twenty twenty four to verify as well too. So do not worry about that. We will take care of that on your behalf and make sure you have the information in time to, have the submission. Alright. So we are gonna move on now to kind of the last segment of today. And over the course of the last couple of weeks, we've had guests onto Real Estate First Friday, which, Louis Fuhrman, my co VP, and I run. And, and we've been pulling on agents who have, you know, very specific use cases in their business. So we had Pamela Tucker, on a few weeks ago who talked about her open house strategy, how she has her three day open houses, and how she's had this tremendous turnout, from the strategy she's developed where it actually feeds all of the leads into her team. And so she's done that. And then she actually came back on it as a second guest, another week and talked about her farming abilities and how she has really dominated specific areas, geographical areas that she wants to be in and the method that she's on to do that. So we are gonna continue that as we are moving into q two. We really like this. We've gotten so much positive feedback about it and continue to have different agents on real estate first Friday to talk about what they're doing to be successful. And so this Friday, we are also gonna be doing the same exact thing. We have Angie Cole, from A Cole Realty. She will be on this real estate first Friday with us. She has three hundred and eighty eight transactions in the in the year of twenty twenty four. I think a hundred and seventy two million in volume. She will be on this Friday with Lewis and I talking about, the systems and processes that she puts in place. Now this is not just for team leaders and team owners. This is also for individual agents. And so she's gonna walk you through critical processes and software that she uses inside of her business to help you fast track your business. So save time, save money by, you know, don't reinvent the wheel. There are out there are people out there doing these things. Let's figure out if there's things inside of that, you know, she can put in front of you that will help you in your business grow. So she's gonna be this Friday. And so we've also got a real quick video we'd like to show on the share your story. So we'll go ahead and roll that video real quick. We caught up with Angie Cole. How has the Listing Power Tools box benefited her team and their clients? From all corners of the country, we're diving deep with LPT agents. Check out their stories. For me, the number one thing that LPT Realty is really helping us as far as giving back to our client base is going to be bringing that listing power to this box, you know, the seller box out to our listings. And, I mean, we already have so much marketing that we do in advertising for our clients, but no other brokerage or firm offers a listing box like LPT Reality does. And then we've had wins from it, right? Because we go and we door knock around the neighborhood, we get to share all about the listing that we're representing, but then of course, it's brand awareness and putting our name out there to the whole entire community, and we've had additional business from that. So it's a win win for our clients, it's a win for the branding, and everyone, of course, is happy. Did you love their story? Like and follow to hear more. No biggie's taking control. We're here now. Awesome. So, that'll be this Friday. And real quick, wanna give a quick shout out to Angie. I saw, just this weekend, she was engaged. So congratulations on your recent engagement. Super excited for you, and your your new past kinda there. Awesome. And, yeah, that was from our first round of share your story. We're gonna be doing that again. You know, we had a bunch of amazing agents who submitted videos and submitted their story. We wanna highlight more of our amazing agents, so we're gonna do the next round. Do we have a slide for that, Hodge? We do. Alright. So let's pull this up. So we're gonna be doing our next round to share your story. So if you've got success stories that you wanna be able to to share, you need to put together a one to three minute video highlighting how LPT's model and tools have contributed to your success. Scan the QR code here, and then we're gonna be doing a a video shoot in Lake Mary. The next round, I think, will be in July. So, again, if you wanna get your video shot, get your submissions in, we're gonna be having another group of agents, from those down in July, for our next round of share your story. And then, you know, that's a great way to be featured on Real Estate First Friday. We share those videos here on Motivation Monday. I know we used them at the Ascend Full Throttle Conference over in, over in Grand Prix. So if you missed the first round to share your story, please, please, please, participate in the next one. We wanna be able to highlight as many of our amazing agents as possible and how you are out there winning in your communities and in your business, both on your efforts and that little bit of help and that little bit of boost and that little bit of wind at your sales that LPT Realty is here to provide and assist you with. Awesome. Awesome. Yes. Alright. Well, we are just about at time. I saw someone say, these thirty minutes go so quick. It does for us too. It's such a great time for us to be able to connect with you and share all the exciting things that LPT is doing to help you, grow your business and support your business. So, Robert, with that being said, I'll turn it over to you for final words. As we are going into these final two weeks of q one, what should our agents be focused and thinking about it, and what do you want us thinking about as we're going into this week? Yeah. Look. This is it. You know? Like, we just gotta keep pushing. We gotta keep driving through. We we had to deal with a little bit higher rates in January and February, which dampened some of that early demand, I think, that we expected to see as an industry. You know, we're gonna make up for it. We're gonna do this amazing marathon together, and and we're gonna give you those those actual actionable items and activities that you can take that you know, hey. What do I do with the box? What do I do with my sample pack? What should I do with my active marketing plans? Like, we're gonna walk you through all of that in the April marathon. So make sure you tune in next week. We're gonna do a deep dive on the marathon, the dates. We're gonna talk about some of the guest speakers we're gonna have, how we're approaching that. Again, there'll be two tracks, one for solo agents, one for team leaders, team members and solo agents, and then team leaders. Again, to talk about how you get out there and how do we grow our business, how do we take market share, how do you grow in your local farms, your local sphere, how do you make sure you pick up those extra couple of deals, because that's what it's all about. This is a this is an industry of inches. You know, little tiny little tiny maneuvers, little tiny extra efforts. And the problem is we can't see it right now. You know, we have this big payout. We have a lot of success when we reach the finish line, but we have to do a lot of things that will work, a lot of things that won't work. You know, there's a famous marketing saying, that Bob Pittman, famously coined from iHeartMedia, which is, you know, half my marketing isn't working, I just don't know which half it is. Half of the activities you're doing are working, half are not. You'll never know what they are. We just have to double down. We have to do more because those extra inches, that extra little bit of effort, that decision that you make to push through, to push a little bit harder, to go knock those extra few doors, to make those extra few calls, to pop by on your sphere, those extra few times, to show up at that community event, to take the risk on a, you know, local, sports sponsorship at your kid's middle school or high school to have a banner hang on a fence. Whatever those little things are, those extra little inches that you put down, and you'll never be able to directly tie the business to most of it. That's the unfortunate and difficult part about our business, but the beautiful thing about that is is that when you make the commitment to the small actions, you make the commitment to push through and go that extra inch, go that extra mile, do that extra thing. When you're tired and don't wanna do it and you push through and and go, the results will be there. And you won't necessarily know which of the many times that you made that sacrifice or which the many times that you push through is what equated to that extra closing, that extra referral from a friend, that extra deal from your sphere, that nosy neighbor who comes over the open house and lists their home with you. You can't directly correlate it and you have to believe. And that's what we wanna be. That's what I wanna be for you. That's what Matt wants to be for you. That's what LPT wants to be for you. Is that proof and that ability to believe, to have the faith so that you can find the strength and find the courage and find that that inner fire to push through and do that one little extra thing every day. And during the marathon, we're gonna do a lot of extra things every day to help you push through and grow because that is where the success comes from. And when you get there and you look back and it feels great because you've accomplished those goals, you've hit those numbers, you've hit the financial success, you've impacted the number of lives you wanna impact, whatever your definition of success is, we don't always know exactly what caused it, but I can promise you this. Not taking the action will absolutely lead to failure. So let us be that light for you. Let us be that fire for you. Find it inside of yourself. Find it through us. Find it through your family at LPT and push together, and do that extra little thing this week. And we're gonna do a lot of them together during the the marathon, but do that extra little thing this week to get ready because that is how we all succeed together. Go out there and make it a great week, and we'll see you back here on motivation Monday, and make sure you check out this week's real estate first Friday. Awesome. Have a great week, everybody.