Good morning, and welcome to another motivational Monday. I wanna do a quick sound check to make sure you can hear me okay. If you can, please give me a thumbs up in the chat.
Good morning. Alright. Fantastic. Okay. I'm my name is Matthew Hodge. I'm Executive Vice President here at LPT Realty. I am joining you from Lake Mary, Florida and our headquarters me go ahead and bring in Robert Palmer, founder, and CEO who's joining us from Yellowstone Club in Montana.
There he is. Good morning, Robert. How are you?
Good morning, everybody. Dave muted me during the the intro.
Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. And so if you're joining us, probably for the first time this year, I think that we probably had around four hundred and fifty, maybe five hundred people on actual New Year's Day.
We did motivation Monday. So this may be the first time connecting with us, this year. So we're excited to see you again. And if you're joining for the first time, welcome to on Monday where we pour into you every single week.
Hope you understand what's happening inside the brokerage, elevating your mindset, and then, of course, giving you some market updates. So Real quick. I wanna start off, Robert, because, it's a fitting time because right now is the time where people actually start to rate their New Year's resolutions. Can you believe it happened so quickly?
You're about, you know, ten days into the month, and this is where you start to see people actually starting to fail at their New Year's resolutions. And, you know, they say it takes twenty one days to build a habit. And so I just thought about that because you know, again, every year in the first, it's kind of a mental refresh and people make these commitments. And they say, Hey, I'm gonna go out there.
I'm gonna make these positive changes in my life. And, you know, then they have to deal with the reality of the consistently trying to do this new behavior that they're trying to do. And it can be hard, right? Because it's not a straight line up.
Hey, I'm just gonna go try to do this thing. I'm gonna excel. I'm gonna win it. I'm never gonna fail at it.
I'm just gonna accomplish this thing, and that's not really how it goes. So, I read this definition that says basically is sacrifice. And sacrifice is giving of something that is precious or special to you that has something of meaning. And so you generally have to sacrifice to accomplish your goals or sacrifice is to accomplish your new year's resolutions.
So what does that mean for you? As you know that people are starting to break right now, what, you know, what advice do you give to entrepreneurs who are trying to adopt these new positive behaviors? And what does sacrifice mean for you? Yeah.
Look, I think I think the big thing to keep in mind is, you know, this this is not a straight line, and this is not I think the biggest trap people fall into is, like, whatever that that goal or that resolution is, you hit that one day where you blow it and you're like, well, I'm done. I I messed it up. You know, said I was gonna go to the gym every day for the entire year, and I didn't go on Monday morning, and now I'm just gonna give up and be done with this. And think that's the big trap you've gotta stay out of is is, you know, it's okay to not be perfect, you know, be a little better than you were, getting closer to those goals, staying committed, The worst thing you can do is just completely derail yourself because you either didn't hit an unrealistic goal or you had a fault along the way And and it's this idea of, like, good is good enough.
You know, we wanna strive. We wanna be great. But at the end of the day, good has to be good enough. And you have to recognize that don't let one little speed bump, don't let one little setback because look, life is going to happen.
Life happens to all of us. Life happens to all of us each and every day. What I mean by life is the unexpected, the thing you can't plan for. Right?
Everything everything looks great in the new year's resolution. Everything looks good in an Excel spreadsheet. When you're planning, everything looks good in a chart always up into the right, and then life happens. And, you know, we see things in our daily lives.
We see things in our personal lives and our our business lives. That we never could have predicted. And it's how you react to that adversity to stay as much on track as you can, that's really the key to winning. You know, I I used to talk a lot about know, in the mortgage space, right, there.
These mortgage companies say, oh, we we never mess up. We always close the deals on time. My philosophy was always like, look, we're gonna make mistakes. We're human, but what we're gonna do better anyone else is get back on track when something does go wrong.
And so I think that's what I want want you to focus on.
Actually interesting little story in my life. So, you know, we we we're in Montana right now. We're out here for two months.
Reagan started in this year. So we decided to enroll her in a school in Montana to go while we're here, and she's in her school in, you know, Orlando, obviously, when we're back there. And on her second day, had a horrible day, you know, get gets in a fight with this little boy, during lunch. He calls her a liar, which my child is definitely not that.
And a right fighter. So now she spends her entire lunch break, like, defending herself arguing with the guy doesn't eat lunch. So now she's angry. She's like, how to fight with this kid on her, you know, second day of school at a strange school.
I picked her up from school. We're driving back up the mountain. You know, she's crying in the back seat. Probably the worst day of her entire, you know, school life ever.
Again, she's young. Getting going. And so as a parent, I'm like, you know, I caused this. I brought her.
I brought her to a new state. Took her away from her, you know, her comfort zone or whatever. And, you know, we get home. She powers through it.
She gets excited. Like, kind of brushes it off. She's very strong willed, very outgoing. And we were having dinner with some friends last time, like, you know what?
Like, that adversity is good for her. Like, as much as you felt maybe, like, as a parent, you put in a bad position, that adversity is good. Then guess what? The next day we pick her up from school, best day ever her and that child in particular are now like best friends.
It turns out he's up here in the same club we are, so they're gonna go hang out at twenty below and play dodgeball. But, you know, overcoming that adversity was what was critical for her. And and, like, there was this moment of being, like, hey, did we mess this up? Should we just pull her out of school?
We'll just ski every day? Like, you know, is this too much for her as a kindergartner to have to start over, make a whole new set of friends for sixty days and then get pulled back? And and at the end of the day, that adversity is what's going to drive her character, her strength, and build her up. And so, yeah, we are right now hitting that line where the adversity is kicking into our New Year's resolutions, our our goals, whatever dramatic life changing thing we were gonna do in twenty twenty four, the adversity is now starting to creep in, and your ability to overcome that adversity, your ability to get back on the track, your ability to recognize, like, good is good enough.
I wanna be great I have to be at least good first. And I'm not gonna give up on being great just because I I wasn't good enough today. And so good is good enough. Drive it forward.
Overcome the adversity, stay focused on those goals, and that is how we went together. And we all got a big dose of that in twenty twenty three. And so don't just magically think because that clock rolled over that now it's all gonna be, you know, rainbows and sunshine and twenty twenty four is going to be perfect. It is the adversity you face in your life that molds and shapes you into who you are.
And that is what drives a successful entrepreneur. I talked about this on a motivation Monday a couple months ago. The the entrepreneur that scares me is the one that's never had the adversity. Right?
If if they launched a new business and it was always up into the right and maybe they were in a new category. And they didn't have any competitors yet, and they were just used to everything working, and they get lazy, and they get comfortable. And if you go too long without that adversity, if you go too long, without having to overcome something, you can find yourself in a really bad spot. So where when when you finally do get those limits, you have forgotten how to make lemonade.
And and I'm a I'm a big believer. Like, you you hand me all the lemons you want, and I'm gonna turn out the best tasting lemonade you could ever imagine. And that is what overcoming adversity is all about.
Yeah, man. I love that. And, you know, it's so funny because a lot of people think that you know, successful people just hit this arc and they just went right to the top. And yeah, it was kinda tough for them, but it maybe they were lucky or maybe they didn't have as many obstacles as what I have or they had some type of advantage.
It may be in certain circumstances that is the case, where some of those elements are played, but one thing that you have to do. I don't understand is that There is no straight line with no obstacles. Like, you have to make it through the obstacles. You have to make it through those trenches in order for you to get the goals that you want.
And the things that you want often if they're worth it are going to be difficult to obtain and they're gonna have some obstacles and they're gonna have some sacrifices you're gonna have to make But I tell you what once you do finally start to get through those things, it gives you this energy. You get this confidence of being able to overcome things that maybe previously stood in your way and that's a great feeling. So, thank you for sharing your mindset again from someone who's built, you know, very successful businesses and and what I believe has a great balance in terms of balancing business and life and family life and kind of all those life elements that still exist, even though you're so accomplished, from a from a business perspective.
But okay. Cool. Well, I wanna go ahead and switch it over to, some big that I know that we've got, I know that people have been very curious about kind of our strategic rollout. You've been, very close to the very closely guarded on the information in terms of how we've done that.
You've always said, Hey, we're gonna strategically roll it out. We're gonna wait for the right people and we're gonna do it the right way. And so is have been a testament if you've seen our track record on the states that we've opened, but now we've got a couple more that we get to announce. So, Dave, if you wanna go ahead and switch over to the sides and I'll let RP take it from here.
Yeah. So we're we're gonna open up a couple more states. You know, we have we really hit a great we had a, you know, like, a great, great batch of amazing people, amazing leadership. We added this great regional leadership.
We've been able to, you know, add great brokers. And And one of the big differences here, and and this is, again, we are we are very different from any other cloud brokerage and how others have chosen to you know, kinda tackle this task and grow their business. And there's a lot of things that we are doing that doesn't look like anybody else. And, you know, obviously, agent choice is is the very first.
One of those. But another big one is, you know, our state brokers are full time corporate employees. You know, trust me. We we in the early days talked about, like, kinda limping into states and saying, oh, we're not gonna have a a full time corporate broker there until we get bigger and we learn some valuable lessons.
And and so our state brokers, they're not building down lines, they're not competing with you guys selling real estate. Like, they are focused on the job and being corporate employees and being passionate about that, but that does make the burden of growth a little tougher, you know, because we have to find amazing people who wanna be committed to that. We have to we have to give them salaries that make that worthwhile because they don't have the long term opportunity. A lot of brokers would say, hey, you know, mister agent.
Let me kick you a couple grand on the side. To be our state broker while you build your downline, while you you run your real estate business. And trust me, that would be much easier from our our standpoint, our side. But to me, that does not build the long term sustainable business that we are here to build.
Right? So we we take the extra time. We find the right talent. And and and it's very important to me that we have that in place as we look to open more states.
The other piece is, you know, we we wanna grow slowly. We wanna make sure that even though we are the fast growing brokerage in history. No one's ever done what we've done in two years before coming out of the ground. We also don't wanna grow too fast.
We don't wanna hit something that is an unsustainable level of growth. Because there are only so many agents, in the US. There's only so many agents in countries where this type of model makes sense. And so we can't fool ourselves into believing we're going to a million or whatever it is, we have to be realistic about we're going to be larger than everyone else, but that isn't a million.
That's, you know, that's maybe two hundred thousand. You know, Keller Williams right now at hundred and seventy thousand ish is the king. And so, you know, two hundred thousand would be a massive accomplishment. Well, you don't need to add a hundred thousand agents a year if that's the goal you're getting to.
And so we're being judicious about, you know, the state growth. At the same time too, we're constantly watching your kind of economic trends, agent movement trends, watching how much growth is slowing at the other big brokerages, the other cloud brokerages, the negative agent count growth that's happening at a lot of the legacy franchise brands. Some of the legacy cloud brokerages are on that bubble of now seeing, you know, negative agent count growth. As the quarters continue to tick by.
But we are committed to the plan. We are gonna work the plan here, and I'm excited today that we are going to be opening some additional states, in q one. And so the the states I'm gonna announce today, for the most part, are opening over the next, you know, ninety days.
Agents can go ahead and sign ICAs and commit to LPT realty so they can lock in the benefits packages for those states and then move their license over once we actually get opened up. So this is not just waiting list states anymore. This is now, hey, guys. You can now request an ICA for these states.
You can sign the ICA, and then as the state opens over the next ninety days, bring your license over. And so this is again, this is a big step forward for those states. So, as everyone knows, you know, we're we're currently in twenty states that we opened up last year. Twenty states in twenty twenty three, and now we're doing more in twenty four.
So if you wanna roll that first slide out, Dave, we'll get into this.
Alright. So, Georgia, this has been probably the most requested state.
Obviously, makes a lot of sense for us being here in the southeast. It is big for us to kinda, you know, close in the Southern southeastern US. As we're pushing into Jacksonville now, we've had a lot of great movement up there recently. We've got a massive team announcing, very soon here that they're joining us in Jacksonville.
And we're gonna push into Georgia. Georgia will probably be the last of the states that I'm announcing to open more toward that, like, mid to late March. But we wanna go ahead and get Georgia agents signing those ICAs, committing to LPT Realty. Again, locking in those early adopter benefits, which are available in that state, before that deadline. And so, Georgia, it will be here by March thirty first. Next slide.
Alright. Illinois.
Another exciting state to get into. We've got some great folks up there, some people I'm I'm personally close to that have been hounding me for a while to get Illinois open and even even hanging out with the CEO doesn't get your state moved to the top of the line. You know, Illinois comes in somewhere around state twenty three twenty four, probably by the time we get it open. But again, if you've got folks up in Illinois, now's the time, get them an ICA, get them committed to LPT, And, again, that's probably a state that's gonna open in late February, early March.
Next slide.
Alright. Mississippi.
You know, this is this is an interesting one. So, you know, my my dad's side of the family is from Mississippi.
We actually put out a map when we were announcing Missouri that had Mississippi lit up. And so once that happened, I said, alright, guys. We gotta we gotta push Mississippi to the top of the list and get this opened.
Mississippi will probably open up pretty quickly. I would like to think we'll have Mississippi open by end of January beginning of February. So, again, if you've got folks in Mississippi, and again, that nicely kind of paints out the southeastern United States for us, once we add Georgia and Mississippi there, kinda closes in that whole Gulf Coast over to Louisiana and Texas. So we're excited to have Mississippi joining us. And, again, get those Mississippi agents, you know, get them ICA's, get them committed. And, again, we'll be opening Mississippi most likely into January beginning of February.
And our next state Alright. West Virginia.
Again, West Virginia, we had a lot of agents who were doing business kinda up in that region as we opened the states nearby. That felt like West Virginia was important for them. We had some multiple license, you know, multiple state license agents. So we've got West Virginia opening up.
Again, probably, end of January beginning of February, it'll be in line right there with with, with, Mississippi opening up as we continue to to paint in and and add more states. And so that's that's kind of our East Coast expansion. And now we're gonna go we're gonna go pretty far west, not all the way to California. Don't get your hopes up too much.
We have We've kinda teased California a couple times here. California is not opening yet. But we are gonna go pretty far west. So if we can hit that next slide, and that is the great state of Arizona.
Lot of excitement in Arizona. A lot of great things going on out there. And, Arizona will be the first of the five states to open. And it looks like most likely we will open Arizona this week.
So if you've got Arizona folks that are excited about LPT and looking to join, Arizona will be opening up Again, most likely this week. That is in Jen McDonald's region. She's done a great job of getting us ready for getting that state launched. The other four states, we're still finalizing kinda where they're gonna fit, but Arizona is firmly in region two here at LPT Realty, and we actually have the number one team in the entire state of Arizona joining us to help kick off that state.
So there was a big announcement a couple weeks ago that the, the number one EXP team in Arizona merge with, like, the number eight EXP team in Arizona, to form the number one real estate team in all of Arizona, and they are coming to LPT. So they're gonna be making their big announcement this week. Really excited to have Keith and those guys coming over. And, we're excited about the potential for Arizona and the growth there.
A lot of big teams coming over right now, a lot of big announcements happening. I think we're probably going to, in the next couple of weeks, kinda put out a press release of all of the amazing agents that we've attracted, top producers, big teams over our first two years in business. We haven't done anything like that yet, but we have some absolute heavy hitters, both on the individual agent side, the luxury side and and the team side. You know, we've pulled number one teams across multiple states now.
We've got a lot announcing here in the next couple of weeks. So stay tuned to that. And then once we have, kinda, all of that dust settled, we'll probably put together a great list of kind of that all the amazing talent that we've attracted here. You know, there's this narrative against us out there that only low producing agents go to LPT because we offer a more affordable comp plan which is such a ridiculous way to look at things.
You know, the idea that that that high producing agents don't want more benefits and to put more money in their pocket and have more money to invest back in their business is pretty foolish to me. And we have definitely proven that dynamic wrong. You know, if you look traditionally, the hundred percent brokerages have struggled to, you know, to really bring in top teams and talent. A lot of that model doesn't fit as well in in the hundred percent.
And then on the flip side, the the cap models have struggled to bring in the agents who are guess what? Not capers, you know, and if you look at, there was a study put out recently, and we're gonna talk a lot about this in the coming weeks. Last year, seventy percent of agents according to the study, closed five transactions or less. And that means for seventy percent of agents in the entire industry, they will not cap So for them, whether they're at EXP's eighty twenty with a sixteen thousand dollar cap or Keller Williams, eighty twenty with a twenty thousand dollar cap or whatever it is for that market center, or Caldwell banker with an eighty twenty with no cap.
For seventy percent of agents, it's all the same. And so the cap model has failed to serve a massive portion of our industry, but on the flip side, the cap model is very powerful for the top producers, for the big team leaders. And so the fact that we have brought the two together our revolutionary, never been done before pioneered by LPT Realty, agent choice hybrid compensation plan model is why we're winning. Because we're able to serve the seventy percent of agents who are going to close five or less transactions with a fair compensation model, and we're also able to serve the thirty percent of agents who are more attracted to that split cap model with more tools with the ability to build a team, the ability to to have revenue share and recruit other agents, and LPT is the first model to ever bring those two together.
And that is why we are revolutionizing this industry. So really excited to continue to grow, continue to attract both top teams and and agents who do hundreds of millions of dollars in production, and agents who are gonna close five deals or less a year because we're committed to them as well. We're committed to being a home for everyone. And no matter where you are in your career, whether that's on your way up or maybe you're taking a step back because other businesses in your life or other revenue streams are doing better.
You know, we have agents who invest in Airbnb. We have agents who own other companies, they own mortgage companies or they're entitled, whatever that is, we want to be the best brokerage to support across the entire spectrum because we understand that your goals and your needs and your definition of success will change from time to time throughout your career an agent choice is the only model that allows that to happen. So excited to be going into twenty five states here. You know, by the end of this quarter, We continue to grow.
We continue to march. We continue to grow faster than everyone else in set records. And, you know, again, I wake up every day charged up in excited to help you guys build this amazing brokerage, help you build your amazing business, help you grow your business attracts more clients, close more transactions, and that is what LPC Realty is all about. Oh, man.
I love it. I love it. Yeah. It's it's still it's so surreal, man, because you know, thinking about, again, the people who have been here from day one, city one, agent one, you know, to where we are now, which is, you know, coming on twenty five states you know, opening twenty five states.
It's it's just it's incredible, man. It's it's so cool to watch the journey. And again, it it's not always perfect. Alright?
Like, you hit the arcs. You hit the ups and you're down we're committed to putting things back on the track. If things get off derailed, then that's, again, that's all that you can hope for as you continue to put one foot in front of the other. So cool, man.
Awesome. Well, I wanna transition real quick into, Grand Prix for this year. And I know last year, our vision for Grand Prix was really about bringing new tools to the table and kind of really, you know, was the birth of our first conference. And so this year, gotten pretty excited about it and you've thought about it in different ways.
So what is your mission for, this particular grandparent in your vision for grand prix, which is coming up in, I guess, what, less than sixty days now? Yeah. Yeah. It's coming up very first week of March.
Yeah. You know, so it is interesting because we look at this, like, what is the purpose of of our conference. You know? And I think with us growing as fast as we have, it's hard to look at other people, but there's no not really one for us to model after because we are doing something that's never been done before, you know, building this hybrid model, growing as fast as as we can, you know, and as fast as we are, giving agents you know, equity in the company, you know, while we're still a privately held company, these are all firsts that were pioneered by LPT Realty at scale.
And so as we look at our our conference, our convention, our annual get together, I I don't wanna just fall into this trap of saying, well, what does everybody do with theirs. How does everyone else think about their conference? And and, yeah, I would say last year, I thought of it very much like, an apple, an apple event. Like, we're gonna announce new products, We're gonna, you know, we announce Desi AI.
We announce new things that are coming. And I felt a bit I felt, you know, and thought of it very much like a product launch. And I think for where we were a year ago, that was the absolute right, you know, right path to be on. As we look at this year's Grand Prix, think this year's Grand Prix to me is very much about the community.
It's very much about us getting together and seeing each other and strengthening our community and strengthening those bonds and and meeting each other in person because, you know, look, when when we had the first Grand Prix, we were barely in in two states. You know, we we had, you know, three states. We had just launched a couple of states. We were getting a little bit of growth in Texas.
You know, we had some agents going in Virginia. You know, Florida obviously was was the biggest market. And and so it was very much about telling the world who is LPT Realty and and launching these new products and, you know, expanding our technology where for me, the twenty twenty four grand prix is very much about let's get together as a community and let's meet each other and let's let's spend some time together in person. We come together every Monday here on Zoom.
You know, we have the other the real estate first Fridays. You know, we have all of these ways to try to bring our agents together, but this is our chance to get everybody into one city and kinda under one roof to spend time together. And so one of the big things we're doing is we are bringing every one of our state brokers and our regional directors down to St. Pete, for, the Grand Pre Event.
And we're going to be setting up breakout rooms, you know, built around the idea of, get to know your broker, get to know the other agents in your state. You know, as as we looked at this and said, alright. We have this year. We have the the convention space across the street from the Mahaffy, and we had a choice to make.
Are we going to just try to fill those breakout rooms with vendors? Are we gonna fill those breakout rooms with with content? Are we gonna focus on new product? Again, what are we going to do?
And and the focus for me is we are going to continue to strengthen this community. We are going to continue to build on the amazing culture that we've all created here together. Which is unlike any other company. You know, we are not like the traditional cloud brokerages.
We are not like the traditional hundred percent brokerages. We are something different. We are a new breed of hybrid brokerage, which brings more agents together under a single umbrella, who are different points and different walks in their life. And then also we're a less than two year old company who's now in twenty five states with record agent growth.
What is the best thing for us to do right now in this arc? And that is to get together. And so we'd said we're gonna use that valuable breakout space, and we're gonna use it to set up tables where our state brokers and our regional brokers can be there to meet the agents who traveled down to Grand Prix from their states so that we can get to know each other. So we can again strengthen this community, strengthen those bonds, and help agents connect with each other who aren't already connected.
You know, one of the big parts of our culture here is to not have silos, you know, to not have this this culture where you only hang out with the people who originally brought you into the brokerage. No. We wanna see those ties and those bonds cross across the entire brokerage, cross across geography, you know, cross across different walks of life. That is the goal of bringing so many agents from so many different walks of life.
Together under a single umbrella, which is possible because of our hybrid model, our dual comp plan. And and so to me, that's what this all about. And so as we continue to move toward Grand Prix, we're gonna be putting out more and more information, but that's really the goal of this. You know, I wanna set the expectations where, you know, last year it was very much come and hear the new things we're doing, hear things we're revolutionizing.
This year is really about come and meet us, meet the executive leadership team, meet the regional brokers, meet the state brokers, but most importantly meet each other and spend time together. And we're gonna have a lot of agent led content. We did that last year. And so, again, if you're interested in helping provide content at Grand Prix.
If you wanna pour into your fellow agents, if you wanna teach a class, if you wanna be on a panel, make sure you let us know. There's a ticket you can submit, to volunteer for that. But that's really my vision for this is is agent led an agent community, an agent collaboration, and agents getting to know each other, and agents getting to know their state brokers, getting to know their regional brokers. You know, we we've added all of that team here in just the last couple of months.
See, I I haven't met a lot of the state brokers and regionals in person yet. It's only been over zoom. And so, really, as you're thinking about, am I gonna go to Grand Pre? What should I expect at Grand Pre?
It is very much about community and collaboration and that face to face, meeting each other, you know, building friends, strengthening relationships, And then, yeah, I I'm gonna give some I'm gonna grab great content from the main stage. We're gonna have great breakout sessions, a lot of that agent led, but the the focus for me and the core mission and the core focus behind the grand prix event is you all getting to be together to strengthen this community because that is what this is all about. That's what we are building together in fast as we are growing as young as we are, we run the risk if we don't continue to strengthen those bonds and those ties that they can break.
And if that does happen, if we were to lose the amazing culture and community that we've built this far, that's probably something we couldn't repair very easily. So it's very important to me that the original mission of this brokerage to build a massive family, to build a massive community where again agents from all different walks of life are helping each other be successful, are helping each other grow. That is what this grand prix is about. And then if we do announce things, it's gonna be things around community.
Things around improving our already amazing education and knowledge, and improving our communications. And I talked about this on motivation Monday, you know, a couple months ago. All the improvements we are now building into Connect. I think it is so critical to build the brokers in the community that we are that we own the technology and we have proprietary technology for how our agents communicate with each other, not just using Facebook, not just using Slack, not just using workplace, but building something that is meant to guide our agents into the future and to to work around the way we need to communicate as a massive hybrid cloud real estate brokerage, something that has never existed before, not communicate the way high-tech Silicon Valley companies do on Slack, not communicate the way maybe the legacy cloud brokerage is due on workplace, but building our own technology.
If anybody doubts out there, that we can build better technology than those other competitors, you know, built directly for our agents to connect with each other. You know, please doubt me on this. I've been doubted before. This is one I am very much committed to.
And we are going down this path because I know when I can see the vision and I can see a future where we have the best technology possible tailored around the way real estate agents need to communicate and connect in a hybrid cloud brokerage, and that's never been built before. That does not exist off the shelf. That is not go by Slack. That is not go by workplace.
That is build something that will drive the ties that are one of the most critical components of this entire brokerage and that is our community, and that is our culture. And so it all starts with grand prix. The announcements we do make again will be around education. Know, we're gonna be rolling out more, agent led education where all of these big amazing agents who have joined us in the last six months are gonna be able to pour into and give back more to everyone else.
That is the beauty of this hybrid cloud model that will bring more agents together under one umbrella than has ever happened before in this industry. And that's what I wake up everyday excited to build. And so I hope you're gonna join us at Grand Priya. I hope you're gonna come make the trip down to say Petersburg, and help help strengthen this community.
I'm gonna fly home from Montana.
Just for that event. I'll be there a couple days before going into St. Pete, I look forward to spending time with each and every one of you. If you don't have your tickets yet, go grab them in the shop.
I know we are working on getting more hotel rooms at the actual hotel where the event is. Matt Levy and I have been working on that. We're hoping to get more hotel rooms in the block released here in the next couple days. But other than that, there are great Airbnbs in Saint Petersburg.
There are other great thousand Saint Petersburg, a couple couple, years ago, we stayed at a hotel. It was, like, four or five blocks away. It was an easy walk down. It's a great city.
It's a great feeling there along the bay. You really can't go too wrong as long as you're in that downtown area of Saint Petersburg. A lot of agents went out and got Airbnb.
We've got agents going in together on Airbnb. So a lot of exciting stuff happening, but we are working on getting some more hotel rooms released in the block. And we I'm excited. I'm excited to spend time with you guys.
I'm excited to, you know, have one of our few in person opportunities to globally build and reinforce this community together because the community is what lies at the core of this amazing thing we're building together. That's awesome, man. Yeah. I'm looking forward to that.
And I know that there's so many agents who, are looking for that time to together as well because they see us digitally and, you know, we don't really have an opportunity to connect in person like said and because our geography in the way that the brokerage is built, it's a good thing and it's a bad thing. Right? We're we're spreading across the nation, but we're also unable to to get in person. So really looking excited to, see you guys in person and and spend that time together.
Okay. Well, we are at final thought here for, this motivational Monday. So, Robert, any final thoughts if we have our people who are trying to get back on track for anything that they missed and for the people who continue to Can you guys see that? Do you do you see the button?
Yeah. You you put your thumb on it. I don't know why that randomly happens every once in a while. That's it freaks me out.
I'm like, I'm about to, like, flex. Like, what's about Anyways.
Alright. So, anyway, final final words for you. Yeah. No. Look, guys. Again, how well you recover?
I want you to take any adversity you're facing, and we'll continue face, any setback, any missed goal, any missed opportunity, and I want you to to be proud of the fact that you have an opportunity to overcome. And and by overcoming, you will strengthen your fortitude and your ability to push through and knowing that you can get back on on the track. Because, again, if this was easy, If this was just up and to the right, if this was everything is smooth and easy, which we had a couple of years of that, you know, twenty twenty, twenty twenty one, it was pretty smooth and easy. And now we've had a couple of years of a much different market.
And while I do believe twenty twenty four is going to turn around, it's not just gonna snap its finger and make everything okay. You have to continue to put in the work. You have to overcome that adversity. Have to recognize there are gonna be days where you do everything right and everything goes wrong.
And that's just a part of being an entrepreneur and a part of building a business. Because again, if this was easy, everyone will be doing it and everyone doesn't, everyone does not succeed at this industry. Our industry has a very high failure rate as a whole. And it's important to me that every one of you has the best possible chance to succeed.
A lot of it does come down to mindset and work ethic and getting back on track when things do go wrong. So Get out there, find that adversity and find a way to overcome it, continue to push through. You know, we're still in a great place for twenty twenty four to be a positive market compared to twenty three and twenty two. We have seen interest rates creep up a little bit.
You know, the ten year yield is back over four percent. We talked about this couple weeks ago because mortgage spreads are closing. Mortgage rates are actually doing better than they should be compared to the ten year treasury. So that's a positive for all of us.
I think we're gonna see the rate relief. I think we're gonna continue to see interest rates in a place where consumers are not quite as scared. They got the shock of the high sevens and eights, which now makes you know, these sixes look like a like a fantastic thing. And and again, it's mindset for the consumer as much as it's mindset for us.
So continue doing the right things, be out in your communities, educate your clients, share knowledge, and be ready because when this thing does take off, it's going to take life like a rocketship and LPT is going to be attached to it and we are all going to win together. So stay committed, stay focused, and, I'm actually, I'm gonna go hit the slopes. I'm gonna change up my head gear here. I'm, I'm gonna go ski a black diamond this morning.
And so that's my little piece of adversity is get out there in the fresh powder. We had a couple inches snow come down last night. But I want you guys to have an amazing week. And, again, get your get your plans together, get your trip planned for Grand Pre.
I will see all of you there, but until then I'm gonna enjoy these beautiful slopes here in Montana.