Motivational Monday 01/15/2024

Good morning, and welcome to another motivational and happy Martin Luther King Day. If you are joining us for the first time, my name is Matthew Hodge, Executive Vice President here at LPT Realty. And Dave, if you could bring in Robert for There we go. And I'm joined every Monday morning, with Robert Palmer, founder and CEO of LPT realty.

Good morning, Robert. How are you? I'm good, man. You you sound a little low to me too.

I see that much happening. I got my speakers maxed out and you're a little low for me as well. Okay. Alright.

Do I sound okay to everybody? I'm on on Zoom native, obviously.

Okay. David needs to get you up a little bit. Up a little bit. Okay. Here we go.

Rp is good. How am I sounding now? Better. Better. RP is fine. Low volume still.

Louder.

You doing okay? I think that's it seems a little better. Okay. Perfect. Alright. Well, I'll have him tweak it.

Nope. Still not good. Yep.

Okay.

Still low. Alright. I'm gonna muscle through this just for one second. You're just gonna have to not say anything important, Hodge.

I'll I'll carry all the water. Alright. That's that that sounds good. Hey, I wanted to do a quick service announcement real quick.

There are a lot of people in chat who are, saying good morning to us. People from Iowa. Let me give you an example, Lisa from Iowa. You only selected host and panelist.

And so we're the only ones who can see that message. What you guys wanna do is at the top, select everyone. And that way, everyone can see you. So just to give you example, Lisa Vance from iOS says good morning, but only to host Colleen Hoffman, from Florida.

Only we can see that. Vida, we're the only person who can see wherein people can see that. And that's from Texas. That's from all over the So just wanna make sure that everyone knows to select everyone so that, everyone can see your messages.

And how am I sounding now?

Yeah. Alright. Cool. Alright. Well, let's move on. Okay. Well, good morning, everyone. Welcome to motivational Monday.

We are happy to be here with you this morning on this holiday And, one, I wanna say big congratulations. So I don't know if you saw a puppy. Most people did, but Robert made the top two hundred lists for most influential or powerful people in, the real estate sector. So I don't know if you guys had a chance to see that on, social media or RP can you kinda tell me a little bit about that what that award actually is?

Yeah. I know it's kind of a big deal. So, you know, Swannepo, Steven Swannepo has a, you know, consulting group that's very influential inside the real estate industry, company called t three sixty, and they put out their annual ranking of the, you know, two hundred most powerful leaders in real state. And I was I was actually pretty shocked to make the list this early in, LPT's arc.

You know, if you go back and look at other cloud brokerages, it was like year six, seven, you know, before they started to make their radar and that they picked us up. They actually reached out to us while we were down in Miami at the end of October. Wanted to interview, Matt Levy, kinda learn more about the company, see what we were doing. They'd heard some, you know, noise about what we were building here.

And, yeah, I'm really honored to make that list and excited to climb up that list in in the coming years. LPT is a force. And, you know, if you think when when they made that decision, we were only in, you know, six maybe seven States back in October, when the, you know, because they they didn't make the decision. The data list came out.

Right? Those those decisions were made based on factors, you know, when we were probably, you know, more like, you know, four or five thousand agents and only in six or seven states. So even the growth we've had since then, I mean, it's it's gonna be It's gonna be fun. I mean, I, again, I I love it for us all collectively because it just shows LPT.

LPT is for real. LPT is here to win. LPT has amazing agents. We are changing the game.

We're not like any other brokerage out there. The way we've combined the models, the way we've put real estate first, anchoring an agent choice. You know, the these are all things that resonate.

And then, they've invited me to potentially speak at one of their conferences as well, t three sixty. So we're gonna see if we can line up our schedules, and I'm gonna try to get more involved because I think it is a great thing for all of us collectively with the amazing company we're building here together. That's right, man. Awesome.

Well, congratulations on that. And I and it's just a testament to show you know, kind of what you are doing, the impact that you've had on the industry. And I know that you said, hey, man, we're gonna push this industry forward. And it's still a win for you if people have to step their game up and the consumer wins and the industry starts to advance.

It's still a win for you even if that's not necessarily within the walls of LPT because we are forcing to up their game and offer their agents more men. So, congratulations to you. I'm looking forward for you to continue to climb that list or, I guess, increase on that that list. Okay.

Cool. Well, I wanna go over our our CPI numbers, for last week. I know that that gives us some indication in terms of what could be happening with short term interest rates and kind of where the market could be going. So we had a CPI report last week.

Could you unpack that for us and kind of walk us through what that could potentially mean for interest rates going forward in the in the near term. Yeah. I'm really gonna talk more kinda holistically about, you know, CPI PPI came out. You know, we saw, obviously, the jobs report, you know, came out the first week of January.

It's interesting because we saw this massive rally in interest rates kinda coming out of the end of last year. There was a lot of talk of the Fed, cutting rates as soon as March.

I wasn't necessarily in that camp. I think I think people maybe got a little too too excited about being at the end of inflation.

We've saw some mixed messages, you know, so some of the inflation reports came in higher. Some came in lower. I think the overall feeling still is that the Fed is is going to start cutting sometime next year. We have seen mortgage rates.

We have seen mortgage rates creep up a little bit, you know, since kind of that low they hit the end of the year, but still in a really great place. You know, the feds got a a tough decision to make. You know, the Fed has to decide, when is the right time to start cutting? If they do it too soon, if they do it too late, they've seen pass feds make massive mistakes, because, you know, inflation can pop back up very quickly.

And just to understand, there's all these external factors, you know, there's actually a a tax cut bill that's in front of Congress right now that's getting some traction. And, you know, if they do that, if they pump more money into the economy via extending some tax cuts, well, that can that can cause inflation, to kinda pop up as well. And so, you know, you've got, all these different things that are happening out there in the economy that have to fit in together. We're watching the data.

The big thing is if your consumer finds themselves in a place where the rate is good for them, they can afford the payment, they can lock in that house price before it goes up any higher, It's really important to move. I think we are safe from the overly egregious interest rates. Like, we really saw when rates got up into those eights that that, it really I mean, it brought the market to a grinding halt. Like, we saw a massive drop in number of transactions.

Q four should have been better than it was. The end of q three should have been better than it was, and they just were they were not. And it was because rates had gotten so high. So, again, we'll continue to watch the data, you know, cancel your customer It is still very volatile.

We're not we're not, you know, there is no clear path yet on where we're gonna end up. And so, you know, we we gotta just keep our eyes on it. We gotta keep our customers, make sure they understand, but we're we're seeing mixed data. And one of the biggest problems with that mixed data is housing.

It's us. And so if you think about it, when the Fed started raising rates, I really think they believed that home prices would come down. Right? That was the logical assumption, when we raise prices, mortgage payments are gonna get very high, and then home prices will have to stall or come down.

We've seen the exact opposite happen. We've seen home prices in most markets continue to accelerate even with rates high. Well, guess what? That makes inflation worse because housing is one of the metrics that goes into inflation.

Rent payments are one of the metrics that goes into inflation. And because mortgage payments are so high right now, rent payments are higher than they should be. And so we're almost in this weird situation where some economists believe that in order for housing prices to slow down or rent payments to come down, the Fed is going to have to cut rates because they need that sector of inflation to come down. And so it's this counterintuitive idea of of the Fed really needs the retail sales, the core personal services and goods, They almost need those to go into a deflationary mode so that they can then cut rates to bring down housing costs and hope they land somewhere in the middle.

I mean, these these guys are trying to thread a needle. And I I do not envy their position, but it it impacts all of us in a big way. So we'll continue to watch it. Keep you up to date here.

Overall, mortgage rates are still in a much better place than they were couple of months ago, but, the idea they were gonna just run down and and get really, really low where it looked like that for a a minute kinda at the end of the year. I think I think the brakes have been pumped. I think we're gonna kinda settle into the range we're in now for at least a couple of months and maybe see another slight tick up. Nothing crazy.

Hopefully, nothing like what we saw. Kinda coming out of October, November, but I do think we're gonna see rates stable to maybe a little higher. Again, I could be wrong tomorrow. One one good data report in the wrong direction and everything changes, but That's where we sit today based on the way I'm seeing the field.

Oh, that's good. That's interesting. And, you know, we we're hoping that that continues, as you said, through through the first quarter, and that we have some more clarity. Because again, we know that buyers and sellers are gonna be making decisions based on kinda what's happening at that macro So, I'm looking forward to seeing, you know, what happens here in in twenty twenty forward, and hopefully see some unlocking of inventory, which will allow those transactions to continue to go up.

So you can switch and transactions going up. I wanna kind of, talk about bigger teams and and what that that means to be an LPT. So I know we were talking about the importance of, you know, luxury agents and and big teams coming to LPT that have, you know, this flexible model that allows them to put people on their team that are all different points of their career. It gives them the opportunity to have rev share or flat fee, whatever makes most sense for both them, and the team leader.

You know, what is your concept around you know, why that's beneficial for big teams and why we're seeing, you know, so many massive players in the industry come to LPT to this flexible compensation model. It is a little shocking, you know, seeing I mean, we, we, again, we just we've had really massive teams come to LPT. We've had massive teams form inside of LPT. Like, I love seeing that.

You know, I I really had this vision that when we built a culture of collaboration that you would see big teams form within the brokerage that that come from different down lines, come from different states, come from different organizations, but they figure out how to come together under the LPT platform and and win together, and we're seeing that. So big teams moving here, big teams forming here. You know, we've got solo agents that are absolutely crushing it. Early on, you know, there was this narrative our competitors tried to, you know, kinda put against us.

So only only low producers are gonna go to LPT. And that, again, that never made sense to me, but I I mean, I understand. They had to say whatever they needed to say to try to protect. Their little fiefdom and kingdom and and the thing they had built because they recognize that we are a real threat over here.

And I think what we're finally happening now is in one, I mean, we're less than a two year company. I mean, if you go back and look, I don't know how many less than two year old companies have ever attracted the the the the high level of producers that we have here at LPT. I mean, it's hard to do. It's hard for someone who's doing, you know, four hundred, five hundred million a year to go bank on a a a company that's less than two years old.

But we have We have the proven track record. We have the systems. You know, we have everything in place to where those big teams and big producers do feel comfortable. And I think that the big piece that they recognize is that there's this massive benefit to being a part of an organization that can reach more people.

Because what what happens is by giving agents choices, one of those choices can be to join a team. And it's always easier to build your team when an agent is already at the Right? Trying to go out and recruit team members from the outside. Now you have to sell them both on the brokerage and on the team.

Where what we're seeing a lot of here at LPT is agents who join LPT as a solo business builder, and then maybe they decide, hey, if I join a team, I think I can do more volume. I can be more of a part of something. Whatever drives that decision, we're seeing that happen a lot where agents are deciding to join existing teams at LPT already inside of the ecosystem. And so if we had the traditional cloud model that only speaks to agents who are already likely to be a capper or already running a team, you don't have that massive amount of agents who are here at a different level in their career, you know, selling real estate, taking advantage of our hundred percent comp plan, who end up being the exact perfect type of agent to potentially join a team in the future.

And so we have this massive ecosystem where agents can make their choice and say, you know what? I'm going to LPT because it's a great brokerage. And then maybe four or five months later, they say, Hey, you know what? I think I'm gonna join a team.

This year's been maybe a little tougher than I wanted. Or I really wanna focus on a specialty so I'm gonna go join a team or on the other side. Maybe somebody says, you know what? I feel like I've outgrown my team.

Well, at other brokerages, if you leave a team, your cap can as much as as quadruple. That's that's hard to swallow. You know, you're at a brokerage and sure your team split may be going away but you're also losing the team's leads and the team's support and then to lose all of that extra add on and support and then have your cap to the brokerage quadruple because you chose to to leave the team. Again, these dynamics do not create a healthy ecosystem where agents have a choice to move around.

And so I think that the big teams and and the folks that are coming here, big producers who have, I think, a mission to to form a team in the future, are seeing that the model here at LPT, the way for the first time ever we've aligned the interests of the brokerage and the solo agent and the team agent to where everyone can win together under a single ecosystem, and that helps everyone grow faster. That helps teams grow in the way they need to grow, which is by adding agents to their team. It helps solo agents grow by having more money back in their pocket on those early deals to reinvest in their business.

You know, one of the other big things that that I talk about a lot is, you know, when you do join a team, obviously, you're gonna pick up that team split. And, you know, there there's teams that do an amazing job of providing the value for that split. But if you're on an eighty twenty with the brokerage on top of maybe a fifty fifty with the team, those early checks can get really ugly. You know, you're you're given fifty percent to the team, which a hundred percent they deserve for the services they're providing.

And then the brokerage wants to take another twenty percent on top of that until you cap it can be really hard to transition into a team and pay your bills. Right? And let's face it. People that are starting out, maybe they're brand new to real estate, they're joining a team, Only making such a small percentage on those early deals can be very, very discouraging.

Where in our model, where at the end of the day, the team caps we have aren't that different. You can go to almost any cloud brokerage. And if you're on a big team, you can get a lower cap like the one we offer here at LPT. You lose that cap if you lose the leave the team, but you have it as long as you're there, but they're still gonna take that big chunk of a split on your early deals until you cap which can make it really hard to be successful.

And so because in our model, we only take the five hundred dollars on those early deals. It's much easier to be able to pay the team splits and get all that extra team value and grow your business without starving on those early deals. And these are the dynamics that these big team leaders across the country are seeing as they now transition to LPT. It's the dynamics that agents within side of LPT you're seeing.

As they come together to form very large teams. And it's just such an exciting thing. And again, as a brokerage, we support it because we don't view someone joining a team as a loss. Right?

Think about the legacy cloud brokerage. Is the old way the cloud brokerage approached it? Well, if you're a solo agent, we get a really big cap from you. And then if you go join a team, the brokerage gives up seventy five percent of its money.

Right? They go to a reduced cap that can be as much as one quarter of the original cap So the brokerage actually doesn't want people joining teams. They may say they do behind the scenes, but they really don't because they view that as a revenue loss. Here at LPT because everyone has access to the same models at their choice.

We don't lose anything. We want you to to define your definition of success. Right? That's one of our core values.

How do we help you achieve your definition of success? And whether that is as a solo agent, a team member, a team leader, whatever it is, we want you to be able to define success in the way that you see it. And by giving you that flexibility at comp plan, where you can keep a reasonable affordable cap whether you choose to join a team or not, that is just a critical part of who we are. And and these other brokers, right, they'll look at us and say, oh, LPT is never gonna work.

You can't You can't make it work on caps that low. Will you guys give caps that low to people that are on teams? You're telling me there's some massive difference in what we have to do. As a brokerage for a file when it's closed by a team member versus solo agent.

I'll tell you it's not. The process of going through compliance is pretty much the same. Know, everything is pretty much the same from our standpoint. You know, the team member may have a little bit higher average production when you look at them globally, but at the end of the day, you know, why why are these other broker just only willing to give the reduced caps to team members?

And then basically overcharge the solo agents. And that is the dynamic that we are breaking here together. And so again, when when we look at our numbers, roughly fifty percent of our agents are either Revshare partners or team members, which means that their caps look almost exactly like they would look if they were at one of the legacy cloud brokerages. But then it's the other fifty percent that we have found a way to serve that they have failed.

And I would much rather be the CEO of a brokerage that twice as large because it's found a way to serve both pockets of the market and giving people those choices and opportunities to move between those two plans and those two different paths in life. And I think that really is the magic here, and more and more people are starting to figure it out. And the amazing thing is the more people that figured out, the more the competitors are going to try to to draw against their bark at it because it's very scary for them. You know, the more they dig into the model, the more it makes sense, and the more they realize that we really are building something special here, and that we've gotten over that hump.

This idea of like, oh, LPT will just fade away. There's too many of us now. We're in too many states. We're closing too many transactions.

We're making too many waves. We are not going away. And so now they have this real problem of wow, that model really does make a lot of sense. It really does serve more agents.

It really would help more people grow their business and it's not going away, which is a direct threat to whatever they've built at their current brokerage and that's where a lot of this fear is coming from.

Yeah, man. And it's, it's interesting that you put it that way because, you know, it's like, when you mark kind of the, arc of of real estate history, It's like there was the before LPT in the after. So to me, that's like, we've creased time, you know. Like, here's how things were done before LPT became on the scene.

But, you know, one of the things that I wanna talk about, I know this was something that you solved for initially as you were kind of analyzing the industry. You said, hey, why is there a high failure rate. Like, why does why is it seventy five percent of people fail within the first two years? And it's about the dynamics that you're talking about now.

Which is at the brokerage success and the agent alignment. They were out of whack. Right? It was one feeding off of the other.

Hey, it doesn't matter what you do or how successful you are, I have to do this to stay successful. And they weren't aligned. And I know when you thought about this model, you really want to find a way for those to come together. So why do you believe that you're starting to see like a a change now, I guess, really, around that success rate with people succeeding past the two years with LPT in comparison into, you know, what it traditionally was.

Yeah. I look, and look, this is not something we're gonna solve. Right? We're not we're not gonna take the failure rate in this industry to zero.

Like, I I don't have that disillusion. But if we can impact it by ten percent, fifteen percent, just to give people a better chance of making it over that that initial hump when they get here, because this is a tough industry. This is an industry where you get in here and and things are harder than they seem, and it's harder to go find business, and it's harder to to get that business closed. In the amount of time, you have to go from to check can be longer than maybe what you expected because even when you get a transaction, you earn that listing.

You don't get paid the day you win the business. You don't get paid until it finally goes under contract and closes. You get that buyer and you find the perfect house. You don't get paid until the transaction makes it through mortgage approval and closes.

And maybe there's an inspection in the middle. That can blow the whole thing up and now you're further away from a paycheck. And so as we looked at that, the two biggest things that we believed, you know, agents needed that aren't readily available The funny thing is education is actually pretty widely available. I mean, it's there is so many so many educational resources out there between you know, YouTube and free resources and then paid classes where there's coaching and education that there is the knowledge available.

And so we say, alright. While we we wanna have a great knowledge library, we wanna help there. We're going to be as good as everyone else. The two places that we really need to focus on to help agents have a better chance at success is the comp plan How do we put more money in their pocket early?

Because while the the cap system was great and the cap system, which was, you know, invented, you know, pretty sure by Keller Williams, this idea of, hey, Once you've paid us a certain amount of money, we're gonna stop taking a split. Well, that doesn't help people in the early part of their career. It doesn't help on deal one, two, three, four, five, six, And and the funny thing is that's actually where people need the help the most because that's when they are most likely to fail out of the industry. So the CAP System actually made that worse.

Alright. And then then the team idea came up and teams helped people survive early. But again, if the broker just taking this massive piece of the commission out on top of the team split, it's it's hard to survive those early deals, and that's why people drop out of the business. They can't pay their bills.

They can't afford to stay in the industry. And so We said we've gotta fix the comp plan. We have to align the comp plan to where agents who are are getting started have a better chance of success, which means we have to take a little less early on. Right?

And so how do we do that? We have to build a brokerage that can afford to take less early on to give our agents a better chance at success. And and I was confident we can do that and we have done that. And again, a lot of that came from my background in mortgage and having to build a very efficient machine in order for me to pay people's closing costs.

We had to be more efficient. Right? I did the same thing over there. I said, you know what, we're gonna take less.

We're gonna make it easier for people to refinance by paying their closing costs, but that means we make less. We take less per deal. So we have to run more efficiently. Now we come over to real estate and I say, you know what?

In order to help agents succeed on those early deals, we have to take less. To put more money back in their pocket so that they can invest that in education, growing their business, or just paying their bills, which is a reality of life. And so we have to run a more efficient company. And I am I am very good at running efficient companies.

It's how I built my entire empire pre LPT, and now it's how we are building this company that you and I are all building together. And it's about being efficient so that we can put those early dollars back in agents' pockets to help them have a better chance of succeeding. The second thing is tools. We have to give agents the tools to show up and win because those early opportunities to win business become critical.

And so having access to the seven home buyer strategies magazine with your face on the cover. Having access to the listing power tools, power packs, that if you do land a listing appointment, you have the absolute best chance at landing it because look, that first listing appointment you go on, winning or losing, that can literally be the difference between you staying in real estate and not. Going on that first buyer consult, whether or not that buyer trusts you and works with you and gets a home under contract, That can be the difference between you staying in this industry or not. And then

also having the prospecting tools to help you go out and drum up more business all built around your face, your brand establishing your credibility. We recognize that we needed to give agents the tools at a cost they could afford, which is either free in the case of the power pack, or very affordable in the case of the other tools, because guess who can't afford to go out and pay companies like listing power tools hundred bucks a month to have access to these tools. The brand new agent who's just trying to get started because they just don't have it in their budget yet. And so all of the traditional brokerages, even the the traditional cloud brokerages, they continue to stack the deck against the newer agent.

And and then, you know, you can say, well, if we train them enough, if we train them enough, look at the end of the day, as I said, the training is out there. We have great training. You can go on YouTube and find great training. Guess what?

You can take that money you save by us not taking twenty percent of your first deal, and you can go buy some really great training. You know, we wanted to give you the resources.

In the form of more money in your pocket on your early deals and then combine with with one of a kind tools that absolutely help you be more successful that are not available out there without a very heavy price tag tied to them at any other brokerage or from any other company. And so I believe those two things together will be very impactful on helping more agents make it over the hump. And then on top of that, you build an ecosystem where again agents can move between joining a team if that's what they choose. They can be a solo agent with an affordable comp plan.

All of this optionality and choice that we've created for agents will help them succeed early because we have to fix the failure problem. We have to fix the failure rate. And again, fixing it doesn't mean it goes to zero. We're never gonna have a real estate industry where a hundred percent of people succeed.

But if we can take that that early year failure rate from eighty down to sixty for LPT agents, that is massive. And it is massive for the growth of this company. It's massive for the community we're building, and it's massive for the industry as a whole. And, again, we will continue to look at how do we provide those tools and then get, throw on top of that dot loop so you have professional e signature software.

Throw on there lofty so you have a professional website. Like, all the things you need to be successful are packed in here Again, the other big thing is we're not banging on your credit card. Imagine that. You're a brand new agent.

You're, like, month three or four in. You haven't had your first closing yet. But your cloud brokerage is banging on your credit card every month, taking those dollars away. This is why people fail early on.

And again, while we'll never cure a hundred percent of that failure, we are absolutely doing things to make it easier to get over the hump and survive and win in this industry.

That's awesome, man. And, you know, it's if you guys don't feel pumped up about that and thinking about the philosophy that went into, you know, the mindset of building this company. And then when you think about the people who talk against this, know, when they try to make it seem like this is a negative thing, you know, you really see where their interests are. Like, they're just trying to protect something that puts their interest ahead of the people around them.

And so, this is very well thought out, and it's really at the core of what LPT is, which is giving agents choice to empower them to find their own version of success. And remove as many barriers as possible that traditionally slow people or even exit people out of the industry. Alright. So we are almost at time, but I kinda wanna wrap it up just we're talking, man.

I do wanna talk about this culture piece. I know we have that on our list. Yeah. No.

I was that's actually where I was going with it. Yeah. Perfect. So what I was gonna say is, you know, you know, about this we're all rowing together.

We're thinking about the culture. I know that Grand Prix, one of the key focal points is us getting together and building things that allow us to connect in different ways. And so this culture piece here that you're seeing, which I think is really unique. I genuinely have not experienced it at any place other than LPT, where there's so many people like minded people helping each other go faster.

Whereas, you know, typically you'll see a lot more competition in a negative way, not competition that helps me feeling invigorated to go out there and do new things, but competition in a way that hurts your fellow agent. And so talk to me about kind of the the culture piece and and why they believe that's so important and what makes it different here at LPT? Yeah. So I wanna start with kinda how how I think about this.

And I'll tell you too. Some some of these things we are doing here that are so dramatically different didn't talk about them a ton early on because I really wasn't trying to draw a roadmap for our competitors too early because they could've used it against us. Like, I can't let the whole playbook out out of the bag early, where now we're getting to a point where, you know, we we've we've crossed that hump. We're here to stay.

I'm a little more confident in letting more of the playbook out. When we thought about culture, we really thought about it as as a two step process. Alright? And so step one was we had to make sure that the brokers attracted and was filled with people who did have an abundance mindset who were willing to help each other, who did view this as a way to help other agents to build something together.

We had to get the individual people side of the culture figured out. We had to have people that were willing and motivated and actually get up every day with a drive to help others. For the most part to drive the culture we wanted to build. And so we focused on that first.

And one of the things we actually did is we built pieces into the model to purposely repel the folks that from my experience, that particular avatar, that particular personality type was not going to be a good fit for this culture. And so some of the things we built in, and and it's funny enough being real estate first was one of those things. You would be amazed how many people we repel because we are real estate first. And there are no people I am prouder to repel than the people that don't wanna come to LPT because we are real estate first.

And they wanna be recruiting first. And again, I I get that. Like, there are people that that's that's their thing. They they've lost their passion for real estate.

They only wanna recruit. And and while there are other brokerages that will embrace that, we have done a lot of things in our model and our culture to really try to repel those folks and stay focused on real estate first. Because what I saw is a lot of the agents who are not actively involved in real estate, they're not truly part of the community in the same way. There's this interesting dynamic where because of of the cooperative, you know, piece of real estate, the fact that any agent you see today could be a listing agent on a property you may be trying to sell tomorrow, or be bringing you a buyer tomorrow, or you may end up on a team with them in the future, or you may end up at their brokerage in the future, who knows, They may end up here at your brokerage since you're never leaving LPT.

That dynamic has has shifted now. There's this this idea of cooperation. What we saw is the folks that are not actually involved in selling real estate, they don't have that same type of tie to the community because they don't have to worry about seeing that agent on a listing appointment or seeing that agent on a on a, you know, writing an offer and negotiating a deal. And so if you end up with too many agents who are not part of the actual real estate community, and they just get a license in order to recruit.

They don't have the same type of ties, and they almost can't build the same type of culture because they're not bound by the same rules and interpersonal and social dynamics and business dynamics that those of you out there selling real estate every day are. And so we made this decision to say, you know what? We are going to build things into our model to purposely repel those folks as much as possible. Be real estate first because if we have culture of people who can all unify under the core goal of helping home buyers and home sellers win when it comes to the largest transaction of their life.

A k a being real estate first. A lot of the the culture of problems we've seen come up with other brokerages really go away. You know, the overly aggressive recruiting is not there. The you know, that the false pretenses at events is not there.

Like, because again, if you're if you're violating that relationship with your fellow agents, it makes it harder to sell real estate. And so folks that are focused on real estate first have a different responsibility when it comes to that overall industry culture. And so we did that And again, you know, me jumping on here with Matt Hodge every week, we give our time. We are committed to being here and being in front of you and spending time with you each and every week.

And we have so many other agents that have that same vibe and that that same willingness and that same heart to give and to lead whether they have a direct financial benefit or not. That's another big piece of it. We don't allow agents to tie trainings and things to their down line. That creates silos.

That creates strife between different groups. Again, We had to get the culture figured out and dialed in from a standpoint of who do we wanna be? Who are we? Who are the agents we wanna attract?

Who is our avatar? Who do we wanna go to battle with each and every day when a market is tough like it has been in twenty twenty two and twenty twenty three? And I think we have done a better job of anyone when it comes to bringing the amazing right like minded, giving abundance seeking agents together. So that was phase one.

And the first two years of this company had been very much about that. Now as we look to phase two, the next question is, how do we as the brokerage now provide the channels and the tools to help all those amazing agents, all those amazing like minded agents with a similar culture, now connect with each other on a deep deeper level. How do we get that education out in more ways so that more agents can discover their fellow LPT agent who's willing to help them with a problem they may be facing. How do we give our agents who have that passion for teaching the microphone to hold their own versions of motivation Monday, you know, on the connect platform.

How do we build now the technology and the systems and and the threads that are going to connect this massive web of amazing people? We had to have the amazing people first because I'll tell you right now. You can have great technology to help people, you know, communicate and combine and interact with each other. But if those people don't have the right heart, If those people don't have the right mindset, that technology is worthless.

And so then the other thing we looked at is is there an off the shelf technology solution that can really support the type of culture that I envision. And the answer unfortunately is no. And other brokerages have chosen to use off the shelf you know, solutions, you know, buying a company with a metaverse, using, you know, meta Facebook software. I truly believe that to embrace the of culture, we have an opportunity to build here, which no one else has.

No one else took the time over those early years to make sure they had the right avatar, the right type of agent, the right people with the right heart and the right mindset coming in. And now we have this opportunity to build something absolutely amazing that will take this company to to heights never before seen with a culture never before seen, but that's gonna require us to have our own technology, our own threads to connect people, our own web, our own mesh to hold us all together. And and what I'm telling you on my commitment to all of you is I am personally taking the reins on that with our development team because it's not just about software.

The software side of it's actually pretty easy. Like writing the lines of code is not where this gets hard. It's the choices. How do we help agents discover each other?