Compass' Stance on Private Exclusives, A National MLS, NAR's Role and More | Today with Jared James Ep. 149

0:00Welcome to Today with Jared James. And now your host, Jared James. Hi everybody, welcome to this episode of Today with Jared James. I am particularly excited. I know I say on every episode I'm excited. It's kind of like doing adventure. I'm excited to be here. Sometimes you're not. You're excited to leave. You can't wait to hit the airport. You can't agree with that. But I'm particularly excited today because I am at the Compass Headquarters, which are not far from me at all. Everyone thinks that I live in New York because I fly in out of New York, but I'm actually I just go an hour away and Connecticut. I am here with Rory Gollett. Yep. I say correct. You got it right. I'm here with Rory Gollett. Rory Gollett, I never know what your title is. I just call you number two. I just call you like, you know, the guy who actually does everything.

1:00It changes a lot. Yes. But the actual title is President of Growth or Compass International Holdings. Okay. Or what we should call you the next couple of months, which is extremely tired of the road. And we'll get into that as far as we can. We were just talking about that. Yeah. Yeah. Playing the game of how many offices we're traveling to. Yep. Actually, at the end, we should line up and see. We've got each other. You know what's funny? We have a similar life right now. When we talked about doing this, I was all, I was like, oh great. Just make it happen. You're all optimistic. And then I go look at the calendar. And I was like, hey, I'm really crazy. But we'll find a day. And then I go look at the calendar and I went, there is nothing. There is literally today. Well, this week is really the only week. That's awesome. That's this. You're on the road the next three months. I've been on my run. I lead tomorrow for another. Yeah. I'm a mind-started early. I'm non-stop between really starting next week until the end of the year. And I have a six year old and an eight month old. Oh, God. So you have young kids too. Well, that's more of a, some would call that a break. Is he going with the sound? Is it close enough?

2:00Yeah. The mic goes go with the sound. I guess, I'm lucky. My uncle is a little angel. She sleeps through the night. Yeah, he goes to get one of those. Yeah. So I kind of, I got locked out with that one. But it's, you know, so this next couple of months, it's important, obviously. And I, it's not my stuff on your way too. Like that's the, it's very, it's tough on the family. Yep. You got it. You know what I'm saying. I, I would actually get anxiety if I wasn't out traveling. I think it's, it's sort of the way we've always operated at the company. Yeah. A lot of our leaders have always, like, we need to be in person. That signals that you guys have stuff to do. And that you have people to actually connect with. Yeah. And that you're doing something that matters. Absolutely. And I am, I'm very much against frivolous travel. Yeah. There's a lot of travel that is a waste. Yeah. So you go out and go to offices and being in front of agents, dozens to hundreds or thousands of agents. Yeah. It is massively beneficial. And so we lean into it. And, and we'll, we'll get to sleep over Thanksgiving and Christmas break.

3:02How are you want you, like, I have a weird thing when I get places because I travel so much. First off, everybody always tries to get you to go to their dinner the night before. I have a lot of fun. Yeah. I'm, excuse is why it won't happen. But if it is offsite, there's zero chance. Because once I've traveled, I'm not getting in an Uber. I'm here. Like, I literally plan my hotel because like, there's a stay-couse walkable or there's a, once I'm, I'm walking. I'm not getting in cars. I don't know how you are about that. So I plan around a different thing. I do the dinners. Oftentimes I just have to do the dinners. I have. But I also like to do it. Yeah. For example, I was in Austin, Texas a couple months ago. Yeah. And I'm, you know, I really want to go for really good Mexican food. Yeah. And rather than me go online and yell for Chachy B.T., I just called Matt home on of our top agents. There is a friend of mine and said, Matt, can you, and I know he can get the reservation too. Yeah. Yeah.

4:02And he's a big Austin guy. So it picks me up into Cybertruck. I've never been in a Cybertruck before. Everything about this is not what I think. Fastest car I've ever been in. Yeah. He's like, you want to see how fast I've been in. All those things are nuts. I've been in. And so, and we had an amazing meal and caught up. So I don't mind the dinners. The thing I plan around is does the hotel have a good gym if it doesn't? What's the closest really good gym that I could get a day pass? Because that's the thing I need to be saying. I do the same thing. Right. So I'm online. I'm looking at the photos. I'll go and check. You're like, does it have a gym or is that an oversized closet? Exactly. You call it a gym. Three free weights and a treadmill is not a gym. Yeah. You know exactly what I'm talking about. I do the exact same thing. So, and then when you get a hotel that actually has a good gym. If it has a sauna, it's a massive. Go to Europe. There's sauna. Yeah. Every hotel. If I can find one that has a great gym and a sauna, I am good. That's what I need. Yeah. That's all in Europe. When you go to Europe every hotel in the matter, it could be a motel five. And it's got a sauna. And then one that's open late. Yeah. Yeah. And I also look for like spots where you can run and like it's just little stuff.

5:04But I don't travel. Even the whole meeting someone and doing, I sit at the bar. I specifically, I'm going to start sounding really anti-social. Especially when I go to events where it's a big event. There's a lot of people. I specifically go offside. I usually stay offside at a different hotel. And then I go and I go to a place that's away from where everything's going. And I sit at the bar. I just want to be alone. Like I, I don't know about you. I'm a natural introvert. So like I can do it. I can get on stage. I can turn it on. I can get in a group and turn it on. I can do whatever. But my, my default is alone. Like that's how I recharge. I really. Oh, one thousand. I would not, I would not have guessed it. I'm not going to do a whole lesson on this. But everybody thinks that introvert extrovert is like extrovert is Ace Ventura. Yeah. Jim Carey from Ace Ventura. And an introvert is EOR from, you know, whatever. Has nothing to do with how you act. It's how you recharge. Most salespeople, public people, celebrities, at like all these, most of them are actually introverted. They can flip the switch. But then the way they recharge is alone. That's the only way they can still be who they are.

6:05I mean, as you say that, I think about it. A lot of the things I actually do to recharge are in iPhone's not an iPhone again. Plugging in overnight. Yeah. I think most of the things I actually do recharge with are solar activities. Yeah. Go to the gym. Yeah. So on a, like, all of this again, let me be, let me be. But, but I also, I see when I, when I travel, I'm sort of just, I just get in the mindset of it in the mode. And I just do it. So if I'm going to be there, then why not do the dinner? Oh, you and I, I've seen you at stuff. You're like, I'm meeting this person at this time. It's six o'clock. I'm, I get anxiety. I'm like, oh, my God. I'll be in my room. Well, I also, I try to be really effective with it. So I'll fly in, let's say the night before so the net morning, I can get up super early, go crank through everything and then come back. I don't like doing multi-days if I could jam it in. So last week I went, I landed an hour before I went on stage, went right out. Tomorrow I'm doing the same thing. Like, and then I fly right out. So what I'm on the other side of that, when we're the ones doing the event, that's what I'm doing. I'm like, where is he right now? I showed up one last week and I showed up and I was there at the time that we told my be there, but they were like, we were freaking out.

7:12I'm here exactly when I made it. I told you I'd be here. The beauty of flying in and out of New York is that first off for anybody listening who like books me for events, I would never, you know, take a chance of not being in an event. Obviously, if there's weather in the winter, you keep an eye on it. If you need to fall out the night before you do it, you know, whatever. But the beauty of New York is you have a million options. So I always look at all the other options ago. If something happens with this, if there's maintenance on this plane, if there's, you know, whatever it is, you know, we've got to back up going immediately. I just want to be in my bed as many times as humanly. I used to, I used to like love staying in places and like staying extra night, catch the vibe, party it out, whatever. Now, unless I know, like if you and I were there alone and we were hanging out, awesome. I got a friend there. I got whatever. If it's just me, good day. Yeah. Like I'm out. But anyway, that is five minutes. You guys will never get back. But it gives you good chopping up because we got some stuff to talk about. You guys, you guys have, you guys have, this is one of the reasons why I really wanted to have you back on here is because you guys have had a few things go on recently.

8:17Just a few. You guys have been in the news a little bit, the real estate news as far as what's been going on. And I don't have to tell you there's feelings all over it. Our industry right now is so tribal and you know who the cool kids are and who isn't. And here's the acceptable belief about this and here's. So let's just get into it. A couple of things that have gone down. I want to hear. And I want for everybody listening right now to understand that like. This is not, and I think this is why you even do this stuff with me is because I don't ever do the gutcha. I'm not on a side. I'm on the side of the consumer. I'm on the side of the industry. I want to see where it fleshes out. But at the end of the day, the thing for me of you being on here is getting your perspective. Because once you dominate the headlines, what I've found, I know most of the people who are in the headlines. And the overall belief of what they think or believe is almost never what the overall thought is. Because it just turns into gossip. And so for me, this is an awesome opportunity and thanks for doing it for this reason. I want to hear like what do you actually, what's your position?

9:18Yeah. What is compasses position? Because when someone's trying to take the opposite side, usually they'll take your side or whatever and kind of like exaggerate a little bit and go, you know, it's because they, you know, don't care about sellers and they want dogs dead. You know, and it's like, whoa, that come from like, you know, like that, you know, some of it is, is pretty, it's pretty crazy how far from the actual intention. Yeah, the things become and candidly, we've had to just block out most of it. We don't really follow most of the noise because it's, it's infinite. It's a new thing every day. It's a new thing every day. And also it's not actually, it doesn't actually change. Yeah. Anything of substance or importance. All that matters is that are we delivering for our agents? Are they delivering for their clients? And that sounds like sort of a, you know, a typical talking point, but it is the truth. The dinner is before the night before when you go in. It's the, it's all, yeah, I always use the example of when I go stand in front of a group of agents, what do they want me to talk about?

10:23They don't want me to talk about another company. Right. They don't want to hear me complain about something without a solution. Yeah. All they want to hear about is what are we doing to help them improve the quality of their business, help their clients? Like, that's our job. That's why they pay us. And so we have, I think, oftentimes we've actually tried to stay out of some of the conversation. We're obviously doing a lot of things that are making news, but you won't find us often following up or even addressing a lot of things directly. Yeah. Because we're sort of, we're trying to not get pulled into that. Yeah. And, and I think if you look at great companies, they stay hyper focused. And that's, I guess, part of what makes them great is because they're able to stay hyper focused and they're going to get pulled into the noise. And by the way, hyper focused, even when something you guys fully believed in didn't go right. Or maybe you tried something in it. It wasn't good. Or maybe you did. Yeah. You never know. Or when a lot of people are saying, that's not the right thing. Right. Or that strategy makes no sense. But part of the benefit, the reward you get for focusing is if you can do it for long enough.

11:25Yeah. You get to the outcome. Yeah. But oftentimes where failure comes into play is it's less about, do you have the right idea? I see it more as, did you have enough grit and focus to actually stick with it? Right. Because most of the things that you want to do that are meaningful, take a lot of work. Yeah. And everything that we're advocating for right now, everything that we're trying to do. If it were easy, it would have been done right. Yeah. And there's a reason that these constructs and systems are in place. And we're trying to improve them on behalf of agents. So. All right. So let's get right into it. The biggest one right now, the most recent one, NWMLS, right? Northwest MLS. I, one of the places I grew up with Washington State. They are a very controlling state. I'm surprised that's where Zillow is. When you start to look at all those rules and everything, I sometimes wonder if people put that stuff together. They're like, that's the one holdout. They can't do coming soon. Yeah. They can't do whatever. It's like, oh, that's right, Zillow is there. So when you look at NWMLS, you guys had what you guys called a victory.

12:25I don't know how you could look at it any other way other than a victory. I don't know if this is 100% accurate or not. I think they were the only like that size that wasn't allowing pre-market at all coming soon. Anything like that. Very restrictive. You guys was a 13 month battle. Millions of dollars. Yeah. You know, and they basically, and I did a video about this. They came out and they settled. And whenever you see a company like that settle, in my mind, that means they didn't like how it was going to go, you know, with everything that was being put forward in the actual lawsuit in the case. Tell us a little bit about what happened there, what your position is on that, and how you guys view that. You guys view that as something that now becomes precedent that you can push across the country because they didn't just do coming soon. You know, what was it, 21 days you can go. Yeah. So tell us a little bit about that, what happened there, and how you view that. Was that a major thing for you guys, or was that just kind of like a, you know, thank you next. No, look, it's definitely a very significant victory for agents, not just agents in competition, national holdings.

13:28Every agent that sells real estate in Washington state that falls under the coverage of North of the semiless benefits and their clients benefit. So you start, you mentioned coming soon, right? The fact that it didn't make any sense that in that market, you couldn't do a coming soon. You couldn't pre-market in any way, right? Like think of it this way. What seller asked for that? Right. What agent said, I think of a good idea to give my clients fewer choices. To not be able to pre-market as a coming soon. And then also look at why was that the only market? Do you think every other market was wrong, and this one market was right? Right. So when you're the exception, there's a reason you're the exception. They were the most restrictive, and it's funny when I would travel the country, I would say, I would share this point in other agents. I'd be in other states. I'd say, you know, in Seattle, you can't do a coming soon. And everyone would look at me like, wait, what does that even mean? That doesn't make any sense. And so I think when you actually step back, it's a massive victory for sellers first. If I'm selling my home, I now have more choices, more options. We've said this often, every seller wants more choices, more options.

14:31There's no client that says, give me fewer options and fewer choices. And you think about as an agent for your business, if we as agents over the course of the next number of months and years can offer more options or more choices, they were creating more value. Right. When you think about all the competitive forces that are at play here, AI, all these different things. One of the best ways to stay in front of it is just keep creating more value. So offering coming soon, that's another option, another choice. The other thing it does is it puts agents in a position where they can then flex their creativity and compete with one another. A lot of where we are coming from is a place of competition. We want to see competition. Agents have to compete every day or or crutches have to compete. You have to compete with people that do what you do. Right. So why is it that there are these organizations and their businesses, MLSs are companies, their private companies. Why is it that these private companies don't have to compete at all? And so it's a massive victory. And now, you know, as an agent in Seattle, in the greater Seattle area, I can walk into the living room of a client and say,

15:36I can now offer you more choices to pre-market your home. And the benefits of pre-marketing are testing price, building interest, building anticipation. And again, coming soon is available for everyone to see. So this is a real benefit for buyers as well. What do you say a couple of things in that? What do you say to the counterpoint where people are saying, that's great, seller choice, seller choice, seller choice is disguised as what's good for Compass? Yeah, it's funny to me how seller choice is only sent that's good for Compass. First of all, let's just step back. The concept of seller choice benefits sellers. So that's everyone selling their home in this country. There's no one who can say that if sellers have more choices, that's bad. Right? We as a brokerage, our job is to help agents help clients sell homes. So obviously, we want to help sellers be able to do that. And so if it benefits Compass, there's nothing that's going to benefit Compass International Holdings that doesn't also benefit the industry at large. Right? Now, I think where people say that is it comes down again to competition.

16:38I've heard from others who have said, well, this benefits Compass International Holdings because they have a program around pre-marketing. We're trying to two side deals before they hit the market. Well, the irony of that is coming soon is available for everyone to see. So I don't know how someone could accuse us of trying to double and to deal when it's out on our website, when it's on Redfin, when the whole world could see it. And so my push to them is, well, if it's good for sellers, if sellers want it, let the free market decide. If sellers want it, if agents think it's valuable, great. And if your agents at a different company want it, fantastic. I encourage you to build a multi-phase marketing strategy. You should be every day competing to create something that helps your agents win more business, helps your clients get better outcomes. And ultimately that competition will then create more choices and more options. And so I keep coming back to this idea that everyone is forgetting for a moment that our job is to compete against each other to give our agents the best tools and services. To go out and help clients and win business. That's what this is.

17:42And so I actually think a lot of this is that for a long time, our industry has not had to compete. And we've seen that that's actually gotten the industry into a lot of legal out water. We should be aggressively competing ethically, but aggressively competing every single day. And so the arguments don't really withstand. Is that how you see it from the perspective of, okay, we are in a competitive market. So when I ask that question and I say, some people say, well, this is good for Compass. There is a part of this where whether it's Compass, whether it's Real, whether it's VirtuaHat the way, whether it's whatever it happens to be. So publicly traded companies whose job is not to do what's best for the other companies. Is there any part of you guys that's like, hey, yeah, we're trying to, yes, we're doing what's best for us, but it is best for the seller. Because what we're doing is we're giving options. And when you're going into a listing presentation, we're not there for the industry to get a listing. We want our people to get a listing, which means we have to give them something that differentiates. Do we have to like, is that how you view it?

18:43You describe it perfectly. So we always talk about the industry. This concept of the industry. There shouldn't be an industry. There are collections of companies that compete with each other for the services, in this case of agents, to then provide services to buyers and sellers. We're not doing things to the idea of competitors getting together and telling each other what to do is collusion is antitrust. And it's ironic because that's actually what MLS's are. MLS's are collections of competitors that get together that tell other competitors how to compete. It doesn't make any sense. There is no other industry that has this structure. My job in the job of our company is to every single day work as hard as we can to help our agents have more tools, resources, choices, and options. So then they go in front of buyers and sellers. They have as good of a chance as they can have to win that business. That's it. And every single day we are going to push to do that better and better and better. I expect other companies to be doing the same thing if you're not than what are you doing?

19:46And so I really believe this comes down to that basic premise. And so I obviously want what's good for agents. But our job, our responsibility is to our agents and their clients. It's not to help support the business models of companies that were supposed to be competing against. It's like I don't expect them to do that for us. And so I encourage all of them to come up with whatever marketing strategy works for them. Whatever thing they want to offer. Remember, if you were winding back 15 years ago when Compass did not exist as a brand. Certainly obviously. It's crazy. Compass International Holdings did not exist as a company. We had to go into every market that we're in. And we had to compete. So I remember because I launched a lot of our markets. I'd go to a city where we were completely unknown. Not a single person knew who we were. We had to launch an office, hire staff, recruit our founding agents. There was never a point time we were able to say, wait, hold on a sec. This is unfair.

20:46We have to actually compete and do all of this. And there's these other companies that have all these great things. And so can someone just set it up for us so we want to separate but not too much. And so yeah. And so and our agents have to compete even within the company within the same brand. There are two or three or four or five agents in the same brand that might be competing for the same client. So if agents have to compete. If the company's have to be like, why would everyone have to? That is the basis of this industry. And I think that's the thing that's lost. And so my response to everyone is just out compete. That will ultimately create the best outcomes. Alright guys, we take this break in action right here from this episode to tell you about a company that I think every one of you individually team, broker-dried, whatever needs to be using, which is stackwrap. Stackwrap.com. Guys, if you're watching this right now, you know that you have a whole lot of bookmarks on your computer. And we have all sorts of tech tools and all of these kinds of things, which is awesome. But if you're not using them, if you're not implementing, if it's just confusing you, what is the point?

21:47And so stackwrap is that place where you can solidate everything into one place, single sign on. You see everything in one place, whether it's your CRM, whether it's your Jera James Academy, whether it's your email, whether it's your calendar, whether it's your Monday.com, whether it's whatever it happens to be all in one place. And now they have an individual option as well. So if you're an individual, get on over to stackwrap.com. But if you are a brokerage or you are a team, no matter what size you are, this company is absolutely blowing up right now. And their pricing right now is not what it's going to be a year from now. So if you have a team of 10, a brokerage of 3000, a whatever it happens to be, head on over to stackwrap.com. Talk to one of their reps and get going. I promise you won't regret it, especially as a brokerage or a team. You can actually see what your people are doing. You can see heat maps of where they are. There's so much you can do. Go check them out. You won't regret it. Stackwrap.com. So what's okay. So let's let's stand this topic for a second because NWMLS because I think this was a big deal.

22:49First off, do you think it was a big deal? Yeah. Or do you guys look at this as just another Tuesday? No, it's no, it's a big deal. Do you agree this is a big deal? I definitely think it was a big deal. I mean, number one to now have the ability to pre-marketing in one of the biggest cities and markets in the country. Absolutely. Number two, the fact that now listings that come from Northwast, some of us and go into Zillow are going to have to show the agent's contact information brokerage brand with equal prominence. Yeah, that was the part. That was the part that I don't feel like anybody paid enough attention to, including myself because I was planning on covering that in a podcast because it was like, it was okay. Now we have pre-marketing and then they call it a list, what was the thing called the 21-day thing? Not list first. I forget the name of it. It was an actual term for it. It was up to 21 days or something like that. It was like, okay, all right. So you have this. They're basically not only getting what they want, they're getting way more than what a lot of other places will offer. So obviously something happened in there that they were like, we're not going to win this. But the big thing was that the seller had the option during that time frame to whether it was going to be shown, whether it was going to be open houses, whether you could accept offers, whether it would go to portals or not.

24:01And that if it went to a portal that it was very specific in its language of how the listing agent would be displayed, what the font would be like, where it would be, how prominent it would be. And I was looking at that and I'm going, okay, look, I got friends on all sides of this, right? And you all say a lot of things that I can agree with. You say it, we all know who the others are, they say it, and I'm like, that makes sense, that makes sense, this doesn't, that doesn't. I don't know who wouldn't like the idea that the listing agent being prominent regardless. Why know who wouldn't like that, Zillow wouldn't like that. But from the industry, I don't know who wouldn't like that, right? And that was a big, did I miss anything with that? That was a big part of it. And I'm going to have a massive win for all agents. Again, I keep coming back to this. The positives that have come from that are benefits to all agents. This is not just a benefit solely to agents that are part of Compass International Holidays. The fact that the contact information brokerage brand name and contact information, phone number, email, actual information that's valid.

25:04Is of the listing agent is there with equal prominence is huge. We've said for a long time, one of the things that we are pushing for, one of the things that we are driving towards is we want to get the listing agent's contact information back on their listings. It has been taken from them and it's been, they've been made irrelevant to the support of the spoils. Well, they won the listing. You should have some benefit. The portals in particular, Zillow has made it their business model and try to make the listing agent irrelevant and invisible. And we don't believe in that. And in fact, I would argue that the buyers are well served by actually having the knowledge and the information not caught up in some massive bait and switch. How many people actually think they're going to the listing agent and they're not. And so the fact that now buyers who are searching on Zillow can see that and then they can make the decision. And who knows more about that listing than the listing agent. Correct. You know, otherwise it's going to someone who paid enough money gets it and now has to call and do an image between it and try to figure out about that property when you have it right there.

26:04Like here's the impact. And so the fact that now that information is going to be on there with equal prominence, I think that is a massive win again for the industry overall. And I actually, I've heard from agents from other companies that are not part of the national oldies that are incredibly excited about this. They're excited about coming soon. They're excited about having that. They're excited about now. Watermarks on watermarks being right. So that's another one. There's all these elements to it that I think are really beneficial. And so I don't see if you're in the business of supporting agents. How you would not be supportive of that. The only entities that would disagree with these things be impositive are those whose business model conflicts with it. And I was going to say like the next war, let's just say that that becomes the waterfall that now goes across the country and it becomes the example of the toughest MLS in the country will do that. Well, then let's just now push it across right. The next war, the next legal fee, the next law is going to be dual agency now because now they're calling the listing agent. And how's that going to be handled. And like now it gets into this whole like I feel like when it comes to dual agency, we have gone to a complete other direction now because everybody's afraid of getting sued.

27:15And they're like, well, no, no, I don't believe in dual agency. Like just as if there's just this adherent, you know, dishonesty that comes with it when like the listing agent was the one that was supposed to sell the property. Like if you look at listing agreements, the whole thing about the co-op was the idea that if someone else brought it, I'm allowed to share. Feel like we've lost that and I'm not going to go off on a tangent and have us go down that. That's the next battle once you start displaying listing information off of the listing agent. I agree with you that it's become this, this topic that everyone has sort of sequestered away as this terrible thing. Yeah. Now I'm a massive proponent of buyer agency and I think buyer agents have incredible value. That's a huge part of our business, right. So you can believe in that, but also you don't need to demonize dual agency. Now there are some states that very self this in some markets, they're not allowing to all agents. That was where I was going. And there were some agents who don't, but I also, and sometimes when we talk about dual agency, we always assume it's done in a way that is nefarious or that someone is being deceitful.

28:20I don't. So I'm saying the industry is starting to look at that because the kid that had this massive lawsuit, they're like the kid who always gets in trouble and now their default is that they're doing something bad. And it was like, no, no, I think there's another host to sell the property. There's also another really important point, which is portals don't sell homes, right portals do not sell homes professionals do, right. Zilla doesn't sell homes agents do right. In most markets, average around 90% of transactions are have an agent representative buyer and agent representative seller, which means 90% of the transactions are happening agent to agent. Sure. Any listing that's then out there on the internet is also on other portals. So the number of weeks on research around this, the number of buyers that are coming directly from, let's say, just Zilla is incredibly small. And so we're also, I think people are getting really caught up in something that's actually not that big of a phenomenon. And every time I hear this, I would say, let's stop assuming that agents are acting in a certain fairies on ethical.

29:20If you believe in the quality of your agents at your company and you hold a high bar, now every company might not do that, you can find ones who are nefarious if we're going to use that word. And then that doesn't I would expect that if a company has people like that, then they ask them to leave the company. We've done that for a long time. And I know, you know, the brands are not part of companies and national holdings. They're leaders did the same. And so that's more about just managing your company and have good people. Yeah, if I played devil's advocate and then I answered my own devil's advocacy. That's even a word. I would say that research that was done as far as 90% not being dual agency was also before you started displaying listing information of the agent, you know, front. So if that starts happening and that flows across the country, do a latency is going to go up. So when I start to look at that, it's like a game of jenga, you do this and this moves and that moves, whatever, I could see a world where then now all of a sudden there's going to be higher disclosures that here's the listing agents info you fully understand that you are calling the person that's doing I could see where that goes. Having said that in a world where you don't do that or do that, I think the listing agents information should be on the property.

30:25Absolutely. That is. That is. Disclosures are a good thing. You know, I agree. You know, we we had disclosures at compass the compass brand in our three phase marketing strategy. We've had that for well over the last year. Yeah, long before no one asked for that. No one mandate we do that we just did it because why not. And I actually think the interesting disclosures, the one that the buyers or really the people just browsing online should really get, which is you're not actually seeing the true listing agent. Yeah, how many people are aware of that to school? I believe me. I'm with you. I think that's a whole other like we pick sides and jump back and forth and look, my state Connecticut, right. I actually think that they did it right from what I've seen so far, which was everybody held it off as a victory that they weren't allowing private exclusives. But the truth was they were allowing them with a disclosure that the seller signed understanding that if you do it this way, here's potentially what that means. You're not putting it here. You're not doing whatever. If a seller wants to do that, I'm like, go for it. That's awesome. They're doing what they know they're doing. It's okay.

31:30What I don't like is taking away all option and not even getting that to this. I like the seller being able to pick this or pick that or do as long as they understand what they're doing. A lot of the industry when they argue about it, they go, yeah, but it's back to the various thing, but the compass agents are talking them into it and they're doing. And I can't speak to that. I don't know either way. I just don't know. I just don't know. We make rules around people doing things wrong. We make rules around with the assumption they're going to do them right. I've heard this argument before and it actually is insulting, I think, to clients and consumers in this country. It's people saying almost you're saying your basic right? You're saying that they're not smart enough. They're too stupid to know. Yeah, like just be honest or say what you're implying, which is that a seller can't make up their mind that a compass agent is going to concoct this incredible story to convince the client to do a thing. It really is. By the way, it doesn't mean it doesn't happen. I'm sure there's people who have done it, but that doesn't mean that that's the story.

32:31It's like you can't on one hand to this side say, oh, a homeowner is 48 times more wealthy than a renter because they're smarter. Don't be dumb and rent a house and then over here ago, they're too stupid to know that they're and it's just like, are there situations sure? Well, there's a simple, a simple and beautiful answer to that is we live in the United States of America where competition, capitalism and free will and choice are the bedrock of our country. And so what makes our country great is that we give people the free will to decide on their own. And it is our job, especially as agents, where advisors, really not salespeople or advisors. Our job to give the client the information, let them make the decision. And the funny thing is when you actually sit down and talk to agents and I think a lot of the people that have pushed back against these strategies have not actually sat down and talked to agents because if they really did, they would find that there is no benefit. There is absolutely no inherent benefit to try to convince the seller to pre-market a home. If it doesn't make sense for them. At the end of the day, as a brokerage business as agents, we want to get transactions done. We want to do the thing that's going to help get transactions done in the case of sellers sell their home as fast as possible for the most amount of money with the least amount of hassle, with buyers, find the right house at the right price, do it quickly.

33:47There is no value in adding layers to that process. And so I sort of say, let the clients decide and stop pretending that consumers in this country can't make decisions on their own. The other thing is about the states that have put that into place, that's actually great. Because what it does is it protects private exclusives. It says, you absolutely can do it. We just require that you sign up for that. I saw that. I think the article I read put it off as like a terrible loss for you guys. And then I read it and I went through it and I went, this might describe exactly how I feel about this. Yes, in most situations, people are going to get more with more demand, more whatever. Awesome. Not in every situation. There are very specific whatever. But in most, yeah, they are no doubt about it. It doesn't mean I eliminate the seller's choice to do what they want to do with their home. Like I'm still on that side as well. So I kind of see both. And I'm just like, again, it's like this is a marketing strategy.

34:49So I've heard a lot over the last year about maximum exposure equals maximum price. And you need to be out on the market and all these things. And I say, okay, great. That's actually completely relevant. Everything we're talking about. All we're talking about is the idea of pre-marketing a home is using. I think of private exclusives and coming soon and three phase market overall is very simply as a pricing tool. All it is is a pricing tool. It's a tool to help you price a property, build interest in demand. A CMA is a pricing tool. Right. So all it is is a pricing tool. What seller wouldn't want a tool like that at their disposal? The only people who are against that are those whose business model conflicts with it. That is it. If maximum exposure equals maximum price, great. Then you can put the listing on the market. There's nothing that I go one step further, which is that we can't assume people's motivation. If everyone's motivation was maximum price, investment deals wouldn't exist. Right. Because what are investments? What are wholesale? What are people who are flipping properties by 60 to 70% of LTV putting money in knowing that that seller could get more if they went through a different situation.

36:02If they went through a different process, they went through everyone's motivation is different. So the majority of people sure they think I want highest price and whatever and we're going to talk in a second about some of that in a second too. But I also don't think you can assume what somebody's motivation is. Well, some people don't want that. Some people don't. Some people want all different choices. But at the end of the day, let's say someone is looking to maximize the price on their home, which most people want to do. Right. So if you're looking to maximize the price of your home, why wouldn't you want to use a tool that can help you do that? That has nothing to do. You know, private exclusives are not off market listings. And I think a lot of our competitors have conflated these two things intentionally to try to confuse people. You've never heard myself, Robert, Netta, leaders of our brands, Phil Blight, Pam Leibman, others talk about this idea of off market listings. Off market listings are specific tool for certain type of client, certain type of property in new on situations. That is not what pre-market is. Pre-market is exactly as it says pre-marketing. And so if you have a tool that can help you come to market, better prepared, better priced, why wouldn't you want to use that? And anyone who's against that, again, it's because most likely they're business model conflict.

37:17Take this quick break from the podcast to talk about mosaic. You've heard me talk about it before, but man, has there been changes? When you look at what's going on in our industry right now, whether you're an individual, but especially if you're a team or a brokerage, and you look at rocket buying redfin and then Mr. Cooper, and you look at the Zillow Super app, and all of these things, you need to be asking what do I need to do to compete moving forward? Because what they're doing is they're building end-to-end ecosystems in what I call the economy of convenience. And your people are going to go what's for convenience, not just who's taking care of them. And if you can't match them and you can't offer an end-to-end economy for them to actually operate in, then we're going to have a problem, right? And so this is your place to do it. You know, one of the great things about our industry is that we come up with amazing tools, amazing tech tools. Problem is we have so many different ones, and every time we use a different one, we miss an opportunity to get a consumer used to the same one, they would then use post-close, which is where all the value is. So we have them use something for transaction management. We have them use something for e-signature, we have them use something for forms, we have them use something to make an offer, we have them use something, and it's all different convoluted.

38:24Mosaic makes it very easy all the way from search to property, and organization to making an offer to the forms, to transaction management, to a client facing app, to post-close follow up everything all in one place, and every time they use it along the path of getting their home or selling their home, they get more and more comfortable with it, which only adds to the option to the availability to the chance that they're actually going to use that thing post-close, which is where it all matters. It's branded to you, they know about you, you're giving them information they want, it's following up in ways post-close that statistically we know they want to hear from you. So if you're not using Mosaic yet, make sure you go check out mosaicmsik.io, get it for yourself, your team, your brokerage right away. So let's talk, I want to get into this Zillotax study in a second here, but I want to see, I don't know if you'll answer this or not, when you guys saw the NWMLS, I feel like I'm like listening to NWA, but when you guys saw the, yeah, straight out of Seattle, when you guys saw the NWMLS ruling, where were you, and what was your response?

39:36Where was I? I'm trying to remember. And don't tell me you were like, okay, what's my next, come on, I know you guys, if you were near each other, you were probably high five and you're so hooting and hollering. I'm trying to remember when, I want it, because the last couple weeks are a bit of a blur, I want to say it was home, because I don't think it was, I would have remembered it was found out about the ruling. Yeah, I would have remembered if it was during the day, I think I was, I was home. How do you find out? I'm pretty sure via text message. I was going to say it wasn't from real estate news.com. No, Robert texted you or someone. I got a text from someone. There's probably fist calls in the internet, I definitely picked up the phone and called a few people, but you know, I'll tell, I do remember so Chris Nelson, who is the regional vice president for the compass brand in the Northwest, okay? who is at the center of his. Oh, he's got to be, yeah. She's been at the ground zero of this whole thing. Okay. And I remember seeing her reaction.

40:37Yeah, she must have been like, yeah. I was sort of looking to see what she, and she was so excited. And I think, you know, one felt vindicated for the fact that over the last year plus, a lot of our agents, compass agents, have taken a lot of flack for this. Yeah. And I think they stood their ground on something that they believed in and carried this. This wasn't just the company. Now, all of them had to really be a part of this and be bought into it. And so I think all of them felt incredibly vindicated. A lot of them were actually really surprised. I think a lot of them were so. Because the NWMLS was just so like, adamant. Is that? I think people for so many years were so used to feeling like there was no shot that things like this didn't change. Things like this couldn't happen. And I think that when it did, it was almost as if, wow, look what is possible. Look what actually, none of this has to be. Again, it's not the government mandating this. These are private entities that are coming up

41:37with rules that are serving themselves. We don't have to operate in that system. And so I definitely felt good about it, but when I saw the reaction from our leaders in the market, that's when I knew, okay, this is a really big thing. Yeah, I remember when I saw it, I was thinking to myself, I'm like, how, I almost text you guys, like you guys must feel pretty good. I will say though, a little bit of a plug to Ethan Glass or Chief Legal Officer, Timothy Letzin, you know, on our legal team. We have an amazing team. Ethan Glass. Yeah, Ethan is our double-o-seven. Ethan Glass is a secret agent. He is Ethan Glass. Ethan Glass, yeah. So Ethan's our Chief Legal Officer, and him and his team are amazing. So I had a lot of confidence going into it, and I sort of just, sometimes with these cases and things, you have to step back and just look at it very practically when you remove the legal side of it. Just like, sort of ask yourself these questions. It didn't make any sense to me that this shouldn't be a thing that's possible. If we learn anything in this industry though, it doesn't. Yeah, things don't always make sense to me. It doesn't have to be right. Yeah, it's about what you can litigate.

42:38And Ethan and the team, I trust. Yeah, I feel like some of the stuff you guys put out there, you kind of know, like it comes back and it's a loss or it's not where you wanted it to be or whatever, but you guys look at it from your perspective, you're like, we're making headway. Like, we're now at the conversation. Now we're doing, it's like a, yeah. We are, we are relentless. Let's drift on a rock. In our, it is. We are relentless in our commitment to doing these things, to supporting our agents. If we look, this is what part of what I think makes our company great is that we are not the kind of company that just gives up easily. That's just not in our dream. Like that. And drift on a rock. Keep going. And if you've driven a rock, a drift wins. If you take an L, you take a loss on it. Yeah. That's just a learning opportunity. Okay, that's in work. Let's now pivot. Right. And I think there have been a lot of examples through this where there have been things that aren't necessarily the public losses, but stuff where we're like, all right, we think this works. Oh, it doesn't work. Okay, let's try something different. Right. So it's the, it's the, it's, I mean, it's the Instagram. There's no W's and L's, wins and losses.

43:39It's wins and learning. It's like, we're getting here regardless. Like, that's the way you guys look at it, right? We get your perspective. It's like, we're getting here. This is where we belong. But we learned from that. Let's change it. Let's do this over here. We do this over here. That's kind of how you guys view it. Absolutely. You don't look at it as, all right. You know, back to our, back to our side of the, you know, side of the bus and we'll just keep doing it how we were doing it. Not in the slime. So I couldn't be further from how we think about it. Okay. So now talk to me about another thing that's been a little controversial. The Zillotax study. Okay. Zillotax. No one likes taxes. So I have heard so much about this, right? And yeah, I think you guys called it the Zillotax. And there was a study done and many have criticized this study saying it comes from you guys that putting a property, correct me if I'm wrong, putting a property on Zillow you guys found has actually cost 1.3%. Yep. Now again, I'm not trying to be wish, I can make it our own both ways here because there is such thing as scarcity and that it does actually create the best offer you're gonna have. You know, that's why, I mean, even when you put a prop in the market,

44:39that's why you say your first offer is your best offers. You know, talk to me about the Zillotax study. What is it? What does it mean? That's interesting because you bring up scarcity. Because actually, I see it completely different. So the Zillotax came from the data science team at Compass that by Dave Crosby or Chief Data Officer and Mike Simon's in our chief office. You've known Mike for a long time. He's amazing. So him, Dave, our amazing team, they looked at approximately 800 listings that were not on Zillow and then compared them to similar cohort that were on Zillow. What they found is that the listings were not on Zillow. On average, again, looking at the averages sold for about 1.3% more. Therefore, the listings that were on Zillow, sold for about 1.3% less. Now, why is that? I actually think it makes a lot of sense. So intuitively, let's step back for a moment. Think about a listing when it's on Zillow. What actually looks like on that listing page? You're on Zillow.com, you have a listing. What is on there? Days on market, price drop history,

45:40estimates, climate score, flood score, walk scoreability, all these things. First, and working backwards, right? All these risk scores, they're completely arbitrary. They're completely made up. There is no government body or government agency that says, here is the definitive way to model rhythm. It's a completely made up negative insight, right? So it's completely arbitrary made up. Then you have the estimate. Again, as we know, not accurate. So you have sellers who... I wish it was, by the way, I just looked my house out. It would be great. It would be great if it was accurate. I've never heard a seller or an agent tell me the estimate was accurate. We know, actually, Zillow shut down their entire I-buy business because it wasn't accurate. So you have now a price on there that is showing potential buyers, a number that's not accurate. And then you have, days on market, price drop history. None of these things are characteristics of the home. A characteristic of a home is, does it have a pool or more? How many bedrooms does it have? Where is it located? So you have all these negative insights.

46:41And what there is flashing ads to buyers, saying, hey, see this house you're looking at, which you probably haven't been to yet, it's not as good as you think. That's an interesting take. And you probably should actually pay less. In fact, we know there are now on Zillow listings, these recommended prices that they have on there, encouraging buyers to bid less than the ask price. So if you have a listing that's on a website, and that website is littered with things that are lit up saying to buyers, pay less, pay less, pay less, this home is not as good as you think, and it would make sense that homes on that website are going to sell for less, because you're basically telling all these buyers, forget, again, have nothing to do with the quality of the home. These are simply just arbitrary characteristics. And so it would make sense if you're on a website like that, that you're gonna get people who come in and low ball and wanna pay less. Now people will say, well, don't people have a right to know, days on market, price drop history? How do you, because I was gonna ask you, how do you respond to that?

47:42Yeah, so I hear this all the time. There's different ways to argue it. I can say, well, great, doesn't the seller deserve the right to know how many times that buyer has put in bids? Does that seller deserve the right to know that buyer's buying capability, what their financing situation is up front, all sorts of things, right? We don't, it's not a two-way street. So it's not even a fair argument to begin with. But again, I come back to days on market are not a characteristics of the property. They're just not, right? Days on market are really just a function of how well you price the property. We know that what's, I think the status, over 40% of the homes are sale on the market right now, have a price drop. Does that mean 40% of the country? Yeah, in some cases it's tired. Does that mean, if Lord is up 50%, so good. Does that mean in Florida, 50% of the homes are deficient? 50% of the homes are bad, 50% of the no. It just, in many cases, they actually were misprice relative to the market. And so you're basically attaching this completely arbitrary metric that hurts the value of the property. Now what will determine the value of the property? The value of the property is going to be determined by, again,

48:43as I said, the characteristics of the property. Where's it located? What year was it built? The amenities, the finishes, whatever it is. And so I have a hard time understanding how people are getting so caught up on this idea of price drop history and days on market. Ultimately, it doesn't actually help the seller in any way, shape or form. And I still have not heard an argument as to how it helps the buyer. It doesn't change the characteristics of the property. That's an interesting take. So your position is away from scarcity, away from demand, away from whatever. It is that when they are going to this public portal, the portal has all of these triggers that, let's face it, it's psychological, we know it's psychological, the colors that are on there for a very specific reason. Placements are out there. The reason why you guys were very specific on font and where it is, there is a lot of science that goes inside. All right. My wife yesterday took a diet code, diet Pepsi. And it had the little thing here, where you, whatever, whatever. But it was in a way where like when you actually do it,

49:45it shows the diet coke so that everybody on this side is seeing it, then she went and looked at a diet coke and it was in the wrong spot. You never see the branding. And she's bringing me through this whole thing about how marketing and this is improper branding and how has nobody noticed this yet and how has nobody, you know, what she's getting all like up in arms about this, right? And it's, it's, it's, it just goes to show you how psychological it is so it's not an exit. It's a good argument. I'm not here to argue with you. That's a good argument. Like the fact that that could be what it is is that they're looking at it. Nothing to do with scarcity because in many cases, these listings are all on other, they're on a, but they're on a, they're on a, they're on a, they're being trying to try to get a deal. Because they're going, here's the estimate, here's what you should be offering. Here's all the negative things. Here's where it is, go. Here's where, make sure it's complete sense. I'm, I'm gonna start rapid firing because I want to get a lot of things out with you. A, R, A. That's, by the way, that's, that's the Zillow tax. Yeah. So there's nothing to do with scarcity. That's a good argument, by the way. I mean, I, I get, like I said, we could spend a half hour going, you know, but it's a good argument. The other last thing I'll say about it is.

50:46I like hearing counter arguments. Like I, I like that. That's a different argument that scarcity. Yeah, because again, these listings are, are on in many cases, the brokerage website for the world to see all these other portals. When you understand psychologically what's happening, that's a good point. The other thing to keep in mind here is that, how many homes actually get sold on sale? Very, very, very few, right? Sales, as I said earlier, get done via agents. Listings are on Zillow. Most of the time are also on other websites and other portals. Yeah. Exactly. So this idea that sellers, sellers believe that Zillow is essential to the home buying process. It's not. Yeah. Agents are essential to the home buying process. Think of it this way. If, for any agent listening, if I said to them, you have a home and you can sell it. You have one tool you can use to sell it. I'm going to give you a choice. The MLS or Zillow. What do you think they would all say? I think 100% of them would say the MLS. Why? Because that's actually where homes get sold. And so that tells you that it's not essential to the process of feeding everything.

51:46OK. So like I said, good argument. That's my marketing brain looks at that and goes, the data on it. I've never done the data. But that's a good, like, people do. There's a reason why everything's the same color. There's a reason why it's, I mean, it's all done for everything on there is on purpose. It's like when you watch a movie and you see some throwaway line or you see the weather change or you see everything's on purpose. Like the amount of stuff they took out, I took a class in college on movie genres. And now I can't watch a movie because you always know what's going to happen. It's all like they do it on purpose. Like here we go. Well, we know how this one's going to go. We still like it. Kind of sucks. Kind of sucks. Anyway, let's do rapid fire here. A-W-A-R-A. A-W-A. I'm still on the N-W-A. A-R-A. American Real Estate Association. You guys, Remax was a big one. But especially you guys jumping on board. It doesn't mean that all of your members are now members. I think they got a three-year or something. It's like 20 bucks a year or something. They have the choice to do it. But let's be honest, you guys went out and you were going after A-R-A and not N-A-R.

52:48Talk to me about that. Is that where you guys want to see the future? Is that you guys? I already know how you feel about N-A-R. Is that we don't need to go down that train again. But is that you guys putting your horses behind and going, we just want something different? Even if we don't know if it's the A-R-A, we don't know if they're going to make it. But we don't like what we see over here. What you guys putting your support behind that? Didn't want to be joined the board? So Jason Haver was a compass agent. One of the co-founders alongside Marie-Ciola, Ivanski. And so he's someone I know well. And it's been a great agent here for a long time. It comes back to the point I made earlier. Number one is about competition. Part of the reason why I believe that N-A-R has so badly underserved agents for so long, is because they've had no incentive to do so. There's no competition. No accountability. When you have no competition, you have no accountability. When you have no accountability, there's no incentive to make anything better. It is, look, it's an enviable place to be as a business.

53:50That's a fantastic place. You do not have to compete with anyone. You can just do whatever you want. But that has massively underserved the customer of N-A-R, which are agents. Now, in a world of competition, if there are other associations that people can join, what does that mean? That means now that there is choice. And if there's choice, that means now associations have to start competing for agents to be a part of them. And what is going to get agents to want to join one versus the other? It's going to be the services they offer, the support they offer, the things they do, the things they don't do. And that's the outcome we want. It's not so much I want to see, I don't want to see N-R, I want to see this one versus that one. I just want to see these get better. And there's not an agent in the country that would tell you that they are content with the support they get from these organizations. No, it's also my God. And so when you start looking how intertwined N-A-R is to everything? Of course, in good, freaking luck. Again, without competition, there's all sorts of things you do not have to do. And so, yeah, exactly.

54:51Just another trick. Another trick. Another trick. Another trick. And I'm excited for what the American Real Estate Association is going to do because I think they're going to push really good ideas and good concepts out there. And then others can react to it. Either others can get on board or come up with their own version of that. But ultimately, it really is just about creating competition. Again, we're the company that pushes back against mandates. So we're never mandating that any of our agents join one or the other. It is completely up to them. We just want to see them have that. But you did, you guys did put your name alongside them. Oh, certainly. Like, certainly we, because you want to see that competition. You want to see that. It's not because you think that 100% of your mind they're the answer in 10 years. They might be. But you're going, right now, the way you're doing this, you're not the answer. That's right. And we do change. Or let's find something new. And the initial things that the American Real Estate Association has put out there are things that we certainly are supportive of. Their intention is to be far more agent first.

55:53Their intention is to actually act as a group that supports agents, that does the things that agents write. And that ultimately is, it's not hard to get us to be supportive of something. You just have to be operated on behalf of agents and do what's in their best interests. But the alternative is you could have just ignored them. So the fact that you did means that you're like going, hey, like you said, hey, they're here too. Let's make some changes. We're excited for that. OK. Tell me your stance or compass a stance, because you've seen now whether it's MRED, whether it's real tracks, whether it was, what do they call it, bright MLS, whether it was any of these ones. Do you want to see a national MLS? Would you like to see an end to local MLS's? And we should really just be like going, like, stop playing all these games and all this different one. And this is the way, in a perfect world. I'm talking, let's act for a second, what I said, 30 seconds ago about how intertwined everything is and how difficult it is to get change in this industry. It's 10 times the size of the Titanic

56:54to try to get anything to turn, because everybody's getting paid and everybody's getting, it's kind of like I saw in Europe, they were the first ones to have listings that went direct to AI. And I said, yeah, you know why that was in Europe and not here? Because there's too many hands in the cookie jar before that that are making hundreds of millions of billions of dollars. Like, they're not going to let you go straight there. That eliminates them. It's very much like that with NAR and the MLS, those places. Would you like to see a national MLS, or are you just again pushing for competition, or what is your stance? I think what's more important to us is competition that ultimately fixes the issues and the challenges that we've experienced. So we're just for the purpose of MLS's. I want to see MLS's drop restrictions, drop mandates, drop fines on things like pre-marketing. Remember the work, so they work for. Of course. Of course. Now again, I'm foolish. No, I'm saying they need to remember who they work for. Yes, my wife ran in MLS and it drives her crazy, the number of fines and everything they give out. And she ran in MLS and she's like, we work for you.

57:58Like, you know, look, you've got your bad actors. Don't get me wrong. But I'm not a prophet. I'm not a camera you set up. Every time I go five miles over the speed limit, you're hitting me with tickets and whatever. Like you work for me. I mean, just think about the fact that CIRM MLS, if you go on their website now, you'll see this. If you report, you can report an agent pre-marketing listing, right? So you can report some agent doing it. And on their website, they have the choices. You can select them. Where you saw the pre-marketing that wasn't supposed to happen. One of the options is verbal communication. So just think about that for a moment. We have one of the biggest MLS's in the country is saying we want to know when people are pre-marketing the property as if that is a terrible thing. And we are going to consider it valid for you to say, someone verbally communicates you and then we're going to find you based on that. That is insane. I don't have a better description. I'm just going to ask tonight. All right, we'll go with that. It's crazy. It's actually crazy to me.

58:59So what do we want? I want to see an end to MLS's finding and hurting agents because they're trying to serve the best interests of their clients, particularly their sellers. I certainly believe in strong MLS's for sharing data, for making it easy to share and exchange listings. We're not against the concept of MLS. But I want an MLS that operates with the agent as their client and not this version of the MLS that sort of comes into play, that what the MLS used to be is really what we want to see. Now, if a national and a Howard Hanna version. Yeah, it could be the Hobie Hanna version. Certainly. No, Hobie's spot on about this. Look, if a national MLS could do it, amazing. Yeah. If local MLSs can do it, that's great too. But we need to see that. We're getting to the point now where I think these MLSs and people have talked about this have lost their way. And they've gotten away from really their initial intention. Not to mention, they're profiting off of agents

1:00:02in a way that I think is wrong. That it's not their job to be instituting a business that profits off of agents by restricting them and then finding them from doing their things. All the very people they're supposed to be working on. Exactly. And actually the rule base should be based off of those people. Yeah. And so that's ultimately where we want to see on the MLSs and we're going to continue to push for that. And look, luckily there are MLSs in the country that understand this. MRED is one of them. Right, is one of them. There are MLSs that get this. And so what I hope is that all the most restrictive MLSs just follow the innovative MLSs that are seen. What's important in doing that? So is this a safe characterization then? Is it safe to say that you're not trying to right now form one national MLS? What you're doing is you're partnering with these different places and having them offer national exposure, like anybody can point in as a similar to the last thing we talked about as a form of competition to get other people to do similar things and say, hey, stop being rules crazy

1:01:03and doing that is absolutely correct. By doing that and creating competition, it will create the ecosystem to make this game in town in other words. Like if you can't, if this local one is going to whatever, then you can do this one. Exactly. Which guess what? That's no different for us as a brokerage. Right? If we don't do something that is against our agents, best interests or hurts our agents, they can go to another company. And they would. That does not exist in the MLS space. Correct. Okay, so all right, next topic. Because I want to get as many of these as possible. Big conversation in the industry right now. We are heading to three major brands. Okay? Like that's where they say we're going. Your thoughts on that and do you think that's good or bad? And is there a place in the future for boutiques? Yeah, so 100% there's a place for boutiques. There's still thousands and thousands of boutiques. But whenever everybody says to me, like, is there going to be a place for boutiques? I'm like, do you think all people are the same and they go to bit? Like some people like Starbucks, some like Dunkin' Donuts.

1:02:06There is always going to be the counter point. The more that these big companies, like yours and others and gobble up these companies, whatever, the more of a place for boutiques because there's people who want that. Well, I mean, we're near city right now. I can name more mom and pop coffee places than I can tell you where the Starbucks are. Right, right? So, of course there's a place for boutiques. Of course we both use this in here, by the way. Yeah, I wouldn't know. I'm not a big coffee trucker though. So, it's more like a coffee. I do a lot of things like fake coffee, but yeah. You see the signs, I just show you don't see Starbucks as much as you can see. You know what's funny? I stopped doing it so much because I was doing it all the time and I was just like, I don't even want this right now. I just walked by one and there it was. Now I do it when I get on stage and when I do podcasts, little, little, little, little you need on the throat. Got it, got it, got it. Anyway. So, absolutely a world, I see a world where boutiques continue to thrive. I absolutely disagree that it's going to three brands. First off, we are not one brand. So, Compass International Holdings is a company, but within it we're nine brands, right? So, you've got nine different companies

1:03:07operating within our company. So, that's nine right there, not to mention all of the other brands. Now, consolidation is definitely happening, but I think we're an example of consolidation doesn't mean you're only going to one brand. There's not an agent in any of our nine companies that wants to be at one brand. Please excuse this quick break from your episode for me to let you know about Jared James Academy. Guys, if you are watching this right now and you are not in the academy yet, what are you waiting for? The academy is literally the best value in real estate and that's not just me saying it, that's our members saying it. I got a message the other day from someone the other day and they said, I feel like I'm ripping you off. And that's because the academy is only $99 a month or $1,097 for the year and it is all of it is a complete tax write off. I'm right now in the middle of doing a complete series on AI so that you know how to get discovered, how to use it to be efficient. Then we're gonna talk about planning for the next year. Then we're going into a multi episode series on session series on getting listings.

1:04:09Like for $99 a month, guys, if you follow me, if I'm a voice you listen to, this is something that you can't afford not to be in. You need to be in the academy. Go to JaredJamesToday.com, forward slash academy. If you're watching this and you're like, oh shoot, you know, how does this, what does it come with? Guys, me personally, I do two live training sessions every single month and if you can't be there, then they're gonna be recorded. They're available on your dashboard. They're available on your JaredJames Academy app. You can watch them on demand. We have notes for you to download with exactly what I talked about, exactly what you need to do. All of our template scripts and dialogues, we've got trainings from our coaches on very specific topics. Like literally guys, this is the best value in real estate. If you're not in yet, you need to be there. JaredJamesToday.com, forward slash academy. Let's get in there as we head into the new year and make sure that you have not just your best year ever, but let's make sure that your career goes to a whole different place. I'll see you in the academy. Right, so how does, okay, with that statement. So how does, you're about to roll out technology

1:05:10to the nine brands, right? So that now effectively means whether they're at better homes and gardens, whether they're at ERA has a new president now, whether they're like any of these different places, they're effectively, if they're in the same markets, using the same technology. So you consider that still separate brand or how do you, how do you in your head justify and say that is not separate brand? Well, no, it's absolutely separate brand. It's absolutely separate brand. So the brand first off is what the client sees when the community came with the agent, what the agent puts out in the market, right? So an ERA agent is putting out ERA, Colobanker agent is Colobanker, a compass agent is compass. A corporate agent is corporate. So just because they might share underlying technology or systems or tools, they absolutely are different brands. I mean, you can see it literally when you physically walk into their offices. And so that's something we absolutely believe in. Ultimately, we believe in choice, right? I want agents and their consumers to have as much choice as they can. And so I don't actually think there's an issue with lots of brands. Brands are not the issue.

1:06:11That's not, and I think people have tried to create this thing where, oh, everyone's under the same brand. They're not. A lot of people have said, and I don't believe in this at all, just because I've been behind the scenes and I've talked to you and I've talked to Robert and otherwise, you know, that you guys are going to turn ERA into compass. You're going to turn, you know, southeast into whatever. And they have this big thing that like that, that eventually it's all just compass. Here's the way you know that that will never happen and doesn't actually make sense. And that's your statement. You're like, that's not our plan. Absolutely, absolutely. Not our plan will never happen. Okay. Let's use that example. I was at the ERA conference in Austin. When you and I were, when you and I saw each other. All right. So if I would have gone on stage and said, hey, everyone, let me ask you a question. How many of you want to get rid of your brand and be compass? No hands would go up. But then they could do it. They could even go to compass. Then I could go to the compass event. Yeah. And I could say, hey, everyone from compass. How many of you want us to get rid of the other brands and make them all compass and no one raised their hand? So if no agent on either side is asking for that,

1:07:15why would we do it? And I don't know where this whole concept came from because there's no benefits of consolidating. Well, that's why I said, I don't believe it wanted it. I think what it is is I think it's others trying to fear longer and create negativity out of what is largely a really positive. We've seen it happen in the past in the industry. So like, so like I think that's where it comes from with people is that you've seen it happen. I know you guys and I know that that isn't beneficial. Then it's not smart to do. It's not that look, there is a distinct difference between compass, which by the way, we want to get into it for the sake of time, but you have the whole thing with renters and compass and it's a monopoly and all this other kind of stuff. But the point is that the reason why it's so dominant here in New York is because of what the brand means in New York, it's a very different brand than what ERA stands for. It's a very different brand than, so what I was really trying to get from you is, do you still see, because you guys are about to do this big rollout and God bless you, men, Rosa, Vee, whatever, good luck. We're in the midst of it now. It's going really well. But like do you see with all of those companies now, many of which are in the same markets,

1:08:15now they're operating with the same technology, they have the same options available to them, because it is the same, it's just branded to them. Do you still see them as, or do you think the marketplace will see them as different brands? How do you get, how do you view that? Absolutely. I think so technology is not the differentiator. The differentiator is the agent, the services they're offering, their brand, their support, and each one of these companies has all different things that they offer. Technology is just the operating system that they use. It's interesting because we look, it's take step outside of our industry for a moment. In most of their industries, there are technologies that every company is using. If you look at companies, how many companies run on Salesforce in the same industry that compete against each other? No one is saying, oh my goodness, I can't compete because this person has Salesforce, and I have Salesforce. No, Salesforce is actually configured to their needs. You look at Oracle, you look at all these systems that people use. So to us, the home platform is a technology platform that runs their business on.

1:09:16Ultimately, it should help them do more transactions, save time, create great experiences for their clients. That's what it does. But that's not what makes them valuable. Culture, vision, people, all these other things. And how they use technology. Right, so there are some agents that use every single part of the platform. There are some agents that use small parts of the platform. Right, love that. There's some and everything in between. So just because you have similar technology, doesn't you're definitely not part of the same brand because you're different brands, and you're going to use it differently, and leverage it differently. The other benefit is that the more users on the platform, the better the platform gets. And I think if I were to say to agents in all of our brands, hey, we can all use the same platform, and this platform can get 100% better every year. Constantly, would you want that? Or would you not want it to get better, have different technology? Everyone would choose the first option. And ultimately, that's what we're starting to see now. So talk to me about this rollout. Because this is, you told me about this, and I'm like, I was getting anxiety, I'm going, man,

1:10:18this is going to be fun. So you've got the tech that you are now, it's branded to each brand. It's brand to each brand. It's brand to each brand. But it's branded to them. It's branded to each brand. What's the rollout look like? When can they expect to see it? What brands are getting it, just because there's people listening who don't understand whatever. When can they, we have, I'm brand agnostic, so I've got people from all brands that follow me, all whatever. They're watching this right now. When can they expect it to be rolled out? What's that rollout going to look like? What are they getting? Like just give me like a... Yeah, so the rollout actually is happy as we speak for owned and operated brands. Okay. So that's for obviously compass previously had it. That includes Corcoran, Colbanc or Sotheby's International Realty at properties. So those brands are actually as we speak, we are rolling the platform out to all of the agents in those companies. The onboarding process will continue throughout the next couple of weeks. And then really the training in the coaching will last through the end of the year. We are doing the most incredible training in coaching. Pouch we've hired some of the top coaches in the country.

1:11:20We have a tremendous amount of resources going into it. Not just onboarding agents, but really coaching them on how to use the platform to grow their business. And so we're doing this for almost 60,000 agents in the matter of a couple months. It's actually, when you and I spoke in the spring, I was even a little unsure if we were going to be able to speak really fast. How are you going to do? We had to actually rebuild the platform for each brand. Because if I'm a Colbanc or agent, I'm logging into the Colbanc or home platform. I'm not logging into the Compass platform. The word Compass is not seen in another brand's platform. And you were showing me what was going on. You guys were taking brands that you were going to and just plopping it on the visual and going, we have to be able to do this. We were still figuring it out. We were still figuring it out. And so now, by the way, it's where real and remax are out right now. We have over 16,000 agents across those brands that are actively using the platform now that have been fully onboarded, that are using it. And I see the comments in the quotes every single day. It's incredible. The enthusiasm around it is really significant. And so I'm very confident.

1:12:21And we have an incredible team that's helping us do this. I'm very confident by the end of this year. You will see all of the agents across these brands saying something along the effect of, wow, this technology is amazing. It's changing the way I do my business. It's helping me run a better business. 2027 will be the year of rolling it out to all of our franchises and affiliates. That will kick off in the early part of 2027. And so we're going to do the same thing there. So in the next six, eight months, you're talking all brands now starting the onboarding process. By this time next year, so call it September 27, all of our brands are going to have a huge success story or keep Rory away from open wind. I can already tell you it's going to be a huge success story. Honestly, not because of me. I have an amazing team. And all of our brand leaders, this is something that our team at the company is working alongside each brand with because when you roll something like this out, no one wants a one size fits all approach. So the way we're doing it, for example, with Corcoran is different than how it's being known with Colobanker.

1:13:21It's different how we're doing it with Southern Eastern national real city. And so we're doing this with a very customized handheld approach. The other thing I've said to agents many times is if we were to email you the day that the platform is ready for you with a link and a manual and said, here you go, log in, congrats, have fun. That would be a disaster. So we are doing the complete opposite. We are doing the most intense handheld white glove, one to one. So it takes your time. They'll defound it. And one where there are thousands, literally thousands of people that are out there in person meeting with our agents. We're doing weekly in-person trainings. We have Tom Ferry, Ninja Selling, Sharag Shah, all these coaches going to these markets, doing these trainings in person. We have accountability groups. We have daily messages. We have contests, leaderboards. We're going all out. We do not want to leave anything to chance. So I'm telling you now, the outcome is going to be it was a success. And it will mostly be because the brands were amazing at being able to deliver it.

1:14:22Yeah, that's the thing. That's the thing. It's definitely daunting. I mean, I was, you know, Ori alone, our co-founder. I was talking to him about this in early July when we launched, when the platform was ready to start onboarding our first initial agents. And, you know, he is an incredibly talented engineer. And one of the things he said is he was like, look, we should be really proud. This isn't normal. And I was like, what do you mean? He said, to take a platform in only six months. Because January was when this came together. And to be in July and have this now ready for multiple brands and be ready to go, is it even some of the best technology companies in the world that moved that fast? We should be really celebrating that. So our tech team has also failed us out a little bit. I mean, that's the thing. This was to me the scariest part. Like I just said, you just had the, not real remax merger, but the acquisition, obviously. And I was just talking to some of the higher ups over there. And I'm going, like, how is this going to go down? Because you have all of these people now being told, okay, now you're going to get access to our tech. We're an AI first company and whatever.

1:15:23And like most of the industry, they've been burned over and over again. You know, it's like an abused dog. You raise their hand. They kind of pull back. Well, that's the biggest thing. It has to work. Adoption is the, you know. Number one, in order before you even think about adoption, the technology has to work. And I think to your point in our industry for so long, we've been the unfortunate recipients of technology that didn't work. Sure. Here's the next thing. And so we're committed to this one. And then a month later, you know. So exactly. So if it works, okay, now, now you have a chance. So if it works, you have a chance. And then it becomes a question of what are all the things you're doing to help drive adoption? And adoption needs to be sustainable. The only way I believe adoption can be done in a sustainable way. So you have to actually sit with agents and help them understand how these tools actually help them grow their business and make it easy for them to do that. And you've got to convince the right people in the office. Meaning there are certain people in every office that if they adopt, if they think it's right and they start singing that tune, that's another thing. And then you have brokers that have been burned so many times,

1:16:25going, this is the one, guys. This is going to be awesome. I know. And ultimately it has to work. It has to work. And so we started really early with, actually we trained all of our employees at all of our own and operate brands months before we went out to the agents. So that by the time we started actually rolling out to agents, our sales managers, our field marketing teams, all of our support folks in the field, they not only were excited about it, they used it, they knew how it worked and they could speak to a credibility. Because I'm sympathetic to that. I would never ask someone at a company, I need you to stand up there and support something that you've never used and you just have to trust me on it. And so I'm really excited for it. This was one of the most popular questions. So I put out to our group. We have a, it's our training group on Facebook is like 26,000 agents in there. And I just kind of put out, hey guys, I'm going to go talk to Compass tomorrow, I go talk to Rory. What do you want to hear about? And I heard this over and over again, they're like, how's that going to work? How's that role? How's that going to be? And you're so you're feeling good about it. You're feeling like this is... We're feeling... Get your work set cut out. Oh, it has been, I mean, we've been working on this

1:17:27every day for, since early January. Yeah. I meet with my team and our teams. We have 30 meetings at least a week on this. I mean, we are, they're the amount of thing processed stock eating. Yeah. That's just on this. The amount of processed documents and checklist and steps, this is an all out campaign. And it speaks to, as I said earlier, a little bit of the relentlessness of the company. We're never going to be okay with okay. Yeah. And so this is something that if we're going to do it, we have to do it the right way. You know, you've got to get this right. We have to get it right. All right, excellent. So we've kind of hit our time. Is there anything we haven't talked about that you want to talk about? Whatever you're not talking about. Is there anything that hasn't come up? We've been talked about AI. I'm surprised that hasn't come up. I mean, AI'd outman. I'll talk about it with you. My God, you tell my agent intelligence because that's like laughing in the world of AI. Yeah. It's just, it's... The topic is obviously, it's the most popular topic in the world across everywhere, everything right now.

1:18:27Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think, look, for me, I see this as, you know, people talk about, oh, AI, I won't replace agents, I won't do this, I won't do that. I very much believe in that. I think though, in order to do that, a couple of things have to happen, right? One, agents need to be able to have AI tools that they're disposal, or they truly can level up. And I think this is hard for people to imagine because we as an industry, I think for the last 20 years have been talking about making more productive and remove all the administrative non-core stuff, but we've never actually been able to deliver it. Correct. I think now, and I think, you know, with the home platform, we definitely can deliver it, but I think now, AI raises the stakes. We will be in a world pretty soon, where agents are not going to have to fill out paperwork, where they're not going to have to do all these administrative things. Now, in that world, what's going to happen? My estimation around this is that agents will spend more time with clients. They'll spend more time forward facing. What will happen is the best agents will work with more clients.

1:19:29We'll do more business. To me, that's no different than any other technological advance. It's just the pace of what should will happen will be a lot faster, and the degree of what will happen will be a lot greater. The other thing that's really important is we have to protect the data in our industry. This is another reason why I am often scratching my head when I hear people come out against all of these things that we're talking about. Right now, as an industry, our data has been completely taken from us. It's been sold off. It's been used by portals, MLSs, and others to profit from. But it's also just been given out to the world for free. And so what's happened is all of these AI companies have the ability to take all of our data, train their models, and build effectively competing products to compete against this. Why is it that every other major industry and business in those industries is right now, the number one thing to them is hold on a sec. You want our data, you have to get our permission, you have to pay for it. And so I believe in a world where if AI companies, if LLMs want our agent's data, their client's data,

1:20:31listing data, most valuable data in real estate, that they should have to get their permission and they should have to pay for it. They should have to pay agents for it. And the client ultimately as well. And so when I see people who are pushing back against what we're doing, I'm asking myself, are you seeing the full picture here? What's coming down on it? Are you seeing, this is, don't, company's international holdings is not your enemy. We are advocating for things that benefit all agents. The companies that would be really concerned about are the companies that have the ability to take all of our data and massively displace and disenfranchise agents. That is something we're not going to happen. And so I often, I find it very puzzling that that is that we have just gotten so comfortable as an industry to say, yeah, take all of our data. And why is it that all these other people can profit off of them? Why is it that agents who are the ones who actually have the client relationship, that win the listing, that run the transaction?

1:21:34Why is it that that data has been taken from them? They've been pushed to the side while others can profit. Do they got used to it? Yeah, and I don't believe in that. So the world that we're going to push to create is a world where that data is protected, where agents have the choice to decide where that data goes. And if people want it, they should have to pay agents for it. And ultimately in that world, that creates a world where agents have a tremendous amount of information at their disposal to be better advisors. By the way, I don't know a client that doesn't want that. Clients when they sign a listing agreement are signing, expecting their agents to have access to that information in the brokerage. They're not expecting the world and AI companies to take all that data and go to all these things with it. Yeah, it's interesting, man. I look at it like, this is a bad example, but internet 2.0 in the sense that everybody, when the internet hit, everybody said agents are gone. It's going to be, everything's going to be done without you and whatever. And what we found out was that you can't add a house to a shopping cart, right? You don't connect PayPal.

1:22:34It's an emotional experience. There's a place for technology. We, at that point, didn't even have e-signatures. There were efficiencies that came in. I'm a big believer, and this is why I called it 2.0. The role of technology is to free us up to do the things that we should be doing all along. It's just to do it more, right? Yeah, absolutely. And so it's funny to me because everyone right now is on this AI kick in every world, in the social world. Guys, don't worry pretty soon. You're not even going to have to shoot videos because you're going to have an AI agent that's going to do it for you, and they're going to do all this stuff and blah, blah, blah, blah, and all this kind of stuff. And I sit back and I go, is that going to be possible? Absolutely. Did anyone subscribe to me or follow me to watch my AI version of me get up and spout off what, no, they followed me. And what a lot of us are losing right now is the idea that AI comes with amazing efficiencies. If you'll understand them, learn them, put them to use, screw up, figure it out again, try again, like amazing efficiencies. But the more that everybody's leaning into this idea that it does everything, and that that means

1:23:36I'm not even going to be the more relevant you become. Because in a world where everybody's doing the same thing, think about it. When you see an AI graphic, don't you know immediately? Yeah, that's it. It's like, it's like, you get a poster. Here's the icons down here. Here's the thing here. It's exactly the same. When it writes something, it's exactly the same. The reason why we know how to spot it is because it's exactly the same. In a world where people go too far, which is what everybody does today, to be first, in a world where everybody goes too far and thinks that it replaces you completely. And now that means, well, that means it's doing it for everyone. Which means there's no differentiation. No differentiation. My son came to me recently, my older one, him and his cousin, they do window washing. And they're making a crap ton of money. It's unbelievable. They made this summer window washing. And they got all excited because AI built their website, which is super exciting. But then AI went in and it put in everything that needed to be done on the back end of the site for SEO, GEO, AEO, everything. They're like, Dad, can you believe this? This is whatever. And I looked at it and I went, well, that really sucks.

1:24:36And they were like, what do you mean that really sucks? And I said, you guys are just a couple of dummy teenagers. Don't know what you're doing. And it just did that for you, which means it's doing it for everyone else. So once the moment becomes that everybody has the right SEO keywords, everything on the back end of their site, the right GEO, it doesn't matter anymore. Now what's the next thing that separates you? And that's how I look at AI. I think that's actually a really interesting point. Same thing, there was a point in time where in 2007, when we first started talking, and you were surprised when I said something good. That was off camera. That was off camera. I was surprised. Anyway, anyway, you always make good points. In 2007, when iPhone first came out, there was a point in time where if you had one, you were different, you're cool. But you also had an advantage. Now we're in a world today where having an iPhone is not an advantage. The same thing with the early, it's expected. The early LLM is the same thing. I remember when Chad GPT first hit the scene. And not a lot of people knew about it. And when people were using the early days,

1:25:38it was a big advantage to people who were just cranking content. Now it's ubiquitous for the use cases it has. So people don't pay for something that's ubiquitous. The differentiator in this case is the human element. And so I think it's sort of no different than we didn't have e-signatures. We used to, and this is actually unfortunate, I talked to someone who once said, I loved when people came into the office to get their check, because I got to see them. This is what I was about. Now you have direct deposit. Now I wish everyone would come to the office every day to get their check. Because that actually culturally would be great. But there are certain technological things that we just kind of flow into our world now. The time it used to take someone to drive to the office to get their check, that time is now used in other places. And then the demands of the client, it's not, I think we're only looking at it from one side of the equation. The other side is that I actually think the demands of the client will go up. Now as the demands go up, that's more need for the engine. You need to expect more. They'll expect more. But the things they're going to expect are not going to be to your point.

1:26:39The things that AI does, because that's going to be automatically because they can get that from AI by the way. In the same way right now, every listing is on the internet. You can go see it. But what does a client really want? They want an agent's expertise. They want to be able to actually go on telling a client it was a listing sheet in front of them that the place has three bedrooms. Thank you. Yeah, I'm looking at it. Thank you. And sort of help me understand this. What do you see as the value? What do you see in the market? How are you thinking about pricing the property? And then my favorite, which is, I always say great agents are like an insurance policy. They're there to help you when things fall apart. We always assume that every transaction is smooth, the best majority are not. So that's another area where people are going to be leaning in. And in an AI world with that level of speed, I actually think there's going to be more issues with transactions. So by the way, more information, more education brings more issues. It's like a salesperson who talks too much and doesn't ask enough questions and let the customer talk. More you talk, the more objections you're bringing out. Most likely. It's the same kind of a thing.

1:27:39We're aligned on that, man. I was just talking to a buddy of mine who's in New York and he had this big bid that he was up for, right? Big bid. And everybody is sending them in at a certain time and doing like you're supposed to do. And it's one of my fundamental beliefs just because you can do something doesn't mean you should, right? It's like post-COVID. We're no longer to do live events because we can do them virtually. Yes, you can. Yes, you can. Is a difference between a YouTube video and being at the concert. Those are two different things. Even if you can watch the live stream of the concert, two different things. And he told me about this large bid and how everybody, you know, you send them in at this time, you email into this person. He showed up and he went and brought it to them and he talked to them. He was there for an hour and a half, talking to him, walking him through, talking about their kids and he gets the bid. And he's like, yeah, could I have sent it over? Absolutely. But in a world where everybody has that at their disposal and in the name of efficiency, they really just get lazy. This is how I now stand out. That's how I look at AI. I agree with you. There's plenty that's going to be super efficient

1:28:41behind the scenes, but the opportunities to be in front of the customer now to have human connection. Like, remember when, I was going to say, remember when COVID happened. Hopefully you haven't, you know, being in New York, you guys have probably completely just rounded out because it was a PTSD. I'm trying to, I'm trying to forget. Yeah. But, but, like, you remember when like COVID happened and all of a sudden, what used to be mundane just to have an interaction with a person when things first started opening up, it was like, oh my God, to go eat inside of a restaurant. It was like holy crap, whatever. In the world of AI, where you can do everything in a certain way and there's a certain efficiency, the idea of taking some things and making them human again and holding someone's hand and talking to them and doing whatever is now only going to put you. And there's, so there's two things that I think, one, you're seeing a lot of really savvy investors start to place a lot of money in real life experiences. Yeah, yes. You know, thrive capital, Josh Kushner, he just bought the LA Lakers and one of his thesis is around it seems to be the value of these sort of,

1:29:43not just brands, but experiences. Experiences, yeah. Bringing people together. You're seeing RA Manual with UFC and World Wrestling Entertainment making the same bets. There's a lot of people, Gary Vaynerchuk, talks about this all the time. There's a real movement I think right now about people assuming that, wait, hold on a sec. If so much is digital, then there might actually be more value in person. And it was funny, I was listening to a podcast over the weekend with Larry Hamilton, which things, one of the coolest people in the world. And he was talking about actually, you know, world where all your grocery show up on time, everything's purchased for you. If you have an AI agent that's just buying everything, organize everything, you run a law in milk, yeah. Yeah, you actually lose some of the friction that creates the good parts of your day to day. That's right. And it's hard for us to think about that, but we are kind of robbed of that. And then you think about when you're buying a home. So much of it is the emotional, physical personification of this experience.

1:30:43So I just don't see a role. That's what makes memories, by the way. That's what creates relationships. Relationships aren't relationships because they're perfect from the beginning. It's because you went through stuff and solved them. That's absolutely right. And that's where trust comes from as well. So you and I are very much a lot. Yeah, I just had somebody ask that question and a thing. And I just said, I think they were basically asking me about their schedule and what they do. And I said, what it sounds like you're trying to get me to answer for you is how to get you to a perfectly seamless, freedom schedule with absolutely no, you know, where's the fun on that? It's just Maui every day. The problem is when you leave. But Maui becomes boring. When you live in Maui every day, where do you go on vacation? Yeah, that's a good point. Like, you know what I mean? Like one of the beauties we have of being in the North is coming to New York. It's my God when the sun comes out. I know, you have a real, through winter. Oh yeah. It's like, there is something to that. But anyway, we're way over time. Is there anything else that you want to say, anything else you want to get across, anything else? I really just wanted to get your feelings on things today. Great catch. Anything we missed. No, this is super fun as it always is. All right, awesome. Would that be in said, guys?

1:31:46Let me know in the comments below what didn't we answer? Maybe we'll get that for next time, because we're nice and close here. We'll get that for round two. Yeah, come on. Maybe if we are close. So it's very easy to do that. So let us know what that is. If you enjoyed this, they thank you for your glory in the bottom there. I think this gave you a lot of information today. I know a lot of you will go back and forth. And whether you agree, disagree, whatever, the world will move on. I promise you. I just wanted you to more see the human side, where I want to get your position on things. And I think we did that. So thanks for being on, man. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. Thanks so much for listening. Please take a moment and go to www.connectwithjared.com to connect with Jared James on all the platforms you are active on. And please remember to subscribe and leave a positive review on the platform you are listening on if you enjoyed the podcast.