Episode 404 - Jack Miller, CEO and President T3 Sixty - Navigating Change in Real Estate: Jack Miller on the Opportunity Report

And what I'm here to tell you is buyer's agents and listing agents and the brokerage system provides tremendous value to the consumer. And I was in it. I saw it every day.

And if you think that, you know, what I want to say to you is if you think you don't provide value, go talk to your past clients and ask them.

And they're not going to be able to do all the nuances and all the details of all the things you did for them, but they're going to tell you you were valuable. And so if that's an issue for you, and if it continues to be an issue, go talk to a therapist.

Because people like you, they trust you, they want to do business with you.

You're listening to the Real Estate Sessions and I'm your host, Bill Risser. With nearly 25 years in the real estate business, I love to interview industry leaders, up and comers and really anyone with a story to tell.

It's the stories that led my guests to a career in the real estate world that drives me into my ninth year and nearly 400 episodes of the podcast. And now I hope you enjoy the next journey. Hi, everybody. Welcome to episode 404 of the Real Estate Sessions podcast.

As always, thank you so much for tuning in. Thank you so much for telling a friend today. It's a great episode. We are going to be talking to Jack Miller.

Jack is the CEO and president of T3 Sixty, the premier consulting agency for real estate in the U.S. stefan Swanepoel is the founder of the company. And it is just fantastic to get Jack's take on the Opportunity report.

If you're not aware of that, you should go to the opportunityreport.com and grab this very important information being released there. And we're going to go deep into that with Jack on a few of the sections.

And we're also, as always, get a little bit of Jack's background, a little bit of his life prior to real estate. I always like finding those things out and there's some interesting stuff there as well. So let's get this thing started. Jack, welcome to the podcast.

Well, thanks, Bill. I'm delighted to be here and always, always great to share time with people in our industry. So delighted.

I can't wait to get going on this. I've told a lot of people over the years that I've been listening to you talk about the industry way before T360. Right.

You are doing some other things in the industry. So we're going to get to that. But my first question for you is I believe you live in Austin. Do I have that right?

I do, yeah.

Did you grow up in Austin or was that a relocation for you?

I did. I'm a native Austinite, so I was born in 1974. And you know, it's, it's funny, this is a town that was, was a small college town.

I mean it's a state capital, but it was still a small town when I grew up here. And so anytime, anytime I'm introduced to go, I grew up in Austin. And then someone will say like, oh, I know somebody that grew up in Austin.

And, and inevitably we know, we know people like, I'll ask them, you know, what high school did you go to? So you know, it's, it still has a small town at its core.

But yeah, I grew up here and my, I have, my parents are from Austin and San Antonio and my grandparents are also from Austin and San Antonio.

So we're, we're, it's a little hard saying native Texan because you know, there were people here in Texas before we were, but, but as close as we're going to get to, you know, to being we're long term residents, I guess we'll say.

So you've seen Austin grow? Oh my gosh, I can't even imagine. 10 year old or you know, a teenager in the late 80s and what's. What it looks like today. It must just be incredible.

It's been massive. It's been massive. And you know, we had obviously the, you know, the computer revolution that started in the 70s was a big force in Texas.

You know, we had, you know, famously like Texas Instruments and IBM has a major campus that was built here. And then we had dell in the 90s who actually I worked for Dell while I was in college and was part of their, part of an engineering team over there.

So all of that growth and then even in the last decade, Apple has now I think maybe even more campus in Austin, Texas than they do in their headquarters in California. They built an entirely two full campuses that one of them I can almost walk to from where I live today. Wow.

And so Apple landed here and all of the big companies failed. Facebook, Google, Tesla, notably, I think Elon Musk has moved, he's moved all of his businesses to Texas.

So it's just, it's, it's been an incredible ride to watch the city change and there's some old timers that don't like it. I'm not one of those. I think it's brought it's personally brought me tremendous opportunity and created a really exciting dynamic.

And you know, we've got lots of good food here now, not just barbecue, not just, not just Tex Mex. I mean we had. Those were staples. But honestly, it's a foodie town now, which is great. So, you know, it's.

The city's grown up and it's wonderful and I appreciate and enjoy it even with all the hassles of a growing city, which, you know, that just goes with the territory.

It does, yeah, it's part of it. So you're a UT guy, Texas go long, go Horns kind of a guy. I assume was that kind of baked into you as a youngster that you going to go there?

Did you think that way?

So it's interesting. I was one of these kids. I went to a science and math magnet program when it was very early.

Texas started a set of programs in the 80s for talented and gifted kids. And so I got. I kind of got mainstreamed into those in elementary school. And then there's a school here, a high school here in Austin.

It's now called lasa, but at the time it was. It's Liberal Arts and Science Academy. The time I went to it, it was the Science Academy. And I was the first.

I was the first graduating class like that went there all four years. So that, that's where I started.

And that group, it put me with a bunch of other, you know, people that were interested in the sciences and mathematics. And so I really wanted to go with that group. A lot of them went to all the big name schools. So I really wanted to go do that and I did.

I went to Duke University for my freshman year, but my financial background did not allow me to continue to finish there because it's a very expensive school. And you know, and I had a scholarship at the University of Texas and you know, it was. Would not be hard to finish there.

But I looked at it, I was like, I can finish my degree in electrical engineering at Duke and have a quarter million dollars worth of debt because I don't have the. I don't have the funds to write the checks or came back and go back to the University of Texas and finish there and have no debt.

And so I elected to do that and. And it ended up being a great choice. I mean, I got to experience that kind of very prestigious university environment.

I have lots of comments about that. There's some real pros and cons there.

But then went back to the University of Texas and finished a degree there and I can't say enough good things about UT as a terrific tier one research university. Great engineering programs, very international.

So I got to work with, I got to work with students from India and China and know all over the world in the, in that engineering program. So you get a lot of kind of global experience and, and also exposure to industry. They have fantastic exposure into the tech industry.

I did internships at Sematech and you know, got to really do some cool stuff while I was there.

You come out of there with a degree in electrical and computer engineering. I don't see real estate anywhere on the radar. Is that the truth there?

That is true. Yeah, that is true. So I, when I was growing up, when I was a little boy, I was, I was, I was a tech nerd.

You know, I love technology and I thought that like I want to pursue a career in that area and I'm one. Not, you know, not all kids are the same, but I was one of those kids that like really had a real idea of what they wanted to do.

So I thought I was supposed to build rockets and spaceships and robots and all that kind of stuff.

And so I went and fully explored that and actually had it, got the degree, had a career in technology here in Austin, worked for Dell, worked for a startup that had a billion dollar IPO in the green energy space.

And so went through, went through a whole startup, build it, you know, take it public, experience outside of the real estate industry and then made money from that, invested in a tech startup with some friends after that. Because I said this startup stuff is really fun.

And that's eventually what led me into real estate was I, we ran a startup right into the dot bom in 2001. As you remember, a lot of the whole market fell apart and we ran out of Runway for the technology company that we were building.

And as I was going through this transition, I looked at what are the things that I loved, like what are the things I was passionate about. And in my startup experience I had become very passionate about solving people problems and specifically got involved with our sales team.

And some of this is kind of funny. Like we had this great product and our sales team would come, would go out and they would come back with no sales.

And here I am, you know, I was a computer engineer but also an investor in the company. And so that was, went on for several months.

And I said, well, what is happening in these sales meetings that we're not getting sales, like we have a great product, what's the problem? So I started going out with the sales team as part of being at that startup.

And what I realized was the sales team, they were not very good problem solvers, which I think really high level sales is all about solving people's problems. It's about listening, it's about making that human connection. It's about understanding what the challenges are and how you get to a win.

And then it's about positioning your products or services to help the person get what they want. Right. And I realized they just weren't good at that. But I liked it. I said, this is fascinating.

And so when I came out of that startup experience, I really only had two criteria for what I wanted to do next. I wanted to work in an industry that was very sales and people focused.

Because I kind of realized like, this is an area I want to fully explore in my career. And the second was, is I want to work for a company that is in some way revolutionizing or changing the industry that it is a part of.

And I wasn't even particular about the industry. I was just like any industry, I'll learn a whole industry. It just has to be a company that is. I don't want to work for a legacy company.

I want to work for somebody who's shaking things up. And I was introduced at that time via, I had a mentor and a good friend, Tim Deegan, who was a consultant for a local consulting firm.

And he was serving as the interim chief technology officer for a little company at the time called Keller Williams. Wow. And so he and I, I, we had a set of discussions and he said, you know what, there's a.

If you're not particular about the industry, then you might want to check out this company. I'm doing some work with them. They're doing some interesting things in real estate. And this was, you know, this was 2001.

Keller Williams was not a national company at the time. You know, those of us have been in the industry for a long time. You think they go, that company's been a big company for a long time. No, it wasn't.

And it really, it struggled to grow in the 90s. It was, you know, they had, Mo Anderson had just had become the CEO towards the end of the 90s. And they had an ambition of going national.

And so Tim introduced me to the firm. I went through their process.

I spent a lot of time with Gary and Mo Anderson and the executive team, Dave Jenks and all of those folks that were running the company at the time. And they ended up hiring me. And I was employee number 28 at the company. I remember meeting, I met Jay Papizon.

Jay Papasan was working the support desk.

He was like building calls from franchisees and he and I formed a friendship because we were both kind of young guys trying to make it in the, you know, make our careers happen. And he wanted to write and, and do many of the things that he's doing today and has had a wonderful career.

So there's a lot of people from back in that, in at that time that I still stay in touch with. And so anyway, so that was my introduction. And then I was at Keller Williams corporate for about five years.

We built, we built a team of about 30 people in the technology department. When I came in, there were three people. I was told to fire two of them and to start over.

There was one for a little while. Okay, good.

Yeah, I let one, I let one of them go, I kept, I saved the other one and then we hired a whole team and we built, at that point we built all the infrastructure for Keller Williams to become a national franchise. When I joined, it was about 100 plus stores and about 9,000 agents in total. Mostly like Texas and Oklahoma.

It was what I would purchase regional franchise at that time. And over that five years it grew. We added 600 stores, we added about 40,000, 50,000 I think. I think when I left we were almost 60,000 agents.

So it was a hyper growth environment.

Right.

And I just, I just suck my teeth and I went after everything, I learned everything and I could learn about real estate while I was there and just loved it. And so this is a cool, such a cool industry with creative, interesting, entrepreneurial people. Tons of opportunity.

All my friends in tech thought I was nuts. They thought, you're crazy. You're doing, you're working in real estate. That's, that's terrible and boring. And I said, you don't understand.

If you have technology skills at that time, you're kind of, you're unusual in the real estate industry because most companies don't have that. And it is an industry that was, that was, that needed to be techno, you know, have technology applied to it.

It was going through, you know, revisioning.

And we've seen that over the course of my careers, I've seen a lot of that where the industry is very different today because of the tools and technology available now. Technology is still not the driver. You know, people will ask me that, well, is the tech going to change real estate?

I said, no, this is a people, this is a people industry first and I think always will be. So I've Never. People like, oh, well, agents are going to get replaced with technology. Said, no, this is a different kind of industry. So. And it's.

That's, that's comes from a lot of perspective on it.

Having seen a lot of entrepreneurs come in and say they're going to, you know, even big, big companies come in and say, oh, we're going to change the whole game. And it's like, good luck. You know, this is still about people. It's still about people. But that's my journey.

That's a short version of my journey into real estate.

It also explains a lot about how like you, you, you would have called yourself a geek. You're coming out of ut, you're like this tech guy.

But it also explains how you really got this great insight into the industry because being around Gary and all those kinds of people. Right. That was a huge opportunity. Yeah, that's great. Now, Jack, I found you through another opportunity. It was with.

You were a part of the Good Life team and you were doing some incredible stuff that the Good Life team. And I was. I'll never forget going to one of the webinars you did. I don't know.

I don't know if it was Zoom or GoToMeeting, because this is a while ago. It was probably go to me, who knows that anymore. We're in that time of the year right now as we record this episode.

But it was about business planning. It's always a big deal to agents in the fourth quarter, should probably be third quarter, but to start thinking about the next year.

And you presented a platform, I'll call it. But it was a.

I mean, it was a really sophisticated Excel spreadsheet that was a whole nother level because most of the good old boys in the business, you know, when they did, when they'd go, how much you want to make? And what's your average sales price? And, you know, and what's your commission rate?

And when you have those three pieces of information, you could build out how many transactions you had to do. Yours was about eight or nine or ten paid worksheets long. And it would rotate the numbers would adjust monthly, not annually, monthly.

It would go back the last 12 months in order to kind of make sure everything was moving in the right direction. You only. You also had things like, not just, you know, what things cost, but time was a big piece of your measuring. Right. For that ROI on this stuff.

Talk about that just a little bit. And really, that whole experience there.

Yeah, that whole. So, So I was at Keller Williams Corporate for about five years.

And it grew so fast that there was a tremendous demand for services and support to help franchises, you know, open up and grow. When you have any organization that grows that quickly, usually the corporate staff is overwhelmed. They can't service all of it.

And so I went to the CEO and said, I think there's a huge opportunity to do some consulting with franchise owners.

And, you know, by my fourth year with Keller Williams, I'd actually invested in some franchises and had ownership in six offices, which, you know, they were.

They were very gracious to allow me to do it as an employee, but I got to learn about more, even more about the franchise business and what it is to open and operate these brokerages. So I went to MO and I said, look, I think there's an opportunity for some consulting services to help people who have opened stores.

And that's how I left corporate.

And in doing that, I spent about three or four years consulting with Kelly Williams Brokerages and then started working with big sales teams on systems marketing tools like how they could run their businesses better. And that was really, I say to people, that's really when I became a consultant.

It was about 2005, and I also started working with tech companies as well. One of my first tech clients was top Producer, and I did some work with them to help them think about their platform.

So that's when I stepped into consulting, and that led me to Good Life Team. You know, Christina Wise was.

Was running a big team at Keller, and there was sort of a thing that was happening in that franchise network at the time where this was. You get teams and they get. They'd get pretty big and then they would go independent. They would say, well, we're. We're big.

I don't think we need the mothership.

And that's a whole longer dialogue about the Keller Williams team environment and how they've adjusted their model for teams and have been, I think, very successful at that. But Christina was one of the. She was running a team and was one of my clients. And then she said, why don't you come over?

I want to go independent and let's build a new kind of brokerage together that's very team focused and where we have a lot of, you know, systems and we all operate on them. And, you know, it's not like an independent bunch of independent contractors all doing their own business.

We want to really work together and see if we can scale it. And. And that was enticing to me at the time. And, you know, so I came over and agreed to become the chief technology officer.

And we had, you know, another partner that came and joined us. Kelly White at the time and Christina's husband Gary at the time. So we decided to build a new kind of brokerage company here in Austin.

And we did that. I did that from about 09 until 2013.

And during that time we built all this really cool stuff and implemented things that I think had not been, you know, implemented in that kind of context before. And that's a lot of that. I go back to that a lot in our kind of thinking and consulting about how did I solve that problem. But for me it allowed me.

I got hands on with real estate. I got licensed, I sold. I managed a team of people that were converting leads.

We did every kind of lead generation or business generation that you can imagine. There's, there's every, every way that you can do it. We did portals, we did ppc, we did SEO, we did expired, withdrawn, canceled.

We did all these kind of marketing campaigns. We did neighborhood stuff, we did business to business stuff. We did video, we did, I mean, you name it, we developed a killer seller report.

When the market we going through the great financial crisis, the market was terrible. You had to tell your sellers what you did. And we built it all on salesforce.com and set a custom tools. I ingested all this data from the mls.

So there's, you know, we built things that today I see companies like will have a startup and they're about this one thing that we built at Good Life Team and which is, it's, I don't know, it's great to see that some of those ideas were good enough where they could have stood on their own as a product. And so that's, that's how I. But it let me get really hands on in terms of running and operating a brokerage and building a new kind of brokerage.

And now that team model is much more common and prevalent. There's more, there's people that are doing it today and there's lots of, you know, I can point to like the Jason Mitchell team.

You know, they've done a fabulous job. You know, Matt Curtis real estate in Huntsville, Gary Ashton in Tennessee.

There's people that are just, they build good systems for scaling up a real estate business and doing especially a lot of lead generation, business generation.

Right. So that's great. Well, we need to get to what I really want to talk about and that is the what, what came out of T360.

There's all kinds of reports and books and things Stefan is always writing, always doing different things, and now you're part of that. And so it's fun to watch it grow. But I want to start with just your quick take from you. August 17th has come and gone.

It was this big day in the world of real estate. What's your take on where we are now? We're headed almost to the end of the year. What are things like, what are you hearing?

So we have been talking to people about this for about five years.

So we started writing about these lawsuits and pending changes to the business years ago and years ago became a very strong advocate around developing a stronger value proposition on the buyer side of the business.

And, you know, this industry has done, I think, an exceptional job of training listing agents about how to talk about their value proposition and how to present it. And it just has not done it at the same level on the buyer side.

But now that is happening, and I believe that's the big change that we're seeing, is that we are no longer relying on the listing agent to negotiate the value of the buyer agent services is that, that is the change and that fundamentally the buyer agent services need to stand on their own two feet and say, this is what I do. Here's how I'm going to help you, here's what it's worth. And, you know, you're either a client or you're not.

And that is the challenge that's been thrown down in front of the industry is prove to us that the buyer services are valuable enough such that a consumer will agree to those terms before they start working with an agent.

You know, that's the challenge in front of us, and that is the opportunity, by the way, which is we cover in the report and talk about where the industry is at. You know, we did a survey into our, you know, broker and agent database, you know, about 45 days after that August 17th change.

And, and some places had already moved their practices and, you know, some MLS has decided to go early and, you know, take compensation out of the mls. And what we found is that we're kind of at a third or third or third place right now.

So a third of the people that responded said, I've fully moved over to where, you know, we, we negotiate the buyer services up front. We don't offer a commission upfront on listings. We, it's. It's negotiable.

In the process, we have the buyer, we ask the buyer agent to put it into their offer, put it, or have it come with the offer. It's about a third of people are doing it that way. We refer to that way as the new way.

Okay?

The new way of doing business. About a third of people are still doing it the old way where they are going to their sellers and saying, you have to offer something upfront.

By the way, if you haven't listened to my other speaking on that or to James Dwiggins or Leo Pareja over at Exp. Sharon, there's a number of people that speak on this topic. The old way is fraught with danger and peril and we do not recommend it.

We've been very clear about that, that moving to this new way of doing business is better.

And the sooner you do it, the sooner you get the opportunity and also the more clear you are in terms of being free from other subsequent potential lawsuits. Right?

So if you're a listener, you're listening to this for the first time, you know, you know, find some leadership on that because doing it the new way is important. So about a third of people are doing the new way.

A third of people are still doing it the old way where you negotiate the buyer agent compensation as part of the listing agreement. And then a third of people are doing a mix where they're in a transitional market where, you know, some.

Sometimes they do it one way, sometimes they do it the other, depending on their, their brokerage and their agents. But I think we're transitioning. I think it's inevitable that we'll transition fully to the new way because the.

It's pretty clear that people that move in that direction are not only going to be able to do business more effectively, it will keep it, also keep them out of liability. So, so I think that that's, I think we're going to end up there.

And one of our foundational philosophies that T360 is if you see change coming, embrace it. Embrace it and use it as a tool to grow your business and grow market share versus try to hold on to the ways that we've done it before.

But this is an industry that really likes to hold on to the old ways. It really is.

It's very, very difficult to change an industry with 1.6 million independent contractors, you know, that like to do it the way that they did it yesterday. It's hard to. It is a hard thing to change.

But there's enormous opportunity embracing that change, which is why we did, we wrote the Opportunity Report and put that all together.

So that really was the driving force behind it. Right? You did, You'd. You had known this was coming For a long time it was out there. They weren't just going to go away. The lawsuits were.

They took forever to get resolved. But of course, we all know what happened. So, yeah, when, when was the idea for the Opportunity Report kind of first thrown out there?

We're like, we're going to do this and here's kind of when we're going to get it out.

Sure, I'll give a little bit of context. So 10 years ago, we did a report called the Danger Report, and this was this.

That report was commissioned by the national association of Realtors, and it was a strategic risk assessment of the industry.

And that report, Stefan personally flew and met with about 50 leaders in the industry in their offices and had confidential conversations with them about where they thought the risks to the industry were. And it was across the spectrum. It was brokerage, franchise, MLS, association leaders. And then we compiled that report. It's still available.

You can go to dangerreport.com and you can still download it. We did an analysis as part of the Opportunity report. We had ChatGPT do an analysis of that report and to its accuracy.

And ChatGPT rated every single thing we had in that Danger Report and gave it a percentage basis. Overall, the report was 83. It judged the report was 83% accurate.

If you read it, if you go read the Danger Report today, you're like, yep, that happened. Yep, that happened. Now, it might not have happened exactly the way that we envisioned it, but the effects are there.

And that's, that's everything from regulatory interference and real estate to continued commission compression to the, you know, the growth and dominance of teams and sales and business generation. I mean, there's, there's, there's, there's trends in there. And it's not because we're so smart.

It's because we went and we talked to people in the industry that were top leaders. And generally the leaders in the industry know where things are going collectively.

You know, if you, if you measure their, their thinking, then there were 83% correct a decade ago. So what we put in everybody's hands today, Bill, is we put in their hands today another report like that.

So if you knew, all I would say to a listener is if you knew, you could go get a document today for free that was 83% accurate about what the industry was going to look like in 10 years. You should go get that document and you should go read it and you should go make it part of your plan.

But because there's many, many pieces in there that we believe if you adopt them now, you look at them now, that you're going to have a massive advantage in thinking and working with your business. So the opportunity report came.

We wanted to do an update to Danger report five years ago, but we were just getting into Covid and the lawsuits and just what NAR was like, no, we don't want to do this right now.

So when the settlement happened, the initial settlement was agreed to back in March, March of 2024, Stefan and I got on a call and said, well, we think we have to do this report now. And there's more than just the lawsuit. That was the reason.

It's also because we've seen massive consolidation in the industry over this last five years. This is a story I don't think enough people are paying attention to.61% of the industry's transaction volume is done by the top 1,000 companies.

That's up from 48% six years ago. Wow. So there's, there's massive sales volume and unit volume concentration happening in bigger companies now.

That's not to say if you're with a small company, don't panic.

I'm not saying you're going to go extinct, but that's a big change and it has implications for everybody in the industry when you have that kind of consolidation happening. That's happened.

And then we had the artificial intelligence revolution, which we believe will be as significant, if not more significant than the personal computing revolution in the 80s where we really brought computing into the, into the workplace and then into the home and now into your pocket. Like that's been a massive change. And we think artificial intelligence is that level of change that will impact the industry.

So these are three things. Massive practice changes, industry consolidation, and the major technology shift all happening at the same time.

Which is why we said this is we have to issue a report about this that really talks about how industry practitioners can look at that and take advantage of and be, you know, use it in their business. So that's the purpose of it. So it isn't just the lawsuits, but definitely the lawsuits sparked.

Like, okay, we need to, we need to do this, you know, 10 year update to the day job.

Yeah, you talk about industry, you know, people being involved in it. It doesn't matter what part of the industry you're in, you need to read the report.

I don't care if you're a home inspector or an appraiser or, I don't know, title guy, it's all important. It's very, some very cool stuff in there. I like that there are 20 different. And by the way, it's a great read.

I'm just telling everybody right now, it's very interesting. It's really fun to go through. As Jack mentioned, the successes of the Danger report. That's pretty cool.

The.

What was it? Regulatory tsunami. That was 100%.

Well called.

100%. Yeah, let's. I want to. I want to. There's a couple of the key opportunities I'd love to just throw at you unless you kind of chat about them.

And the first one is on the topic of elevating agents. Right. Raising the bar. It's been around a long time. You've heard it since you've been in the business.

But I want to share the opening statement that you guys put together.

It says the industry has a unique second chance that's in quotes, to redefine the role and value of real estate agents, positioning them as professional advisors rather than licensees or salespersons. I love this. I mean, this applies, you know, to agents and brokers. I think. I think this endeavor is really a great opportunity.

What?

Talk a little bit more about that. I think it's critical.

Yeah. So I think there's a good history here of real estate professionals demonstrating that they're a lot more than what people think we are. Right.

And we had that. And I think that some of your listeners. This is going to be ancient history, but in.

When the IDX agreement was passed and when we started putting listings online as an industry, there was a whole group of people in the industry at the time. They were like, well, if I. If I.

If I can't force the consumer to come to me to get access to the MLS book or to get access to the MLS through me, right. Then what value do I have? Right? And this industry has a psychological problem, I think. I think that people.

People don't come here as necessarily as their first career. There's a lot of people come here and they don't think their services are valuable for some crazy reason, Bill. I don't know why that is.

They think they're. They think that what they do is invaluable.

And so that's why we have this whole line over the hill mentality about like, everything's a threat to us because we don't think our. We don't think we provide value.

And what I'm here to tell you is buyer's agents and listing agents and the brokerage system provides tremendous value to the consumer. And I was in it. I saw it every day.

And if you think that you Know what I want to say to you is, if you think you don't provide value, go talk to your past clients and ask them.

And they're not going to be able to do all the nuances and all the details of all the things you did for them, but they're going to tell you you were valuable. And so if that's an issue for you, and if it continues to be an issue, go talk to a therapist.

Because people like you, they trust you, they want to do business with you. And this part about elevating the profession is if we think of ourselves as salespeople, well, salespeople are very fungible, very replaceable.

You know, it's like, oh, I'm just a salesperson. I'm just showing you. I'm showing you inventory, right? I'm showing you inventory. I'm getting you to sign a contract. That is not what good agents do.

And I think, bill, you and I know this. Like a good agent does so many things in helping the consumer understand their options, think about what they really want and need.

Look at homes critically, look at neighborhoods critically, evaluate deal terms, put together offers, babysit things through to close. You know, all of that. It is, it is one of the most intensely human processes that people go through in their life.

They only do it three or four times. I put it on the same category as, like, this is like major surgery or getting married or going like.

It's a big, it's a big thing in most people's lives to buy or sell a home. It's just a big project for the average person. Right? And those people need guidance, consultation. They need good listening.

They need all of those things. And what we know in this culture, Bill, North American culture, we are a high service culture.

We are willing to pay for things that are valuable to us, that make our lives easier. We have no problem paying a lot of money for those things. And we do.

You know, the joke I make on stage is like, you know, this is a country where know we'll pay more to have the food delivered than for the food itself.

That's right.

We are, we are about making this, making our lives easier and moving with confidence, like the North American consumer will absolutely pay for that. And it's been one of the flaws that I've seen people come in this industry out of the tech sector and say, I'm going to save people a bunch of money.

Well, guess what? That's not consumers top criteria in real estate. That's not it. The top criteria is, I want to work with Somebody I can trust to get what I want.

Right. And part of what they want may be a good deal. Right. But it isn't. They're like, I'm going to shop for the least expensive way to buy a home.

That is not how the consumer behaves. Go read thousand watts research. They've done some great consumer research on this that we use and we work with thousand watt all the time.

They've done some great stuff there on the consumer. It's just not, it's not what people want.

And so we, we have to elevate the thing that the consumer will consistently say that they value, which is that consultative, professional, advisory, all of that. And if you think of yourself as a salesperson, you'll be treated as a salesperson and you will be devalued by the marketplace.

If you treat yourself as a professional, as an advisor, as a counselor, as a consultant, that's the path. You make tons of money doing that. As a matter of fact, one of the early reports we're finding, we did.

Tom Ferry did a survey that we got access to, and I talked to Tom about three weeks ago, and they surveyed their, you know, people in their programs, and they found there's a. There's a lot of people on the buyer side.

They're actually making more money now because they're not just accepting what the listing agent is offering with their seller. They're actually going to their buyers and explaining their value. And they're getting it. And they're getting a.

You know, they've effectively given themselves a raise because they are good at explaining what their value is to the consumer, and they're not just dependent on whatever's being offered via the MLS and the old way. So that would be my, that's my call to action is like, this is a real opportunity to think of yourself as a professional. And I know your listeners.

There's probably a lot of them preaching to the choir here. Well, great. You got to teach others because that will make the industry better. Yeah.

You said something earlier that just so resonates, I think, with success. And that is, you know, if these, if we can. The elevation.

It also involves really being good at being curious and listening and not just saying, oh, I've got all the answers. You do. That's. That's a good thing. But we don't need all of them.

We just need the ones that matter for that particular person at that particular time in their life. Right, that's right.

Yeah. Yeah.

The associations, the industry, that part of it.

Right.

So we're going to jump away from agents and brokers. This is where I think some of the really interesting stuff in the Opportunity.

Report is there, there's some tough stuff for some association folks to hear. Yeah, there's some tough stuff.

Let's start with decoupling of the MLS from Realtor associations.

So in the Opportunity Report, we do say pretty clearly that, and this came from the leaders that we talked to, that the governance of the MLS needs to be separated from the governance of the association and that mlss should basically be standalone entities that are focused on their business, which is to run a really great data business right now and to provide great services and value to members. And the through line in that entire section and really through the whole report, people go, what is this all about?

And I said what this is about, it's about demonstrating value and the way, you know, when you package and bundle things together and say, well, you're going to get this and you're going to get this and you're going to get this. And then people. And then for years, Bill, this is not new to your listeners or you or me.

People say, well, I only joined the association to get access to the mls. Okay, well that's a value problem.

That is a, that is either the association is not doing a good job of saying these are all the things that we do for you for advocacy, for professional development, for training, for, you know, all of those things and we're not doing a good enough job explaining that, or they need to go fix those services. And I think that's the, if you look at the association section, it's like, look, everybody has to stand on their own two feet with their value.

The national association, the state associations, the locals and the mls. And they need to say, look, here's what we do, here's why your $35 or $50 or $90 in dues, whatever it is, are worth spending with us.

And the thing is, this is another one where I think the industry has some psychological problems. We've dug in. In many of these instances, they really do have value.

They're just worried about saying, well, if I decouple it from the mls, no one's going to want to be a member of the association.

I'd say that's flat out wrong most instances because the association, when it explains what it does and says, here's the, here's the value being connected to this association of professionals that are full time in real estate and that are trying to do great things for their clients. People want it and it is valuable. And the states have clear things that they can do. The state associations, the national association has a big job.

We are not burn it. And the people we talk to, they were not burn it to the ground people, maybe other than Rob Hahn. I think Rob Hahn would be Rob, we did it.

Yeah, but it's great. I love that he challenges everybody's thinking and he's a great friend. He's a great friend and, you know, and collaborator.

But for the most part, the people we talk to believe in institutions. But what it is right now is the institutions have to be valuable.

They have to show that they're valuable to the member and, you know, and be able to stand their own two feet with that value. And that's. That's the through line where we talk about separating the MLS association.

Look, I believe most local associations have value they deliver to their members that they can charge for. And I know the MLS has. I have a lot of people challenge me on the, well, there's no compensation. Mls, what's its value?

And I'm like, what, are you crazy?

You're nuts.

If you want to market a listing, the MLS is the cheapest, most effective tool you have. It's the best thing this industry's ever built.

And you can put a property in, and it notifies every realtor that's actively working with a client and their clients instantly. And you get to do that on a subscription fee that you pay a flat rate. This is like the postal service. The.

You're, you know, you put it in there and it's basically a flat rate for you. You're not having to go into a bid market and trying to get the attention of the consumer with your listing.

You know, imagine the MLS didn't exist, and you're like, I want all real estate professionals in this area to know about it and no details about it that will help them sell it. Now you need it. You need it for that. You need it for comps, you need it for everything. It's such a valuable tool.

And so people that say, oh, it's not valuable, it doesn't compensation anymore, I think they're crazy. That's just. Yeah, yeah.

Sticking with your value conversation, that's another opportunity you talk about is the fact that, you know, you have to join all three levels of the association and you think, once again, the value for each of those should be clear and apparent to the agents so they can make the decision.

Absolutely.

And I think that when that is done, that people will go, wow, I did not know what my State association was doing for me, I did not know all the things my local, I did not know all the things the national was doing. And you know, by the way, the association part of the dues are not that expensive.

And if you're a professional and you're supporting our industry, you're gonna look at that and say that's great. Now I can. You know, obviously there's places where improvements need to be made.

You know, there's local associations that may not have a lot of value and they need to adjust their programs. There are states that maybe need to adjust how they deliver value, what they do.

And I think that's the, I think that's the thing that people want right now. We're in an age where people have lost trust in institutions.

And the way to get it back is to show value is to actually do things that matter and demonstrate it. And that's the way you win back trust in an institution.

And that's really what, you know, and separating and saying it's pulling apart the three part agreement which may not happen. I mean we, we're advocating or the people we interviewed said, hey, let's have these things all stand their own two feet.

Well, if they can all stand on their own two feet and show value, then maybe, maybe they will still be as part of some tri party agreement.

But the fundamental there is they need to show value and a way to force them to do that is to make them stand on their own two feet by being separate, separate memberships that people sign up for.

Yeah, and yeah, you, you also call out NAR in particular, which needs to be called out. Right. It's the largest trade association in the world, I think, at least the country for sure. Yeah. So.

And they've definitely lost some of the respect of the industry. How do they, how do they get that back?

Yeah, And I think that is, again, it's, this is an age where we don't trust our institutions and it's because our institutions have failed. Right. And I don't think I'm out of school saying that there is, that, that is why we are politically where we are and why we are.

You know, people look at the national association and say we feel you have failed us.

And we heard that very clearly in these interviews that we did with industry leaders is that they felt like the, the association did not serve the purpose for which it was designed. And when that happens, you have to retrench.

You have to be able to look in the mirror and say, look, if, if our membership and some of the largest brokers that have thousands and thousands of members associated with them feel like we have failed them. Then you have to make changes. And that's, that's what. And, and we're not bomb throwers. We.

In the, in the opportunity report, we have changes in the transport we wrote last year, we had a whole chapter on what we think could be done with the National Association Realtors to restructure it to be a more effective institution and to serve its members better. And, and, and we're, we're, we want it to be successful. We need a strong national advocate for real estate and real estate professionalism.

You know, it is needed. And so it isn't that it should go away. It just needs to serve the purpose better.

And so this is a, you know, and that's, that's the content that, you know, that, that's the message.

Another opportunity. It's, it's a great word. I'm watching the clock. I got to get you out of here. I do want to ask about T360 in particular. It's been.

I've had the opportunity. I had a brief fling with a startup myself, and it was a lot of fun.

And being involved with Travis and the help that we were able to get from his team, it's just amazing. But I always wanted, you know, the T3 tech summits. I got to attend the first couple of them. Fantastic.

Great opportunities there for marketing, for connecting, just talking to people. Is there something else that T360 is cooking up that you can share?

Yeah, so there's a couple of things. There's a couple of things I'll talk about.

We are launching a whole new set of programs this next year where we've been doing this with a number of companies, where, you know, I believe every company, brokerage, technology, MLS associate, any company in this industry, mortgage company, every year you're going to have two or three projects that are very strategic for you to get done for which you might not have the right skills, talent and horsepower. And we've got 40 people at T360. I've got, you know, four former CEOs that work for the company.

We have some serious horsepower to put against important initiatives and problems for, you know, brokers of all sizes and associations and mls.

And so this next year, we're launching a set of programs to make that really easy to do, where it's like, okay, we're going to work with you and identify, you know, what are your most important projects or what are the most important things you need to do it might be hiring an executive, it might be restructuring your technology with, we've done a ton of work on it. Might be looking at your brokerage business model, your commission program, your, you know, how your valuation and all of that.

What do you need to do to significantly change that? But what I tell people is, you know, every year, pick one or two things that will change the game in your business and go do them.

And what we see is that we're. And if you really want to get it done, give one of those two things to us and we'll make sure it gets done.

And so that's, that's the thing, that's the assurance and the capability that we lend to clients.

And again, we're launching a whole new set of programs in January that we think will make that more accessible, affordable, predictable for people, you know, in any of those segments to do brokerage, tech, mls, any of those, to go do those things with us and to get access to a really first class group of people that are passionate about this industry and have been in your shoes before and run businesses before. So that's, that's what's coming next, is that those new set of programs.

Nice. It's the final question time. It's the same one I've asked every guest.

So what one piece of advice would you give a new agent just starting in the business today?

You know, I'm gonna.

There's a lot of ways I could answer this question and I know a lot of people will point, you know, there's a lot of obvious things that I can point to out of the coaching realm. And you know that many of those folks will say, look, you're a new agent, go do this.

But I will tell you for me, the something a little different that I would have to say to the new agent is really spend time investing in the people around you, be present for your community, build a community, be part of a community. The. And have a great life outside of selling real estate with that community. Right? That is when I see people that are living successful lives.

They do all the stuff the coaches tell them to do, they do all the things, they do all that stuff.

But usually what's at the core of it is they have a great family, they have a great community, they have people, they have a life, they have a real life outside of this industry that will just wear you out.

And so I would say as important as to do all the stuff your coach tells you and do all the blocking and tackling to do with this new agent, have A great life, have a great community, have people you care about that you see regularly. And by the way, that's business productive. That's one of the great things about this industry is that's business productive for you.

I was going to say.

Yeah, yeah.

It actually, you know, there's a lot of places where it's like, you know, you're an engineer and you do your job and then you come home and you have, you know, you, you have a great life at home. But it does. It's not synergistic. Well, real estate, it really is.

If you have a great life and a great community around you, then it will, it will generate business for you. But more importantly, it will sustain you through times where you need to be sustained where you need to be fed.

And, you know, everything about human happiness and all of that says that connection is the number one thing that people want and need. And I'd say if you're a new agent, make sure you've got that, because you're going to need it. You're going to need it through your whole career.

And if you do that, you see people are successful. They. They tend to have that more way more often than not.

And I love that about our industry is that people who do it well, they end up with fabulous lifelong relationships. And it's part of why I love this industry.

That is the first time that Answers popped up in 404 episodes.

I wanted to give you guys a little something different.

That's awesome. Jack, if someone wants to reach out to you, is there a way they can do that?

Yeah, just.jack360.com and I'll happily connect with you. And we've got a whole team of people over here that are just, they're just great human beings. They love the industry, they're passionate about it.

And, you know, we're not a bill by the hour attorney shop. We're gonna talk to you. I have clients I've talked to. I talked to them for five years before they did a project with us. So don't be intimidated.

Reach out. If you're like, hey, I'm in this situation. I'm not sure what to do. We love that.

Everybody on my team, I tell them 10% of your time is for public service to help people and just help them. And then business will show up. And that's how we run.

So if you have questions or comments or want to talk to us, just reach out to me and I'll get you connected to the right people.

I will vouch for that. From personal experience. That's fantastic.

Jack.

Thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it and continued success and it'll be Fun to watch T360 grow.

You bet. Thanks Bill.

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