Real Estate Sessions Rewind - January 2021 - Building a Better Real Estate Business: Insights from Mark Choey, Co-Founder of Highnote.io

The most important thing an agent needs to do every single day and what is that? It is taking a lead that you get and converting them to a client.

Whether it's a buyer, whether it's a seller listing, whether it's an offer you have to write, you have the opportunity for business and you need to close that business. Otherwise you may not be able to feed yourself or your family. Right? So it was like the highest pressure thing an agent needed to work on.

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. Hey everybody, welcome to episode 266 of the Real Estate Sessions podcast.

As always, thank you so much for tuning in and thank you so much for telling a friend. Today we're sticking around the Bay Area.

Last week it was Nina Dosage in San Francisco and this week it's Mark Choi who's launching a new venture called HighNote IO. But you may know Mark Choi as a co founder with Chris Lim of Klein Real Estate.

They did some amazing things in the San Francisco area from 20067 until they were actually sold. Climb. We've already interviewed Chris, kind of the marketing and sales mastermind.

This time it's going to be Mark who's got the tech and it's the tech side of him that's created this new tool that we're going to look at as well. So let's get this thing started. Mark, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you. Great to be here. Bill.

I can't wait to chat with you. As you know, I talked to Chris Lim I might have been a year and a half ago. It's a while ago.

So to get the the other half of of Klein Real Estate will be a lot of fun. And now both of you, it's weird. You're both from New Jersey or back east. In fact, I think you're a self proclaimed Jersey boy. I saw that somewhere.

Whereabouts are we talking? First of all, where in the Garden State did you grow up? And then look, I grew up in San Diego. I lived there for almost 40 years.

I just when I think Jersey, I'm going to be really bad here. I think Sopranos. I think Garden State, a fantastic movie with Zach Braff. Right. But what should I know as a SoCal native about your home state?

Oh, my gosh. So, you know, I grew up in Bergen County, New Jersey, and that's the northeast portion.

Teaneck, New Jersey, was the space, and it's a very, very diverse, racially diverse and socioeconomically diverse town. And we. The high school, you know, is half African American, half Caucasian with a smattering of other ethnicities.

It was also the, you know, part of very heavy Jewish contingent. So there was this mix of people that really, really was. Everyone took pride in because it was very unlike any other. Any other upbringing we had.

And then Teaneck was known for that. And Teaneck was interesting. It's very close to New York City. It's too. I think it's like two and a half miles outside of New York City.

So it's very much in. You know, when you're up there, you're. Everything's New York, New York City, New York City, New York City. It's hard to be out of the shadow of it.

Everyone works in New York and, you know, they just live in the suburbs, which is, you know, New Jersey is one of them. So, you know, the stereotypes of what Jersey's like, you know, it's. It's the Sopranos. It's. What's that MTV reality show, The Jersey Shore.

The Jersey Shore, you know, and those are the stereotypes of New Jersey. And I will say that some of those stereotypes are very true. And. But New Jersey is a great place. It's a great place.

Some people say it's a great place to be from, but, you know, I wouldn't have had it any other way. It's. It's. It's a. It's a unique, unique, unique state. And it's a mixture of all kinds of different people. So I loved it.

Yeah, you actually attended Rutgers, so I did. You were staying there. So let's talk about that a little bit. Well, first of all, Shiano's back.

Is there a chance that Rutgers football can come back to the greatness they were a few years ago?

Yeah. No. You know, Greg, you needed Greg Shiano. You know, Rutgers has had a lot of years of misery, and that is. That is the.

The truth of it, that they played the first football game ever with Princeton and they won that game. But it was back in, I don't know, 1700s or whatever. 1800s. 200 plus years of misery. And they've had this.

It's a conflict because Rutgers is, you know, a private school sounding university, but it is the third largest state school in the country. It's amazing behind Ohio State and probably a Texas State University. But it is humongous. So it has this identity problem. They don't know what to be.

You know, they. They're the State university of New Jersey. It's run like a state school.

It is massive, sprawling, super diverse as well, you know, campuses all up and down the state. You know, football is something they've always tried to grow. Their basketball team is doing great.

But, you know, when Greg, you know, Greg Ciano came back and that was the only hope for Rutgers. It's, it's, you know, they've been. For years, have been not good, and Greg has really propelled them, and this year has been a good year for them.

They won the most games in the Big Ten ever for Rutgers and, you know, and they came close on three of them. So they, They're. We're excited. It's on the upswing. And, and that's the. That's kind of like the, The. The spirit of New Jersey.

You are, you know, the football team is the perfect epitomization of it. You are an underdog. You know, you are an underdog, and you are at a slight disadvantage because of whatever reason.

And the Jersey spirit, or the, you know, the spirit of being a Jersey boy is really like a scrapper. You're a hustler. You're a scrapper. You don't come from a good upbringing.

You know, maybe you don't have the silver spoon in your mouth, but you work very, very hard, and you. You really do everything you can to get ahead. And that's the fight.

That's the fight that is endemic with Jersey people, you know, to really make something of yourself when you don't have a. An upbringing. Really. Yeah. Yeah. If that gives you a little bit of understanding of the spirit. Yep.

What was on your roadmap at the time?

I always knew I was going to be involved in computers on some degree. And, you know, when I was studying, you know, back then in the 80s, I went to. I went to Rutgers in 89 or 88. I think I graduated high school in 88.

Computers were just coming out. I mean, we all had the Atari and the IBM PCs and, you know, everyone was talking about computers, right?

And we're like, okay, this is the next big thing. Clearly, my. My uncle was an engineer. An engineer. And my dad was an artist and he was an architect.

My mom said, don't be an artist and don't be an architect. And at that time, the Real estate sector was doing poorly. Architecture was not doing well.

And my mom said, if, look, if you want to make an income, you can't be an artist or architect like your dad, unfortunately. But so, you know, I said, okay. Computers are kind of my thing. And I, and I loved it. I was programming when I was a young kid.

I was 10 years old and you know, you loved everything about it. And engineering was. Rutgers had a very good electrical engineering program.

And my mom, you know, just me and my mom, I was an only child and my mom and my dad had separated and divorced. So I needed to be near home really. And Rutgers was like near home, but not too close, right?

It's an hour, an hour and 10 minute drive back to Teaneck, New Jersey. So. And it was very inexpensive. You know, the state, the tuition must have been, gosh, I think it was like 8,000 including room and board.

You know, my mom was a single earner and they're immigrants and, you know, not a lot of money, so not a lot of money to send those places.

So, you know, I did apply to a whole bunch of other colleges outside of state and private schools and this and that and, you know, just really realized I was not going to be able to afford these schools. And Rutgers, hey, it was a great, great education and a great environment and a great opportunity to, to stay at home and, and take advantage of it.

So, yeah, that's why, that's why I went to Rutgers.

You, I know your mom to this day still loves the fact that you stay close to home. That's always great. I have to ask you one quick question. So when you were coding as a kid, you're like, did you have like a 286, a 386 processor?

I know you.

Yeah, no, it was back then, it was the Atari 400. So I don't even know. There was no, it was no Pentium. I mean, there was no 86.

That was way before intel and there was no 86ish stuff that all came out later in college. But it was. We started basic, right? Everyone started out on basic, on Atari 400 or Commodore or whatever they were doing.

So we were programming games and all kinds of things and we just knew it was just powerful. Very, very powerful tool. It was going to change everything. We had no idea what it is today. Like, no one could predict what it is today.

And everyone says now it's just beginning too. You have artificial intelligence and computer science and computers are being even more powerful and more intelligent.

So I studied that when I Did my master's degree at Colorado. Artificial intelligence.

Yep, let's talk about that. I can't imagine a bigger change than Bergen County, New Jersey to older Colorado.

Yeah. At Rutgers, I studied wireless engineering. And again, back then, wireless was becoming a big thing. No one had cell phones.

And, you know, just making a phone call was very difficult. And you had a brick of a phone and it was getting smaller and smaller. You know, nobody could predict that.

You could watch a video on your phone and play games and it'd be a supercomputer in your pocket. But if they did predict it, I mean, everyone knew that could happen, but no one could envision what that would mean.

So I got into cellular and wireless, and I was part of a really prestigious research group at Rutgers called WIN Lab. I was an intern there, and I did a study on early wireless protocols for transmitting data through the air. And I got a job from that.

And I went to University of Colorado. I went to US west, which was one of the main.

The six Bell companies that split off from AT&T after the divestiture, when the government ruled that AT&T was a monopoly. So US west was one of the main ones. And they had a research lab. And so my research lab hired me to come out and do more wireless research for them.

And then when I landed there, University of Colorado Boulder, it was very different. It was like night and day, I mean, especially in the 80s and early 90s. Not a super diverse place, not a tech hub, but it was amazing.

Amazing location and the weather is amazing. 300 days of sunshine a year. And I was like, it's like the best kept secret in the country in a lot of ways. And so.

But when I got to University of Colorado, or, sorry, Boulder, I saw that there was a university at University of Colorado, Boulder, So I decided to do my master's degree there. And that's where I was introduced to artificial intelligence.

Somehow we got to get you in real estate, and somehow we gotta. There's a meeting between you and Chris Lim, and I'm sure you know exactly the first time you met him, you know, because you guys built something.

We talked about it. I talked about in the opening with Climb. So does there kind of do those kind of work together or are they separate?

Yeah, well, you know, you have to fast forward 10 years, basically. But it was, you know, essentially those are my formative years.

And, you know, I went to Asia and I started a startup company, which is an early version of TripAdvisor, and then came back to New York and I was at Citigroup, working at Citigroup and I got into real estate at that time and I started getting into real estate investing. I started getting into buying and selling my own homes.

And then I met my wife and my future wife and we said, let's move to San Francisco because we loved California, always wanted to do the California thing. We had many, many record when we were in New York for three years. Like every summer was record heat and every winter was record snow and cold.

And we just couldn't take it anymore. So we said, let's go somewhere warm and we said California.

And unfortunately we pick San Francisco because I didn't realize it was so cold in San Francisco. But, but it was great. I love San Francisco as far as that goes, the city and, and the diversity.

And when we got out to San Francisco, I started looking at houses and I went to an open house and you know, we talk about the story all the time. And that's where climb, that's where I met Chris. And he picked me up as a client and we kind of hit it off. You know, I really liked him.

I liked his demeanor, I liked everything about him. He was. But he had this thing about him that was kind of like a hustle.

And you know, he was like a hustler, really hard worker, busy doing a million things, bold, you know, some would say brash. But he was just always making something happen and he drop everything for you and you know, he just seemed like a really interesting fella.

And so we got, I got to know him, we became, you know, became quick friends. He was my agent for, for. And I was, I was doing, I was real estate investing. Back then everyone was a real estate investor, right?

In 2005, something like that, right? You could. And I just saw the, the movie, the Big Short and it was all about the mortgage backed securities and how easy it was to get a mortgage.

And it kind of took me back like, yeah, you didn't, you just stated your income, you didn't need to prove it, you just stated what your income was and there you go, you have a loan and you could buy a condo or a home. And so I was part of that.

I was, I was buying many, many homes, many, many condos, flipping them, buying them for investment, really trying to get into real estate in a bigger way. And then Chris was my agent and he was helping me find all these properties, helping me get in on things. And we became friends.

And then one day he goes to me, you know what? You should be a real estate agent. I didn't know what to say. I was like. I was kind of insulted. I was also not insulted. And I said, really? Be.

Real estate have never dawned upon me. And so I said, oh, fine, I'll get my license and let's see.

And I thought it would at least help me procure better deals or get, you know, ahead of the deal, ahead of the, you know, find deals faster, really, because you have MLS access. So I started getting into deeper and then I picked up this great book, Gary Keller's book. Right. About real estate. I forget the. It's the red book.

Millionaire agent.

Yes. Yeah. And that was. That had a big influence on me because he systematized everything. And he really thought about the real estate agent as a business.

Right. You are running a business, and this is the way you structure your business.

And so I started getting deep into this, and then you talk about teams and I. And I really understood it and I really got to it and I said, wow, this is. This is the way you got to do it.

And I saw Chris running around like a madman, very unorganized, unfocused, just chasing every deal, every lead that came his way, but being hugely successful. Hugely successful and really, really a rainmaker. And I kind of approached him, I said, look, I think there's an opportunity here for us to team up.

And you wanted me to be an agent. I have a license. But you know what? I think we should turn what this is, you know, what you have and what I have in form a team.

And like Keller, like Gary Keller says, form a team and then develop a brand and start a business. And, you know, that's what we did. You know, I joined forces with him. We started dating, as you say, right. And then building a team together.

I was the business strategist and organize the manager and really this. The whole brains behind it, I would say. And he was the heart, right? He was the salesman, he was the recruiter, he was the one powering everything.

And then, you know, I built it around tech, and he built it around marketing. And we. We needed that combination. You need that combination. You need both sides. And we kind of. We sort of figured it out. And then climb.

That was before climb. And yeah, that's. That's essentially how Climb was born in a lot of ways. The.

The meeting of the minds, right? The engineer and the sales guy. Sales. And that's a. That's a fantastic partnership. Usually those clash a lot, but you guys figured it out and that's.

Yeah, I have to get to high note, but I Do want to ask another question about climb that I think for, for agents listening, you really, the two of you said this is going to be our part of San Francisco. I think it's called District 9, kind of south of Market. And where is that in relationship like to att?

Is it, is it kind of, is it incorporated in there.

At&T park, which is now.

Yeah, they made change.

I don't know what it's called. Oracle, I think it's called Oracle Field or whatever. I don't know what it's called. They change it, they change it up.

But that was the anchor to south beach soma. So south beach and Soma, they're kind of synonymous in a lot of ways. But it was full of warehouses, like a warehouse district.

And that's where you would bring your car to get tuned. That's where you would bring your car if you got into a car accident. That's where you would go buy paint.

That's where you would go find scrap metal and things like that. And the city had abandoned this area because historically that's where the factories were.

And every, all the richies went up the hills to Knob Hill and Russian Hill once the cable cars were built and they left this area and it was just been an industrial area for many years. And as San Francisco started to grow, tech started to come in. They needed housing, they needed places to put housing.

And so, you know, south beach was redistricted by the planning department at&T park and Giant Stadium or whatever we want to call it nowadays is set up shop there. And then all these businesses started coming around ATT park and then condos started coming. But that was the first wave.

And so when I got there, AT&T park was already there. There was a little bit of an ecosystem of stuff happening.

Then the city doubled down on the area and really said, hey, this entire area, we're going to redistrict and rezone and zone it for high rise residential living and the high rise condo district. Right. Every city goes through this. San Diego went through this years back. Every city has this because they need to build up.

And you know, we're from New York. You know, I loved high rises. I loved lofts. I loved warehouse living. I loved urban living. Chris also loved urban living. We love the how edgy it is.

We love lofts feel, you know, urban sophistication. You know, we loved high rises and stuff like that.

Victorians aren't just weren't for me, you know, like I, I didn't really resonate with the San Francisco notion of a Victorian. It's a very romantic, very different feeling than the urban side of things. And I said, you know what?

There's, there's got to be, there's no, there's no brand that's, that really focuses on this. You know, there was one small shop, but we thought, hey, we can make this bigger and really cater to the urban dweller, right? The city dweller.

And so that's how Climb was born. And I said, look, and I said, let's focus, let's really focus on this district.

District 9, the realtors called it and it was Soma, South Beach, Mission Bay, Potrero hill, the mission, etc. And make this our home and make this our, you know, this is where our flag's going down. And the strategy behind that all was okay.

The city is planning to build 25 plus thousand units in the area.

And if you try to, any Realtor who tries to, or real estate agent tries to enter into an old established market with postcards or you try to win listings from the incumbent, it is very, very difficult, right? If someone's been there for 20 years, it's going to be hard to uproot that person unless they retire.

So but if you go to a new area, it's very easy to capture market share because there isn't an incumbent agent, there isn't an incumbent brokerage, there isn't this thing. And especially if everyone come into the market is new.

So we said the strategy would be buy, represent the buyers into the area, represent all the buyers, as many as we can into the district. What happens to buyers? They become homeowners. And what happens to a homeowner in a condo?

Well, they find a mate, a boyfriend, girlfriend, what have you, whatever they have to sell because they can't live in a one bedroom forever. And so those, you know, first time buyers, the condo buyers, they're all younger, they don't have kids, they, they buy and they have to sell soon.

So you end up, and then when they sell soon, they buy somewhere outside the area, right? So down in the Peninsula, Silicon Valley, maybe the East Bay, maybe the Marin. And then you get three transactions in one.

So you represent them on the buy side, you wait for them to sell again, you represent them on the sale and then you represent them on the buy again. So I said if we focus on the strategy, three to one and not only that, it's going to climb, going to grow very, very fast because of the way.

And we, that was our strategy. We, some buildings we would capture literally 30 of the buyers that went into the building.

Yeah, we would, we had an army of agents that we would just arm them and just focus them, like, hey, target this building. You have to tell all your buyers about it. We would, you know, coordinate with the launch, get them early access.

And then we became known as the condo guys and the condo brokerage. And so we would get first dibs. Right. A lot of times they would invite our agents first. That was the way you did it.

And we just hit it very hard and because we knew that was what was going to happen, you know. And now District 9 is 25% of the market share of all of San Francisco. Back in the day, it was not even a blip on the radar. Right.

So we grew along with District 9 and, you know, SOMA, South beach in particular. And as that district grew organically, we grew organically with it. And then we became a top 250 brokerage in the country within five years.

So it was a really accelerated fast growth.

That was really part, because it was part of that strategy and you know, because we, we, we bolted ourselves onto the fastest growing part of San Francisco. Yeah. So that's what happened.

NRT comes calling and you and Chris decide it's time to make a move.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We built a lot of notoriety. You know, Inman started getting a hold of us and articles started popping up. We started winning awards.

Most innovative brokerage, most best branding, best, you know, best this, best website. We were doing a lot of cool stuff with technology, but we're also.

Chris was doing a lot of cool stuff with the marketing and you know, you can't have one without the other. You know, you have to have, you have to have both. So tech and marketing, right.

If you do all the great tech and no one knows about it, well, that's what's the point, right? So marketing is everything in, especially in real estate.

So yeah, we started getting offers, the guys started getting interest, and then we started getting interested in another company called Compass.

We started seeing how they were taking over various markets very aggressively and putting brokerages out of business, either through buying them or recruiting their top hitters. And then they said they were coming to San Francisco in a couple years.

Somebody that was trying to buy us warned us about Compass and said, hey, you better consider our offer because if not, these guys are going to eat your lunch. They are the real tech brokerage. They're building their own technology and we're a small brokerage. So we did not build our own technology.

We tried and we Realized, oh my gosh, it's expensive to build this software.

So we just partnered early with a lot of tech companies, a lot of software products, really tried to use, you know, First Mover advantage on a lot of these software products and integrate them into our business and then not only that, but teach our agents how to use it. That's how we got our innovative reputation. But they're building things.

They said Compass is, is building things and they're going to, they're armed with $8 million in venture capital right now. They're armed with I think 1.5 billion. I think they just raised another round. I just heard. But so I just said, we better watch these guys.

And I think we start, really should start considering selling or exploring our options to partner with someone. Because we were a small brokerage, a hundred agents, we were doing almost a billion in sales with those hundred agents.

But we also knew we were very vulnerable. We lose the top three agents and that was 25% of our sales.

So we said, my gosh, any brokerage could come in and poach our top guys by recruiting them, giving them a big check and effectively knocking our business down 25%. If you take the top to you guys. Right. So, you know, we talked right before this call. It's the Pareto principle of 80 20.

No, in real estate, it's 90 10. Right. So that, that's why, you know, we started exploring it.

It's funny, you talk about, you know, building tech takes a lot of money and, you know, you just can't do it as a brokerage. So what do you decide to do? The tech, the engineer, the. That techie. And you, you've, you're starting a new company.

You gave me a demo right before we recorded this interview. It is, it is a fantastic looking product. Love it.

It really sets you apart as an agent. Right. And that is what an agent looks to do all the time. How do I set myself apart? How do I differentiate myself?

But it does it by focusing on the most important thing an agent needs to do every single day. And what is that?

It is taking a lead that you get and converting them to a client, whether it's a buyer, whether it's a seller listing, whether it's an offer you have to write. You have the opportunity for business and you need to close that business. Otherwise you may not be able to feed yourself or your family. Right.

So it was like the highest pressure thing an agent needed to work on. And we didn't find many tools out there that could do this in the way we wanted. We wanted beautiful marketing.

We wanted something that could take what an agent wanted to share with a lead, put it all together into one link and deliver that one link to the client and lead. And instead of a black hole that you get with email where you send, okay, here's my listing presentation.

Here's why I could be your best agent for you and my brokerage. You don't get analytics on that. You don't know what they're doing, you don't know what they're reading. It's a black hole. Right.

You don't even know if they've opened it. So we've built a system where an agent can take everything that they want.

Video, website, matterport, you know, everything, their reviews, their brokerage presentation, their customized listing presentation, everything. Put it all into one place, deliver the link, get analytics on that link and close the deal. Right. Close the lead or win the business.

And, you know, it was originally designed for listing presentations and agents started using it for offers. They've been delivering offers with it and they've been delivering many things with it.

They use it to educate the consumer, educate the seller, like after they're in contract, what are their next steps? Or after they've closed their home sale or purchase, delivering documents through it, staying in touch, being top of mind to the clients.

But it's a very, very sort of underserved market. We feel for the agent workflow and we just want to make agents better. We want to make agents better at their jobs, and that's our mission.

I recently saw Kenny Truong and I know, you know Kenny, Jeff Law, right? Two. Two.

Really?

Two highly respected voices in real estate talking about High Note at the Inman event just last week. Yeah, so that's really cool.

And I think, you know, the, the power of people like that, talking about a tool is pretty important at this stage for you, right?

Yeah, it's very gratifying. I mean, you know, it's one thing where you tell someone to promote yourself, it's another when they do it without your involvement.

And so, you know, and I've been working on this since 2019 after I left Realogy. And it's been really gratifying to see that agents, so many agents are finding success with the tool.

We've been in beta since, in 2020, basically really getting it out there, getting the bugs out there, understanding what the other use cases are building, making the tool better, and really honing in our marketing and sales process.

And we're going to make an announcement in early 2021 as far as a launch, a nationwide launch to bring it to all agents or brokerages that want that edge, that want their to deliver their value proposition the easiest possible way. So that's what we're doing.

I have to ask this question. My boss has listened to the podcast.

You're telling me then an agent could have a rate my agent profile and have that as one of the pieces of information that they supply to a potential listing or potential buyer as well?

Absolutely, absolutely. They, you know, the one of the major things that an agent wants to convey to their client is validation of themselves. Right?

Now that's what an agent does, right? You kind of like, hey, this is about me. I'm so experienced and I'm so great.

But let me not just me tell you, but here are all my clients telling, saying the same thing. And reviews are everything, right? Testimonials are everything.

Before you buy something on Amazon, if you're deciding between five or six things, not only is price important, but reviews the most important thing. Same with real estate. The reviews and testimonials are the most critical piece because you just don't know who this agent is. And you need trust.

Trust is everything in the business. And you know, the reviews and testimonials are that piece. And yeah, we tested it with Rate My Agent and it works, right?

You could just get the agent profile very seamlessly, copy and paste the link straight into high note and deliver that link to the consumer to show your expertise and showcase what you do as an agent.

I think a lot of top producers are going to eat this up. I mean, I really do.

It's been the, we have a big waiting list now. You know, it's, it's been overwhelming for us.

And you know, we have that because we need to be able to make sure they're serious, make sure they're serious about their business. You know, we market it as a top agent tool and that's what it's for.

It's really for the top agents out there who are really serious about their craft. Right? Because if you don't get the serious ones, you're just going to spend time onboarding them. They're going to get out of the business.

They're not going to take their business seriously and, and they're gonna, they're gonna you know, just basically waste time and money. Right? So it's for top agents. It's for, for any agent that wants to get ahead and, and build their business, get to the next level.

So yeah, yeah, build building tech for Great agents. That's. That's gotta be. That's gotta be.

That's our slogan. That's the slogan of High Note Labs. It's building well, great tech for great agents. There you go.

That's awesome. Just a side note, I'm an Evernote certified consultant. I love Evernote. You know, came out of the Bay Area, Right. I think Phil built it up there.

It seems like if you thought, think about a. You think about a notebook in Evernote with a series of notes in it, right. That are. That you can get to through one link.

You've taken that and just turned it into this. And I probably will cut this out. I'm just asking you this question. It seems like that's what you've built, but in a way sexier way than an Evernote.

Yeah. You know, the technology, you know, is not new. I mean, Dropbox doesn't same thing. They send a link full of documents.

But the new part is that real estate is different. You're not. And when I'm saying real estate, I'm saying the agent. The agents are sellers. They're marketing people. Right. They are relationship driven.

And they want to not just show files, but they want to make them pretty, they want to make them look good, they want to affect an emotion. And you can't affect an emotion with Dropbox links, right. Or Google Drive links or any link. Right.

To something that opens up that is not in a advertisement or some sort of beautiful marketing, beautiful showcase of something. And that's what we did. We added a presentation layer on top of the delivery of materials. And.

But the presentation layer is easy for the agent to build because that's the other thing. Agents are not graphic designers. They can't build things quickly. And they try and it comes out terrible.

And that's why you need marketing departments. And marketing departments cannot turn them around quickly enough.

So you need to have a tool that puts the power of building beautiful presentations in the agent's hands. And so that's what. That's what we built. And it's very hard to do well, right? It's very hard to do, but we're onto something.

So we'll see how it takes off at our launch. But it's very positive so far.

Mark, I'm going to wrap this up the way I've wrapped up every episode.

And that's ask you the same question that I've asked every guest and that's if you could give one piece of advice to a new agent just getting started in the business, what would it.

Be, oh my gosh, you know, you really, you need to think about your real estate business and you being in the, in the business as a business. And there needs to be a marketing component, there not needs to be an expertise component and there needs to be a focus.

You need to figure out as an agent what your focus is going to be.

And we tell this to every agent that joined our brokerage because every agent that comes in, a lot of them are very much like, well, I'll do any deal. If there's a deal, I'll go, I'll go wherever the client goes, that's good for that one deal.

But what's going to end up happening is you're going to be running around everywhere and you're not going to develop any particular expertise in any particular market and with any particular niche and you need to stand out because there are a million agents out there, in fact 1.4. Right? And in your market, it's very competitive, every market.

And you see, you need to figure out what is that thing that is going to make you great, right? What's your niche, what's your marketing angle, what's your, are you a people person? Are you very service oriented? Are you great in tech?

Are you going to be, you know, servicing first time buyers? Are you for investors? Are you a condo specialist? Are you the, the, you know, the relocation specialist?

You got to be, you got to have a specialty and pick one and go with it. And go with it hard. You really need to lean into it, right? And don't try to please everyone because you're not going to.

So you might as well pick the group that you want to please. And you know, that's being you, right? In this day and age of social media, I mean, you can't hide anymore from yourself.

So I think it's the greatest thing is just to be you and own it, right? Own it, Mark.

If somebody wants to reach out to you, what's the best way for them to do that?

Email would be great. Markinote IO you could find me on social media as well, Mark Choi. And it's hard not to find me social media.

My name is very unique so you can always reach out to me on LinkedIn, wherever. So but Markethinote IO may be the best way.

It is gonna be so much fun to watch this company go big. I'm excited for you. Yeah, that's super cool and I love the look and the feel.

I would tell people, go to HighNote IO and there's some great demonstration of the product you can see what it does. It's going to be launching sometime in 2021, so congratulations and best of luck.

Thank you. Very excited and I really enjoyed this conversation and thank you for having me on the show.

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