The Real Estate Sessions Rewind - Episode 250 from August 2020 - Behind the Scenes of the Real Estate Industry with Stefan Swanepoel

Hi, everybody. Welcome to another Real Estate Sessions Rewind.

We have a very special rewind episode today because next week Jack Miller, president and CEO of T3 Sixty, will be joining us talking about the Opportunity Report. So I thought it'd be a great time to go back in time back to August of 2020 and let's relive episode 250 with Stefan Swanepoel.

It was great getting him on the show, getting his background. I think a lot of interviewers don't go that deep with him.

It was a lot of fun to get that information and then of course, just where he thought we were headed in 2020. So I think it's pretty cool and appropriate to put this episode here.

So enjoy and don't forget to tune in next week to listen to Jack Miller talk about the opportunity to report. 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 250 of the Real Estate Sessions podcast. Yes, you heard that right, 250 episodes. Thank you so much for tuning in.

Really, thank you so much for telling a friend and I am so excited. Special shout out to Jay Thompson for coordinating my next guest for me for this special episode. I'm going to be talking to Stefan Swanpoel.

Yes, Stefan Swanpoel of the Swanpoel Trends Report, of the danger report in 2015, the guy that runs T360 with that incredible team. So let's get this thing started. Stefan, welcome to the podcast.

Bill, Good morning. Or to all of the listeners, depending on where they are, good afternoon or good evening.

Yeah, yeah, we're. I'm in St. Petersburg, Florida, enduring a little bit of a thunderstorm. Let's tell everybody where you're sitting.

Well, then I would have to say I'm on the opposite side of that because I'm on a beautiful north shore of Kauai on the Hawaiian Islands and it is a gorgeous sunshine day, beautiful blue skies, probably mid-80s. And it will be another perfect day in paradise.

And if I my maths right, you're about. You're six hours behind the east coast, correct?

Yes, it is. It is now still morning where I am still early. Not early, early morning. But it is early morning. Yes.

Well, I can't thank you enough. And I want to shout out to Jay Thompson for help helping coordinate this. I've been a big fan of what you do, what T360 does.

I have to also tell you this. I'm like a Jack Miller fanboy. I've been following him since pre T360. And so what a. What a. What a great hire, by the way.

We'll talk about that a little bit later. I want to start at the beginning. That's what I'd do with all my guests. And when I was doing my research, I found out that you were.

You're my second guest that was born in Kenya.

Oh, my goodness. What's the odds of that?

What are the odds of it being two? Right. And so how long were you there and how does Kenya enter the picture for you?

Yes, I do have a very eclectic, eclectic background and interesting, if I have to say so, myself as well. Very strange. I was blessed and I'm also very thankful for the opportunities that my parents gave me.

I don't come from a wealthy family, but I come from a father that was in a part of the diplomatic corps and was stationed around the world for many a year. His first appointment in the 50s, sort of early 50s, actually early to mid-50s, was by Queen Elizabeth of England. And he was appointed to.

Although in the diplomatic core, he was not on the political side or the spy side or the military side. He was involved in the exports and imports, the commerce side.

His task was to try and improve and encourage trade relationships between the countries that were all part of the British Commonwealth, the Crown, Queen of England. So it was places like the Canadas and Australias and the New Zealands and the Indias and the South Africas.

And of course at that time also many of the.

The countries which subsequently became independent in Africa and Kenya was then, and probably is still now one of the top two or three countries in Africa that have always been a little bit more economically viable and strong and progressive. And so he was stationed there in, as I said, early, early 50s. And I was born there late 50s, while he was there. He was there for eight years.

I was there for about five and a half or so. So I was born there. My first friends were there. I went to kindergarten school there. I was baptized there.

And then in the early 60s, sort of around about 62, there was a uprise, as there was in many countries in Africa over years to come, as those countries seek their autonomy from what they considered mainly European White rule. So many countries, be it Kenya, Tanya Tanzanica, Congo, Ghana, Nigeria, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Zambia.

South Africa went through a period of time where there was tension and stress and struggles. And then at different stages they became independent.

Kenya went through that in 61, 62 when they had what they call the MAU MAU uprise, MAU MAU, one of the local tribes in Kenya. And they did not appreciate people from India.

So what they called Indians, not the American Indians, but Indians from India, the Jewish population and then almost any white population, mainly English, German, Dutch, Belgium, French, Spanish, French, and they wanted them out. And they did start unfortunately becoming violent in some cases.

There were many killings and we were just told on very short notice at one stage which was fine, and then we were told we've got to get our ass out of there. And we were, we were evac'd out because we were non critical personnel. So when it became bad, we were told to leave.

And I remember going down to Mombasa and on a helicopter to a military ship, I mean very vaguely. I was, I was five, six years old, don't have lots of memories of it. And we left and my dad said, well, where's next?

And they said, well, there's an opening that's just opened up. You can become the Trade Commissioner for the entire east, for England, if you'd like to.

And that will be stationed in Hong Kong, on the island of Hong Kong in South of China.

So in 62, 63, we went over to Hong Kong and that's where I did my first schooling, grade one, all the way to grade five, six somewhere there and where I had some African American or we were just called them black friends in Kenya. And I spoke a black language for a period of time, which my parents told me I spoke fluently. I do not have many good memories of that for meaning.

I don't remember really speaking it. I can do a few words today, but I can't speak the language.

I was then taught to speak Chinese, which I went so from a black African language to a Chinese Asian language which is so different. Meanwhile, of course my parents are European, from French and Dutch and English stock European.

So I was given some English, some Swahili, some Mandarin, Cantonese, and it was confusing. And I think by the time I was, you know, 9, 10 years old, I had a lot of experiences.

I had the privileges of going to many countries in, in the, in the east, so, so remember going to the Taj Mahal in India, going to Singapore, walking on the Great Wall of China, so lots of Experiences which I don't think many people, especially not as a child, ever have. And then towards the late 60s, my dad got a position in South Africa and we moved to South Africa, late 60s, and I finished elementary school there.

South Africa did not have middle school. You had only elementary school and then high school. So it was divided sort of around about grade seven.

And so I had just around about finished elementary school in South Africa. And then I did high school. Graduated in high school, my parents wanted me to speak Afrikaans or Dutch, which is their native language.

And so I was put in a Dutch school. So they. I wouldn't say they try to get rid of the Swahili and the Chinese, but because there were so many languages in my head, they forced.

I wouldn't say forced. Forced, strong word. But they put me into an Afrikaans medium school, not an English medium school.

So English, I would today really consider maybe my fourth language. It's not my first medium.

And I sometimes catch myself talking fast and thinking in another language and then having to, in my mind, translate quickly. So I sometimes get so mad when I. When I make a spelling error or a grammatical error, and once I say it, I realize it, oh, wrong. But it's. It's the.

I think it's the multiple languages which contribute towards that.

So I graduated in South Africa in high school and then went on to go and get two degrees, one in engineering and then a master's degree in business and then a few postgraduate diplomas in technology law and mergers and acquisitions and then real estate.

Real estate. When you want to ask this question, where are you from? That is such a difficult answer for you.

Yeah, I usually. Because I get the answer probably 100 times a year, so I've had it, you know, 2,000 times in my life in the last 20 years.

I usually joke and say, Texas. And then when somebody says, no, that's not true. I say, yeah, you caught me out, sort of. I come from Brooklyn, New York.

And then they say, well, that's not true either. And then you can see, usually the people are either either they're like you smiling at the moment, or they're a little awkward.

They're not quite sure if I'm, you know, I kid because I like to kid. So they not sure if I'm kidding or it's the truth.

And then I would say, well, it's a difficult one because some people pick up a South African accent, but my wife is South African and my parents have a South African accent as well. And I don't really. I clearly Those who say, oh yes you do.

But if you speak to all the friends which I have in South Africa, they will say, no, you don't. Yet Americans don't think I have an American accent.

So I think that the accent, I always say it's got screwed up and buggered up and it's been disjointed. So it's probably as international eclectic as you can get.

It's got a little British undertone, but then it's got the Canadian, European, Hong Kong flavor to it. Then it's got a South African bend to it. And then I've been in America now almost 30 years. We became citizens almost 20 years ago.

It was always my dream to become an American citizen. So I've picked up the tomato. Tomato.

And to be understood driving through a drive through at a McDonald's on a scratchy intercom and trying to tell them what you want on your hamburger is in its own a very difficult task. So to be able to pronounce water correctly or water right. So I don't know. It's a delightful mess.

Yeah, that's great. I love the McDonald's reference. That's not what I expected. That's great. You finish at university. So engineering business, first of all.

My first thought is, wow, engineers, they're not really thinking about business as much as they are about building and things. They seem like. And it makes sense though, what you're doing today, obviously that these two things played together.

What was the first thing you did out of school? What was your first job?

Well, that's it. Again, I'm not a simple person, so I can't give you simple answers. I apologize. I say after school because I didn't do my first job after school.

I started working in grade nine. I've always had an affinity for business. So grade nine, grade 10. I found school extremely easy and boring. I mean, it was a breeze for me.

Did not find it hard at all. So I actually started looking for work and I started working in grade 10 as a cashier at, I would call it the South African version of Walmart.

It's not called Walmart, but it looks just like a Walmart. It functions like a Walmart. It is in all regards just a local, local brand, but so I would say Walmart. I did that for three years.

But while I did that, I found was not enough to do school in Walmart. So I actually started distributing newspapers as well. Morning and afternoon newspaper. And then I found that that wasn't enough.

So by the time I was in grade 12. I was actually assistant manager of Walmart.

I had to open up the store every morning before I went to school, check all the cash registered till the cashiers in, open the, open the building and then go to school. They went on working, that would come off to school. We would do the reconciliation because we closed at 5, reconciliation of all the cash registers.

And I would pluck everybody out everybody's time cards and then locked the store actually up. And then in the mornings I would wake up at 4 or 5 o'clock. They would drop the newspapers up at my mom's home, my parents home, my dad's home.

And I was the local regional manager for two newspapers. The Auchenblatt and He Wolfstadt was two Afrikaans newspapers.

And I had about 40 boys on bicycles that would come around at around about 5:30 to come and pick up their respective streets of newspapers. So I would get four or five hundred newspapers.

I would then count them out in bundles of tens or twenties or thirties, put the rubber bands around everything, get them all ready. So when the kids came around an hour or so later, I would give them their newspapers and then I would head off to Walmart to go open it up.

And then I would go to school. Then I come back, close Walmart. And then I would get the afternoon delivery of the newspapers, finish that at about 5:30.

And then I had no idea what to do at night, so I became a waiter at a restaurant, a catering company. And then within a year I just, I couldn't do the catering so they actually made me manager of it. And we did parties at people's homes.

I remember doing Miss World. South Africa had a Miss World in 1975.

I remember doing her private function at her home where we would have four or five cooks, gourmet cooks, and people that would do the wine table and the cheese table. I was not old enough to drink at the time, still don't drink today really. But I would be the organizer, so I actually had my license.

I would drive them all there, take the food there, set it all up, coordinate with the host or the hostess or the owner of the party, give everybody their tasks, make sure the food was there, stay there till the thing was finished, the party was finished, you know, 11:00, 12:00, 1:00, whatever.

Take everybody back to the catering company and then wrap it up, check everything, book it all out, check all the finances and then you go back home, you know, 12:00, 1:00 to start, 4:00 to the newspapers. And that, that felt like a balanced day. That felt like a good day.

So, so I, I heard somewhere that you didn't even apply for your first job in real estate, that you, someone applied for you.

Yes.

So. So let's talk about how real estate enters your life because it's obviously your, your passion.

I have always loved real estate. And I had my own construction company. I had maybe about two crews of about 40 people each working on two different homes that I was building on spec.

We had built spec. And this is what I was at university. I was, I did a five year engineering degree and I was in my third year and I started the construction company.

So I had these two crews, maybe about 80 people building two spec homes at a time, which I had taken the money I'd made while I was in school to fund these homes. So I actually owned homes when I was just in college. And so I like the construction, development point of it side of it.

And one day I had just graduated from university and I was engineer, appraiser, developer, partner in the largest company in Pretoria, in the capital city, and very happy at what I was doing. Loved the people, loved the company, loved the job.

And I opened a financial magazine at the time called Financial Times and there was this one page, full page ad which said, we're looking for a chief executive officer to run basically the equivalent of what we know in America as the national association of Realtors. They called a realtor there an estate agent.

And they didn't call it the association, they call it the Institute, but exactly, exactly the same animal.

And I looked at this sort of this world of real estate agents or realtors, and it said, you'll meet the president of the country, you will write books, you'll give talks, you'll speak at seminars, you go to international conventions, you'll do tour groups, you'll be on legal advisory committees, you'll change the law, you'll do education, training. And I said, if I look at that list of things which they claim that this person would do as an engineer, I was never going to do any of those.

I mean none. I was doing calculations and research and algorithms.

And I thought that other job sounds so impressively, awesomely, generously delightful compared to working with algorithms and formulas. Although I'm very good with numbers, it doesn't do anything for me. I mean, I might be good at it, doesn't mean I like it.

And I thought, I wonder who would be the person. I thought, let's say, take you as an example. I thought if Bill Risser is the right person for the job.

I wonder if I could meet Bill and if he could become my mentor, I could become his apprentice. And then if he did the job for, I don't know, five years or 10 years, and.

And then maybe one day when Bill retires, I could maybe step in under his shadow. But I didn't even know where to start.

And a week or two later, I was a chairperson of the junior chambers of commerce for my city, and we were hosting a cocktail party, and I was at the cocktail party, and I butterfly around when I'm at a party. I pretend to be a good host and went around making sure everybody's happy and everybody's good.

And this job, which I'd read in the magazine, popped up in my head, and I thought, I wonder if somebody in this room maybe knows a realtor. I mean, I wonder. So I started asking around. So as I was introducing myself and saying hi to everybody, are you enjoying the evening?

I said, hey, Bill, do you happen to know a realtor? And, you know, half of them said, no. And at last one person said, oh, yeah, that guy standing there in the corner. His name was Dirk D I R K.

He said, dirk knows. Dirk's a realtor. So I walked over to Dirk, introduced myself into. So I said, do you know a realtor? He said, yeah, yeah, I'm a realtor.

I said, by the way, what is a realtor? I mean, I have no clue, right? And he said, well, let me explain to you the buying and the selling of homes. I said, no, I get that part.

But anyways, so here we strike a conversation. I like him, he likes me. We get along that evening, and he says to me, why am I asking? And I said, well, I saw this ad in the financial magazine.

He says, oh, yeah, yeah, we're looking for an executive officer, CEO. He said, well, are you interested in the job? I said, well, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I'm too young.

The time I was 25, I said, I'm too young, and I don't know exactly what the job entails, but it just looks fascinating. And we left it at that.

And a few days later, he was at a board meeting for the local chapter, the local association, and he threw my hat into the ring, and I had no clue. No clue.

And a year later, you're the CEO.

They called a couple of weeks later and said, come in for your appointment. I said, appointment for what? And they said, well, your application for the job. I said, what job? I have no idea what you're talking about it came out.

I was petrified. I actually considered not going for the interview. I thought why?

And then I thought, well, I was interested enough to look at the ad to ask somebody, to find somebody. What can I lose to go for the interview? So I went for the interview thinking that this is a great learning experience.

And the interview process took about nine months, which I had not expected. It was painful.

I had association board members gruel me up and down from anywhere from Sunday asking me questions which I thought only your mother and father can ask. So I was terrible. I didn't like it at all.

But nine months later, three rounds later, 200 candidates later, at the age of 26, they offered me the CEO job to hit up NAR for Southern Africa. And I got introduced to the deep side of our industry and have been in love and stayed in it every day ever since.

I think looking back at your timeline, you've always been a CEO from that point forward. And talk about some experiences throughout the industry, mlss, other associations. How about working with ERA and part of realogy.

Let's talk about how do you finally get to the United States?

Yeah, very blessed.

And I would humbly propose that I might have some of the most diverse experience you could have because I worked for the association as the CEO, liked it very much. I had no short term intention of leaving.

After a couple of years there, the largest bank in Africa came to me and said that they were merging four organizations together. United Trust Allied and one other Volkskas.

And they were creating apsa, Amalgamated Banks of South Africa, which today is still, I believe the largest bank in Africa. And they were creating a new division which they were going to call a real estate division.

And they had picked me and asked me if I could come and join them. I joined them at the age of 29.

I became a general manager which in a bank of, I don't remember, I don't know, 5,000 people at the time I was in the top 10, 29. So super young come to head up this real estate division which at that point in time was. Was zero. It was just me, so it was nothing really.

But their goal was to become the largest player in real estate, bar nothing. I got a reasonably open checkbook. I mean, of course there's limits to everything.

But in the pursuing two or three years after that I bought probably 20 companies for them on behalf of them, which we submerged together. Some clean, some restructured, some brought into the bank, some kept autonomous, some put up a new brand against it. We bought International brands.

So there's not a part of real estate that I didn't do in some role as CEO and most of the roles below that, a total rebranding of buying six companies and changing all the brands of all six companies to a brand new brand and rolling it out. I had the budget to do so. Blessed to do so. I did that for a significant period of time. Very happy again where no short term tension of leaving.

Got an unfortunate message that my mother had terminal brain cancer, which she just one day did not have and the next day had it, which we did not know. I decided to resign from the bank.

They were willing to give me a couple of days, maybe a week or two off, but the doctor said my mom could maybe live for a couple of months before she passes, which she ultimately did that year. And the bank just said, your role is too important.

We can't allow you to take, you know, a couple of months, can take a couple of days or maybe a week or two. I said, no, I need to be with my mom. So I actually resigned from all of that and my mom actually lived for another nine months.

I was with her every day for those nine months. I basically spent almost all my time with her, which was delightful and wonderful. And of course that was hindsight.

You could always say that was the right thing to do at that time. It was hard, but we were neighbors. I had bought the house next door to them. I had two young boys at the time and my wife was next door.

So we had the opportunity.

I could walk over three, four, five times a day, spend time with her, which is of course great, hard, but it was, it was correct, it was the right thing to do. And once she passed, I, during the time which she was terminally ill, I actually wrote a book. And that was one of my first real estate books.

And I released it shortly after her passing and it became a number one seller in South Africa. And it was called A New Era in Real Estate.

Era, meaning period of time, happens to be the name of the franchise which I purchased, which also happens to be the name of my wife. So my wife is called Hero. So the word had many, many meanings. The passing of my mother, my wife's name, and then the franchise name.

And it was like a trends report. It was about the future of real estate which I had written during my time, which I had available.

And so a year later, I had secured and purchased the ERA franchise rights for Southern Africa for about, I think it was 11, 12 or so countries, roughly. We only launched in one but we had acquired all the little small countries in and around.

There are some which are almost like Indian territories within South Africa. And there was always a question, are they autonomous, are they not? And I didn't want somebody to use that as a loophole to attack me from my flank.

So if there was any chance that I could secure it, I secured it. But we launched in South Africa in March of 92 and by November of 94, which was 18 months later, we had 122 offices.

So I had grown the business about one office every 72 to 90 hours. Every 90 hours for 18 months. And I got a call from America and they said wow, how big is your team? I said my team to do what?

And they said well the team to sell franchises. I said no, I mean I bought the master franchise. It's my business, I'm the only one who sells franchises. Nobody else sells my stuff.

And they said well you can't sell that many franchises. We have a team of 25 people in the US and they can't even do that. Anyways, long story short, they offered me a job.

And that was the same time which South Africa was going through a lot of the, you'll remember apartheid, Nelson Mandela, sanctions, some violence, some protests and riots. And I had two boys which were six and seven, eight, six and eight years old.

They had broken into my neighbor's house, they had come onto my property and the police were there with a helicopter but they didn't get into my house, but they got into my property and they kidnapped kids, kids at my kids school. So it had become, the violence had become close enough to home that we felt very threatened for our lives.

So when they offered me an opportunity to come to the States and that having been a dream all along because of all my travels, we seized it in end of 94 and we immigrated to the states end of 94 and I sold all of my South African businesses off to local institutions and we, we came across completely and we made America our home. So I worked for a the large franchise era. They asked me and said you can pick any, any area you want. We did not know America very well.

We'd been across here two or three or four times. My wife and I together. I had been separately maybe 40 times, but my wife maybe two or three times with me.

And so we took, we took a month and we toured nine cities. Washington, New York and Miami and Orlando and Dallas and San Francisco and Chicago and Denver and San Diego and la, sort of.

Those were the kind of cities in A month. And my wife fell in love with San Diego. And so we asked if we could get the San Diego region. They gave me the San Diego region to run.

I ran the San Diego region as vice president for era.

A year later they gave me the entire California, all the way Sacramento up to San Francisco, which was about the same size as my operations in South Africa was about 130 offices roughly. I ran that for a year. When we the company was acquired by today rilogy.

At the time it was called HFS and then later Ascendant, but it was HFS at the time. It was a purchase and we were all called to Kansas City. We were about, I don't know, 300 corporate staff people.

The team had about 26,000 agents at the time, but 300 corporate people and then maybe two and a half thousand brokers. But the corporate people called to Kansas and we were all fired. And they said we are moving the head office to Parsipony, New Jersey.

And we all said where the hell is that? Had no idea. I'd never heard of the name in my life anyways.

They said a person by the name of John Snodgrass at the time the president under Silverman, one step above Richard Smith said that we need about a dozen people to come with us to help, but the rest of you we don't need. So we're firing all of you. And if anybody's interested in a job, you've got to reapply.

About half of the people had no interest because they were Kansas based or did not want to move to New Jersey. Half of us all said yeah, hell yeah, we want a job, sure. So about half of us reapplied for a job.

They interviewed us two days later and of the 150 or so which applied for a job, they gave a job to every 10th person, roughly one in 10. I was one of them. They promoted me to senior vice president, asked me if I would head strategic planning for, for hfs.

And so how long are you in that role?

I, well I, I sold my house in San Diego. We moved to Parsipani, bought a house there. I came in as a strategic planning. I did it for about three months.

And then the president which they had appointed for era Fred Beelstein was an accountant out of Atlanta, Bucket. He did not know franchising, he did not know real estate. He was the hatchet, he had to be the hatchet man.

He had to do the relocation, he had to build a new team, he had to put it together, he had to Learn the complexities of rilogy of Sendet. He was there for the same 90 days which I was, senior vice president of strategic planning. And the poor man had a heart attack. He just.

One day something happened. We didn't see it. It happened. We didn't know at the time. It was kept a secret from us for the best part of a month.

They were hoping that he was going to recover. He did ultimately recover. He did not die. But he never came back to the office. Never, ever.

And for a period of time, we tread water because we weren't sure, where's Fred? And then Snodgrass called me and said, we've now determined Fred's not coming back.

We're asking you to step in and become acting president of ERA Worldwide. So I had been there about four months. I had been in the country for 28 months, and I took over.

We got to get you to your own company somehow.

Not today. Are we about that?

No, no. This is fascinating. This is exactly what I want. Tell me. There's got to be this piece of you that says, I want to do what I love.

I want to do something beyond this. And is that what really got the beginnings of what's now T360?

So, yes, most certainly there was a want. But you know what? It is probably like in most things, Bill, it's usually your wife, right? She gets all the kudos.

And then sometimes when they're not present, we sometimes can blame them, too. But, yeah, I was in New Jersey.

I was the acting president, and we were still working through the Fred Beilstein situation, and we were buying back many of the independent territories that the previous ownership of ERA had sold. And I was doing that, and I truly was happy. I was pretty certain I was going to stay with them. I wouldn't say forever, but for a long, long time.

And maybe I would have. But my wife experienced the winters of New Jersey, and she said, stephane, you sold me a bill of goods. You showed me San Diego.

You let me pick San Diego. I brought my parents across, they saw San Diego, and now you're squirreling me up here in a gray, gloomy, muddy, wet New Jersey.

And the first winter we went through was awful. My wife's experience of snow prior to that date was a white snowflake on a Christmas card.

So when she had to live through it, it was stressful for her. And she had a small accident on black ice, and the schools were closed and the kids had to be in our basement.

And we left the cat outside one day we Almost lost the cat. And she just said, listen, this is not working out for me very well.

And we were there maybe six months and she said, please, can we go back to California? And it took us a good six months to work through that family challenge.

She threatened to leave without me, but we discussed it honestly and I felt she had given up. Her family's back in South Africa. I married her when we were, when you graduated university. So she gave, I would say gave up.

We still have a close relationship with her parents. We're actually talking to a mom now to come and visit us, I think for the 10th time. So her parents come across frequently.

But I felt she had given up family and locality and proximity to loved ones so that I could pursue a desire to want to become an American and a dream to becoming somebody meaningful in America. In real estate, the least I could do is let go of a job. I mean, a job is not that important. And I had always had my desire to have my own company.

So this was an opportunity. I could blame her, but at the same time I was pursuing my own dream. So it was not anybody's fault.

But fortuitously, the passing of Fred Beelstein, the opportunity which came in the winter, her wanting to come back, me wanting to start my own business, it basically blossomed at the same time.

So after I went back to the leadership at Rilogy and indicated that I would like to move back, they said I could not move back until I fulfilled certain obligation and tasks and goal. And that was to help train my. I said my. The successor who was going to become the president. I agreed to do that over a six month period.

We moved back to California. I started the company which today is known as T360. At the time it was called Real. Sure, but it is basically the same entity, roughly the same entity.

And I flew back and forth from California to New Jersey for six months to help train and introduce the new CEO to the franchisees and to the industry.

You are known as an author, an analyst, a speaker, a management consultant. What are you, what's your favorite?

I am from this year, for the first time, a grandfather. So that might be the most important.

That is, that is awesome.

It is awesome. She's delightful. And she's living with us here in the house at the moment in Hawaii.

So we're, we're thrilled to have her little, little small girl of, of eight months. But I am all of those things, Bill. I, I was gifted from, from the big man upstairs with an enormous amount of energy. I like doing A lot.

I don't mind getting my hands dirty and there's not a lot I won't do. I'll probably do about anything. So as a result of that, I will be the chief cook on bottle watch.

And hence, when you do a lot of things, you end up actually becoming reasonably good at different things because you do them all the time. If you said I had a pick between those, I would probably default to author. It allows me to retreat from the world of craziness.

It allows me to do it at my own time, my own pace, my own leisure. It allows me to critique myself, of which I am by far the worst.

It allows me to rip up my own stuff and rewrite it two or three times where people tell me I'm good on stage. And I do, of course enjoy the accolades which come from stage and the interaction with people. But it is, it is high energy, high stress.

I mean, you have to get your things right. You have to remember, you have to prepare. People say come easy, but it takes a lot of preparation to be as smooth and gifted as one can be on stage.

So if I know I'm going to do the T3 summit and there's 400 people and they're your peers and they're. Gina Brafari, the head of Berkshire is there and Gary Keller is there, the head of Keller, and Ryan Schneider, the head of religious there.

I mean, these are all very smart, high experienced people and I know them. So the last thing I want to do is screw it up in front of them. So. Which means you end up spending hours in prepping. So that's.

I wouldn't say stressful, but it's less enjoyable as writing.

Yeah, I want to get specific on one particular report that you put out. I mean, it's acronym, it's Danger. The Danger Report 2015. This is great, right? Definitive analysis of negative game changers emerging in real estate.

Just sweet. Acronym. I love that. It generated a pretty big reaction in the industry. There was a lot of. Well, I'll just say a lot of reaction.

I'll leave it at that. Let you comment, but any particular stories come to mind about releasing that report at that time?

I had by that time probably already done 30 publications in my life, 30 books and reports. And although many of them are very, very well known and read, they are in some cases, like the Swanepo Trends Report.

The Swinepole Trends Report is a solid read. This is not. This is not a book with just photos in it. It's not academical, but it is Intellectual, most certainly.

And I don't expect every agent to read it. But if you care about the future of the industry, if you're a leader of your business, you should read it.

And therefore I have always read or written for the leadership group constituents. I haven't really written a lot for agents.

And when NAR came to me and said that they would like to try and take some of the components from my trends report and widen it to a larger constituents than just brokers, but try and widen it to everybody, if I could say everybody in the industry, the agents as well, and then make it all encompassing to have a specific section just for agents and a specific section just for brokers and a specific section for the MLSS and for the associations and then come up with the complexities of the future. I saw the opportunity to create a more widely read, more widely used publication that could become in my dream, it was to be the industry standard.

So although NIR commissioned the publication and most certainly paid for it, I probably put in two or three times what they paid for it because it was my passion that I want to create a landmark document here.

And of course I am extremely grateful for NIR for awarding me that contract, which I know there are many people with hindsight that would have loved it at the time, but at the time I couldn't see anybody else in the world but me doing it, that was mine. And I might have actually given up my left finger for that contract.

I mean, it was going to be mine because it was my topic, my subject, my passion, my commitment. And we spent, I mean, that vernacular or that acronym which you came up danger.

I came up with it, but it is probably the 40th variation of things that I had tried.

So NIR was happy with if we had called it something vanilla, which would have just said, you know, I don't know, the futuristic analysis of the changing impacts that would be held in the real estate industry as seen through the association's eye in a study held by, you know, organized by the Strategic Thinking Committee and Association. I mean, that's how the title would be. And I wanted something that was. I'm not sure sexy is the right word.

I don't mean anything by that, but I wanted something catchy and that would grab your imagination. And initially NIR didn't like the title. They said the title was too edgy and might get some negative feedback from some places.

And in the end I said, I'm sure it will, but that's what makes it edgy. You've got to come up with something which will stand out. I don't think the majority of people will see it as a negative.

It most certainly will become an acronym which will be used in the writing of articles. The Danger. The Danger Report. And that was the intention because that would.

I mean, the Washington Post grabbed it the same week it came out and it ran with articles. There was industry does introspection and identifies dangers Threatening its existence. Well, that's a little bit of exaggeration.

But that caused, you know, tens of tens of tens of thousands of hits that same day. So the report was, I think NIR would say. And I would say probably, I'd like to say the.

But let's just say one of the most successful reports in the last 20 or 30 years that anybody's put out in our industry. And that was. That was the goal.

Looking back, did you absolutely nail some of those, some of those game changers that were emerging or were there any misses? I know for me, you know, your take on teams in 2015 was dead on.

I think that I like to qualify often by saying, I am not the Dalai Lama, right? I'm not Jesus. I don't do projections and I don't do predictions. I mean, I really don't know what's going to happen in the future.

Don't see me as a gifted person that is going to give you the details of the stock market tomorrow or what's going to happen to bitcoin next week. I mean, that's not what it is about.

What I believe it is about is if you are a intelligent, smart person and you read a lot, you research a lot, you interview people a lot, you do focus groups, you talk, you have wide exposure and you are willing to address any situation in life objectively and fairly.

Whether it's the complexities of diversity which we struggle with in a country at the moment, whether it is the complexities of COVID should you or should you not wear a mask? And to what extreme? Or whether it is is a new business model ibuyer or virtual or salaried, is it coming or not?

If you don't stand in judgment of the president, the people, the virus, the model.

But you look at those things as neutral, objective, fair, logically as you possibly can, you will see past, excuse the word, if I may, but the bullshit. You'll see past the bullshit and the politics and the crap and the emotion and you'll get to see the.

I don't know if it's the factuality or the reality of where that initiative or that concept, or that trend or that thought is going. And I believe that most things that happen in life are on a path. I understand that things can happen on a split second.

I understand that a plane can just fall from the sky. I understand somebody can shoot the present. I get that.

But society, community, schools, areas, good deeds, families, they are all events that happen over lengthy periods of time. And in my family, your family, in creating a school and building a school, building a neighborhood, you can play a role.

You can actually shape the future of that school or that community. And if I can shape a future of a school or a community, that means I can shape my kids. If I can shape my kids, I can shape the industry.

So I think that what our trends report is, what the danger report is, it is purely that I think I have analyzed and researched. I really believe probably more than anybody else in our industry about our industry.

I think I'm in the 60, 70,000 hour range at the moment of just analyzing our industry. Now that doesn't mean that other people haven't lived in our industry longer in your hours, but we all do other stuff.

What I do is research all the time. When you're not talking to me, I'm not talking to you. I'm doing research. I mean, I'd like, like it. So it doesn't make me better than you.

It just means I've probably researched more reports and more studies, have spoken to more people than you have in our industry. From an inquisitive, research and analytical point of view, you may have interviewed them to find out their history.

I've not done that, but I've tried to find out different things. So when we wrote the trends report or the danger report, most of that is not predictions.

Most of that was the feedback that I had culminated, mashed up, scrubbed clean, aggregated together from the leaders and the people in the industry that I had spoken to, not deliberately, just for that report, but for that report before that time, during that time. And I had tried to remove my own passion from those words which I heard. And I try to put it back onto paper in a basic, simple, direct.

I like to call a spade a spade. I'm not very political. Sometimes people say I'm a little brash. It's simply I don't have time to mix the politics.

I'm not trying to, if you read my words, don't try and read something into it which is not there because that wasn't intended. I try to put on the paper what I'm trying to say. So I think that that danger report is not me. I was purely the vehicle to put it there.

It is truly an analysis and a synopsis of the industry's feelings and thoughts at the time.

I can't even imagine what putting together the Trends report for 2020 looks like because obviously that research is happening right now.

Am I. Yep, the 21 report is happening right now. It will be published 7 December this year. It will go to print on 7 November, a month earlier than that.

So about the time which the NHR convention will take place, the highest writing periods are the month of August and September and October. So we are right in the middle of that. We spend June and July to try and identify the topics, the companies, the models, the concept, the debates.

And again, the topics will not be. It's not, oh wow, I had no idea you were going to write about that. Where did that come from? But we'll look and say, well, is Compass topic relevant?

Is Exp topic irrelevant? Is Keller Williams topic irrelevant? Is the concept of I buying?

So whether it's in the MLS association, profitability, broker, management, leadership, franchise side, why is there so many companies at the moment going public? How can they raise so much money? Is the money being used effectively? And when I say that I'm not trying to judge.

So many people in our industry have an opinion, well, that's a bad thing. I don't judge Compass or Exp or Redfin. I'm not here. It's not my role to judge, but it's also not my role to promote them.

I'm not their spokesperson, but I have no ax to grind with any of them at all. I ask the questions to try and find out what I think they are doing.

How do I explain it to everybody so that they have a better understanding of those companies? And how could you then either use what they've done to your advantage by either joining them or competing against them?

Because I don't personally care which one you do. If you join them, good for you. If you are going to compete against them, well, good for you too. I mean, you're going to do what you want to do.

But I can make you smarter. I can give you more tools so that you make less mistakes. Mistakes you will make.

But you don't have to make mistakes that many people have already made. If we can show them to you and point them out to you, it's like you or me teaching our children.

I would prefer that they not hurt themselves too frequently. Hurt themselves? They will. Mistakes. They will. They will Bump their toe, they will fall. But I would prefer it not happening all the time.

Wow, Stefan, you put together an amazing team and very well respected team at T360. In fact, there was a hire this week, the week we're recording this podcast you just announced. Yeah. Talk a little bit about what you've built there.

So T360 would like to be the McKinsey of real estate. So we respect McKinsey, we respect Deloitte's, we respect Boston Consulting. So when you look at the Price Waterhouse and what is it?

What's the other one? I was trying to think, was it Anderson? If you look at those big, big, big management consulting companies, we admire them.

We don't see consulting as the job which you take between the previous job where you were fired or retired and the one that you're going to go next to. Nobody at T3, to the best of my knowledge, is looking for another job or wants to move into another job. So they're just with us at the part time.

We've said to everybody, you've got to like management consulting as a career. This is your business. The people at McKinsey work there for a very extended period of time. Yes.

Many of the young ones, of course, end up becoming CEOs or CFOs somewhere else. So because those big companies are not in our industry, they found our industry very messy, complicated, political, fragmented, mom and pop.

They are in REITs and shopping centers and maybe sometimes in commercial real estate, but they're not in residential real estate. So because they're not in residential real estate, we want to be the McKinsey or the Deloitte's of residential real estate. And that's all we do.

We don't really do anything else. We don't do commercial, we don't do investments, we're not developers. We don't have a broker's license.

Now, are there people in our organization that have brokers licenses? Sure, yeah, we do. But nobody's selling real estate. And if our license is somewhere, it is simply because it has to hang somewhere.

It's not because we're selling. Nobody in our company owns any commission on any transaction.

So we try to be a group of dedicated, smart people that want to be consultants for a career and want to use their experiences that they've had from different walks of our life, be it mls, association, franchising, broker, whatever, and help people to not make the same mistakes and grow their businesses faster and quicker. I've now been CEO of at least nine companies. I think it's actually 11, depending on how you count the small ones. But let's call it. Call it 10.

And I have, I have run once with 20, 30 people. I've run once with 20,000 people. I've run ones in one state. I've run ones in 30 countries. I formed them, I've closed them down, I've sold them.

I've been part of IPOs. I've sold my own company, I've sold somebody else's company. I run an mls. I've been a CEO of an association. I've been a board president.

That doesn't make me better. It just means I've had an opportunity to see real estate from that point of view so that when we provide guidance or assistance.

Yes, I have run a real estate company three times and I've had. I've had a company with 800, 684 agents in California. I have got. The text is from an agent on a Sunday when they give me crap, which I didn't want.

Right. Yeah, I've lived with it. So I think that we are the largest, most skills, if I may say so.

It's always hard to say that yourself because it sounds arrogant and I do not mean to be that, but I would like to believe in my heart that. Jack Mark Lesswing we brought on board, who is the former CTO of nar this week we brought on which you referred to Kenya Burrell.

She's going to head up our diversity consulting initiatives. We know that many companies are asking us to help them with diversity and I think, I think we can.

But I also want people that have more experience and diversity even than I have to be part of the team that when we help somebody else on it, that we can actually say that we have lived both sides of the color line. So yes, we've done that. We've brought on people like Dean.

Dean Cottrell was a senior vice president at nrt, was on the shortlist to potentially become president, which ultimately went to Ryan Gorman. But I mean, he was in the hunt. At one stage. We brought Travis Saxon on board as well.

He was the senior vice president at Real Trends, Stephen Murray's company, where he had been for many years. We brought Michelle Khan on board. She heads up our mergers and acquisition division.

She was with numerous companies, Move.com Tribune where she did mergers and acquisitions, Modern Ventures even for a time. Jack, which I've already mentioned, I mean he did. He was worked with Gary Keller, Keller Williams. Then he was with the Good Life team.

Jonathan was with Lone Wolf. So most of these people, and I know most people, always say, my team's the best. I don't. We're not trying to look for single star performers.

We're trying to create the most respected, hardworking, dedicated group of knowledgeable people that if you needed a SEAL team to back you up, call T3, and we can be your SEAL team.

Whether you want to take out Osama bin Laden or you need to get some water into Afghanistan or whatever it is, of course, I'm using that as a metaphor. You call us and we'll come in, we'll fly in one person, two people, five people, 10 people.

And whatever your problem, desire, goal, wishes, we will make that happen for you. And then once it's done, we will step back because we're not looking for a job. We don't want to be part of your team long term.

We don't want to take anybody's job. We'll fill in on somebody's job. We'll take over somebody's job for a short period of time, help that person grow, expand, achieve the goals.

And then once you say it's ready, we'll take a step back and walk away from the transaction so you can continue with your company.

Stefan, this has been amazing. I've had you here almost an hour, which is. Thank you so much. But I have to ask you one final question.

It's the same question I've asked over 240 people, and that is if you could give one piece of advice to a new agent just getting started, what would it be.

Hard to give you one so much like, to give you more than one. You're saying one state of one.

You can go a little above that.

I'll give you one, and then I'll frame the one. All right, If I had to pick one, stay focused. If you say, put that in context, I would say set your goals. Create your roadmap to achieve your goals.

Have a backup plan for every strategy that you have. Execute on what you've decided to do.

Once you've decided to execute, don't doubt, don't question, don't get distracted by shiny toys and announcements. Don't get scared. Stay focused. Focused, focused, focused, focused. If it doesn't work out, for whatever reason, be outside your control.

Go to your backup plan and execute.

Because I believe that if you set goals for your life, for your family, for your kids, for your business, for your friends, for your neighborhood, for your school, for your church, for your community, I truly believe there is very, very little that you will not be able to achieve. And with the grace of God above and your own energy and the friends around you, you can probably achieve whatever you want to achieve.

If someone wants to reach out to you, what's the best way for them to get in touch with you?

I'm hiding in Hawaii. You can't. I would say the best the T360 website. We have many.

We have about 20 websites, but the primary one, the one is the shortest domain, which is what I wanted, is the letter T and then the numbers360. So we have just four numbers, which is cool.

T36t360.com and then if you want to reach anybody in the team, just put their first name in front of that. So it would be Stefana T360 or Jack at T360 or Dean at T360 or Mark at T360. That is how you can reach all of us.

Awesome. Stefan, I can't thank you enough. This was fantastic. I've.

You know, what I know of you from, from your, your books and from reading the trends report and reading the Danger report and reading Surviving the Serengeti is someone who's passionate about the industry. But to hear you say it is a whole different feeling and a whole different experience. Thank you so much for your time today.

Well, thank you for the invite. I'm honored to be the round special number 250.

I feel like it's a mile marker, which it's going to take you a long time to get 500 so I can hold that for a while. Thank you for being so generous in asking me questions which on the one side is uncomfortable to talk about on the other side.

I appreciate the opportunity to share it with some other people. So thank you very much.

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