New Chief Growth Officer Shares What Content Attracts Other Agents Vs Clients | The Walk Thru 191

The agent should never be the hero of the story, but 99.99% agents make themselves the hero of the story. It's the worst marketing probably in the entire industry, but you can make the client the hero of the story or the home. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the walk through the most valuable marketing podcast in real estate history. I am Eric Simon, AKA the broker agent. I am joined here by Jason traveling Cassidy Jason. How are we doing today? I'm doing great. I'm in the Sacramento Airport. This is all planned strategically. I knew I was going to land right at 950. And because I'm in Sacramento, I know this airport well. I think I met the employee break area, but I kind of think the background works. I think it looks better than my office. Yeah, the background does work. I like that little fern that's placed nicely there in the background. We have a very special episode for you today because we have an enormous announcement. And I don't know if you've seen this on social or you've heard about this on BAM or in the real estate news, but something enormous happened to one of the walk through cohosts. And it wasn't me Jason. It was you and this is an enormous thing that happened in your real estate career. And we are so proud of you. And I know that may sound patronizing, but seriously, because I have kind of grown up with you in this industry. I said that on the broke agent like we've been friends for 10 years now, where we met in an in-conference, just kind of like drinking at a happy hour. You were just an agent. I was just an agent kind of trying to find our way in the industry. And you have now accepted officially the position of chief growth officer of real brokerage, which is truly unbelievable. So first off, congratulations. This is amazing. I want to talk about what this means for you, what this means for the brokerage. I'm not at real of course, but it's just like obviously something so big. And I think it's important that we share our wins and update our audience on everything that's going on. So what's it been like? And it's happened. Yeah, for sure. So first of all, thank you. Right? Like this has been this isn't something that even in I think January 1st, I was thinking was going to happen, for say. Over the last two months or so, there's been talks with Tamir and Jaron and everybody involved in order to kind of craft what we envision this role to be. And there was at one point where we were kind of deciding we're like, okay, so we need an agent who can speak agent. We need someone who's in production, but not the biggest producer because they can't leave their team. And so we need someone who can speak the language, but not and then we also need someone who's in attraction, but not the biggest attractors because they make too much money. Like they're not going to stop and just give it all up. And so I'm just like, huh. So I'm just mid enough to where I can get that. Just good enough, exactly. Where I can speak to the agent side of things, I can speak to the attraction side of things. We were able to work out obviously a title and a compensation package. I am putting aside my real estate agent business, which is another layer to the whole thing. I am freezing my revenue share and attraction and everything literally just to become a C suite employee and work for the company. I now work for 33,000 of our agents as opposed to just me and my team. So that's a huge shift. But that being said, I think, like I'm wildly optimistic about everything. You know, I think that the company is in a good place. I think that we have a great model and a platform. So I'm really looking forward to just this new challenge and working for all of our agents and it should be fun. Yeah. And this is an enormous challenge, an enormous opportunity. I've said enormous like 16 times on this episode. I mean, I switch up the dialogue there a little bit. But you're getting out of production, right? So team going under someone else, I assume, or the team. Yeah, I guess you're right. Like how does that work? Yeah, we're working on it right now. So Mike, my director of sales, will most likely rebrand the team. And then some of my team members are going to go with him and some of them are going to go out on their own. That's solo agents, just depending on where they're at in their career. So the logistics, we have about a month or two to figure that out. And I was thinking to myself, I'm like, okay, I've got a month or two here. Let me do as many deals as I can before I have to start passing them away. And it's day three or day four. And last night, I'm like, I can't do both of these things. I got to give you. So I started looping Mike in and giving him like all my personal business because I'm just too busy. But the, yeah, so the team will cease to exist in its current iteration, just because I can't, it's called the Cassidy team and then not the team leader anymore. But it'll still the, or like the bones of the team will exist under Mike as a neutral third party name. So I won't have anything to do with it from from that angle. Mm-hmm. Perfect. So yeah, for the walkthrough, we'll now have two people that aren't selling actively selling real estate. So great. I'm a real estate marketing podcast. But two people that aren't selling real estate. Exactly. Okay, so this is such like a huge life transition in the fact that, you know, you've been building this real estate business for over a decade now, right? When did you get licensed? 2014? Yeah, 2014. Yeah, 13 years. 2012. I started like interning with my broker owner, Mike, who's actually my director of sales now. But, um, and then 13 is when I got licensed and started doing sales. So 13 years. Mm-hmm. So you have reached the, the, the point of your career that every real estate strives to reach and that is getting out of production. Every real estate agent, ultimate goal is to get out of selling real estate. But still somehow be in the real estate business and you have achieved that. I've been working on that also for a decade without ever really selling that much real estate. So that's awesome in itself. In terms of just how you're going to go about this role because Chief Growth Officer, you're going to be in charge of ultimately agent attraction, right? Getting agents to this brokerage. Yeah, pretty much net. But there's a hundred things I'm going to do, but there's one KPI and that's net agent growth. If you think that agent growth. Yeah, so that even breaks down into two things. You have agents coming in and reducing agents leaving. So, so there's 80% of it probably is agents, agents coming in, agent events, agent attraction calls, industry evangelism, making sure that people know who realism and choose us. And then there's 20 to 30% of it. It's going to be agents support linking with our current agents and stuff like that to make sure that they feel heard and have the end stuff like that right. Right. People leaving. So those two things working hand in hand, but ultimately it at its core is agent, agent growth. Yeah. And is this kind of a just, hey, let's hire Jason and let his mind run with how you're going to go about doing this or is there some sort of structure in place? Because then I know this role did not exist previously, correct? New role. New role. So are they just saying like, now are you basically like, what do I do today to get more agents to this brokerage? Is it social posting? Is it events? Is it all the above? Like what are you? What is your brain thinking of right now? I can't imagine the burden of this 33,000 agents. Your goal to grow. It's off. What are you thinking? What is this burden that you just took on? So, so in a sense, real similar to other cloud-based models that have revenue share, right? Realized heavily on their agents to attract. And so there's a core component of what we do, which is basically like, how do we encourage and get the agents to attract more agents? So that is going to be like educational opportunities, building out playbooks so that people know how to have the conversations, case studies of what works, how did Brad McAllem meet this indie brokerage and get them to come over to real and introduce the concept. What type of social content should you be posting, right? We've talked about this a lot when it comes to agent traction is like, you should almost never talk about real. You should talk about selling houses and production and how you help and then people will be attracted to that. So we're trying to institute a playbook as to all the other agents so they can know exactly how to go about a traction conversation when it comes time. But then also, secondarily, would be seeking out new partnerships and opportunities for the brokerage, whether that be CRMs or SaaS products that might be beneficial to our agents. So then, you know what I mean? If we can ink an enterprise deal with follow-up boss or something, I'm just literally throwing something about it. Now, all of a sudden, the brokerage becomes more attractive because you can get follow-up boss or lofty or whatever. So that type of stuff too, and that's, to me, or would even say, don't worry about that too much, just work on the agent growth. But I think all of it kind of synergizes. For the people at home, to me, or is the CEO of real. By the way, this is not a commercial four-wheel brokerage at all. It's not. So we just got a close of the podcast talking about this crazy life development here. So I want to touch upon something you just said where in terms of you working on agents who work on their attraction. So the best agents who attract the most people to the brokerage aren't necessarily posting about real constantly, right? It's not necessarily the announcement videos. It's just the fact that they're selling real estate. And I think that's a testament to how you ran your social media page. Yeah. If you go on Jason's page, sure he speaks at events and mentions the real brokerage or will have a hat on or the merch on, which is kind of like subtle, you know, visual advertising, but 99% of your content was listings, real estate business, storytelling, client education. So, and I agree just from an outside perspective, when I see the Brad McCombs who's doing these amazing listing videos, that to me is more attractive as another agent saying, hey, these agents are selling a ton of real estate. They're not just like the social media agent that are doing, you know, kind of gimmicky stuff to attract other people, right? So I think that makes sense. Take it, take it because it's not a real commercial. So I'll go outside of that, take our friend of the show, Kyle whistle, right? And his big like this exp org, take Josh Altman and Douglas Eleman, take Ryan Sirhant and Sir Ham people are going to those places because they're also the best agents, right? So like it's not just that they're talking about their brokerage all the time. They're also selling the most houses, which then people want to be around, especially when you talk about mega teams and top producers. They want to be around the other mega teams and top producers. They don't want to, you know, be at a place where production isn't valued. So part of what I'm my ethos to this entire thing is who are our best agents, not just the loudest and content creating ones, but who are our best agents, the hundred million teams, the big teams, like the ones doing it the right way. And how do we shine the light on them and pedestal them to make sure that they are the ones who that's why people come over to reals because they want to be with them. You know what I mean? So there's a little bit of a change there where not even change, but like you'll never hear me speaking outwardly on, well maybe now in this new role I'll have a little bit more of outward. In the past you've never really had seen me talking about real per se. Maybe once a year, twice a year, I'll have a post. And then like you said, every once in a while, I'll just be showing proof of what real is done for my business, but it was never like an outbound thing because that's not how you should be attracting. And I think from like client attraction standpoint too is agents and you could correct me if I'm wrong here. But the agents that almost overly show brokerage pride and are just constantly talking about their brokerage, like why would a buyer or seller care about that? That's right. So if all of your content is based off of oh, compass is so amazing. I love Robert Reffkin or real is so amazing. So like here's a new announcement video of someone else joining under me. That's cool and shows that like the brokerage is growing, that you're growing, that your team is growing. But if I'm a client and I see Jason Cassidy just posted, you know, the fact they just listed a 12 million hour house in La Jolla, that makes me want to list my property more than just showing all this kind of brokerage pride stuff. 100%. Yeah, the clients maybe I'm thinking 13 years, maybe two that out of 400, you know, and say however many sales we did that cared about what brokerage I was at, you know what I mean? And usually it was back when I was at Compass more often because they had concierge. And so it was because of a specific thing that I was able to offer, not because of the brand, but it was just because of the thing. So like very, very, very rarely we ever see, I think a lot of the legacy brands and stuff are hanging their hat on like, oh, well, we have this great brand or whatever it is. And I think 99.99% of the time, the client cares about the agents. Yeah, definitely. All right. So I want to get a little tactical here because I'm curious to see how you're going to transition your social media and marketing to kind of fill this role. You know, this is a marketing podcast. It is. And you're the chief growth officer who will be in charge of marketing the brokerage of posting on social. I don't know about email campaigns or whatever you plan on doing with this, but like what are you going to use maybe from that worked in your real-state business and on social to then use on your social now as the chief growth officer of real? Let's, I mean, let's make no buts about it, right? I think I found most of my success in real estate through the lens of video marketing and social media, video marketing being the avenue and then social media being the distribution channel. And so why would I, why would I switch it up now? Right? I think that when that because that is what works in 2026 and beyond. And so I think that now it's actually going to have a whole slew of new video ideas because now I get to build in public. But instead of building a real estate business and talking about listing videos and real estate market updates and hyperlocal San Diego content, I get to show what it's like to build a brokerage from behind the scenes. I already have like a running list of ideas where as I go to these events, I'm up in Sacramento today, I'll be meeting with Kofi later who's one of our big agents because he's speaking at the event as well. So you better believe I'm going to get some time with Kofi while we're going to shoot some content together. I was in Vegas last week. I met with Joel Herrera, one of our big agents out there and we went golfing, but I had Connor our videographer comp and so we shot a break 50 Bryson-esque vlog style podcast on the golf course. Break 100. Break 100 on the front line. It was a part three course and it was still a hundred from the reds on the front nine with two people as a scramble on a part three course. So but it's like, hey, I want to interview him. He's got he does 700 homes a year. He's got 3,000 people in his network. He's one of our best agents, but I don't want to sit in a podcast studio per se. I want to get him out doing what he loves. He's a scratch golfer. So I want to get him out doing what he loves. Meanwhile, I got the same six or eight questions that I wanted to get from the podcast, but we got it out in the field. Right? So I did another one with Katie Day last week, or I guess, Joel was two weeks ago. Katie was last week. We worked out. So she's doing the 75 hard thing. That's kind of her her brand. And so we worked out together and then after the workout, I asked her six or seven questions. So now it'll get cut up as a as a as a different type of pod where we're interviewing our best agents. Secondarily, like, meet the C suite, right? As I travel around with Tamir and Jenna and her Tesh, can I can I shine light on them? Can I show what it's like? Man, I love hanging out. I love traveling with Jenna, but she talks so loud on the phone. And then get some B roll for her talking loud, right? Can I can I humanize our C suite as we're out and about doing stuff? All of this is going to in my opinion. It's just showing off how we build and public. I want to show what we're doing behind the scenes. And I want to do it in public in a public forum, Facebook, Instagram, social YouTube LinkedIn. And then I want to layer in a little bit more to and I want to come back to that because I think all of that works for agents. But in our internal work Vivo, which is our back end office software, I want to have a live stream every Friday, which I'll have from my first one tomorrow, where we update or where I just talk to the people about what I did that week, right? So it's a very transparent kind of approach. And we're like, hey, this week, I we had a great event on Wednesday and on Thursday, I went to Sacramento on Friday, I went up to Orange County. I had lunch with Shuron. I had I met with Jeff McGonagall at his office. Here's what I learned from each of those. Here's two great things that I learned from the Jeff meeting. Here's how you could take those and put those into play. So my entire, the entire broker, it's all 33,000, have the ability to see what we're building every week in a transparent public way. So that all of that is what's going through my mind for this next, you know, first 100 days, maybe first year, as to how we can utilize video marketing and social to help, to help the new role. Yeah. So two things there, the podcast or like the interview style. So you're basically doing things that these top producers like doing, which I think is really cool. So you're going to golf with someone who likes golfing, you're going to work out with someone who likes working out. And it's such a good, we can go to Disney, right? Yeah. And maybe walk around downtown Disney to Macy. Yeah. It shovels snow or whatever. Also good at also good at Disney. Disney. Exactly. We can fight them or something. But I like that because it's such a good pattern interrupt from the normal either Zoom podcast or in-person podcast where it just kind of breaks the walls down of, you know, hey, we're just having another like value-based conversation. It's like, okay, Katie really likes working out. Why does she do it? How does this help her real estate business? Who you golfing with Kofi or Joe Herrera? Okay. Joe Herrera likes golf. He's a scratch golfer, apparently. Everyone in this business is somehow a scratch golfer too, which also infuriates. Okay. I was going to say, that's jealousy coming out because you wish 100% Joe, I think is like a two. His son is like a plus two or something like that. So I just merged them together and made them scratch. Got it. Okay. Yeah. And Byron's like 10 strokes better than me right now too. So it's just, I don't know, I'm not playing that much here. But I love the idea of doing that to just normalize, humanize, and pattern interrupt change the setting with all these people. I wonder, is there a way that agents could do it? I guess it is kind of interviewing the business owners in their business. But is there another way agents could kind of take that principle? Yeah. I, this is going to sound so weird because we always correlate this back. But I consider that to be like the client testimonials of what agents do. But again, client testimonials, most agents missed that because they just screenshot the Google review and then they just put it up. I think if you were doing client testimonials the right way, you would be like interviewing your clients about what the process was like, but not how you helped them in the process. So I'd be like, Eric, what was it like when you got free of fruit? Like how did you get to see it? What was it? You know, what was the home process like? And then you cut that up into like a client testimonial video. So you get to show what it's like working with you, but you never actually say like working me or you're letting them tell their story. That's what I envisioned. That's kind of what I'm doing here. I'm taking case studies of our best agents, but I'm letting them tell it in a setting that they like to do. I like both of that kind of. I almost like, yeah, why did you move to San Diego? What was it like when you got pre-approved? How did you come across me? Yeah. Like I do kind of like that because you could clip that out or something. It's like, oh, I came across you because you posted that amazing listing video of the kid doing the home alone at that house in Carlsbad. Yeah. That's awesome. And then what was our communication like? It could be a combination of both that doesn't sound too salesy, but does kind of show how you, you know, worked out specific problems. Interviewing clients is a good idea. In my interview, I mean, meet them at a place that they're already doing something they like doing. Make them the hero of the story, right? We talk about that all the time. It's like, the agent should never be the hero of the story, but 99.99% agents make themselves the hero of the story. It's the worst marketing probably in the entire industry, but you can make the client the hero of the story or the home, you know, sometimes like with Benny or like I did one with the the Brooks where there was the AI. If you can make the home the hero of the story too, just stop making yourself. And so same thing, I'm taking that over here where I'm making our agents the hero of the story in whatever capacity our biggest agents are, you know, the winds that they're they're having. I get to showcase those and help. So never make it yourself the hero of the story. or a make whoever it is that you're trying to serve the hero of the story. So for agents, it could be their clients. For me now, and this, my client now is the 33,000 agents. So the overarching thing though, is to take yourself out of it and then make your client the hero of the story. - Yeah, that number, I just, I have an updated ticker actually on my phone. That number just dropped to 32,500. - Just by watching the show. - I've been doing this part. Now the second you became CGO, I don't know what happened, but five hundred eight minutes just dissolved out of thin air. - I was gonna make a joke about selling the stock immediately, but I don't even know if I'm allowed to say that anymore because I can't do it. - As I see it, I don't know if I can give you a knock advice. - When you told me I dumped everything immediately. - Smart. - Obviously smart. - Just kidding for everybody at home, I don't hold any real stock. I only hold. - Just kidding, I never go currencies. So. - Just kidding, I never owned it anyways. - Never owned it anyway, exactly. But maybe I'll buy now, now that I know who's behind the growth. All right, so you're going to build in public, or is there any like mistakes that you made in your marketing journey leading up to this that you're not gonna do going forward with real. Like is there something you could take away even, I don't know if it's from your real estate business, whether it's mistakes or something you wanna capitalize on that worked in the past? - You know what's so interesting is that I've always said that the biggest mistake in my social media or like real estate marketing career was leaning into or trending like doing agent centric things. So right around, I think I've said right around the time I met you, we did the giveaway, and then I got a bunch of agents that followed me, and then my content started being four agents instead of four San Diego. And I've always said about how big of a mistake that was from a social media, but then it's like, but then in 2022 I joined real, and all of a sudden I had all these agents that followed me, so that turned out to be good. And then now, because of the attraction, it's paralleled into this role. So I'm like, maybe that wasn't as big of a mistake, 'cause I thought, but that's-- - Funny how that worked out. - Funny how that works. I think that's just for me though. So now looking ahead, I don't know because most of my content will be agent centric and agent focused. Now, I think probably the inconsistency, I think now, I'll be frank with you, I have a videographer budget, and that was negotiated. And so like I think now the inconsistency I had really early on when I was building out my agent business always kind of like hurt and hampered my growth a little bit. I feel like I could have done much better. And so now I think that I have the ability to have a consistent video presence, that that should be what I try to work on the most is making sure that I stay consistent. The other thing is I think the thing I'll change a little bit is, I don't know that I'll be able to necessarily talk about other brokerages as much. So I've always had a news where I could like, I could explain a compass earnings call or I could break down. And I don't know that I should be saying that anymore, just not that I couldn't, you know what I mean? But like I don't know that I should be. - That makes sense. Yeah, if there's some industry news about brokerage battles or something happening with compass, it's probably something to lay off. - Yeah, and I'm not, like I'm not trying to be like a sellout or anything like that, I just don't know. Now that I know that I actually, - Yeah, that's not being a sellout, it's just being responsible in the new role. You could just attack you 100%. You could attack EXP just every single day. That could be a strategy. - 100%. You know what though? - So when we had Sharon, obviously as our president for three years, two years, whatever it was. And he was, in my opinion, the most prolific kind of social, C-suite, you know, or industry person that we had. And then Sharon left and I feel like Leo did a fantastic job kind of picking up Sharon's playbook. He's very visible, Leo Brad as CEO of EXP. And so he's very visible. He's out there doing agent advice, things like that. I do want to take that title back. - Yes. - And I do want to take that mantle back. And it has nothing to do with the fact that the company on the other side, it just has to do with the fact that I feel like Sharon trailblazed the C-suite on social. And I want to take that mantle back for sure. - Well, he put out such valuable content for all agents. Like every time Sharon posted something and still now it's expanded beyond agents and just business owners or motivation, just anyone now, which is great for him because it's just such a larger audience. But I think that's what really attracted people was that just no matter what brokerage you are at, the content that he put out was motivational and extremely valuable. It wasn't like, hey, this is what real agents are doing. This is what real agents are doing. It's like, this is what agents are doing in the business that works. Like every talk, it was slightly peppered in or he would use real agents as examples. But it was just always subtle and classy the way it was kind of a lack of promotion. But just like everybody in the industry has to follow this guy. He tends his webinars go to his talks because it's that valuable, it's that entertaining, it's that energetic. So, and you could, I mean, you've already been doing this too, which is kind of like what's amazing about how life works with all of this is like you said, you were naturally kind of doing agent education, all your talks, whether it's on the walkthrough or in-person talks are not about brokerage, right? It's about whatever your talks are about. I forgot, I don't pay attention. You don't pay attention anyway. It's, you're absolutely right. I've always kind of said that Shron didn't even belong to us, he belonged to the industry. That was kind of like an internal thing and we just had him for two years or three years. And so I feel like that might be the move, right? It's just like you provide value to every agent and it doesn't matter which brand or which color, which logo you have. Like as an industry, I think there's a bigger goal here. If you Google, realtors are the next, like the words that come up as the suggestions are not good. Like, do you know what I mean? The Q-score, the favorability of realtors is not high. And so like, but I do know that there's agents out there who care and try hard and are really worth everything. And so like I'm gonna try to promote the craft, not just the brokerage, you know? Especially when you're talking about outbound content and things like that, obviously on industry or brokerage events and stuff, I'm 100% teabrie. I'm gonna talk real, but when you're talking about more like a fam stage or housing wire, that's everything. That's industry, that's not just real. I need to be a good evangelist and it doesn't always mean just being a shell. - Is Jason Cassidy gonna make his brokerage stand out from the crowd if you're an agent, looking to stand out from the crowd reminder media? Is a resource you just have to check out. You get your own branded print and digital magazines, email newsletters and social media content reminder, delivers these resources to your contacts on autopilot, keeping you top of mind with your database. All you gotta do is focus on your follow up calls and watch referrals and repeat business flow in. - Yep, absolutely. In terms of how you feel right now, I am just curious because I know the responsibility level of providing for yourself and family and then you have a big team, a growing team under you. And then now it's 33,000 agents. Is there a daunting feeling that comes with this? Is it like, oh my God, what did I get myself into? Obviously I know you're gonna crush it and I'm sure you're confident in what's gonna happen but there's gotta be a little bit of anxiety that comes with it. I have anxiety. When you were telling me about this, I started to feel like, this is a lot. This is like a big leader at a big brokerage responsible for a lot of agents. Not to scare you, I'm just curious as to how it feels. - Can't scare me. You can't scare me that I've already thought about it all. Don't worry, you've already had the panic attack. You're absolutely right. It's going from an individual producer to a team of eight to 33,000 is a weight. And I said this in my welcome call and my work Vivo thing to the team. I was like, I'm so, I feel the weight of responsibility but from a motivational challenging standpoint, like I will not, I wanna crush it so hard for these 30, you know what I mean? And the weight and the responsibility is actually also the motivator. But I take it very seriously. And that's the thing is like, because it's not, that goes back to like why maybe I can't talk about industry events because it's like it's not just me and my eight anymore. It's 33,000 that I have to look out to. So I'd take it very seriously. But it's also quasi kind of become the biggest motivator here because it's like I want to crush it for all these people to make sure that I don't let anybody down, right? And then that's maybe where the anxiety sets in. And I've had anxiety for years, but usually it was around like flight anxiety or certain areas. I have been since this went down, I mean, it's a super insight based but like I haven't had one bout or thought of anxiety. It's been like a pure focus. And just like I do feel the responsibility, but I'm just ready to go. I'm just ready to work in question. - Yeah, that's awesome. What about like, I know speaking gigs, we always talk about how before butterflies always have, and I think they happen still for most speakers because everyone I talk, I mean, I'm not gonna like sit there and ask Neil Dinger if he's getting scared before he goes on stage. But I know most people, most people make it because they care. - Yes. - So you're gonna have to be probably way more public facing than you've ever been. And beyond bigger stages, having more serious conversations, it's not gonna be like necessarily a 10 minute presentation on how to take a screenshot of a Google map and put it on your Instagram story anymore. - Totally. - It's tactical, but we're like, is that gonna be a big part of this too? Is a lot of more public speaking, speaking to all these agents virtually and in person? - Yeah, yeah, it is. And that's been one of the things that I wanna improve my craft on is that I have like three talks that I've ever done, I wrote to Adam and I mixed them in with some tactical stuff. And it's like, that's gonna have to change, right? I'm gonna have to have eight to 10 that I can default, just do by memory and have a cadence of. And then I have to be able to pivot when slides don't work and I have to get really good at that. Because again, I'm the figurehead of 33,000 now. I can't bear it. I can't embarrass my friends on stage. So I have to get, you know, obviously really good, but a lot of the, in my opinion, the successful keynotes and speakers is because they're talking about something that they really believe. And so like if I can just, but there is a science to it or an art to it, where I do wanna make sure that I'm not stumbling over my words and I know what the slides are coming so that I can then convey what it is that I believe effectively. And so that is one of my, I don't wanna say goals, but that is one of my like, hey, here's how I can level up over the next year. So it's with these public speaking events. And I'm comfortable like where I'm in Sacramento right now. I have a 200 person event here in a couple hours, but I'm doing a talk of already done. So I'm comfortable with that. And I now need to introduce five to 10 more that aren't just about, yeah, how to do an Instagram screenshot there. Maybe a little bit more broad on where the industry is going and how to move the needle. Yeah. And or like personal how to get the mind right and stuff like that. And that stuff I've never big stage spoke on before. So I need to make sure I iron that out. Yeah, not to trivialize your screenshots of the Google maps. I think those are very effective talks. And some of the best clips we've had on the walkthrough. Side note, I saw Jimmy Burgess speak. I think you were at the event. Maybe it was in North Carolina. Yeah. His slides didn't work. And he murdered the talk because he had it memorized. And he was so casual with it. If my slides didn't work, 'cause I just did a talk with Jimmy or for Jimmy and Berkshire Hathaway in Panama City, I had 150 slides. And I was so not dependent 'cause I knew what was coming after each, but I have so many examples in my talks that I would have panicked. And it was so cool to see someone that was just like, whatever we're just rolling with it, doesn't matter that the slides don't work, I'm still going to deliver the value. And that's a skill in itself. It's a, I was at the talk with you we were sitting right next to each other and he was like walking up and down the aisles. And of course, Jimmy, no matter what he says, is it hits because he's got the Southern accent. Yeah, that helped. Just dropping these little Southern sayings and he's working the crowd. And his slides didn't work the entire time and he still crashed. And so last week or two weeks ago, and since Nadi, our slides worked, but the sound on the videos wasn't working. And my talk that I was doing had three specific videos in it that one was an Alyssa Kurnat video, one was a Berne Mugavan video classic. And so without the sound though, obviously, it actually threw off the whole thing 'cause I was trying to show how hyper it works, but I was like, so, okay, pivot. I was like, do you want me to tell you what she was saying? And I started reciting the whole video word for word. But so I was able to pivot kind of, but like it's still, it made it very friction. And so I do want to work on like obviously the ability to kind of improvise and just pivot when stuff comes up. Maybe have a couple of talks that I could theoretically do without slides 100% and then the slides are just a gravy. And so I can default to that in case something goes wrong. It's funny that you say that because I think I have heard Valentine, by her, I mean Alyssa Kurnat, her Valentine's Day video memorized because I've played it at every talk for the last year and a half years about how to showcase hyper local events during holidays. And I seriously haven't memorized. Look, I think I could just recite the entire thing. I'm not gonna do it because that's a cut. - You can stay at the dab in court. You can eat a wooden city and I forgot to share this. Yeah, I got it all down. I know the shots. I know everything about it. By the way, if you want access to Alyssa Kurnat's hyper local content course in training and DM scripts and her entire shot list, it's in BamEx. Do you want a seven day free trial? Link down below in the description. All right, so this role has started. Like you officially have begun. - Monday. - Yeah, four days is day four. - Okay, so this is day four. And then what do you think walk through us? Do you think we're still gonna do the show on a consistent basis? Do you think what do you think this looks like? 'Cause the audience is curious, I'm sure. So I'm not sure either. So we're kind of working this out in real time here. - Why don't we leave it up to the audience? If you're watching this on YouTube and you're here 33 minutes in, that means you like the episode and you like us, let us know in the comments below if we should keep this going or if we should fold it up. And if Eric should find a new co-host or maybe go solo, let us know. Let's do a focus group and pull our people. I did have people reach out. So we announced on Monday, we bam wrote the article, I had my announcement video, real drop something and there was I think three or four comments, at least within one of them peacefully saying, well what's up with the walk through? Like is the walk through? - Yeah. - So this is people on the industry. - 100% people want to know. Yeah, so let us know in the comments below. I'd be interested to hear what they think. - Yeah, so Jason, I of course have talked about this, not just on this podcast, but it is hard and I am curious what the audience thinks on this too, because the walk through has been going on. The walk through by the way started with Byron as the co-host. This was one of Byron's 10 podcasts that he was doing. It was Byron, me, and then two rotating guests. And we basically covered real estate news and then I would do some marketing segment at it. You were on a couple of those episodes. I don't think I ever set a word on them because Byron led the charge. Byron led the charge and it was a great kind of like, part of the interruption going through all these things. So then Dan became the co-host after Byron was doing too much and we're like, let's make this a marketing only show. And then you became the co-host and we took it similar direction but not even always to guests where it became kind of more interviews, kind of old over-ask style. - Yeah. - We would do solo episodes really just kind of figuring out what was next. But as a host of the show, as you know, it's hard to come up with real estate news, a real estate marketing news topics every week, which kind of was the thesis of the show. Because if there's not new Instagram news or YouTube's not coming out with a new feature or Adam Maseri doesn't do a post or mini chat, it's hard to be like, oh, here's the new strategy but it's really showcasing what agents are doing in the industry that works and then it ends up kind of being the same 2030 agents that are still crushing it. But it's like, I'm curious, audience, I'm asking you right now, let us know in the comments. Like, do you like when it's just Jason and I? Do you want me to do kind of more scripted, 10 minute long videos about like a very specific tactic that I used to do for marketing Mondays? Do you like when it's forecast? Do you like the variety? Let us know because I mean, I know you're just gonna be so busy as hell too. - So when we talked about it, in a sense, the show is broker-jagnostic, right? The fact that I went from an agent to a C-S-B, that doesn't honestly matter when we're talking about real estate marketing, nothing really changes on that front. The cadence of how we do the show for those who don't know is we film it at Thursday at 10 a.m. Pacific, and then we release it at 2 p.m. Pacific. So there is no, there's like last week I was traveling, you had Ailey and Alyssa stalker on him, and I was gonna be in an airport just like this, but the flight was delayed, so I missed the cut time, and so I had to miss out of the episode. So the only issue is, is that Thursday becomes a very busy travel day when we're out on it, 'cause I always travel Tuesdays, so Thursdays almost. So the issue would be we would need to either get back ahead two weeks, which is, which I loved when we were ahead a week or two. But then the thing is, is if we're ahead, and that means we're actually behind two weeks, by the time we release it, and some other Instagram news has happened, like it makes it a little bit tough. Now, I think I have a plan, I just wanna hear what the people have to say. I said to see what the feedback is, because this absolutely can continue on. We can make it work, we can get a couple of weeks ahead, we can figure it out, but I'll be interested to see what the people think. - Yeah, let us know in the comments. By the way, if you ever do a podcast, getting a couple of weeks ahead is the best thing that you could ever do. Not only just for the mental pressure of, hey, this has to be cut up, this has to be produced, we need clips, we need title thumbnail. Like that four or five week stretch at the beginning of this year, or maybe two months stretch, really. Just made it, you have one in the bank too, so if you are traveling or something happens in real estate deal, you can't be there. It's like, all right, now we're good to go. I can always be here, 'cause I just sit here all day. - I'm ready to constantly film "Octaves." But yeah, let us know about the direction of the show, the shows evolve all the time. Like we've evolved the show three separate times, so it could happen again, but yeah, let us know. Anything else Jason, I mean, this is truly amazing news. When you called me to tell me about it, I was so happy. It makes so much sense. You're perfect for the job. You've grown up in this industry with the most natural progression of a young bride-eyed, 25, 26-year-old, whatever you are, 40-year-old at the time. And then how old were you? - 26, or 26-27. - We were young bucks in the industry. Now there are other 26-year-olds. I remember being at that first-imm in conference, being like, I'm 20 years younger than everybody here. - It's so weird to watch, 'cause we had Bailey Dixon on, right? I don't know if we had Zach Mikkelson on. He's another young guy. He's up in Orange County as well. And I'm just watching these 21-year-olds and two-year-olds, like Crush TikTok lies. - I know. - And like, oh my God, am I that guy now? Or like, yeah. - We are, 'cause the first conferences that we went to, agents were so behind on social media was not universally recognized as a tool to actually increase your real estate business and attract leads. It was basically an afterthought for agents. And anybody knows this that's been around since 2015. And it was going to those conferences and seeing that agents had no idea what they were doing on Instagram. Didn't even have Instagram. Most of them, it was still just Facebook or Pinterest, really. And it's just cool to see how now it's such a necessity. Like, that's all anybody wants to talk. I mean, now it's AI and everything, too. But it's just like, it's cool to see how it's evolved and how we were at the beginning of that. And now we're in the back half of our 30s. (laughing) - The wrong side of 40. - I'm 40. I'm on the wrong side of 40. - Yeah, it's crazy. Any other parting words on this? - No, I mean, the community, the BAM, so again, I posted an announcement video. You posted the story on BAM and then we collabed on it. The, I was expecting some people to say, congratulations. I was expecting some fanfare. I was expecting some haters in there too. The outpouring of support was like super-home. That was, I was not expecting the exposure that it was gonna get, you know what I mean? And I think it has to do with the fact that obviously that I do the show and I have a good social following. But, you know, we see these announcements all the time and we see the BAM article or the housing wire. The different articles or whatever, but then to see the people in the comments that are just like, no one better for the job. Like, this is amazing news. I'm very excited. Not just stuff. Yeah, of course. The Russian bots. Yeah. But the, like, the outpouring of support that day, so Monday was like a, just, Monday was a waste of it. I started Monday, but I didn't really even start until Tuesday. Right. Because Monday I'm just replying to people and stuff like that and it was just like, it was very ongoing. And I'm sure it was pretty cool. I was in Hawaii on my baby moon and we were four hours behind. So, or three hours behind. Yeah. Just like the coordination of making sure this article got up. It's like the right time and that post and everything. It was cool to see all that behind the scenes. But yeah, and my wife saw the article and she's like, oh, like this is, I told her already that you were drawing, but she's like, oh, this is perfect for Jason. She doesn't even know you. But she's like that makes complete sense. And you're an easy guy to root for. And I think that helps. Because you have been humble throughout all this. And because you have been exposed on the walk through at all these events, maybe that's not the right terminology. It's not exposed. But I just mean like you've put yourself out there so many times that you're a familiar face in the industry that's like, it's approachable. And that's what made Toronto effective too is his approachableness and his humbleness. Where it's not like, okay, this is just some asshole that got a CC level role. And like this is, you know, now he's up here. It's like, we could, you know, we could still talk to this guy. I think that matters a lot. - I mean, thank you. Yeah, appreciate it. I would always say like, I'll try to keep that in mind. But it's like, I feel like that's just who I am. It's been 40 years now. I don't have to pretend to be someone else. That's just who I am. - We'll see. Maybe you'll turn into an asshole by the end of this. - We'll see. Check back in in six months. And the six month follow up episode where it's like, that was a dumb move back in real estate. It's just selling houses. - Now there's 13,000 agents. So you know, now you're starting a team at another brokerage. Now that's-- Well, congratulations, Jason. This is awesome. Give a congratulations to Jason in the comments. And we are curious. We want your direction as to where we should take this show. We want your feedback. We appreciate you as listeners. We know this was a slightly different show, but I think it's important to show the wins. You know, we've been sharing everything about other agents in this industry forever at this point. So I think it's important sometimes when something big happens in our lives to break it down. So congratulations. And maybe we'll see you next week on The Walkthrough. (upbeat music)