 What's up everybody? Welcome back to another interview on the Zero to Diamond show. I'm Ricky Carruth. Good to have you. Today we have a special guest, John Siebre. He's the CEO of Missouri Realtors. What's up John? Hey Ricky, it's great to be with you today. Absolutely man. So where is the Missouri Realtors office at Missouri? I'm in the Heartland. I am in the very center of the state of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri. I also have an office in Jefferson City, just outside the Capitol building for all the advocacy work, but we're right here in the middle, exactly halfway between St. Louis and Kansas City. That's not really the middle John. You know the middle is Marshall, Missouri. You know that's true. That is the middle of the state. The reason I know that's because I went to Missouri Valley College for a semester. Did you? Wow, that's awesome. I had a football scholarship from Foley, Alabama High School to Missouri Valley and I went up there for a semester and it was like an 18 hour drive there and back and I was 18 years old. I came back for Thanksgiving. I went back for finals. I came back for Christmas and I didn't go back after New Year's. Well, I know that drive because I moved here from Tallahassee, Florida. Yeah, so I basically did that exact drive. Yeah, so yeah, that's the middle of the state, but we did go to Columbia. It's Columbia, right? Yes, Columbia. Yeah, we went there because that's where that's where Mizzou is, right? Mizzou's here. The world revolves around it. Yeah, we went to down there and partied at Mizzou and then we played. There was a football. There was somewhere, another team somewhere down there. We went down there and played. But anyway, man, so John reached out to me. He wanted to come on and just kind of chat, share with you guys. He is the CEO of Missouri Realtors, which serves over 20,000 real estate agents up there in Missouri. So it's going to be really interesting to get your perspective on a lot of things going on with the industry right now. Sure. Yeah, I'm glad to do it. So tell us a little bit about yourself, maybe a three-minute Cliff Notes version of kind of how you got to be where you're at. Sure. I grew up in Kentucky and right after college moved to Washington, D.C. to work for the U.S. House of Representatives, and it was during the savings and loan crisis, which all of our members who've been in the business for a while certainly know about. And the Realtors were lobbying us. And after only two years on Capitol Hill, the National Association of Realtors offered me a job to come work for them as a lobbyist. And I did that for 13 years. During that time, I handled Alabama, among other states, working with the congressional delegations. And then after those 13 years, Florida Realtors came to me and said, we want you to come run our lobbying operation. So for 11 years, I was in Tallahassee running the statewide Realtor Association lobbying operation. And then just four and a half years ago, Missouri Realtors came calling saying, we've got an opening for our CEO. We love your experience. We think it's time you hang up the lobbying cape and start being a statewide CEO. So I've been in Missouri now almost five years. Right. Okay. So as the CEO of the Missouri Realtors, you represent the National Association of Realtors in Missouri? Or how does that work? Well, I represent we're a separate entity. So when you as a Realtor join the association, you join at the local level, they keep their dues, send the balance to the state, we keep our portion and send the balance to national. So you're a member of all three. But we at the state association handle only state issues. We help our locals a lot. We have over 30 local boards of Realtors. In fact, I've met with them the last two days at a workshop down at Lake of the Ozarks. And we try to do everything we can to supplement the work that the local association is doing. But I would say at the state association, we're probably best known for the advocacy work that we do at the Capitol. But we also have a legal line that every Realtor in the state of Missouri can call when they've got issue, you know, the deal going sideways. So we get, you know, thousands of legal line calls, we have three attorneys handling those and so many other things as well, networking opportunities for our members, education classes and that kind of thing. Okay, man. So look, I want to dive into some issues here. I would love to dive into some some really good questions. I don't know how comfortable it will or won't be, but I want to dive into some of these issues that I'm hearing from other agents through my network. You know, just to kind of get your take on different things, right? I want to talk about the Amazon thing, kind of get your take there. I want to talk about DNC, right? And one thing I want to I want to ask you right now is, you know, a lot of agents out there sitting back, and I know you don't represent the, you know, NRA or NAR or whatever. But there's a lot of agents sitting here saying, okay, you got these companies that are trying to take over the industry, you got Zillow, you got, you know, all these different entities out there saying that they're not trying to replace agents, but on the back side, you know that if they saw an opportunity or some way they could do it, you know, they do it in a heartbeat. A lot of agents think that our association kind of sold us out kind of deal through giving that data, giving that MLS data to these companies. What are your thoughts there? How do you feel about it? You know, there are a couple of things. One, the first thing that I hear is that before you even sold the data, you sold realtor.com basically. Yeah. That NAR doesn't own realtor.com. So first of all, NAR does own the URL realtor.com. They just have an agreement with Move to run it. And I think from the work that I've been doing and things that I've been seeing, realtor.com has definitely had a wake-up call. And, you know, the Zillows of the world came along and realtor.com would probably admit they were asleep at the wheel. So there's that. But I think it's our individual members that have chosen to give their data away. It certainly isn't the association. Now MLSs that our members are on the boards of have made the determination how they're going to handle their data feeds. But then we've got realtors that pay thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars to Zillow and then complain to us. So I don't know. There is a disconnect there. I think the realtor has to determine, you know, where is your bread buttered? And if you have issues, you need to take it up with your MLS. But I think your colleagues, your volunteer colleagues chose at some point to give that data away. And, you know, it's tough when that genie's out of the bottle. Yeah. What do you mean they chose to give it away? The MLS has agreements with Zillow. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Not us as agents. No, not us, you know, the board. Yeah. Well, the MLS, which is separate from the board in most Yeah. Well, like like our like our Baldwin County Association of realtors, you know, the board of realtors in Baldwin County, they run the MLS. So it's not, I guess it's two different things, but it's ran by the same group or power. In most instances, they have separate board of directors, a separate corporation. I've seen a few here in Missouri where it may be a committee of the board, but that's pretty unusual these days. What we see more are large regional MLSs. And I think that's driven by brokers who are tired of being members of seven MLSs and five boards of realtors. They say, come on, we're always going to be passed up if we don't, you know, get with the program and start working in a smarter way. Yeah. Well, you know, I'm the king of free and given out information. You know, I'm the first completely free coach. I got the fastest growing coaching program out there. And the way I see it is, is that, you know, we've given, we're given, you know, the Zillows of the world the data to put in front of the customers. Now Zillow has the attention. Let's just say call it, let's Zillow is all the Zillows out there. You know, they've got all the in consumers attention, all the eyeballs, they're getting millions of views a day on their website. To me, so far up to this point, it's done nothing but help us as agents because now the consumer, the customers, our clients, our prospects are more informed. They're more educated on these properties, on closed sales, what's out there. They know what it looks like. And they literally come to me and say, I want to see this, this and this. You know, they're telling me which properties you want to see. It takes a lot of the work out of it for me, but they still need an agent to guide them through that negotiation process, the contract, the inspection, the, all the little odds and ends, the delicate parts of the, of the deal. And my commission hasn't come down at all. Yeah. I was getting five or six when I started, I'm getting five or six now. Will it change? Who knows? Nobody knows the future. You know, there's a lot of people out there trying to say they know what's going to happen. You know, oh, Amazon's going to take over and they're going to unlock the door for a buyer and let a buyer walk through a seller's house. Seller's going to watch the showing on their mobile phone and agents aren't going to be needed anymore. But see the thing is, is no one knows if that's going to happen. You know, like the people are saying, we know that's going to happen. No, you don't know that's going to happen because if it were me and I'm a seller, I'm not going to let any just buyer off the street walk into my house and look at, look at my house while I'm not there watching him from a phone. I mean, if I'm watching him from a phone and I'll watch him still something or hit something or kick my dog or drink some milk out of the refrigerator, I'm still going to be just as mad. You know, so I think people that try to predict and say they know what's going to happen, you know, I think that's where those those kind of people kind of they're putting themselves in a situation up to now. Nothing has changed. It's only gotten better. And I think it's just going to continue to get better. If you ask me, you know, I love that way of thinking. And we started something called the emerging issues forum at our business conferences. We have three business conferences a year. And we started it in January. And in advance of that, I, we surveyed our members who were coming to the conference and said, what keeps you up at night? We're going to deal with these issues. So we had Zillow at our January business conference on stage, taking the tough questions, because we can choose to stick our head in the sand and ignore this and just believe what we're told, or we can ask them to their face and try to get the right answers. So we didn't have them at our April business conference, but they're coming back for our September business conference. And we have realtor.com on the stage with them. Zillow is there. And we're, we're asking the tough questions. And our members can ask them directly, you know, do you want my business? And they, they tend to get a better answer when it's coming straight from Zillow than what we assume Zillow would say. So do you remember back when that happened and Zillow was there on stage and all that stuff? Do you remember what the best or the most controversial or the, the most interesting question and answer was? Oh my goodness. You know, I think at the time there was talk out West, and I don't know if you have the instant offers and things happening in your market. And we don't have a lot of that here either. It was more like test markets, Arizona and that kind of thing. And members were reading about it and getting really nervous. So there were a lot of questions about that at the time. But, you know, realtor Zillow did not shy away from any questions at all. They were, they were happy to answer anything. And you know, I'm sure they'll be the same this time around. I'm not remembering off the top of my head. I think the biggest play out there right now for those companies, I think the biggest play what everybody's really fighting for is the data. You know, they want the data, they want the customer's behaviors, they want to know, you know, what you're thinking, you know, if they could get in your head and, you know, put all that on them, you know, in a memory, on a memory card and sell it, they would. Well, what do you think about this? I mean, you know, no, you don't know a lot about it. We really, we don't know a lot about the Amazon realty deal to be honest with you. We don't know what we really don't know. And you guys comment below if you think you know, or if you've heard or if there's a rumor. But we don't really know what the financial deal is between Amazon and realty, right? We don't. In fact, I just yesterday, as a matter of fact, talked to the director of the division of real estate here in Missouri to get his initial comments on it. And he said, obviously, I've read about it like you. But until we see how they act, how they do a deal, you know, we need to know, is there a real estate agent involved? Are there inducements? Is someone doing unlicensed practicing unlicensed activity? You know, those are all things we have to find out. And so his feeling was we see what the first couple of transactions look like if there are some in Missouri or somewhere else, and then go from there put their attorneys on it to figure out how different is this, then what should be happening? Or is it just fine? Is it a new business model that works? Is there are they opening up in Missouri? No, we don't think so. Yeah. But we would probably see what they've done in another market first. Right, right, right. Yeah, it's going to be really interesting to see. I'm just kind of sitting back and want to just watch it. It's like a reality show to me to watch all these companies try to do their thing. You know, Red Finn, Purple Bricks just left the U.S. It's just interesting. And then Red Finn partnered with Open Door and their iBuyer business. And a lot of things happening. And I feel like these companies are kind of squirming around because they got all this venture capital and they went towards this one idea. And they're finding out that, wait a minute, what's happening is they have way more expenses than a normal brokerage because they're paying people by the hour. And then their income is way less because they're charging such less fees. So their incomes are up and their income is down and their expenses are up. And so that can't last forever. And so that's what I'm seeing out there. There's so much liability. There's so much work. I mean, at the end of the day, you know, I don't know. I mean, who's going to take on liability and work by the hour handling these delicate real estate transactions? Yeah, you've got to be in it full. You've got to jump in with both feet really to do it right. I know the people watching are probably tired of the part-time agent or the person that isn't in it for the long haul because that's where you see a lot of problems. What's that now? If something you said made me think about, the person who knows the transaction best is someone who does this every day. Not someone who gets paid by the hour to do this or that or someone who's in the business part-time. Yeah, yeah. And keep up with changing rules and regulations and all of that if you're not in it full-time. To me, this is why real estate agents will always be needed because the market changes so fast. I mean, just like prices change so fast. And then when you add the layer of rules and regulations and ethics and everything else, there's so much involved that's changing every day, every month, every year. And to even add another layer to that, it's like if I'm one of the top agents where I am, but if I go an hour away from here, I'm oblivious to the market. And so I would need an agent to help me through a transaction an hour away to make sure I'm doing this right and the paperwork's going to be different and the price, what's the price and what's the trend? And there's just so many variables that if, I mean, even me, as I've been in the business for 17 years, if I go two hours away, man, I'm lost. So I could imagine being a consumer who does five transactions in their life. And I mean, it's got to be one of the most scariest things, you know, the most stressful, one of the most stressful situations you could be in. And that's what they need us for to take that stress off of them, handle the deal, we're professional, you know, get on the best situation, make it go smooth. And, you know, I think that's just, I don't, I don't see a path where agents will not be needed. You know, you know, I totally agree with you. And in almost every state, I'm assuming Alabama is the same. There are almost twice as many real estate licensees in the state as there are real tours. And the way I've always looked at that is the real tour is someone who really is in it more full time. This is their livelihood. They're following every new thing that's happening, keeping up with the market. They know their market where that real estate licensee maybe, you know, got their license on the side, but they're not really practicing. But when a friend needs a place or when they want to sell their own, maybe they use it. But, you know, they can't really know the market that well. So you're telling me, and this is in Missouri? This is in every state. When I was in Florida, there were twice as many licensees as there were real tours, licensees with the state of Florida. The same was true when I got here. We have 23,000 real tours, but there are 47,000 real estate licensees licensed by the state. So, so just for everybody watching the licensee, they're not, they're not part of the board of real tours. They're not part of that association and they don't have MLS access, correct? That's correct. Okay. And so they're working for one of these boutique companies more than likely. And they're just kind of floating in the wind. They don't really have access to the information. But I guess in today's world, hey, they can just go on Zillow and find out what's for sale and what's going on. I would argue from a residential perspective, that person probably isn't selling more than a couple of things a year, if that. And maybe they have it more as a hobby for themselves. The difference would be a commercial practitioner. A lot of times commercial real estate agents don't feel like they need to be a member of a local board because it's just their, their deals are different. And so it depends on where they are, unless they can be a member of a commercial overlay board, for example, or some other commercial specific board. In many instances, they won't be a real tour. Mm-hmm. That's just crazy. I mean, but that's kind of, that kind of goes along with the role, you know, there's probably, would you say the role of, you know, 10% of the agents is probably doing a bulk of the business? Oh, I would say so, definitely. Yes. What do you think the number really is? Is it high percent or 15%? I would say 10% is probably pretty close. Yeah. Yeah. And then, and then do you think the statistic that always gets thrown out there about 87% of agents fail in the first five years is still a pretty solid number? I do. In fact, this isn't as scientific, but we just did an all member survey. And it was a benchmark survey to one that was done five years ago, right before I got here. And 50% more than 50% of the people that did the survey were not in the business five years ago. So it's a, it's a new brand new crop of agents that are new to real estate and new to the association getting involved. And the beauty of that for me is they have very different needs. And so I like to look at what does a new agent starting out today need from their association? If we're the association of your grandparents era, we're probably not meeting your needs today, which is why I focus on emerging issues and things that are really going to help that real tour be successful in their business and be more professional. So, so as the CEO of the, of the Missouri real tours, what is it that you do to provide that to the agents? Is it just events they come to and listen to speakers talk or is there more involved? Is there online courses they can take? Is there, do you guys offer, you know, CRMs and different, you know, training on how to create sales and stuff? Or what exactly do you guys offer? We do all of that, you know, last Thursday or Friday, we had an online class with hundreds of people signed up. And, you know, we obviously have lots of networking events where they can come in person, speakers. We want to get people to our conferences. So we give scholarships for those who've never attended our conference to pay for their hotel rooms and things get, get there and see what you're missing. But we do other things as well. I think I've been a little different than others. And I learned this when I was not far from you, when I was in Tallahassee, when I got there, I've told this story before, but Jeb Bush was the governor of Florida when I got there from Washington. And he had been a commercial realtor in Miami, had to give up his realtor membership to be governor. And he said to me, the first thing he said was the realtors need to be more engaged in economic development, because I make these trade missions to sell our state. Every governor does it. Your governor's doing it as well. Maybe it's because you've got great automotive industry manufacturing and they go to auto shows and they do these things to promote the state. He said, we need realtors on these trade missions because no economic deal happens without a real estate component. And he said, I'm going to Germany. I've been there before and there'll be executives wanting to sell their widgets or have someone produce their widgets or come back and sell their widgets and figure out how to produce them. And he said there's never anybody with a real estate background that can talk about quality of life for those workers and executives, cost of living or something as basic as how much per square foot is the facility out by the airport or the one that has rail access. And he really got me engaged on that. And I went to Germany with him and it was successful. So I went on every other trade mission Jeb Bush ever took and the governor after him and the governor after him. So I get to Missouri and I think they don't think that way. They're not looking big picture at the role our members can play in economic development. Because if you are a realtor, focus on jobs, get involved with your chamber or whoever else is doing these things. And if you're not, if you're seen as someone other than the person looking for a commission on a deal, but you're seen as the person that is looking to make your community better by creating more jobs, the real estate sales will follow. And that's what I've seen. I was just in France twice already this year. I was with the governor on his trade mission to the Paris air show because Missouri has over 100 aeronautics manufacturing companies and an amazing aeronautics history. And so that made sense for him to go. But I was there with them to talk to these companies about the real estate component. And I think that's something that's missing sometimes. We don't think big picture enough at the role we can play, whether it's a small community or a big region or statewide. But as realtors, there's a role to be played there. That is so interesting, man. I never really thought about it like that, how real estate is really and even the real estate agents as a community could play such a huge role in economics of I mean, I've seen it. I've noticed it, you know, on a surface level, but this is going deeper. This is so deep. Yes. Yeah, this is think this is thinking so much bigger than I've ever really even thought about the role real estate agents play in all this all the way down to jobs. And, you know, I mean, that's I go to the south of France every March to what's called MIPM. It's the largest commercial real estate expo in Europe. I don't go there with a portfolio of properties that are for sale in Missouri. I go there looking at it as an economic development opportunity, looking for investors to come to Missouri. And we've been incredibly successful. We take our state economic development agency staff with us. We pay for them to go. And if someone walks up to us and they see a Missouri booth and, you know, maybe they know St. Louis or they know Kansas City or Branson because they vacationed there or Lake of the Ozarks, we've got pictures on our booth and it draws them in. And whether they're healthcare or aeronautics or automotive or plant sciences, we've got an expert there that can talk about that and it's bringing business to our state. And so when a realtor questions, why would you go to the south of France? That sounds like a junket and a vacation. We're bringing back hundreds of jobs every time. That is amazing, man. And then when you think about the ripple effect through the economy of creating those jobs, not only the commercial space, the least space, the residences that are going to come from that, from high paying jobs. It's really, it's a great story. That gives me chills, man, thinking about that. So let's switch gears a little bit here. Let's talk about, I want to talk about what you think from where you are, looking at the industry as a whole. What do you think are, why do you think so many agents fail? What do you think the problem is and what do you think that we can do to remedy it? Or is it just the way it is? And this business is just set up where only a small fraction of people are willing to do what it takes to make it happen. You know, I think you've probably got people around you that look at you. Maybe you meet them at the softball field or a church or somewhere and they think what you do is probably easy, maybe because you make it look easy. And so, you know, I'm going to stop being a teacher to go be a real tour or something like that, you know. And I think they're, they don't realize just what a commitment it is and most people have never lived on commissions. You know, they've had a paycheck so they could, they could get by. But you really have to be, you know, you have to be willing to do what it takes and knock on doors and, you know, go back to basics and figure out how you're going to be successful. And, you know, usually when I'm working with realtors, they're beyond that stage. By the time they meet the state CEO, they've been a little more involved and I'm trying to get them to maybe go to the next level and maybe be an advocacy superhero with state legislators or something. And what I always tell them is what made you, you know, maybe you were an attorney, maybe you were a TV personality in your previous life. You know, real estate has it all. We've got people from every, every different. I've interviewed NFL, I've interviewed X NFL players, you know, movie stars, you know, people from all kinds of walks of life. So I will say to them, what made you a successful teacher? How did you stand out as a teacher? How did you stand out as a fill in the blank? Use what made you special there and apply that to real estate. There's a place for it. Maybe you were in communications and you write the best newsletters. Don't just write one for you, but volunteer to do that for your local board because then you become a resource and you find new ways to, you know, meet new people and increase your sphere of influence or better yet to increase your business, use that skill with that softball team or that other community thing. What made you successful before then you become indispensable to that group at church or softball or school and then they look to you as their realtor. I just did a video. It's coming out in a week or two about networking with other agents and how important it is because that's something we kind of overlook. We're so focused on the clients, the prospects trying to get the listings, find the buyers, so on and so forth. And a lot of times we kind of overlook the fact that some of our best relationships, best business relationships are with the other agents in our community who are selling our listings and representing the seller, you know, against our buyers and that we work with on a daily basis. And a lot of times we don't put enough energy into those relationships. So I like what you're saying about if you're really good at writing letters, you know, write letters for some of the people at the board or other agents or, you know, lend a helping hand and further those relationships and go deeper with all that. I like that a lot. I'm sorry. I was just going to say it's one of the things that's probably most fascinating to, so I'm a non realtor. I've never been a realtor coming through the National Association of Realtors staff ranks as I did. We were discouraged from being a realtor because we work for you. So I didn't need a congressman using me as their realtor because I was the one giving them a pack check or something. They saw me as their supporter. That would have made me your competitor. So I've never been a realtor. I just help realtors. But to me it would be so fascinating to have someone come to one of our meetings and as an outsider and see these relationships that realtors who are competitors in real life, the relationships that they have, they are best friends at our meetings, closer than the people they work with in the office. A lot of times because they know what each other is going through and they work together to solve problems at the local level and the state level and the national level. I can't imagine another industry that's quite like ours that way. It's truly fascinating to me. It's so unique to have an industry that your closest, toughest competition is literally the person you're working with day in and day out almost. It's so fascinating. I've always thought about how unique real estate is in that manner. And to go back a little bit, like working as an agent with your local board and authorities to help try to put things in place to better the economics and create more jobs and stuff. I just find that so fascinating, man. It keeps going over and over in my head here. The different doors that it could open up. You know, I was on a panel in Washington DC in May and someone asked, how do I go about this? And I said, it's probably the opposite of what you would think. Don't go in there talking about how you can sell real estate. Talk about how you can help them create jobs and be that resource. And again, the real estate will follow. And I had the same experience in Florida when I first started working with the US Department of Commerce on some of these trade missions. They have what's called the commercial service that helps businesses set up meetings overseas. They didn't have any interest in helping realtors because their mindset was, oh, well, that's all those individuals that want to promote themselves. And I said, no, I'm here not as an individual. I'm here representing hundreds of thousands of those individuals and the difference we can make if you work for us. Forget about the picture on the business card. That was their mindset. Think about how we can help you achieve these big goals. And they started thinking differently. Yeah. No, that's incredible. And what you're talking about is personal brand. That's what you're really talking about here, because if you think about what you're doing, you're going into these situations, not talking about real estate, not talking about sales. We're offering to help them for nothing without expecting anything in return. Okay. We're helping them for free, which is my biggest strategy. My biggest strategy for for sale by owners with agents is to go help them for free. Literally go help them put it on flatfee.com to get it on MLS, remarks, pictures, price, give them your entire playbook for nothing. Right. And then the real estate will follow. They'll list it in three weeks. They're tired of trying to sell it on their own. If they sell it, they're going to buy another one. Who are they going to buy with you? It's the same concept. You're using the fact that you're trying to help them create jobs to get their attention to say, hey, this guy wants to help us. He really wants to help us. We like this guy. And the next thing you know, you're doing real estate deals. Sure. It's so incredible how today's world works. Right. You know, one more international thing. When I started working with Germany, the, the realtors there or the real estate licensees there kept every listing close to the vest. We can't have an MLS. We can't share. That's my listing. They're the same way in Manhattan, by the way, in New York City. They, you know, this is my listing. You have to call me to see this listing. Well, once realtors in America figured out the more eyeballs on my listing what you said early on, the more successful I'm going to be, you know, we hit the ground running. But in other places where they have this mindset of that's my listing, I'm the only one that can show it, you know, put it out there, get it, get eyeballs on it and you're going to sell it, but you're also going to get more business. I went to Brazil. I was the keynote speaker at R4 a couple of months ago in May and they have zero MLS. Yes. They don't even have comps. The buyers don't know what, if they're, if this is a good deal or not, the agents that sell the properties won't tell any of the other agents what they sold it for because that's their comp to help their clients. You know, it's a different world down there. So I know exactly what you're talking about. I spent a week down there with them and man, I had no idea. You know, I just had no idea that they, they could be so much more successful and there's agents down there that are very nice people. They understand what I'm saying with this MLS thing and they would more than welcome it, but you have this whole other group that want nothing to do with it. They like it the way it is, but as a country, their real estate industry would boom if they would put an MLS in place and, uh, but you know, there's, there's some states down there. You don't even have to have a real estate license. And so it's like the wild, wild West and everything. But yeah, I know exactly what you mean. And you know, it's a shame because I think that mentality of holding everything close to the chest is kind of like maybe 30 or 40 years behind where we are now, you know, in America. So yes, you know, if they would fast forward and open their mind up to the possibilities of more volume, you know, sure, you won't get the full 6%. You're going to split it with someone, but we're, you're going to do 10 to one, right? You know, which, which means in essence, you helped 10 people. You know, that's why I look at it. We're helping people, you know, and so every deal is another family that you helped or an investor or whatever the case may be. Let's move over, man. I want to, I want to get your thoughts on the DNC. It's such a hot topic. My thing is circle prospecting. You know, I believe in cold calling owners asking them what we can do to help them, not necessarily if they want to sell, you know, the old scripts are, you know, do you want to sell? Have you thought about selling? You've considered selling? Who do you know? And I think all those scripts are designed to figure out what the client can do for the agent. And the clients are running away. The prospects are running away from that language because, you know, they don't even know the agent. The agent, you know, I don't know you, but will you sell your house so I can make a commission? Will you help me by selling your house, basically? And I want to, I'm reversing that. That's the movement I'm creating. I want to reverse that into what we can do as an agent to help the prospect. You know, you know, I'll call and the prospect will say, you know, I'm Ricky Kruth from X of Orange Beach. Well, I'm not selling my house. And I'm like, good, that's not why I'm calling. You know, I don't want to know what I can't do for you. I want to know what I want to know what I can do for you. You know, and I want to create a relationship with you forever. You know, and I just want to help you. If you don't have an agent, I would love to be your agent in the future. I want to stay in touch. Let's do some business down the road. And I'll run into people that want to do deals today. And I'll build my business full of people that want to do deals in the future. So I'm building my business for now and later at the same time. It's an incredible way. It's a way I've built mine all the way up to the top. And but now we've got this DNC thing. And I call the DNC. I know you're probably XNA on the DNC name there, but I call them because I'm there to offer help. I'm not trying to necessarily, I know my business, I'm soliciting so on and so forth, but I'm not asking them to sell their house. I'm asking them what I can do to help them. And if nothing, I'd love to stay in touch with you. And I think I think the people that are on the DNC, they're there because of the robo calls and all the BS calls out there. When you call and you're a human being and you're there and you sound like a friend or family there to help them, it's a whole different ball game. So just give me from your perspective, this DNC thing, there's a lawsuit going on in California. I haven't found anyone who has ever been fine for the DNC. I've scoured the internet. I've asked anybody to please send me anything on anybody getting fine calling DNC and I can't find it. So I would love to hear your thoughts. You know, as a person like everyone else that gets all those robo calls, it is incredibly frustrating. And when I accidentally answer one, like most realtors probably have to answer because it could be a client calling. It's a little less that way for me, but it's frustrating and it's, you know, but I would say I would probably step back slightly if it were me and be a little more focused on creating those other relationships I was talking about, whether it's, you know, and not the hard sell, but, you know, you're the sponsor of your son's little league team. So you're already there with all these people. You're just the nice guy that's helping everyone, not talking about real estate all the time, but telling a story about how if they did this little thing to their house, you know, it would increase the value this much and just keep that in mind. If you're ever, you know, just let a morsel slide every now and then, you know, then they're going to be thinking of you. So it's a little different tactic. Maybe just put yourself out there. I think sometimes realtors get so busy. They think, well, I don't have time to volunteer. I don't have time to do this or I don't have time to do that. Well, someone else is volunteering. They are, you know, so think about, you know, if you're, maybe you don't consider it volunteering because you have to be at gymnastics for your daughter, but and don't make it work either, but find this way to make it a neutral ground that people pick up on the fact that, wow, he's a good guy that I want to be in touch with if I need to sell a house. He's not one of those hard sell people that that's all he talks about, you know. So that's more where I think versus what's legally accepted. And, you know, I haven't heard of anyone being fined either. I would love to, you hear about new ways of blocking callers, but I haven't found that those seem to work either. I mean, I still get calls. Yeah. I mean, I don't, I don't even block that. I can pretty much tell if it's a spam call and I won't answer, but everyone see they're, they're starting to figure it out because I'll get calls and it'll look like it's a local number like my friend or something. And it's a, it's a automatic, you know, message to somebody trying to sell me some insurance or something. Was your friend's number? Yeah, no, it has. It has. It has. It's like they have somehow figured out who my friend, like it's nuts. I've had like two or three calls where it is my friend's number and it's a robo call trying to get me to buy some insurance or something or healthcare or, you know, a business loan or something like that. And would you really do business with those people? No, not at all. How do they think that's even, you know, it, it has to be a scam. So. I get, I guess somehow it's working or they wouldn't be still doing it. Yeah. I don't know. Well, it really is a scam and somehow they get the person on the line and, you know, get a commitment from them for something. I don't know. I don't know. It's crazy. I've never heard of anybody getting sold on one of those. So, I don't know that I helped you on D and C or not, but. That's okay, man. That's okay. No, that was great because you get, you gave us a different, you gave us a different angle there. It's like, okay, you know, here's my take on it. You know, when you're out and about at, you know, different things and you're volunteering or you're at your daughter's soccer game, you know, don't forget those people are, you know, gonna buy and sell properties. And so, and I love what you said about low pressure and because that's my entire game. I don't want you to buy or sell something. I just want to know, because to me, they're going to buy or sell at some point. And if I'm the person sitting here saying, look, it doesn't matter to me. I just want to help you, right? Do you need me to come tell you what it's worth? Do you want to go look at some properties? I don't care if you buy, we can just go look. Do you want me to, you know, give you advice on, you know, paint colors or whatever the case may be. I'm just here to help you do those things and whenever you get ready, I'll be glad to help you kind of deal with your mindset of giving things away for free and things. One other thing that's been a pet peeve for me over the years is I have friends all over the country and they're moving to Washington where I was or they're moving to Florida and they call and say, hey, I'm moving so and so. Can you connect me with someone to help? And, you know, maybe they still haven't sold their house back home and they want to rent for the first six months and they call the person that I suggested and that person has no interest helping a renter because that's just a rental. Well, what kind of mindset is that? If you really help this person that needs transitional housing, they're going to buy a big house from you in six months or a year. It's a small investment on your part, but they were totally turned off by your attitude that, sorry, I don't deal with those. My entire tagline is relationships over transactions. Yes. You value the relationship over the transaction in every single situation. We're so transactional, we're just trying to convert, convert, convert and if we would actually listen to people and just help them do what they're trying to do and we create this, when you help someone rent a property, okay? And you make pennies, pennies on that. You just help them with a tough situation. They're never going to forget that as long as you do what you're supposed to do on the back end, which is stay in touch with them forever. You got to have some kind of system in place. I've done a weekly email every Wednesday since 2007, a weekly email every Wednesday, 2007. It's literally the reason why, because I retain so many clients. I retain them because they get the email or if I showed property five years ago, they didn't buy, now they're getting the email, now they're ready to buy. But if I didn't do the email or if I didn't have something on the back end, staying in touch with them, then I wouldn't retain so much business. It doesn't matter if all they want to do is rent. The thing people are missing, John, they may rent, they may never buy, but their mom has a $3 million house they need to sell and they want to know what realtor Susie thinks is the best. Now they're calling Ricky and now you got to deal out of nowhere. Why? Because you're a good person and you put that relationship over the transaction and now you get the $3 million deal. It's basic stuff. Good stuff, man. This has been an incredible interview so far. For me too. I look forward to following you on all the great things you're doing. Yeah. Yeah. Watch me on Instagram and here I've got over 600 videos here and I travel the country speaking. I got Dallas, Vegas, Atlanta, DC, and Birmingham for the rest of the year and booking more stuff. So I'd love to come up there to Missouri. Yeah, we'll get you out here. What's out? We'll get you out here. Yeah, I'd love to do that. So just let me know dates and what I can do to help because I'd love to come up there and just spread the relationships over a transaction message and try to help some of those people. There's a comment here. It sounds like those robocalls, I guess they're getting to the elderly people, which is really sad. Yeah, it is sad and that's what I was thinking when I said what I said. I think they capture that one person who answered the phone and was bored and gets sucked in. My grandma is like that. She gets messages or calls and she's just like they called and they said they needed this day and they needed my credit card right then or they're going to cut my password off or something. So this is an interesting question here and you may or may not know the answer to this and this is kind of going back to the Amazon thing because Amazon is giving up to $5,000 worth of fire stick, echoes, painting, moving, stuff like that. And this person asked about the lenders and this is something I was wondering too. What will the lenders say about buyers getting back some kind of high-tech credit from a third party in the transaction because the third party picked their agent for them? Right and whether that is a respa violation. That's what I mean. Yeah, that was one of the things I brought up yesterday to the director of the division of real estate about inducements and unlicensed activity and not meeting respa regulations and you know again I don't know because we haven't seen the first one work yet but it does definitely raise questions to us. It'll be interesting to see how it all plays out. Just kind of scroll through the comments to see if there's any more questions or anything. So what would you like to say? What would you like all my viewers? This will probably get a couple thousand views. What would you like them? What can we do for you, John? You know the busy real tour oftentimes doesn't think they have time for their local board or their state association and they think that's left to the people that aren't as busy as them but there are pretty significant decisions being made there such as you know how we started with giving you the data to Zillow. You know if you weren't there at the table you can't really complain a whole lot so I would encourage people to take a little bit of time and maybe it is the thing that you're really good at. Volunteer with your local board. You have a wonderful board there in Baldwin County. They're winning national awards for the things that they're doing so and other boards are doing great things as well but if you have big ideas you know we want to hear them because you pay my salary. The real tours are paying me to do these things for them and if only a handful are taking advantage of this we're all we're all missing out and and I think we all share this desire to see a more professional industry because it's the bad apple that gives us all a bad name and you can help with that at the local board too insist that we enforce the code of ethics and professional standards and no one likes being called before a group of their peers and if a local board is doing it right you know it's a great stick to keep people from being bad actors. What's something right now out there that that you feel needs to change? You know I had a huge conversation on this yesterday coming soon is seen you know in every state can be different the regulations can be different but there's very little instance where coming soon really meets state regulations in Missouri and if you're trying to do what we were saying that the Germans and the South Americans were doing and keep your listing so only you see it is that really good for your client um so I think we need to think more about these types of things that that aren't good for camaraderie among agents you know and especially if it's not good for a client. So basically just so I can clarify for people watching what you're saying is is agents are getting listing signed and then they're putting their listing on comingsoon.com or coming soon or coming soon in their MLS I think there's an I think there's an option in my MLS for coming soon um and so they're and so they're saying it's coming soon because in in in theory the owner is still trying to fix up the property or trying to get it ready or they're trying to do this or that but what you're saying is is you think that that is an avenue for people to abuse the timeframe because isn't the rule that once you once it's listed it has to be an MLS within five days. Every MLS has their own rule summits four. Three or four or five. Five here in Baldwin County but you have so many days to put an MLS and so this is kind of given people an avenue to hold the listing tight to their chest to try to sell it their self or whatever the case may be which isn't good for the seller. No by the way it's not that's not good for the client because if it's not getting exposed correctly um then they could be losing out on possible deals and if the agent's trying to hold it you know and it's not exposed to the entire market then they may not get as high of a price as they would have if it would have been exposed so I see your point. And there is a place where it is the right thing you know like you said we have a signed listing agreement and the seller has said please don't you know you can't show this until Sunday a week from now because we're having new stairs put in and this and that there is a place where it's legal and it works but my concern was that it may be as you said being used in a way that isn't really fair to the system. Yeah yeah it gives us all a bad name so. I like that man well I appreciate your time today and I'm sure everybody got a lot out of this so. Good Ricky. Yeah for sure okay guys we'll see you guys on the next show tomorrow we're doing live calls um I've got an agent up in Montana I believe it is we're going to do live calls right here 4 p.m. central then we're going to have Brandon Glass who is a student of mine that's really crushing it he was on a blog by follow-up boss a couple weeks ago doing incredible things so he's going to come on and and tell us all his secrets and everything so tune in for all that let me know what in the world I can do for you guys and we'll talk to you soon.