Podcast appearances and mentions of christian well

Christian Castile, a trial attorney at Reed Smith, is joined by Reed Smith's Professional Development and Continuing Legal Education Manager, Joe Maguire, and Emily Chang, a former Reed Smith summer associate, to explore the evolution of LGBTQ+ inclusive language. This episode delves into the history and reclamation of the term "queer," examining its significance and the broader impacts of language on the LGBTQ+ community. Joe and Emily share their personal stories and insights, discussing how their experiences have shaped their understanding and use of LGBTQ+ terminology. They also touch on the intersectionality of language across different marginalized groups and the importance of person-centered language. Tune in for a thought-provoking discussion on the power of words and the journey toward inclusivity. This episode includes a frank discussion of words used to describe the LGBTQ+ community, some of which could be triggering to some listeners. ----more---- Transcript: Intro: Welcome to the Reed Smith Podcast, Inclusivity Included: Powerful Personal Stories. In each episode of this podcast, our guests will share their personal stories, passions, and challenges, past and present, all with the goal of bringing people together and learning more about others. You might be surprised by what we all have in common, inclusivity included.  Christian: Hello, and welcome to this month's episode of Reed Smith's podcast, Inclusivity Included. My name is Christian Castile, and I am the guest host of this month's episode. I am here joined today by Joe Maguire and Emily Chang, and we are going to be discussing the evolution of LGBTQ+ inclusive language, focusing on the term queer as a prime and driving example, but looking sort of across the board, a different language that we use. I'll get into a little bit of the history of that term and some other terms, but as we are getting started here I'm gonna toss it over to Emily and Joe to give us a little bit of introduction. So Emily, we'll go ahead and have you start. Can you just share a little bit about your background and what it is that inspired you to pursue a career in the legal industry?  Emily: Yeah, I'm Emily. I majored in undergrad in hospitality and graduated in 2020. So my job on cruise ships was no longer an option. And I took a semester off and then decided I wanted to go to law school. I had taken a hospitality law class and I had loved it. It was definitely the right move. And I am studying for the bar and joining the firm in Dallas soon.  Christian: That is so exciting. Are you doing anything interesting in between your law school graduation and starting at the firm?  Emily: I'm going to clerk for a bankruptcy judge in Dallas for a year.  Christian: That's incredible. Congratulations.  Emily: Thank you.  Christian: Joe, I'll pass it over to you. Sort of the same question, if you could just share a little bit about your background and how you came to get involved with Reed Smith and the legal industry more broadly.  Joe: Sure. So I was an English and philosophy major in undergrad, which was all incredibly useful if I wanted to go into publishing, which I did not. So I ended up going to law school, as many people do, as sort of a default. And I clerked for a couple of years, and then I practiced for a couple of years. And it was clear that it was just not something that I was... I love the law, and I love the learning, I love the words, but the actual practice just just didn't suit. And so I went a different path and worked in law schools and then eventually came to work at the firm. And actually, this week is my 25th anniversary at the firm on the 14th.  Christian: Congratulations. What a milestone.  Joe: Thank you. Yes, it's a milestone I don't think anyone ever really expects to hit. It sort of comes as a surprise. So yeah, and it's interesting because my law firm experience was very different from when I was a practitioner to when I was in a role that allowed me to work with lawyers was a different dynamic and one that suited me quite well.  Christian: Well, I know I speak for many of us here at the firm to say that we're happy to have you in the role that you're in. You do some great work for us, and I know I enjoy working with you. So I'm so pleased to be sitting here with you both today for this podcast episode. And I appreciate the insights that the different perspectives that you just both shared are going to provide for the discussion that we're having. So just really quickly, I thought for anybody who is maybe less familiar with sort of the history of what we're talking about today, we are looking at the word queer as a sort of focal point for the evolution of LGBTQ+ inclusive language. And the reason that we're focusing on that word is because historically queer has seen a lot of change, a lot of development over the way that it's been used, the way it's been perceived in this particular community, most notably sort of starting out as a derogatory term, and then over time being reclaimed as different generations of the the LGBTQ community have really focused on trying to recapture some of that language. So sort of with that in mind, this is a question for both of you again, as well. And we'll go, we'll take this in reverse order. So Joe, if you could open us up here, is there anything that you are comfortable sharing about your LGBTQ experiences, your experience as a member of the LGBTQ+ community? And specifically, what is the language that you use with respect back to your own identity?  Joe: So I was aware by the time I started school as a kid that I was different. And I had some awareness of what that was about. And I, as an elementary schooler, was mildly fluid from a gender perspective. And so consequently, I was effeminate enough to get the attention of my classmates. And that made me a target. There were other factors in my identity that sort of contributed to that sense of otherness that had nothing to do with sexuality or gender. Going through those experiences, I had a fair amount of confusion about exactly what was going on. And all that seemed to clarify once puberty hit. And it became very clear to me that my identity was male and gay. And that is how I identify now. And that's probably been since about sixth grade.  Emily: Yeah. And I use she/her pronouns. And I think came out to myself probably in middle school as a product of, I think I grew up in Texas and I think that different sexualities are not presented as an option to you until you learn about them yourself. And I grew up in a time when the internet was very available. And I think that was very useful and educational for me as a young person. And then I came out as so many do to my parents and greater community and when I left for college and could do that and everyone was very receptive, And so it's very nice to have a community here and in the larger, in everywhere I've gone.  Christian: Emily, it's interesting that you mentioned that, too. That could almost be its entire separate topic, right, of the advent of the Internet and how that has sort of impacted not only the way that, you know, our community has disseminated information and representation, but also how it's impacted the way that we use language. Language, getting sort of to the crux of this episode, I'm curious if either of you are willing to share specifically what the word queer means to you personally, and whether you've had any experiences with that term that sort of informed the way that you interact with it, the way that you perceive it, and your feelings around it.  Joe: It took me a long time to decide to respond to Christian about whether to do this, because I have, I feel conflicted. As a lover of words, I think queer is a great word. And I've always felt sad that it was hijacked in the way that it has been. And I mean, I went through a period of time where I wanted to be an etymologist. It's still an interest that I have. So despite the fact that I think it's a fabulous word, it's not a word I really ever use. And I certainly don't connect with it as part of my own identity. And while I love the idea of reclaiming words, anytime I've tried to use it, like the word has come out of my mouth, I have not felt comfortable. I'm not 100% positive about what the sort of official definition is in current usage. But, you know, I've heard it used as a an alternative to the sort of alphabet soup of LGBTQIA+, which is certainly a mouthful, and a lot. So I understand the desire to find a term that sort of captures all of that without literally needing to spell it out. But I've also heard it used as a general term for sort of intersection between sort of sexual and gender identities, which that can be a lot to communicate to someone. And so I can understand the need to want to kind of find an accessible term. I think about the term gay, which is sort of used as a catch-all for many sexual orientation identities, but it's a hijacked word and it's a little artificial. So because gay is an old term and it's one that I personally have come to identify with, I sort of try and remind myself on the use of the word queer that it's a little bit like gay and it's just a word that's been selected to try and capture something. But that's the purpose of words. They exist to capture the meaning of something, and it's never going to be quite exact.  Christian:  Yeah, absolutely. Especially, I think, within this community where there's so much nuance and sort of differences that we can all celebrate about each other. I think precision is definitely something that's difficult. Also hearing sort of from your response there, a little bit of, and correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like maybe some change over time in, you know, in one direction or another. Or maybe not necessarily directional change, but just some changes in the way that you've perceived that word over time and the way that you've sort of grappled with it. I'm curious if I'm reading that correctly, sort of what stages of your life, if any, that correspond with the way that you've your changes in that perception of that word have come about.  Joe: So you know obviously it was a common derogatory term in my youth so you know in that in that sense you know there's always going to be an element of trigger quick i mean it's a microsecond but it still exists that i probably you know will never fully lose and i think the evolution over time is to have it began to appear in different places from within the community. And I can't recall the precise time, but I can generally sort of recall when it started to pop up and I had a very negative reaction and I really had to sort of stop and examine that. But I think really my bigger transition was after marriage equality and sort of rights for gays and lesbians were sort of solidified in a variety of areas, legal areas, and societally. And then the sites turned to trans equality. And that just sort of opened up. Sort of before that, I didn't really know any trans people. And so being, knowing, and it's how we all learn and evolve is through our connections with other people. So by becoming connected with people who identified as trans and some of the other parts of the alphabet that I had never known before, I started to understand the challenge between precision, but also just being able to communicate in a general way. And that sort of pushed my evolution in how I see the word.  Christian: And Emily, I think for you, sort of same question, what does the term queer mean to you personally? And how has your understanding of the use of that word, whether it be for yourself personally or broader from the community perspective? What has that been like for you?  Emily: Yeah, I, again, did grow up kind of in this weird in-between time of very much when I learned the word as a young person, I knew it had been used in a derogatory way to large swaths of people to disenfranchise them and harm them. But that was never my personal experience. I had never heard the word used in a derogatory way to me or to any of my friends. There were certainly other words that got used, but queer was never one of them. And I do think I was growing up in a time of reclaiming the word. And I think there are lots of benefits to it. I like the idea that especially for kids, for people in middle school who are learning who they are to not have to. Niche down and label themselves when they're still learning who they are and to have this word that I perceive as an umbrella term for just the larger LGBTQ queer community to just be able to say I'm queer and I maybe don't know exactly what that means for me yet but it means that I'm something different than this societal standard I have found very helpful and I know a lot of my peers have found it very helpful and I think in a larger community sense I know several non-binary people who find it just easier than saying gay or lesbian when that doesn't quite identify with the intersection of their gender identity and their sexual identity. And so I know that the word has been harmful to people and have over time spoken to older people and have realized that and certainly don't use it to describe someone who I know is not comfortable with the word. But in my generation, I found it very helpful. And I think a lot of people my age find a comfort in it, almost a sense of security of just this big blanket term that also includes all of us and allows us to refer to the larger community as a whole, kind of as queer. And I think that's really nice. And I also grew up watching the word get used in mainstream media In 2018, when they revived Queer Eye, I know the original Queer Eye, I think, and I didn't watch it at the time, but the early 2000s one, I think that word was being used in an almost subversive way. And in 2018, when it came out, that was just what the show was called. And that's just what we all called it. And I don't know anyone who batted an eye at that, because it was just a very normal part of our vernacular.  Christian: Yeah, that's a really interesting point with the differences in reaction to pop culture. You know, I didn't even think about Queer Eye, but you're absolutely right. I have a similar, I think, sort of reaction to you when I think about, you know, when we were younger and that show was coming out for the first time versus now. That's a really interesting observation. Joe, I'm curious, do you have any reaction to that as somebody who, you know, maybe was paying more attention to the environment when shows like that were coming around originally?  Joe: Yeah, it's interesting. I'll just sort of move, start more current and work backwards. You know, so when they when they relaunched, you know, Queer Eye, I did not have any reaction at all to the word, I think, just because it was already like a brand in a way. But when it came out originally, I was I was suspicious of the show. It was it was a show where I avoided it, I think, in part because of the title and a lack of like, I just wasn't sure. Like i knew there were plenty of of gay people involved in the show but i just wasn't quite sure what their take was going to be was it going to be kind of a wink wink not not gay people are just so strange and funny and and so it took me a while to watch it and then i'm like okay i kind of see it so i i agree with emily that there was a lot of subversion going on in in the its original iteration that didn't really exist the second time around because it was sort of like no big deal.  Christian: Yeah, I think that goes directly to sort of this development of language piece that we're talking about today. It sounds like, you know, listening to the two of you sort of describe your experiences that you, you know, sort of all of us now as we sit here today are on a similar page with the way that we interact with this sort of language. But it's interesting hearing the perspectives coming from sort of two different and distinct places with different and distinct experiences sort of driving those thoughts. I'm curious to focus on, you know, as a community, as a group of folks who do have different identities and are trying to find a way to move forward that involves language that we all feel comfortable with and that describes us all, what are our thoughts on sort of the broader impacts of language, of the word queer, and how are those intersectional identities and things that we're thinking about factoring in. So sort of with that in mind, I'm curious if either of you have encountered in your experiences any challenges or any pushback from folks within the LGBTQ community to the word queer, either because they don't feel that it represents them or because, you know, any other concerns that you've been faced with?  Emily: I certainly have had interactions with people a little older than me who have a similar reaction to Joe in that the word when they grew up with it wasn't what it means to me now. And so it is a little bit more startling to them to hear on a first brush. And if the conversation continues and it's realized that that's a word that's not just a little new or startling, but is actually gently triggering in the way that it is for many people. It stops being used in that conversation and with that person if they're uncomfortable with it because as much as i like it and as much as i think it is inclusive for the whole community and even if the other person in the conversation thinks that it doesn't change the fact that they have an experience with that specific word that is harmful and and brings back negative associations And I do really like the trend toward inclusive words that don't make people pick niche labels at an early age. I do really like the freedom that broader terms give us. But I do also think there is room for growth or to find different words that across the community, across generations can be a little bit more kind to everyone that are new. We could invent a new word that is all-inclusive that no one has had bad interactions with. I don't know how we would or what that would be, but that's my ideal world for the future of language.  Joe: That is also my vision, would be to come up with a word that doesn't have baggage associated with it. And I also echo Emily, is that I would love a term, which is sort of how queer is tending to be used to be broad and inclusive, as opposed to the alphabet soup. The alphabet soup also, I think forces, I mean, Emily's coming at it from a person from the perspective of someone who perhaps is still trying to figure out who they are as they're, you know, forming their identity. But I'm also thinking about it in terms of like, just how specific does a person need to be? And I appreciate that, you know, some people have pretty complicated identities around orientation and gender that require not just a word, but maybe a sentence, a few sentences, and that gets very personal very quickly. Particularly because they may be things that the person that they're interacting with may not even be that familiar. They might use the word, and the person that they're speaking with may not even understand what that means. And so the fact that a person is often in the position of having to explain their identity to someone, that's just exhausting. And does someone need that much detail? So I think having an umbrella term that people kind of generally understand that you have an identity that is not 90, what is it, 94% of the population, whatever the current stats are.  Christian:Yeah, that's a very interesting piece. And I actually think it ties into something that Emily had just said specifically in that last answer that she gave about, I think you used the word freedom, Emily, when you were talking about words like queer and how they afford folks who use those identifiers a little bit more freedom. I'm curious, especially having just listened to what Joe said, if you could elaborate on that a little bit, sort of what you meant by that when you said freedom and, you know, how it ties into some of the things we're talking about today.  Emily: I definitely agree with Joe in that it gives freedom to not have to disclose parts of yourself that maybe you're not comfortable. Talking to other people about queer is just a very umbrella blanket term that implies that you are not the same as 94% of the population, but you don't have to go into specifically what you feel if you don't want to. I also think it gives freedom for exploration and change. And I think because being queer is not the norm in society, especially for younger people, can be difficult to figure out what that means for you specifically and how you feel and what your identity is. And so to have this umbrella word feels free and safe to me to not have to pick something and then feel nervous later about saying that specific word I chose doesn't fit anymore. And now I need to change what I'm telling people about myself and the stigma that comes with that. And I think the worry for some young people that comes from deviating from the norm already and the deviating from the deviation you decided. And so just saying I'm queer from the jump, it provides, I think, a sense of freedom to learn and grow and a sense of safety in that.  Christian: Right. And that's so important. And I think, you know, we have now nowadays we have studies suggesting, you know, having freedom as somebody who's growing up and discovering your identity, I think, is so important in, you know, long term success and happiness. I think a big piece of this too, and you both touched on this already, is whether it's queer or whether it's other language, so much of our community's success in speaking with each other is about this idea of person-centered language, which is not specific to the LGBTQ community. But when we are talking about it in that way, using the language that people are using to describe themselves and sort of being willing to go on that journey with folks to the extent that they are, you know, finding out new things about their identities, using new words, sort of being willing to take that linguistic journey with them, I suppose. Joe, earlier, you know, speaking of linguistic journeys, you mentioned that you had sort of a strong negative reaction to the word queer the first, you know, first time, first couple of times that you heard it. And you said that you had to examine that reaction. I'm curious if you'd be willing to to share for us sort of what that process was like for you and what was your impetus to maybe take a step back from the shock or the negative reaction that had you feeling like it was worth examining?  Joe:  Well, I think any time I have a strong negative reaction to something, I just feel like it's worth examining what's going on. Sometimes it's very obvious, but other times I'm like, hmm, I'm really surprised that I feel so strongly this way. And I think it's partly because I think I've always thought it's a cool word. I mean, just the sound and in a way that like faggot, for instance, not a cool word. It just doesn't sound cool. it doesn't have like there's it doesn't have any uniqueness to it it's very harsh and so you know as i dug deeper into it i realized this that it and i love the idea of reclaiming words but there are a couple things that that sort of went on for me one was it was a little bit shocking because it was a word that you're not supposed to say and then people are saying it and there are other or reclaimed words in other communities. I know African Americans who have a very strong negative reaction to the use of the N-word by anyone, whether they are part of the African American community or not. And then I think there's also this other piece that is a challenge in reclaimed words, which is why it would be lovely for, and I think we will eventually evolve to a term that doesn't have baggage, but the challenge is who can use the word, right? It's It's been reclaimed, but who, who's allowed to use it and when, and, um, I think anytime you have a word that people are unsure, they're unsure about what it means exactly and who is allowed to use it, that creates a barrier. It's no longer inclusive. It's really quite exclusive. And that's a danger that I, you know, that I see. And I have to kind of think about like, if I start using it, how do I feel if other people, say an ally or just a random person on the street, uses it? Yeah, I'm still not 100% sure about how I feel.  Christian: It's definitely a key topic to sort of conceptualize for sure. It's interesting, right, when you think about this discussion too in terms of other communities outside of the LGBTQ+ community, right? And so I'm thinking about the way that other marginalized groups have their own language issues that come up. I'm curious if either of you have ever found yourself in an experience where you were either more comfortable or more informed about using language, that is specific to a marginalized group because of your experiences with words like queer and sort of the dynamic nature of LGBTQ+ language. I think that Joe makes a really good point about who can use words and when and how that is concerning in a lot of ways. And I think that having a lot of friends in different marginalized communities, I don't necessarily use words that maybe they have reclaimed or that they would use for themselves. Because if I'm not part of those communities, it doesn't feel like my place to use them. But to me, the queer community is broader. And again, I think as someone who hasn't experienced that word being used in a derogatory way and who has only ever encountered the word in a generally pretty positive way, it makes me feel more comfortable. If that's how I describe myself openly and my friends from other marginalized communities use that word for me, I don't mind it as much, especially, I think, because I know that they have a history with words that impact them. And so I'm more likely to understand that their intent with that word is positive and to support me and the way that I use that word. And they don't ever mean it in a derogatory way because they understand the power that words have. And I think that that kind of intersectionality is important. And I also think that the queer umbrella is so broad and encompasses so many other marginalized communities that there is a lot of interplay between different communities and the words that we use.  Joe: I would say from my perspective, I'm very sensitive to words. So I try and really pay attention to the words that people are using for themselves and about their community. I just pay a lot of attention. I will occasionally do the bystander thing, not just for our people within the queer community who have an identity I don't identify with, but are perhaps a topic of conversation. But also for other communities and to just highlight, you know, in a low key way, why a particular language that's being used might be problematic. And I'm not talking about slurs. I'm thinking about having been in a conversation about for the Latin community and the use of Latinx versus Latino / Latina, and just being thoughtful about the words that are used. And the fact that communities are not monolithic, I mean, we, by definition, are very broad, but within other marginalized communities, there's a broad range of identities that people hold, and language reflects that. And one of the problems with language is it's kind of a general label that works well a lot of the time, but it's going to chafe a number of people who are part of that community and people who the label is applied to. And I use that labeling not in a negative way, but just it's a term that's used to refer to them.  Christian: Yeah, and I think that's critical, right? That point about, you know, communities not being a monolith. So there's always going to be a certain amount of struggle. But I think what I'm hearing from both of you is that, you know, sort of grappling with language in the way that you have as a member of the LGBTQ community has given you sort of insights and an ability to think critically about language in other settings and as used by other groups as well. In a way that is really empathy forward, which I think is really awesome and something that is important for us as we move forward in this D&I space. I think that puts us at right about time. Emily and Joe, it has been an absolute pleasure talking with you today. Thank you so much for sharing your insights. Thank you everybody so much for listening to this month's episode of Inclusivity Included. We at Reed Smith are always happy to have you as listeners. I hope you all had a good time today and learned a lot. Thank you.  Outro: Inclusivity Included is a Reed Smith production. Our producers are Ali McCardell and Shannon Ryan. You can find our podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, reedsmith.com and our social media accounts.  Disclaimer: This podcast is provided for educational purposes. It does not constitute legal advice and is not intended to establish an attorney-client relationship, nor is it intended to suggest or establish standards of care applicable to particular lawyers in any given situation. Prior results do not  guarantee a similar outcome. Any views, opinions, or comments made by any external guest speaker are not to be attributed to Reed Smith LLP or its individual lawyers.  All rights reserved. Transcript is auto-generated.

Mad, Satanic Roman Emperors had created a disgust amongst the population for Ritual Satanic Murder Sacrifices and the poor people turned to Christianity which by itself should have civilized the world and made it evolved and rich.  Heads up UKRAINE:  They want your minerals, they are saying the quiet part out loud:  US senator says […] The post How Lutherans and Satanism grew out of Roman Empire.  They thought it was going Christian, well didn’t work out that way.  WHY does the BUSH family hide their real name (Scherff family) and origins? Did a Bush Murder Tesla? appeared first on Psychopath In Your Life.

Does christianity actually hurt our well-being

Bottom line, our world is different … dramatically different. (white hat off) And in this world it is not clear that I am one of the good guys. In fact, in this world the majority would probably see me as one of the bad guys, as part of the problem, not the solution. (Black hat on) So … this is my hat now. And, if you guys are anything like me, you are probably bad guys now, too. Looks like we need some hats, right? In the eyes of many in our world, guys like me … old, white, middle-class, educated, Christian … Well, some of them would classify me as sexist, and racist, and privileged (which is a bad thing), and insensitive, and intolerant (which is one of the worst sins possible, right?) Now guys, I hope they are wrong. I don't want to be any of those things. But by their definitions I am all that, I guess. I hope by God's definitions I'm not. Because, bottom line, it doesn't matter what people think of me. It doesn't even matter what I think of me. What really matters is what God thinks of me, right? If God thinks I'm a bad guy, I have issues. If he thinks I'm doing okay and you don't, well … I think you have issues, right?

Bottom line, our world is different … dramatically different. (white hat off) And in this world it is not clear that I am one of the good guys. In fact, in this world the majority would probably see me as one of the bad guys, as part of the problem, not the solution. (Black hat on) So … this is my hat now. And, if you guys are anything like me, you are probably bad guys now, too. Looks like we need some hats, right? In the eyes of many in our world, guys like me … old, white, middle-class, educated, Christian … Well, some of them would classify me as sexist, and racist, and privileged (which is a bad thing), and insensitive, and intolerant (which is one of the worst sins possible, right?) Now guys, I hope they are wrong. I don't want to be any of those things. But by their definitions I am all that, I guess. I hope by God's definitions I'm not. Because, bottom line, it doesn't matter what people think of me. It doesn't even matter what I think of me. What really matters is what God thinks of me, right? If God thinks I'm a bad guy, I have issues. If he thinks I'm doing okay and you don't, well … I think you have issues, right?

Ready to think twice about the filtration used to treat your water for consumption? Ready or not, our hosts are exploring the gut microbe, Campylobacter jejuni. This gram-negative bacterium is about 0.2um – 0.5um in size. Small, but mighty enough to warrant the use of a 0.05um filter if you want to catch this bug and potentially avoid some stomach souring symptoms. More about Campylobacter jejuni: What is Campylobacter infection? Safewater.org | Campylobacter Fact Sheet Stay tuned for more episodes, posting on the first Thursday of each month. Subscribe to our show wherever you get your podcasts and find more info at weebeastiespodcast.com    The Wee Beasties podcast is a production of Nephros, Inc., a company committed to improving the human relationship with water through leading, accessible technology. ***  Campylobacter jejuni, Campylobacter, biosurveillance, microorganisms, biotechnology, PremisePlumbing, AntonVanLeeuwenhoek, WeeBeastiesPodcast, season1, origins, CDC, pathogens, OpportunisticWaterbornePathogen *** SHOW TRANSCRIPT: Christian: I am back with Dr. Kimothy Smith. Kimothy, welcome back! Kimothy: Thanks, Christian. Christian: All right…how are we doing today Kimothy?  Kimothy: Doing well, Christian. Just recovering. Christian: Recovering from what? Kimothy: All of the candy corn I had to pick up in my front yard this weekend. The local monsters and ghouls decided it was imperative that my lawn be seeded with candy corn so they could apparently revive a Children of the Corn montage for Halloween.  Of course, nothing was going to grow except the number of birds and bugs on my lawn, so I found myself bent over cleaning that crap up all day on Sunday. Sigh. Christian: Well, hey, out of the Steven King flicks to choose from that was probably the best.  I mean, at least they didn't choose to revive the film It, your front yard would have been littered with psychopathic clowns with red hair and pointy teeth. It can always be worse, Kimothy. It can always be worse. Well, enough with the candy corn and clowns…what is our pathogen for today? Kimothy: Campylobacter jejuni Christian: Campylobacter is always associated with camping and environmental infections for me.  I just remember the camp in Campy and immediately remember that these infections are uncommon for treated water networks, but more likely found in untreated settings like stagnant environmental samples. Kimothy: Yeah, Christian, this bacterium doesn't tend to survive in treated water systems very well; and, if it does, it is in a viable but non-culturable state.  This is a gut microbe and it's primarily transmitted through birds, cattle, and other livestock feces – but, poultry mainly, such as chickens and turkeys. Feces from these animals shed campylobacter in into streams, rivers, lakes, and reservoirs. The most common route of infection is through ingestion (fecal-oral), whether that is untreated water or contaminated food. The result is campylobacteriosis – an acute illness that causes nausea, abdominal pain, fever, cramping, and diarrhea.  The abdominal pain can be so debilitating that it is often confused with appendicitis. Christian: Alright, so, in treated water there is less of a concern, but it's still possible to become infected in untreated water sources. What about its cellular structure and behavior; is this something I can easily filter out of the water supply I'm drinking from? Kimothy: Well, this is another gram-negative, spiral, and rod-shaped bacterium that is about 0.2um – 0.5um in size, so you'll want a 0.05-micron filter if you want to catch this bug before using the water for consumption.  Its motile by a single flagellum, and is not a good biofilm producer, so it's constantly on the move for nutrient sources.  It's most happy in intestinal tracts of animals, like I mentioned early, so livelihood is challenging for it in bulk water systems. That said, it doesn't take much ingestion to make you symptomatic and acutely sick.  I believe Safewater.org reports that less than 500 cells consumed will result in symptoms. To that end, I'd like to deviate just for a moment and emphasize Campylobacter is the most common bacterial cause of diarrhea in the U.S., affecting 1.5 million residents a year.1 And, a not well-known mode of transmission for shedding Campylobacter is our pets, in particular, our dogs. Christian: Ahhh, so all those people out there that are convinced your dog licking your face is OK, and just a warm sign of affection and love – it's probably true, but it comes with the bonus of acute diarrhea and cramps!  Nice.  Well, pooches aside, which patient populations are most at risk for acquiring Campylobacter? Kimothy: So, nothing surprising here, Christian.  Immunosuppressed or compromised patients are at greatest risk (think cancer and AIDS patients), but also pediatrics -- specifically those under the age of five are highly susceptible because of their lower developed immunity and inability to cope with the hypovolemia and accompanying diarrhea.  There are a few rare circumstances possible when acquiring this bacterium that are worth noting also (although these are highly improbable):  About one in every 1,000 cases of infection results in Gullian-Barre Syndrome (GBS).  GBS is an autoimmune disorder that causes weakness in the extremities and sometimes paralysis. Most people recover, but permanent nerve damage is possible in rare cases.  Also, strangely, according to the CDC, about 1-5% of those infected with Campylobacter will develop arthritis – non-age dependent. Christian: Bizarre…I wouldn't have suspected that outcome. Tell me about the treatment.  I assume since this is another bacterial pathogen that the best treatment is an antibiotic regimen. Kimothy: Actually, no.  This is rarely fatal, and symptoms will usually resolve on their own in most patient populations within about three weeks.  Except for those patients most at risk, that I mentioned earlier, you really are just treating the diarrhea here – so taking extra effort to drink lots of fluids and combat the dehydration and cramps is really most of what needs to be done. Christian: Alright, well it's good to hear that this isn't a pathogen with a high mortality rate. It does seem quite easy to acquire in untreated water or contaminated food, but if you do acquire it, symptoms resolve quickly. And the worst-case scenario you must get an antibiotic treatment if you're part of a high-risk patient population.  And you said earlier that these little guys don't survive well in bulk water systems and that treated water usually kills them or puts them into a VBNC state. So, there seem to be two easy solutions – use a point-of-use 0.05-micron filter or treat your water – also don't kiss your dog – and you're well on your way to preventing this bacterial infection! Kimothy: Usually it does just come down to the basics. This one is an “easier” one to address, but it still is ubiquitous and it's important to recognize small inputs and changes that really aren't that cumbersome can reduce the infection rate of this opportunistic pathogen. Christian: Alright, Kimothy, another one down, Campylobacter jejuni. I made it through all of that without being campy – well, maybe a little with the dog bit. Kimothy: Yes, a man of true restraint! Christian: Kimothy, as always, thanks so much for the chat today. Kimothy: You bet, Christian. 1 https://www.cdc.gov/campylobacter/faq.html

In this episode, Dr. Kimothy Smith and Christian Railsback discuss Klebsiella – a gram-negative bacteria that causes various healthcare-associated infections. Though Klebsiella has a broad scope at the species and sub-species levels, this episode concentrates on common characteristics, environments, and levels of drug resistance. A transcript of the conversation appears below. More about Klebsiella:CDC's Opportunistic Pathogens of Premise Plumbing listKlebsiella pneumoniae in Healthcare SettingsKlebsiella Pneumonia Stay tuned for more episodes, posting on the first Thursday of each month. Subscribe to our show wherever you get your podcasts and find more info at weebeastiespodcast.com The Wee Beasties podcast is a production of Nephros, Inc., a leading water technology company providing filtration and pathogen detection solutions to the medical and commercial markets. ***SHOW TRANSCRIPT: Christian:  I am back with Dr. Kimothy Smith. Kimothy, welcome back! Kimothy:  Thanks, Christian. Christian:  So, what's our bug for today? Kimothy:  Klebsiella. Christian:  Klebsiella. Reminds me of something I would get whacked with by my grandmother. Kimothy:  Well, Christian, Klebsiella is likely slightly more insidious than your grandmother, it can lead to meningitis.  But I don't know I never met your grandmother.  Christian:  You're right, that's slightly more insidious than my grandmother. Okay, I'm really interested to hear how Klebsiella leads to meningitis or other pathologies of similar mortality and morbidity. But let's start small today. Let's make this easily digestible. This is a waterborne pathogen like the previous pathogens we've discussed. How do we differentiate this bug? Kimothy:  Let me first say the genus, Klebsiella, has a fairly broad scope and extensive list at the species and sub-species levels. For the purpose of remaining very clear I'll limit my descriptions to the most clinically significant species and sub-species. Namely, K. pneumoniae and K. oxytoca. Both of which can be pronounced in different ways, by different people. Part of the justification for limiting to just these two is that 90% of the waterborne pathogen infections caused by Klebsiella are these two species. Christian:  Okay, so that means the microbiologists out there are going to express scorn for our unwillingness to spend the full day discussing the catalogue of attributes across the genus, right? So, keeping in mind this is a 30,000' discussion, what's at the cellular level, what kinds of characteristics stand out? Kimothy:  Well, Klebsiella's most immediate visual cue is its rod-shape and capsule.  Its capsule is meant, in part, to protect it from hostile environments.  Klebsiella thrives in the gastrointestinal tracts of a wide range of animals, including our own. And consequentially it's also found in wastewater, soil, and then of course therefore, fruits and vegetables as well. Since it predominates these areas, it easily integrates into the water cycle and in particular municipal water networks. The capsules also promote biofilm development which allows it to better protect itself and easily persist in water distribution systems despite heavy chlorination. Like the other pathogens we've discussed this too is a gram-negative bacterium.  And it's non-motile, so it really depends on the biofilm for protection and nutrients. Christian: Biofilms keep coming up. I assume it's not a coincidence that the CDC is emphasizing non-motile biofilm producers on its list of most concerning waterborne pathogens? Kimothy:  Yes, that's right, Christian. And I'll just add that another common feature we'll begin to see many of these bacteria share is the ability to resist antibiotics. Klebsiella is no exception. It is among the most resistant to antibacterial agents. Most recently to a class of antibiotics known as carbapenems.   Christian:  This is I suspect, in part, why we see so many healthcare-associated infections resulting from Klebsiella. Long-term care facilities, hospitals, clinics, and places where antibiotics are used, I imagine that's why Klebsiella persists so much. So, tell me a little about the epidemiology. What kinds of illnesses are caused? Kimothy:  So, I mentioned earlier that Klebsiella does exist in the human GI tract, but this does not cause disease. Klebsiella really only becomes a problem when it's (like meningitis) transmitted in the blood or inhaled.  So, serious blood infections and acute pneumonia are the biggest concerns. Particularly, patients needing long-term, recurring infusions or patients on ventilators are most susceptible. Also, individuals with liver disease and are hospitalized are known to get liver abscesses as a result of Klebsiella.  Christian:  Okay, so if I've got this right, I've got Klebsiella in my gut right now, but it's essentially benign there because it really can't take root and cause disease, but if it's in my blood or if it enters my lungs that's really where things start to go badly. So, I've seen some headlines, well more headlines than one would expect, highlighting Klebsiella outbreaks around the United States. Why do you think there has been a spike in outbreaks? Is this in some way correlated to our overuse of antibiotics in healthcare settings? Kimothy:  Insightful question, Christian. Klebsiella is ubiquitous in the environment. It finds its way into many places where humans will run into it, and of course, one of those places is hospitals or healthcare centers. But your point highlights the importance of antibiotic stewardship, or the judicious use of antibiotics to fight bacterial infections in healthcare settings. One of the interesting features of gram-negative bacteria, like Klebsiella is that they can share genes – they can share plasmids. In these plasmids they can carry antibiotic resistance genes that can be shared with other bacterium – passed on from one group to another.  And so, when they grow, the resistance to antibiotics can grow exponentially. Bacteria can carry, and “collect” multiple antibiotic resistance factors in their DNA, which makes them hugely dangerous, particularly in a healthcare setting where you have immunosuppressed patient populations. The topic of antibiotic stewardship has reached a level of importance to warrant discussion and policy adoption at the World Health Organization (WHO).  Even some at CDC and Health and Human Services consider this an issue that deserves a broader national discourse in the United States. We have a limited number of antibiotics with which to fight infections, and we are losing many of those options because of the way the bacteria are adapting. Consequently, it is harder for pharmaceutical companies to develop novel antibiotics. I didn't intend to wax so philosophical on this topic, but you brought up such an important issue, I wanted to give it the attention it deserves. Christian: I really appreciate it. It seems to me this is a problem we are not well prepared to mitigate. Namely, you've got a waterborne pathogen here that has a rigid exterior, it's protected in a biofilm, it's resistant to the effects of chlorination, it's ubiquitous in water supplies, and there is no way to mitigate it from entering our water supply; and, to top it all off it's incredibly resistant to antibiotics while outpacing our ability to manufacture better antibiotics. It seems like we're getting outmatched here and one of the things we could be doing better is monitoring water using biosurveillance. Kimothy:  Absolutely, I couldn't agree with you more. Better surveillance, better detection and diagnostics, particularly at the point of care / point of need, combined with fastidious cleanliness and sterilization in healthcare settings, and judicious use of antibiotics in healthcare settings. And finally, sharing this information across healthcare provider networks – educating communities. Christian:  Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more, education seems to be the best thing we could do to begin the fight. Again, this fascinating stuff, Kimothy.  What else do we need to mention today? Kimothy:  I think that's probably it. I think we've scared our audience today – hopefully not too much. We've given some hope and some appropriate measures to take, so I think that's enough. Christian: Well, again, thanks so much! This is always a pleasure. Kimothy:  Likewise, Christian.

Good Morning and Good Coffee! Do expect that this world should be problem free because you are a Christian? Well, I hate to break it to you, but this world will never be perfect. But it doesn't have to be to see the wonders and feel the peace that Jesus has to offer. Let explore this topic more today. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/larry-quicksall/message

God Bless you all. In today’s sermon, Pastor Jack Gonzales kicks off the new sermon series titled “This Life” . It’s central passage is focused on Micah 6:8 “He has shown you, o mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” God is calling US to act justly. What might that mean exactly for a Christian? Well listen and find out! We pray it blesses your life and stay tuned for the continuation of this series! 

When we look at the occupations of Bible heroes, we find more paper-pushers than priests! We have several shepherds represented - Abraham, Moses, David - but even some of them became bureaucrats. Where did we get this idea that if you're not a "member of the clergy," you're really a second-class kind of Christian? Well, Pastor Jim will take issue with that idea today. Let's enjoy Part 1 of the sermon God's Will at Work. Jim will begin reading from Ephesians chapter 6, verse 5. Listen to Right Start Radio every Monday through Friday on WCVX 1160AM (Cincinnati, OH) at 9:30am, WHKC 91.5FM (Columbus, OH) at 5:00pm, WRFD 880AM (Columbus, OH) at 9:00am and WRZN 720AM (Gainesville & Ocala, FL) at 7:30am. Right Start can also be heard on One Christian Radio 107.7FM & 87.6FM in New Plymouth, New Zealand. You can purchase a copy of this message, unsegmented for broadcasting and in its entirety, for just $7 on a single CD or $2 as an MP3 download. RS10162020_1.mp3Scripture References: Ephesians 6:5-9

Welcome to season 2!  In this episode, Christian Haynes ’20 speaks with Schone Malliet ’74 about his dynamic career and the many ways that he strives to foster diversity, equity, access and inclusion for all. Interview originally recorded on July 30, 2020.  Due to the ongoing effects of the pandemic, all interviews in season 2 are recorded remotely. --- Transcript Schone: The question that I have now: is diversity, equity and inclusion, a committee or is it a culture? Is it something that you talk about around a table or it's something that is a way of life? I think that it's both. It starts with the talking around the table, but it needs to be the way things are, not something that you do. Maura: Welcome to Mission-Driven, where we speak with alumni who are leveraging their Holy Cross education to make a meaningful difference in the world around them. I'm your host Maura Sweeney from the class of 2007, Director of Alumni Career Development at Holy Cross. I'm delighted to welcome you to today's show. Maura: Welcome to season two. In this episode, we hear from Schone Malliet from the class of 1974. Schone's career path will keep you on your toes, although he claims that his life isn't movie material. After growing up in the South Bronx, he came to Holy Cross in the early '70s and successfully walked on the varsity basketball team. Upon graduation, he entered the Marine Corps and became one of its first black jet pilots. From there, he got his MBA and worked as a top executive in the technology and banking industries. Today, he combines this wealth of experience with his passion for making a difference in people's lives. Maura: Christian Haynes from the class of 2020 speaks with Schone about his life, career and his current work as the CEO of Winter4Kids, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to make a difference in the lives of youth through winter activities. As his first intern, Christian was able to witness Schone's hard work up close. Filled with thoughtful insights around diversity, equity, access and inclusion, their conversation highlights the many ways that we can all make a difference in our communities and the wider world. Christian: What's good everybody? Welcome to the Holy Cross Mission-Driven podcast. I'm Christian Haynes, class of 2020, which means, yes, I'm officially an alum and hopefully in five years, I'll be on the other end of this. But today, I'm the interviewer and my guest today, great man, a man that can light up the room with his energy and charisma, a man that's been giving me opportunities to become a better person from the moment I met him.... and I'm glad to call him a mentor, Mr. Schone Malliet. Schone: How are you doing Christian? I am really glad to be here. I'm not sure who you're describing there, but when I find him, I'll make sure I connect the two of you, okay? Christian: I actually compared you to Magic Johnson, by the energy you bring. Schone: Well, that's good because he got his game from me and everything he does on the court was because of all the things I hoped to be. No. Thank you though. Christian: He definitely did. How's everything though? Schone: Actually, it's pretty good. Well, it's mixed. With everything going on with CV-19, our society and the upheaval that's going on, it's mixed. I go through a day that has highs and has lows and a lot of thoughtful moments. All in all, its life, right? It’s not always good, it’s not always bad, it’s just hard. I think it’s making me better and hopefully its making all of us better. Christian: Yeah. I guess it’s all just about adjusting to these events. I guess that's the best we can do. The most recent things that we've been doing to adjust and by “we” I mean the Holy Cross community, the ALANA talks we have every two Saturdays, that you’re a part of. I think that you started right? You start that? Schone: We started that as a happy hour and it became talks. I think it's been an awesome way for alumni and students... A safe place to talk about the things and share what we feel, what we're going through and hopefully gain somethings. I gain insight from everybody there, especially the students and recent alumni. You guys are my heroes because I never stop learning, and I do learn a lot from all of you. Christian: Yeah, so with these alumni talks, one of the biggest topics is the social injustice issues that we face both on the Holy Cross campus and outside of it as well, around the world. And one thing that a lot of students say now, or a lot of alumni say now is that nothing has changed from when they were in school, whether it's '70s, '80s, '90s, early 2000s. A lot of things have stayed the same when it came to these social injustice issues, these race wars almost. How do you feel about that? Do you feel the same? You feel as if things have changed or things have stayed the same? Schone: Wow. I was listening to something about the athletic director, I think for one of the conferences and I think it was a conference of HBCU's and he was talking about this issue of integration versus assimilation. I believe what's happened and is still happening today is, while I've been able to evolve from us taking over Fenwick when I was there into which on surfaces, it's been a very good and blessed career, that I've been resensitised to some of the challenges that I went through in my career, whether they were explicit or implicit racism or the -isms that things did not really change. And I think I let my success lure me into believing that it was different. And talking to students, talking to my fellow alumni, revisiting my life as it has been and how it is today, the issue of being impacted socially, emotionally, because of the color of my skin and even how I live is still there. Schone: So, I have to have the talk right? With my son who's 21 years old about, listen get stopped, here's what you do, don't get stopped and then even to have to be sensitive to how, what, when and where are my surroundings, has let me know that this is still real. And so you asked about how do I feel about that, I'm feeling a lot of stuff but I'm also hopeful. And I'm hopeful because in this time which is different to George Floyd thing, the Breonna issue, all of these things now have been front and center for everybody. And so I don't feel that I am, we are as Black people are going forth by ourselves. I think that the whole of society has been brought into the experience. Christian: Yeah, I definitely agree with that. Seeing them on allies today. Many protests have been happening, even outside of the country which is kind of surprising for me. I always thought this was a American thing, but there are a lot of people of color facing the same struggles outside of this country. So it is great to have those allies all around the world. We're going to backtrack here a bit and go back to 1970s, South Bronx. When I say that, what's the first thing that popped up in your mind? Schone: I'm a projects kid right? 1710 Lafayette Avenue. Kemba Walker came from the same project which is again where my basketball skills must have went to because I didn't have any. And I look back at the South Bronx as not something bad, it was great where I grew up, it was alive. Of course as I compare it to now and we look at it, it looks different in terms of equity and access and those things but I am a product of everything that I went through growing up, raised by a single female and her having the insight to put me in Catholic schools, to be prepared for where I am today. I love my upbringing, I love everything about it. I wouldn't change it, I didn't know what I didn't have which is kind of a blessing because everything I felt that I went through was what I was supposed to go through. Christian: Rice was located in Manhattan? Rice High School? Schone: 124th Street and Lenox Avenue, in the heart of Harlem- Christian: Yeah, right in Harlem. So what was that like? A private school in Harlem? Schone: Well, first of all, at the time there were no high schools in Harlem. The student body was probably all of, was is it about 400 or 600? And was majority White in Harlem and during the time I went to school there, was the riots of the '60s right? And Rice was a block away from any transportation, buses and trains that I had to take two buses and two trains to get to school. None of the kids who went to school there ever subjected to anything negative. Rice was a great school, Felipe Lopez, Kemba Walker came out with some great basketball players but again that Catholic education plays a role in preparing me for today and Rice High School, it's interesting because I didn't play basketball in high school because I'd tell everybody that Rice High School, the managers could start at any other high school in New York City which is true because I was a manager but I got to play up at Holy Cross so I guess it was unique and it's a shame that it went out of... It's been sold and it's now a school for Harlem Children's Zone. A good legacy. Christian: And you said that Rice prepared you for today, how did it prepare you for Holy Cross? Schone: I think the group of individuals that were kind of the core... this group of individuals helped me create a voice and we started an organization called the Coalition of Catholic High School Students in New York and this is before cellphones and before computers and we not only were activists but it was a social organization as well and I think again it gave me the opportunity to find my own voice. And I probably learned to talk too much but I think that came from my grandfather and all of that and there are people who talk about me and my family, my father's side because my grandfather was a foreign editor on EMCM News. He also was a Black publisher but people in Harlem says oh, you're that Malliet family. All of you guys you could talk, so don't blame it on me, blame it on my heritage. Christian: That's dope. Sometimes I wonder for myself, how did I end up in Holy Cross coming from Brooklyn. So what was it like, the private institution you were part of, the Catholic culture that you were part of that put you onto Holy Cross or maybe a friend? What led you to stepping on the hill? Schone: I picked it out of a hat. I picked Holy Cross out of a hat and let me explain that. So, my mother who didn't have the high school education... So college was not within a vision of my mother or myself and during the time, everybody talks about the fraternity which was the class of '60 that came in '72 but Father Brooks kept recruiting. And part of the response to the riots of '68, '69 were that schools started to proactively recruit Black students and they actually used the PSAT's right? No, I guess that Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test, the practice test as screeners. So they not only screen African American students but they started to proactively set out invitations to apply. And they sent them to guidance counselor, and my guidance counselor pulled my mother in the school, said bring your mom into school and I said for what, I didn't do anything wrong and he said no just bring her in and I brought her in and he says listen, I want to talk to you about college's for Schone and she said he's not going to college. There's no money, there's no... and she didn't understand. Schone: He said no, I have his applications here, these schools he can get into and he should apply and we applied and there were some interesting schools, Holy Cross was one, the Merchant Marine Academy was another one, UCLA, Slippery Rock State Teachers College, John Hopkins, don't ask me why those schools. I picked Holy Cross out of a hat, didn't understand why, I'd never visited the campus and showed up there the first time and had not a clue of what I was doing and why I was there. I believe not in karma but spirituality that I believe in a higher power and a lot of things in my life, I probably would not have chosen on my own but I'm sure that I was guided and that was one of the best things that ever happened to me. Christian: Did you really pick it out of a hat? Schone: Yes, I really did pick it out of a hat- Christian: I mean, imagine you really having a bunch of papers in a hat. That's crazy, I mean I guess it is fate- Schone: My life has been interesting and you're going to laugh at this, I'm sure [inaudible 00:15:50] that when you look at what I've done in my life, like Holy Cross right? And the Marine Corps as a pilot and Technology's CEO and Pepperdine MBA and banking and running Winter4Kids, it looks like a great story right? It looks like an awesome movie, it's not movie material. There was no plan for those things. So I tell people all the time, I ended up doing all of that because I didn't know I wasn't supposed to and again I go back to, that I've prepared when the opportunities came along but the preparation went not only to Holy Cross, the institution but all the people in my class and who were ahead of me, I mean Ted and Nina Wells, to Malcolm and all the people that played basketball with, from Stan to RL, Rod and all of these individuals, even though I was abused by most of them. Schone: Not only abused in that social setting but prepared me for the rest of the world and when I think about Holy Cross, that critical thinking component is really the most valuable thing that I've ever been able to learn and integrate within my life and internalize because it goes to problem solving. And if there's anything that I would say that I really enjoy and characterize as what's my talent or thing I like to do, I like problem solving. I enjoy the complexity of it and trying to find which people than others are a solution that works. Christian: That's good to hear because there's a lot of problems in this world, so I guess we all going to come to you then. Schone: No, but I'll be more than happy to talk about it but it's true I mean, there's always a solution right? And it depends on how much time and energy that you can put into it and what the goal is. If the goal is to be right, then it's not going to work. If the goal is to find something that works for everybody, that's great. I think it was Barack Obama who spoke at Harvard’s graduation a couple of years ago, that said, if you expect your life to be something where you're going to get your way a 100% of the time, it's not going to happen. The thing you have to learn is what's important, how to compromise, how to communicate and decide that everybody has to win for something to be sustainable. Christian: That's also kind of boring too. I mean you don't even know what's going to happen. So if you're right all the time, is it really fun? Schone: I wouldn't know because I've never been right all the time and if I find anybody, I'm usually going to walk away from them too because... But I think that, those experiences right? And you know when you're interning here, the way that we work is, how do we figure out what's the best way to do something which I think is an inherent skill set that Holy Cross is really, really good at no matter what your major and giving you those kind of tools. Christian: Yeah, one thing I actually noticed at the office there, once you have the kids, something that we do especially junior year, senior year, a lot of collaborations, a lot of team work and it's similar to what you just said, trying to find the best solution to the problem given to us. And although I dreaded it at the time, working with other people and meeting them at 11 o'clock at Cool Beans, all that stuff, staying up until 4 o'clock, you know that. All that good stuff, it definitely works in the long run and seeing that from you and seeing that at Winter4Kids, in a business setting I can see that it's definitely a tool that I'll definitely carry for the rest of my life. Christian: But how were you as a student? Not just as a student but as a person at Holy Cross, on campus. Where you like some of the people I've interviewed before? Just partying all the time, I'm not going to mention any names but maybe you know who I'm talking about. Partying all the time, stuff like that. Where you a studious student or you were just that person that went about your business and wanted to graduate right away? Schone: Can I plead the fifth? Because it's good that my parents who are in heaven now, because I don't think they want to hear this. Going to college was a whole brand new experience for me because I had no plan for it. So I didn't know what to do when I got there, right? I was a studious, actually I don't think I knew how to study right? So I guess the best I was capable of doing but my capabilities were limited by my own faults right? So I would say that I enjoyed playing basketball, I enjoyed the parties, the social life. I didn't necessarily embrace the opportunity to learn as much as I could, the best way I could and now when I look back on it, learning is more than just the academic side, it was all the things I went through. Deciding to make a basketball team and go and try out was a big deal. I lived on the Black corridor and then moved off that into Beaven as an experimental house. Schone: I had my eyes open to a world I'd never known of and I think the core of my learning was exploration of opportunity and interactions and it drove me to actually sign up to be a Marine officer which most of my colleagues and you know said.... On Commencement day, after I got my degree I had to go get commissioned and I put on my uniform. There are people who said, what the heck is going on here because they had no idea and I believe that. So to answer your question, I was not studious, I definitely enjoyed the social side, I learned a lot. Could I have done better academically? Absolutely. I was so scared to look inside my... The folder you get with your degree to see that there was a paper in it because I wasn't sure that I had made it. Schone: But I will say that there is something that I learned about what college is supposed to be through that and it's truly academic side, but I think that college is the place to experience a lot of things. Matter of fact, has it a negative that shaped the rest of your life? Because had I not learned coping skills, I could not have experienced and be comfortable in a majority world, as I have been. Does that make sense? Christian: Definitely does- Schone: And I think that the coping skills were the personal interactions with individuals. Christian: Yeah, I always say that you learn more outside the classroom than you do in it and I think my GPA outside of classroom had to be full point on. Because- Schone: I wish I had put that on my transcript, because I could have used that but I think that when people say so what you got out of Holy Cross? Which is why I feel so much about what the school gave me as an opportunity. Like everybody, I came out of there with not feeling that the experience was the most positive at the time but when I look at it in context to where my life has been and where it is now, the will learning was so subtle but so life changing and in the context of me still being a Black man. I did not and do not give up what my essence is. I embrace it, I internalize it and I manage it so that I can be heard and understood and felt. Schone: So today as we talk about what we're going through, I'm talking to colleagues of mine who are White. They are calling me and asking me questions and I'm welcoming those conversations because I believe that if they are going to call and be courageous enough to ask the question, their intention is to learn and to be better and if I can give information from my perspective or what I feel or what I think, it gives them another data point for them to now have a choice about how they are going to interact with anyone who is physically different but surely those of us who are Black. Christian: Now after graduation, like you mentioned straight into Marine Corps. Talk to me about that, the decision going into it, your time there and finishing that time. Schone: Most people who go to college have some goal coming out of it. Being a lawyer, being a doctor, I want to go into law enforcement. Remember I had went in with no particular goal. I had no clue about what I was going to do after I went to college, so the story about the Marine Corps is an interesting one because at the time, Marines were recruiting officers on campus, they would come out in front of Hogan, set up a table and there'd be Marines in uniform recruiting individuals- Christian: They still do that? Schone: So at that time we were protesting, the Marine Corps recruiting on campus. And I say we because I was part of the protesters. And we stood around this table as only Holy Cross individuals can do when they protest. Maybe a 100 in silence for hours and the Marine officer in charge, Major said to me, you don't even know what you're protesting about. He said and you probably could even make it as a Marine. Now I don't know what happened but in the context of looking for something to do after college, I explored the Marine Corps, I took the test for this program. They asked me if I wanted to be an aviator and is said I don't have a clue because I'd never been in an airplane before, they said okay, well take the test, let's see what happens and I guess I did okay with that because I got past the application side, I went to Officer Candidate School, which was down in Quantico, for I think between my sophomore and junior year, no between my junior and senior year. Schone: 12 weeks of a lot of physical challenges, but a lot of it was officer leadership challenges and I got through it and came back to Holy Cross. Spent that whole year. Nobody knew that I had been through that. Graduated, got my commission as an officer, went to the Officer Training School which is the basic school then went to flight school. Flight school was interesting because I think I had the lowest grades of any candidate coming out of flight school and I was the third Black jet pilot in the Marine Corps behind Major General Peterson, the first Black General in Marine Corp and then Charlie Bolden who's a General as well. Charlie Bolden flew the light aircraft that I did but Charlie Bolden was the first astronaut, he was also the head of NASA. Schone: But this interesting about the Marine Corps was that, that was my first experience about being treated differently because I was Black. I was not a great pilot coming out of flight school, I was concerned that I got my wings because I was Black. I said to my instructor I don't want to get this just because I'm Black and he said Schone, I don't worry about you because you are confident, you're capable, you will not press yourself passed what your capabilities are and that's a good thing and sometime in your career, you're going to be okay and be a good pilot but up until that time, people are not going to think very highly of you, because you won't be performing at the level that they expect. Schone: And true to form, I didn't. At one time they challenged me on my ability from an academic stand point, whether or not I was smart enough to be a pilot and I had to use my performance and Officer Candidate School and basic school to show them I finished in the top five of the class out of 250, just to offset that. But subjected to evaluations both direct and indirect because of the color of my skin and I don't know if I accepted it or ignored it because I didn't know how to handle it. I will say that I went from being a very, very bad pilot to being a very, very good pilot. Then got out of the Marine Corps, but at the Marine Corps was very important, near and dear to my heart. A Marine, a Crusader, being raised by my mother, having family, legacy that's important and Winter4Kids, are all things that I'm extremely proud of and blessed to have had the experience because all those things helped me to be the person that I am both in business and personally. Christian: I love driving, I love being behind the wheel but flying a plane, I don't think that's something I'd ever do. What is that like? Anxiety levels have to raise, you more courteous. What is it like? Schone: Flying an airplane is like anything else that you do. Once you learn how to do it, I hope my son doesn't hear this because when I'm riding in the car with him driving, they may as well be a steering wheel and a brake on my side of the car because I'm pressing him out. But I think that, as you progress with anything, you learn how to do the basics and you learn how to take what you learn and apply it, which is skills that you develop. And then you get comfortable at knowing how to apply those things at the right time. But I will tell you that flying an airplane is interesting because it moves at 11 miles per minute and there's lots of things going on. So 11 miles per minute... So your thought process speeds up to process all that information. You don't skip steps, you just do that quicker which creates challenges for me today because some people say, well you get to a conclusion Schone, much quicker than everybody will and do you skip steps or do you jump to conclusions. Schone: It's really not true. What I do is, I process all those steps and risks and those things. I don't get it to a 100% but I've learnt to evaluate things, detail wise very quickly and then be able to make the right decisions but flying was and is one of those things that I got to do and landing on an aircraft carrier, all those things have created things that are special to me. And also, remember I told you that I did a lot of things because I didn't know I wasn't supposed to. They should told me, I should have been scared landing on aircraft carrier because now I probably wouldn't do it but... Christian: I got one question. I feel like a lot of people got to have this question as well, are all those buttons necessary? Schone: In an airplane? Christian: Yes. Schone: Every single thing that is in front of you in an airplane is something that's going to impact how long you live and how good you're going to be, at living that and doing your job. There is nothing in it that is unnecessary. Christian: I'm just asking, I just felt like there's too many buttons. I feel like at least 10% of them are just there to be there. Schone: No, and the interesting part about this, you learn how to scan them and you'd check on those things, not focusing on only one thing because you can't. But you'll learn how to quickly take those things in and keep your eyes outside. So you learn those things. Christian: So one thing, I don't think you did mention it. You went from Marine Corps to- Schone: Technology. Christian: Right. Technology in the '90s. To me that's pretty interesting because now that's almost like we're in an era where technology is part of our lives 24/7 but in the '90s, how was that? Schone: It wasn't like it was today. It was interesting because what we know of as a cloud, existed back in the '80s and '90s, that's what they called timesharing. But I do think what happened for me was, I always went to technology as... I was really interested in how I could use it. What could I use it for? And because I got my MBA at the same time that I was working for Computer Scientists Corporation which would use technology to solve problems. I actually used that technology to help me with my MBA and so I became a user of any technology to help me get things better, faster, sooner. So for me, and you know me, I have just about every piece of technology you van have but it's all about how do I use it? And how does it make my life easier? I think that today, we have a lot of technology out there. Schone: I'm not sure that we know how to use those things, like Apple creates things first and then you figure out how to use them later on. I still can’t figure out today, why in the world I've got a watch on my hand and I could call somebody, listen to music, tell time, manage how exercise I've got and by the way tell me if my heart is working. But if you think of that right, we didn't ask for all that. And so I think that it's evolving so that it helps us to live better and it did back then as well. Christian: So fast forward and imagine you go to banking but same time you got into Winter Sports with the National Brotherhood of Skiers. Now before we answer that one, I want to know what was it first time you got exposed to Winter Sports? Schone: I got exposed to Winter Sports, following my navigator when I was in the Marine Corps. We decided that one weekend we would go to Park City Utah. And on the weekends, in the military you train on the weekends, meaning you could use the plane to train and go to different places. So we decided to go to Park City. Mike Vizzier was a skier, Schone Malliet was not a skier. Mike Vizzier was an expert skier, Schone Malliet was not a skier. Got all the equipment, went to Park City, followed Mike up the lift and there's a lift called and a trail called Payday which had Park City people know is not something for a beginner. Followed him up there, fell getting off the lift, fell numerous times getting down and I promised myself, I was never going to do this again. I was cold, It was miserable and the immediate gratification of me doing something to get it right, was not there. I was not happy camper. That was the first time. Schone: Now National Brotherhood of Skiers which is the largest organized group of skiers in the United States, which is all African American had at the time, over 70 clubs now has about 50 clubs in multiple cities I lived in Los Angeles. I got hooked up with Four Seasons West and they socialized the whole process. Every weekend, we'd get in the cars and drive up the Mammoth. I wasn't any good then but happy hour helped so you may have been miserable, you may had a tough time but you got to go back and misery loves company. At least socialize about the experiences that you didn't really like. That allowed me safe place to get better at the skills, to enjoy it and help me get to where I am today. Christian: Now was the National Brotherhood of Skiers, was that a non-profit? Schone: Yes, it is, it was and at the time I was just a member of this club, but I also got into the coaching side of it and coached African American kids because the National Brotherhood of Skiers, their mission is to identify, develop and support Athletes of color who will win international and Olympic winter sports competitions, representing United States and to increase participation in winter sports. It was what gave me the experience to be a coach and then to take African American athletes who wanted to pursue that and to train, we went to South America twice during the summer time, which is winter there. We went to Switzerland twice to train. A great experience. Christian: Right. So you were doing that at the same time as the banking and stuff and I think for a lot of us that come from these communities that lack resources and those who are fortunate enough to end up in a college with more resources and get to network and all that stuff, our goal is to obtain as many resources as we can. One of those resources is money. So we try to chase the money but our heart also tells us to give back to the community. Did you feel like there was a pressure to do both or some type of... You felt like you were pressured to do one more than the other? Schone: I don't think any of those things at the time, were pressure things. I think it was things that I just wanted to do. I do think that somehow along the line of my life, I've been wired to make a difference in people’s lives. That's what drives me. And as part of my DNA, it's what fuels my energy and excitement, is to see what impact I can have on individuals, companies. Whether it's younger alumni like you or current students or races who want to pursue something, people who work here Winter4Kids. Because I realize that my life was gifted to me and the things that I've been able to accomplish and it took efforts and support and people around me, who cared enough about me to guide me. Maybe to chastise me, and even people who were negative to me gave me the skills to be who I am. So I think I've always been cognizant of the fact that I was the beneficiary of the people caring and helping me and I believe I internalized that, so that's what drives me to make sure that my team, they are as good as can be. Schone: That our impact at Winter4Kids on our youth has significant impact. That current students at Holy Cross, alumni, that if I can share my thoughts, my feelings, my experiences, not as directives but as information that it could be useful for them and for me with the things that they go through. Does that make sense? Christian: It definitely does. Definitely does. Now to today, Winter4Kids, you mention that a lot during our talk. Talk to me about that, what is it? What do you guys stand for? What do you guys do? Schone: Winter4Kids, our sole existence is to make a difference in our kids’ lives. Kids who traditionally don't have access to winter activities, through winter sports and the outdoors. That difference includes better health, through better and more activities but in which attitudes is about nutrition, their own future, the outdoors and opportunity for them to master something they have never done before. And to give them a platform to build upon so that now they have choices, can choose to go to college, can choose to explore a sport. To choose to ignore a practical or physical limitations to enjoy something different and new and the fact that over the last five years, it's been over 8671 kids, our kids and continuing to grow till we get to 10000 kids a year and we'll do about 34 hundred this next year and to be able to use Winter4Kids as a way to change lives, like you're an intern here and I have three Holy Cross interns this year. I think I have Oluchi, Meah and Emma, and they are shaping the future for us. It is an exciting and unique opportunity. Schone: It allows me to take a sport that I enjoy, an inert desire to make a difference in the lives of people, especially young people. The experiences of running a business, gathering the resources to do that and developing with the team. A sustainable plan is the most exciting thing I've ever had to do in my life and it's a blessing, karma, you can call it whatever it is but I get to do all those things a lot because of all the things that I experienced by my life. Christian: Right. Was I the first intern from Holy Cross? Schone: Yes. Christian: I was the guinea pig. Schone: Yes, you were the pioneer. Somebody once told me that pioneers get all the arrows but those that live through the experience get the first choice at prime real estate. Christian: I feel that. Now being a Black man and being a CEO of a winters sports organization, is that really strange to some people? And it definitely carries a stigma... There's a stigma that Black people don't belong in winter sports or they don't want to be in winter sports. How do you, with your platform try to change that? Schone: There's no doubt that winter sports, lacks in multicultural experiences or participation. In the role that I have today, has not always been received by everyone as a net positive for the industry and I ignore them. Christian: How? Schone: Well, the way that I live my life is that I can't control how people feel, I can't control how people think. The only thing that I'm rally in control of is what I do, my integrity and the values by which I live. And understand that, things like privilege and immunity come into play. That is, when you are first in an industry or sport or anything and you're being first is different. The evaluation of you is not the same as those who are from the majority are White. So, Winter4Kids, we have always been focused on what our mission is, how we do these things and create a culture of equity, access and emerging. I tell people today that at Winter4Kids, diversity, inclusion, equity, access and emerging, that's what Winter4Kids is. It's not something we do, so today we represent an example and a model for an environment that is culturally based on equity and access. Schone: Somebody asked me yesterday, how do you recruit people for a diverse company? I don't think that you recruit people, I think you promote the culture that is first and foremost, give everybody access to it, ensure that when they are in that culture that there's equity, that there's fairness across that and that you make it a safe place for people to contribute to the mission and to be themselves. We have a very interesting makeup of a leadership team and I didn't even think about this that, you know, of the 12 to 15 leaders on the management team, seven are female, three are male, four African Americans, we have Latinx. So that wasn't the plan, it happened that way because we are that way. So the question that I have now, is diversity, equity and inclusion a committee or is it a culture? Is it something that you talk about around the table or it's something that is a way of life? I think that it's both, it starts with the talking around the table but it needs to be the way things are, not something that you do. Christian: Yep. I think LeBron hit the nail on the head when he asked about this Black Lives Matter movement. I don't know what the question was but that was the phrase that many use, he said it's not a movement, it's a way of life and this is what... And I think that goes with the community versus culture issues that we have now. A lot of people just, whether it's businesses, companies, institutions giving us something to chase the dog's tail. Something to keep us busy and that sort of community thing versus culture thing where we want to feel this everywhere we go. Whether it's in the classroom, talking about school, whether it's in classroom with my classmates, professors, whether it's in the dorms, at the cafeteria, in the party, we want to feel included everywhere we go. We want to equality, equity everywhere we go not just where the legislation thinks it matters the most or where they think we're only arguing for or fighting for. It's everywhere we go. That's the culture right there. Schone: I agree with that. So now, I have made myself available to my colleagues who are White or of any background, to answer any questions they might have, without fear of judgment and an example is, I had one of my colleagues in the industry who's a publisher of a magazine ask me, and before they asked it, they said I'm a little bit ashamed, I'm sorry if this is uncomfortable, I just want to, and hopefully it's all right. And they asked me, Schone do I call you Black, African American or person of color. And I felt bad because that's where we've gotten to right? Is that, there are individuals out there who don't know what to say and don't know how to say it or who to and I say to them look, anyone of them work for me, because I go to intention. Schone: So if your intentions are good and you just want to understand, to be sensitive to me, then that's okay. I have to ask that about my colleagues who are Hispanic because now I don't know if I say Latino, Latina or Latinx. And I just learned that Latinx is the gender neutral side. The best way for me to ask and say which way, if I'm going to speak about race, which way works for you? I don't know if you know this movie, did you ever see Remember the Titans? Christian: That's my favorite movie, come on now. Schone: That is my favorite. Well, I want you to look up and watch the part of the obituary that was written in... I believe Jones died maybe about 10 years ago, whatever. But what Boone said about him and said about how they got together and I realize that the reason why I have hope is that I believe that we've created a culture where we can have conversations. I've had some people challenge me about the N word. About, have I ever been called that and I go yes even at Winter4Kids, not to my face but the question that some have is, how come on one hand the N word is a bad word right, and on the other hand it's used in music, right? And I said that's a courageous question for you to ask. I would say that it goes back to intentions again. When a person whose White used that word, it was meant to be demeaning, denigrating and to put us in our place. Schone: Within the cultural music, it has different connotations. It is coming from a different place and while the word is bad, which I agree that it doesn't have any real use today, that intentions dictate how things are received. Christian: I think you must have remembered the times... I think there are two things that bring us together, unfortunately one of them has been taken away from us this year because of COVID-19, and that's sports and music and we would just get together like the way we do when we're at concerts, when we're at sporting events and I think the world would be a lot... a way better place, a lot better. Schone: I think it will be. I think whatever happens coming out of this, we're going to be different. We're going to look at a lot of things differently, we're going to look at each other differently and not to minimize the trauma and the pain that COVID-19 and the race issues are causing us. It's going to be better, coming out the other side. I just hope it gets better, quicker. Christian: All this great work, that you've done for your communities, especially out there in Vernon, New Jersey. How do you think the Holy Cross mission statement, men and women for and with others, has helped you do what you do today? Schone: I actually think I live it, maybe. I don't know if I thought about it that way but I think intentionally I've been wired to do it that way and I think that the service of others right, is intentional. The responsibility to make a difference is purposeful and the opportunity to deliver on that mission is to be embraced and not only just embraced, but you need to not only feel it, you have to do it and you have to be it. And you could do all those things and live in this world and be successful and you don't have to sacrifice anything except for those things that are negative to do it. Christian: I think it's important for me to use this platform that I have right now to mention a concern that a lot of my friends have had with their mission statement. They feel as if some people are not included, when we just say men and women and when we mention others it makes people feel like us as the Holy Cross community is on top almost and we are regarding to other people that don't identify as or with the Holy Cross community as other, in a negative connotation. From my perspective and I'm pretty sure from yours and from a lot of people that I know, that's not the case. We want to include everyone and we try our best to include everyone and when we mean with others we do mean us as Holy Cross students and alumni, helping those who haven't sat on the Hill, who haven't experienced that Holy Cross lifestyle. And we are trying to help our communities, whether it's back home, whether its different schools, communities that we've never been to and all types of communities, all types of places in our life. Christian: So I just wanted to I just wanted to take this time to mention that. I think that is very important and maybe we may rephrase this mission statement, and I think that's just a legislative thing that we spoke about, but the culture thing is the most important thing and I think that's something that you are working on and I applaud you for that. So many other alumni are working on as well. Schone: I think that this brings up a good point, that language limits who we are and how we embrace what we does not. I hate labels, because when you define somebody by a label, you are either restricting them or you're limiting some parts of them. So I don't like labels because I don't like being in a box. I am not sure that I want to be... I'm not predictable and so you're right, I think language will evolve. I do think that the intention is to be as broad as possible but isn't that up to us as we take the mission and go forward with it, that our interpretation of that mission and what we do with that is what dictates how it’s received. So yeah, I think that its all of us at the Holy Cross community embracing everybody and what we do in the context of not just service but equity, access and taking the time to get to know each and every one of us as well as we know ourselves. Christian: Right. Has there been a mission statement that you came up for yourself or that you got from someone? That helps you do what you do now. That you live by today. Schone: Unimaginable dreams, inevitable opportunities. Christian: I should have known that. That's the motto for Winter4Kids, for those that don't know. Schone: But just think about that, in the context of where you are today and it’s tough to imagine the unimaginable right? But that's really what dreams are. And I really believe that I'm a living example of being able to do really, really good things most of the time and learning from the things I don't do so well to be able to create and support opportunities for others. Christian: Well Schone, I've got good news and bad news for you. Schone: Ohh oh. Christian: What do you want first? Schone: Give me the bad news. Christian: The bad news is that we're reaching the end of our episode. Schone: Wow okay. Christian: And the good news is we're reaching the end of our episode because it's the fun part, the speed run. So I'm just going to ask you some quick questions and I just want the quickest answers you come up... And if I ask why, the first thing that comes up to your mind. Schone: Okay. Christian: So, you ready? Schone: Yes. Christian: Favorite year at HC and why? Schone: '71. Christian: Is there a reason why? Schone: The reason why is, I got to make the varsity basketball team. When I looked at the list and I had made the team. Christian: Ah cool. Favorite dorm? Schone: Beaven. Christian: Favorite roommate? Schone: Bob Tomlinson. Christian: Saturday night, place to go? Schone: Wellesley. Christian: Three things to change about Holy Cross? Schone: There things to change about Holy Cross? The basketball teams record, that's number one. I'd like to see more interaction across cultures and let me explain, I know this is a short answer, you want a short answer but homecoming weekend, when you have the multicultural event, I'd much rather see that at the Hoval rather than down at the quad. And I'd like to see more Black students as part of the student body. Christian: Okay. Favorite sport? Schone: That I participated in or that I watched? Christian: Either or, it doesn't matter. Schone: My favorite sport actually happens to be basketball. The favorite that's to watch and the Warriors. The favorite thing I like to do is first track skiing, morning gloom slope with music. Christian: Okay. Besides skiing, favorite winter sport? Schone: Besides skiing, favorite winter sport? Football. Christian: Okay. Celebrity you admired growing up? Schone: Muhammad Ali. Christian: Okay. Favorite city to visit? Schone: Amsterdam. Christian: The least favorite job that you had? Schone: Working at UPS when I was at Holy Cross. Christian: Okay. Food to most likely make you cheat on your diet? Schone: Wings. Christian: If you could, and you could why you can't. If you could, five of those you'd invite to Winter4Kids, dead or alive, to ski? Schone: I'd love to invite to my mother and my father, who had never been able to see me accomplish this. Denzel, Martin Luther King, Steph Currie- Christian: Last one, filling in the blank. Schone Malliet is? Schone: Grateful. Christian: Well, Mr. Schone Malliet, thank you very much for taking this time to do this episode with me, it was a great one. I hope the listeners take a lot of things from this. Maura: That's our show. I hope you enjoyed hearing about just one of the many ways that Holy Cross alumni have been inspired by the mission to be men and women, for and with other. A special thanks to today's guest and everyone at Holy Cross who has contributed to making this podcast a reality. If you or someone you know would like to be featured on this podcast, please send us an email at alumnicareers@holycross.edu. If you like what you hear, then please leave us a review. This podcast is brought to you by the office of the alumni relations at the College of the Holy Cross. You can subscribe for future episodes, wherever you find your podcasts. I'm your host, Maura Sweeney and this is Mission-Driven. In the words of St. Ignatius of Loyola, now go forth and set the world on fire. --- Theme music composed by Scott Holmes, courtesy of freemusicarchive.org.

Yes, it is possible and Yes, there is such a thing. One such example would be King Solomon. Turn to and read 1 Kings 11:1-9 . Pray. So, you want to become to a backslidden Christian? Well, you have come to the right place! Tonight, we are going to learn just how easy it is to become a backslidden Christian!…

Glory and suffering don't go together naturally. In our culture we have the phrase NO PAIN, NO GAIN. All the responsibility for gain and glory in our culture is through our own suffering. And, when we don't get the glory we think we should - many would say it is because we didn't have enough pain in the training, or whatever. We are bent on thinking that our glory comes at our own expense, our suffering and pain. If we endure we will get the prize. But what if we don't? I mean, does our pain and suffering "guarantee" the glory? In no way. Many people make the ultimate sacrifice without the glory. So if that's the way it is in our society, how is it any different from the Christian? Well, it is. Jesus, St. Paul and St. Peter tell us why suffering is a part of the glory we experience "in Christ". Find out why Christians find glory even in suffering.

My guest today is Christian Crumlish. Christian has led product and design teams in organizations ranging from startups to large tech companies. In this conversation, we delve into the relationship between digital product management and information architecture, and how we might be more empowered as users of these systems. Listen to the full conversation   Show notes Christian Crumlish (mediajunkie.com) Dungeons and Dragons Paladin Yahoo! Design in Product Slack community Richard Saul Wurman Understanding Context: Environment, Language, and Information Architecture by Andrew Hinton Pervasive Information Architecture: Designing Cross-Channel User Experiences by Andrea Resmini and Luca Rosati Reframing Information Architecture by Andrea Resmini (Editor) Information Architecture for the Web and Beyond by Louis Rosenfeld, Peter Morville, and Jorge Arango Living in Information: Responsible Design for Digital Places by Jorge Arango Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love, Second Edition by Marty Cagan Shape Up: Stop Running in Circles and Ship Work That Matters by Ryan Singer Basecamp Objectives and key results (OKRs) Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World With OKRs by John Doerr Amazon Kindle Matte Scheinker Airtable Asana Tinderbox The Informed Life Episode 6: Beck Tench on Tinderbox Notion Wikis From UX to Product (Christian's video series in the UIE All You Can Learn Library) The Information Architecture Conference Web Directions Product Some show notes may include Amazon affiliate links. I get a small commission for purchases made through these links. Read the full transcript Jorge: Christian, welcome to the show. Christian: Thanks Jorge, I'm happy to be here. Jorge: So, for folks who don't know you, would you please introduce yourself? Christian: Sure. My name is Christian Crumlish. I'm a writer, product and UX leadership consultant, information architect and I guess I do other things too, but that's plenty. Jorge: I've been privy to the arc of your career over the last, I would say 15, maybe 20 years? No, 15 years. And you're one of the folks out of several that I know that have focused on product. And I was hoping that you would tell us a little bit about that aspect of your work. Christian: I'm glad it's only been 15 years, because sometimes the spans of time are starting to freak me out a little bit. But I think for me, a lot of what my title has been and what sort of roles or jobs I've done in companies and at other times as a consultant or you know, agency designer or strategist, the titles have evolved over time or changed. And in fact, when you mentioned that arc to my career, I thought like, if only you had my career had been in the shape of an arc, that would be so cool. Cause it's been more like a zigzag down or up, you know, along some rapids or something. I feel like I've shifted gears a number of times. I was talking to a D&D… A person who also had played D&D as a kid, and we were talking about the paladin-type character that you have to cross-train in like several different… You know, you have to learn, like to be a religious person and also a night and there's probably a third thing, and how it slows you down in a sense. You know, you don't do that. Like people who knew they wanted to go to med school when they were six and have stayed on that straight path their whole lives. My career has been like a path of discovery. But along the way, I've been given a lot of different titles, or I've asked for or invented titles as needed. And so, I was a content strategist back before that was almost even a thing, around 2000. And I was an information architect, and that was my title for a while. And I was a director of strategy, and I was in an interaction designer, and I was a design pattern library curator, or pattern detective, as I liked to say at the time. And along the way I started noticing that the frame of a product — that talking about what was being made a software as a product — was a fairly dominant kind of lens that was being used in the businesses I was working in. And I think I first really came to my attention at Yahoo when I was there for about three or four years. And the product organization was sort of on a par with the tech organization, the UX part of the shopper, UED as they called it, was itself really just a subdivision of the product organization, and ultimately always reported up to people with product management titles. The deep history of that at Yahoo was that they had people called “producers” early on, and in certain nineties in the web, if you made content there was often more of a television medium terminology and so producers of content. But half the people who had producer titles at Yahoo became front end developers because they'd actually been making the content, and the others evolved into the product management role. And that also took from a program management role at Microsoft. There's a lot of antecedents to this. But ultimately, the first thing I saw was that at least in these larger companies, user experience design was at the table, but they're sort of the kiddy table. And that they had these parents called product people. And so that made me think just from the desire to get close to the decision-making or to be able to make an impact, I thought, “I have to learn more about product, or why it's called product or what product management is.” Along the way, these practices have continued to evolve and in relationship to each other. I think there's a very active conversation right now, about the boundaries or the intersection between product and UX. Enough so both, I witnessed this conversation and I have it come to myself personally when I speak, or when I'm out there connecting with people. So, I actually ended up setting up a community on Slack called Design in Product, just really to have a place to discuss that. And for some people that means kind of following this career path I've been on, of going from UX design or UX management roles to product management or product leadership roles. And other people deciding they don't want to do that, or they want to come back in the other direction. And a lot of negotiation over what is the shared common ground of those roles and where are their responsibilities and their points of view quite different. My roots go back to this information architecture tribe and people who have a point of view. And you and I have been friends for a long time, but I'm also essentially a student of your writing and your thinking and that of a number of other people who've really shaped my thoughts about information architecture. I don't know if other people call it this, but I sometimes call it like “third wave” information architecture, with the first being, of course, the initial… Spacing on the TED Talks fellow… Jorge: Wurman? Christian: Yeah, sorry. You know, that's literally an architect saying, “Hey, making maps is really important,” essentially. And that maps are going to be important information as well. And that they all sort of a share a semantic and kind of wayfinding and meaning-mapping kind of frame. And so, I think he kind of coined or crystallized the concept of initially. And the second way was sort of the world-wide-web-filtered application of information architecture, and just some often very tactical or pragmatic, but even then, with sort of this big-IA kind of dream of being the overarching backbone of things. And then what I think it was the third wave, is this sort of academically kind of sound and intellectually very rich notion of information architecture as still a way of mapping meaning and, and, and crafting spaces that are information, but I think less bound to some of the literal artifacts of the seventies or the nineties. And I don't want to do short shrift to other people who thought long and hard and debated these things. You kind of need to go to the books and read Andrew's books and yours and Andreas's and a number of other people to get caught up in that conversation. But I feel, again, that that conversation has a lot to say about product. And it's not just through UX. I mean, I think information architecture is a thing UX designers need to think about and be good at and use in their work. And UX then as a way of influencing the product management or product strategy and the product practices of companies. But I think IA is also a tool in the toolkit of the product manager herself. It's not just something that they should let designers mediate for them. I think they should be firsthand users. You know, architects of information — people who think about the way the information and the meaning and the knowledge and understanding and the positioning of people's bodies and of spaces made out of information are going to play out in the product that they're building. If you were redeveloping the waterfront and putting hotels up and walkways and places for cars to drive, you know, you're thinking about how are human beings going to flow into the space? What kind of experiences are they going to have? What is it going to do to the economy? What secondary effects are going to happen? You know? And that's an architecture, traditional built architecture. And I think that when you're making software, particularly the kind of social software that I've typically been involved with… It's a metaphor, but it's not simply a metaphor. It's literally the same thing. You're going to build an environment. People are going to flow into it. They're going to have experiences. There are going to be secondary effects that you didn't anticipate and systematic ecosystem effects. And you need to do information architecture or have someone who's a really good information architect at hand, I think to get a grip on that. Or you make it sort of like primitive, you know, “We're just going to put the waste affluent in the river kind of kind of building.” You know? Without thinking about the larger picture at all. Jorge: You talked about how information architecture could inform the folks who are managing and designing products and building them. Because I'm on the IA side of things, I'm interested in the converse, which is about learning about product and learning how those roles work and how the process works. And in the past year. I've read a couple of books on this subject, and I have a specific question that I'm, I'm teeing up with saying this one is the second edition of Marty Cagan's book Inspired and the other is Shape Up by Ryan Singer from the folks at Basecamp. And one thing that struck me in reading both of those is that… And by the way, I'm not claiming that the latter uses anywhere near like the same framing as the Inspired book. Christian: Right? Almost by definition it wouldn't. Jorge: But I just bring them up because I see them as examples of what I see as advocacy for a type of approach to the work that is very much bottom up in my perspective, in that you're working within a relatively small problem space and you iterate on that. And you may be doing that in parallel to a lot of colleagues who are working in other projects of similar scope. And the question that I had in reading both of those books was, “Where within this framework is there place for looking after the coherence between those things? Right? Like especially if they're part of some kind of ecosystem or family of products. Eventually those things need to cohere at some level. Christian: So, one thing about Marty Cagan is, anybody interested in product management should be familiar with Marty Cagan and should read his books and also follow him. He teaches, he's out there still influencing people. Silicon Valley-style product management is done in his image. It's done essentially in a framework that he established. It's also important to understand that he represents kind of a reforming notion of what product management should be from an earlier, slightly more, I'd say kind of enterprise, kind of static-MBA style product management. So, he represents the school of thought of, get outside of the building, and iterating on small things. Basically, in line with the lean and the agile trends that we all have probably been around and been part of it had been grappling with how do you do UX? How did you research? How did you plan? How do you think big or system systematically when things are being done often in these small incremental bits, as you asked? A big part of the product manager's role is actually connecting those levels of meaning, or those levels, those scales. There's this almost fractal-like scale of decision-making that goes on. And one great thing to know about product management as it differs maybe from UX and UX roles or your jobs, is that it's very much a decider role. You make decisions constantly. I don't like to stereotype people or professions or anything, but having been in them, maybe I'm a little bit more allowed to speak, you know, to tease ourselves. But what UX designers like to say, “it depends.” They don't want to get things wrong. They want to figure it out correctly. They want to apply the proper techniques. They want to take time and do things well. And I think that that's an important set of values and forces to have represented in the process. I think product managers or product management does not always value all of those things as much and believes that you get diminishing returns and that being decisive sometimes with less than complete information is sometimes more important than being 100% sure about what you're deciding. And that comes from having to make decisions all the time. If you make, if you make 15 decisions in a day, you can't fool yourself into thinking that they're all 100% right and perfect. You have to know that you're going to have an error rate, and hopefully you keep it manageable and you're good over time. Just to go back to this. Those decisions can sometimes be, “Is it okay to ship this next release with a bug, with this bug? We haven't fixed it, but you know, we really want to ship. Or is this bug a showstopper and we can't release it until this particular one is fixed? What we built, does it meet the requirements adequately enough to move forward or not?” You know, those sorts of decisions that are sort of tactical, but tied into important, larger overarching questions, up to the next level is sort of, “What should be in the next sprint? What's the next thing that we should work on?” And there you're at the level I think you were asking about, where things seem to happen very iteratively and without too much regard to the bigger picture, but just kind of down in a trench trying to polish a local maxima or run some tests or ship a feature or something like that. And those decisions also have to be made. Again, they can't be theoretical. Something's in the sprint or it's not, and either the last sprint went well, or it didn't, and stuff fell into this sprint from that. What I mean, you're dealing with a tangible reality all the time, and then the buck stops with that product manager. But those decisions again should be made with reference to, well, “What are our goals this quarter or in this time period? And why are we building this feature? And how many people will be affected by this bug? Is for those people, giving them a bad experience, an acceptable price to pay towards the larger goal?” So, there's a sense in which often the product manager is the person in the room who's supposed to be looking levels and levels above the current moment to figure out a decision. In some ways you'd say the UX person is doing that in a different sense: they're going out to like what people think or what we know from our users or they enlarge the question in a different way. But I think the product manager says, “Well, the company's strategy is this. And that's informed the product strategy, which I'm familiar with. Because either I'm the head of product and I own the roadmap or I'm on a well ordered product team and the head of product has communicated the roadmap and my portion of it to me well, and I have autonomy to execute my part of the roadmap.” So, there are actually these tools and mechanisms that that ladder up and down from like the very biggest picture of the company's dreams and yearly goals and quarterly goals down to what should we ship? Now, like any of these kind of project management or information management processes, like a roadmap or a sprint planning process where you're relying on a person to kind of make all those times connections, it is vulnerable to becoming kind of just a thing on autopilot, where it's just all happening, but nobody is really saying, are we on track? What's the meaning of all of this? Does this add up to anything? And I'm not some sort of spotless paragon myself. I've found myself sometimes leading a product team, doing lots of things well and correctly, and still taking a step back at a certain point and saying, we're off track. We've gone off track, and enough of these yellow flags have now… Or funny feelings in my tummy have added up to the point that, you know, if we continue like this, we're not actually achieving our goal. And they're none of my official signals yet say that we're off track, but the fact that I did step out of the day-to-day and look at a different timescale or a larger question that we were supposed to be answering has woken me up. And there's this danger sometimes of getting too attached to these techniques and processes, but at best they do help things stay in a line. And if you have a healthy team and you're reporting up and down the line, and there's somebody with authority who is watching the biggest goals, I think there already are methods that can work, you know? But you have to assess the kind of health of that on any product team, how well they do that. I know you're more interested in the product management side than the IA side, but you could say sometimes a lack of that… That no one's written down a map. Like we talked about it, we have our OKRs, blah, blah, blah. But no one's really done that IA work of saying, “And this is what it's going to look like,” or “This is the part where we're in, this part of the map now, and we're trying to get over here.” And helping to kind of do that communication to everybody so everybody can agree on what the mission is. I think maybe that's like a lymphatic system that's missing, so that you've got a circulatory system, but somehow, it's not a healthy creature, you know? Jorge: Yeah. As you were describing this up and down reporting structure and things like goals, it made me think of another book that I read last year,  Measure What Matters, by John Doerr, which is about OKRs. And one of the things that I got from that book was that there are mechanisms to scale OKRs up and down the organization. And my sense is that the goal there is to make sure that everyone is pointing in the same direction. And I guess the concern that I have is at a different level of granularity, and you called it out; the information architecture per se. My favorite example of the lack of such a thing is Kindle. I've been using Kindle for a while to read books, so I should be familiar with it. And I use Kindle in three very different device platforms. I have a dedicated Kindle reader, I have Kindle on my iOS devices, iPad and iPhone. And I also use Kindle on my Mac, and I find things like navigation structures to be different in all three Christian: Navigation within books or between books? Jorge: More so within books. I recently upgraded to a… I had a very old Kindle device and I recently upgraded to a newer one. And the operating system has changed a lot between the two versions… Christian: You're kind of… Okay, I'm going to sort of defend imaginary product people or UX people or tech leaders in companies like this. Some of this is a big company problem. You know, like big enough that you have teams that… The left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing, or they have their own agendas. So, in theory, they're all the same experience. And there should be someone saying, “Hey, we have a fundamental experience and you can express it differently, but we all agree it has to XYZ in common.” There are usually efforts to do that. And when I was doing the pattern library stuff, that was a version of that kind of thing. Nowadays, design systems are a version of that kind of thing, but often they're still about the interaction and not how it all fits together or how it works. But there are natural tensions. Teams are going to say, “Yeah, but that doesn't work for my device,” or, “But I have reasons for this,” or “It's always been this way on our sub platform. You bought us and now you're trying to make us be part of you.” It's non-trivial — especially in a larger organization — to just, you know… Everything's constantly shifting. It's a system. You could gradually maybe bring it into harmony, but I think you just have to have some tolerance, therefore. The consumer has every right to expect it to be perfect. But I, know, from being inside the sausage factory, how much that can almost never happen, especially in large organizations that have probably completely different orgs making those things, and maybe not enough cross team alignment. Every big organization I've ever been in is literally either in the process of becoming a little bit more decentralized or more centralized, or it's finished doing one of those things and it's about to start doing the other one. And they never find the perfect amount of decentralization and centralization for all these different overlapping things. So, you get matrix reporting. I have my boss, but I also have my practice leader. And then one day my practice leader is my main boss and I'm embedded in a team and we're a service bureau. And it's like, none of these models are right or wrong, but they produce software like that or experiences. And this has definitely been… And I'm sorry to rant like this, but this has been like a hobbyhorse for me for a long time, particularly when I started doing mobile and cloud type stuff, which was what I was calling holistic UX. Meaning that you don't do the UX of your Kindle on the Mac and you don't do your UX of your Kindle on the Kindle and your UX of the Kindle on the iOS, on the iPad or whatever. Kindle should have a UX, you know, and Kindle should have an information architecture that is one big map. And then everything should be some articulation of that or some expression of that. And yes, there will be compromises, but they should always be the sense that… But “should” is easy to say. When I was at AOL, I think, working for a fellow named Matte Scheinker, who taught me a lot about product, I remember telling him like, “There should be information architects, like that should still be a job.” I was having that old argument, like, should that even be a job title? And I'm like, “Yeah, there's some people they should just do it.” And he's like, “Well, how many? How many do you need? How many IAs does this company need?” And I was like, “Well, at least one.” You know, and maybe it needs to be the chief IA or the one person who just sits there near the CEO or the CPO or whatever and is just making that big map on some level and communicating it. Yeah, I feel like that's lacking. But again, that sounds utopian to me. Nobody understands that they need that in some sense, or it's hard to prove that having that is going to help some team meet its quarterly goals. Jorge: I think it's pretty clear that that's what's going on. And in fairness to the Kindle teams, the individual apps in the different platforms are coherent internally. It's this… I think you put your finger on it, it's the talking between them that seems to be not happening as much. Christian: But were you pointing out… Somebody online was recently pointing out that Kindle also gives you no way to organize your library. It's just a giant list of everything you either have downloaded or ever, unless you delete things, I guess. And there's no grouping, or if there is, it's hard to use. I'm not quite sure what the story is on that. Jorge: Yeah, I remember that tweet, and I think it was around the ability to do so in the Kindle devices themselves. And the reason I remember that is, I actually posted in reply to that that I could easily see how that could be the case, because — to your point earlier about the constraints in different form factors — there was a generation of Kindle devices that didn't have keyboards, and you had to type by moving a cursor around with a four-way pointer thing, which made it really awkward. Right? So, you did not want to be editing a lot of texts, so it made a lot of sense in those to not have it. And perhaps the newer ones, which have touchscreens, don't have it either because it's an artifact from that time? I don't know. Christian: I also think sometimes you get into the difference between power users and ordinary users. So, I've worked on software where we burned a lot of cycles at times thinking about how to make the switching between your two accounts' experience better, or the managing your multiple accounts. Until somebody looked at the data and saw that only 2% of the users have even the second account, let alone multiple. So, I hate to say it, but maybe the long tail of Kindle readers don't have more than one screenful of books or whatever, and investing in a great system for organizing your huge Kindle library just isn't going to satisfy big enough fraction of their user base. Jorge: Yeah, that makes sense. Folks have got to make choices, right? And at least my experience in working as a consultant with product organizations, there's always more to be done than there are resources and time to do it. Christian: I think that goes back to like, what are the incentives? And you say, of course, Amazon doesn't have an incentive to focus on that problem. They've got so many other, you know… Or Kindle, or whatever sub-team you're talking about. But somebody out there could be making it so that ordinary people have a lens they can put in front of anything they're consuming and organize it for themselves. And that may take different forms and it could be a plugin or an add on, or it could be another app you use instead, or it can… There's a number of different ways to give people bookmarklets or things that put a little more power in their hands. And I think this is a longer-term agenda that I've always been fascinated in, which is like, “Where's the Excel for data or for information or for lists, multi-dimensional lists and nodal, you know, nodally-connected things?” There's a lot of tools out there, but there's not sort of like this universal structure that people start to learn as a literacy thing. So, I feel like people are overwhelmed by their information as soon as it becomes more than one list, or have has to be managed dynamically, or anything like that. I actually would say, to be honest, I think something like Airtable is the closest I've seen, not to endorse a product specifically, but when I've used that, I've thought this is giving people who aren't database architects the ability to create structured data with relationships in a very copacetic way. And so, I'm hopeful about that. But you know, to just kind of go off a little bit more on a tangent, I've had this side project, hobby horse of mine that I returned to whenever I get some free time, which fits that model of sort of ideally being something that you could put in front of any other list or any other, you know, like a to-do list or a project list or something like that, which I call “One Job.” My shorthand for it is one job, like “you had one job.” But the log line of it, and you can see this'll date to when I first had the idea, originally, I would describe it to people as “Tinder for tasks.” You know, basically meaning that even… Personally, like I'll use Asana, I've used it as a project management tool in jobs, but I've used it for my own personal to dos kind of convenience. It's a nice kind of just sortable list, but with recurring things. But I still find psychologically that looking at any large group of things — and this could be the backlog for the product that I'm planning the next sprint for or the accumulated ideas that have piled up in my road mapping tool, or my personal list of just, you know, household tasks I want to do — that it's kind of anxiety-provoking to see anything you ever thought of and anything you might consider doing or, or might get to if you get to it. You know, if you do 10 things, do they, here's the 11th thing. Like, that's a lot to have on your screen in front of your face and trying to get your attention. And so, the original idea for this One Job thing was just that you have a stack. You know, essentially you can only see one thing and either that thing is the most important thing on your list, so just do it or, you know, swipe it away, put it to the bottom of the stack and look at the next thing. But eventually you should hit a thing where you're like, “Oh, I can call mom. I could do that now.” Or, “No, I don't feel like calling mom.” You know, whatever it is. And if you get all the way to the bottom of the list and you're back at the top, then you've got to start doing your psychological work. But more generally, I feel like, how can we be empowering end users rather than leaving it in the hands of the businesses to always give the information the exact way everybody wants it. You know, like, I think this has gone back and forth in the browser world. You know, in the early days it was like controlling your own layout and look, I want this type face, I want this backdrop. And eventually that kind of didn't work as it would break the magazine design of the website, you know? So that kind of fell by the wayside. But I think you get that more with people maybe wanting to have more control over their privacy or how their data is going to be used, and there's a market maybe to give people the tools that come between them and the mess kind of product and help them manage the relationship with it better. Jorge: Yeah, I agree. There is a gap in the market. You've already pointed to Airtable, that's one that immediately came to mind as a possibility. Another one is perhaps Tinderbox, which we've highlighted in a previous episode of the show. Christian: I've tried to use that, and I think for me… I have sort of like a law of personal information management systems or whatever, which is that you have to go all in. And no matter how good or bad the system is, they only work if you go all in. And if you partially commit, and continue to partially use other systems at the same time, then you don't get any of the relief that it's all in one place, and that you can stop worrying about it, and you'll have more and more and more systems to track and manage. Jorge: Another product that that came to mind, I don't know if you've had a chance to play with it, is Notion. Christian: Oh, you know, I've been reading about it a lot lately, and I've seen people promoting it, but I'm not quite familiar with how it works. Jorge: My sense is that — and I have not used it extensively, I've kind of played around with it — but from the videos and tutorials that I've read, it strikes me that it that Notion is to something like your notepad as Airtable is to Excel. Where in Airtable and Excel the primary information objects that you're dealing with are some kind of a table-based structure, Notion is much more freeform and more text-centric. But the principle seems to be fairly similar, where you enter information and allow the structure to emerge as you gather more of it and start tagging it on the fly. So, it's intriguing. I do think that there are gaps in the market for such tools. Christian: Yeah. I see it kind of plays into the wiki paradigm too. I used to use a personal wiki, and for a long time, that was another great, infinitely malleable, networked thing. But again, I think these things work if you just commit to using them there's an expression in 12-step programs that is, it works if you work it. You know, physically like if you go all in and embrace the system, you can make almost any system work for yourself. Jorge: That seems like a really good place on which to wrap our conversation. And I feel like we have much more to talk about, and perhaps we will at another occasion. But for now, Christian, where can folks follow up with you? Christian: Well, you can always check out my personal website, which is mediajunkie.com. And if you're near Richmond, Virginia in February, I'm doing a workshop there, but this may not be out by then. I've got a series of videos coming out with UIE, with Jared Spool's website, in their all-you-can-learn library on product management for UX designers. So, people who are coming from a UX design background and want to understand product management better, may want to consider making career in product management or kind of a hybrid product design career, might find some value in those videos. I hope they do. If you have a chance to make it to the IA Conference in New Orleans, which is in April, I'll be giving the closing plenary there. So, some of the things you and I have been talking about, and probably a couple of other things reflecting on social software, mental health, vulnerable populations, things like that, that relate to my recent work. I'll be talking about those things as well. And if you're in Australia, I'll be in Melbourne in late June, early July at a Web Directions Product, giving a keynote there. So that's probably a lot of ways to find me in the near future. Jorge: Well, fantastic. I'll be in New Orleans at the IA Conference, so I look forward to seeing you and hearing your presentation. Christian: Great. Can't wait to see it then. Jorge: Thank you for being on the show. Christian: You bet. Take care. Thanks for having me.

A Life That Is Full Of The Fullness Of God Reader: Miriam Montgomery Date: 25th February 2020 Time: ------------------- Paul the Apostle was very fond of the word 'fullness'. He tells us that the fullness of Deity ("Godness") dwelt in Jesus Christ. (Colossians 2:9 and 1:19) He tells us also that the fullness of Christ dwells in the Church. And here in Ephesians, Paul prays that believers in Jesus will become mature in their faith so that they will be filled with the 'fullness of God'. That is mind-boggling! The word fullness means completeness, you don't add anything more to it. So how can a Christian be filled with ALL the fullness of God? It is easy for us to think of Jesus being filled with God's fullness, but me, an ordinary Christian? Well, here are some things to note. First of all, this 'fullness' is **given** to us (see Colossians 2:10) It is God's gift — complete salvation. Then Paul wants us to enjoy this fullness more and more. The Christian life is a full life — as Jesus himself says "I came that they (believers) may have life and have it to the full." (John 10:10) It is in John's Gospel that we have another reference to this word fullness (otherwise we only find it i Paul's writings in the Bible). It is in John 1:18 where we read "And from (Jesus') fullness we have all received grace upon grace". The Christian life is a complete, abundant life, the gift of a loving gracious Saviour. No wonder Paul goes on to say in Ephesians 3:21:_"to him be glory in the Church and in Chris Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever. Amen!"_

Jeff and I share our church stories. Well… parts of our church stories at least. We go to The Gathering in St. Louis, MO, which has three sites scattered across the St. Louis Metro. “The St. Louis Metro”? That sounded pretty douchey, didn’t it?Anyway.Did you know, that you can still say the word “fuck” AND be a Christian? Well, you can. Despite what the mean old nuns told you as they were beating Jesus out of you with their rulers during your Catholic Education.I go to the Clayton Site of the Gathering. It’s been around for eight years.Eight years!?!Do you want to know what I was doing eight years ago!? Strippers and blow. That’s what.So… come on in and pray with us.The water is warm.And holy.The GatheringNeed help? Question? Email Chris: cpondoff@pondoffsanonymous.comfacebook.com/pondoffsanonymousinstagram.com/pondoffsanonymouspondoffsanonymous.com

Do you think you should have a perfect life just because you are a Christian? Well, Jesus said, "Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake."

What does it mean to be a Christian? Well, you might notice the word “Christ” hidden in there. And that’s because we’re called to imitate him! Pastor Ron Zappia teaches how we can model Jesus to our children. Find out how to pray for your kids, and show them Jesus

Download this Episode On today's episode, we talk about the shiny object, ways to build your business and modern marketing. Please leave us a review and subscribe for more! reThink Real Estate Podcast Transcription Audio length 24:20 RTRE 64 – Get Off My Lawn: A Guide to Modern Marketing in Real Estate [music] [Chris] Welcome to re:Think Real Estate, your educational and hopefully entertaining source for all things real estate, business, news and tech.  [Christian]: I am Christian Harris in Seattle, Washington. [Nathan]: Hi, I am Nathan White in Columbus, Ohio. [Chris]: And I am Chris Lazarus in Atlanta, Georgia. Thanks for tuning in.  [music] [Chris]: Hey everybody and welcome back to re:Think Real Estate. Chris here with Christian and Nate. What's going on guys? [Christian]: Hey fellas. [Nathan]: What's up? Another week since last week. And I don't know. You know, the usual grind here. It's… [Christian]: You seem excited to be alive. [Chris]: ow's your CRM coming Nate? [laugter] [Nathan]: It's gonna get done after I get back from Key West next week. So… [Christian]: Let me know. I will walk you through it.  [Chris]: Man. [Nathan]: Work hard play hard boys. Work hard play hard. [Chris]: Must be good to be a real estate agent.  [Nathan]: I guess so. [Christian]: It is good to be an agent.  [Nathan]: I like it. What are we talking about today? [Chris]: Well we were just talking about [censored] marketing in real estate and how not to do it. You were just showing us a sign of a real estate agent that put his sign out in the middle of the Utah backcountry. On a…what was that Nate? [Nathan]: I mean literally it's in bum [censored] Egypt. I mean it was out…I mean literally it's a like a 16 mile hike. Like I mean maybe it's genius because here I am talking about it. Right. I don't know. [Chris]: Good marketing. [Nathan]: You know, I mean I don't know. But literally like it's like who's gonna see this, you know. Like you spent a…I mean what's an average sign cost? Hundred bucks? [Chris]: 47. [Nathan]: What's that? [Chris]: 47. [Nathan]: You use the cheap one.  [Christian]: Depends on how many you buy at a time. [Chris]: That's a temporary sign with the thing in the middle. [Nathan]: OK well either way I feel like this guy throw away 47 dollars. Because I doubt he'll ever go back to get it. But, you know, bad marking. You know, Christian was asking me do I do marketing. No. I mean yes and no. I think we've talked a little bit about that. That Ohio running realtor Instagram is of course my marketing. Even though it has nothing to do with Realty. [Christian]: Your Donut Saturday with your son. That's marketing. [Nathan]: It is but it had…I mean that was actually started before I became an agent. So I'll be at…a ton of people identify me through the donut Saturday. But I don't…I don't…I don't mail stuff out. I don't, you know, I'm not out blasting stuff on social media. I really hate most of that stuff. I think there's…there's more organic ways to do it. and I generally find that there's more bad examples than good examples. [Christian]: Yeah so you're saying that there are different ways to do marketing? [Nathan]: Yes but…let's go…there's…there's many different ways to do marketing. The question is can you do it well? And my answer would be no. Most agents do not do it well. [Christian]: So there's plenty of examples of bad marketing. How do you…how do you not do bad marketing and do good marketing? What is that? What does that mean? What are those standards? [Nathan]: Well I think…OK so I, you know, how do you not do bad marketing? OK well that'd be like saying all right, it's same reason I don't take pictures. Right. I'm not a [censored] photographer. And I'm not in marketing either.  If you have a marketing background, maybe I get it. But most of the stuff I see agents do is poor. It's poor video. It's poor pictures. They're there…I don't know what even the terminology is when they create their own business cards. It's just horrible. Like there's a reason there are people they get paid in marketing. And you should go pay them to do it. I mean you get a better result. I'd rather be really… [Christian]: Do you? Do you Nate? [Nathan]: Yeah I think so absolutely.  [Chris]: So please do not go buy the printable like perforated business cards and then use your word art. And print them. [laughter] [Nathan]: Yeah word art. Yeah right. Well you see a lot of that. You see really bad names of real estate teams. And, you know, it's just like oh man it's so tacky. I mean there's…I guess there's a place for them because they're still doing business. But… [Christian]: Well…well I'll back this up a little bit. I don't know if you wanna scratch this or not. So, you know, we've got a bit… [Chris]: No this is all good.  [Nathan]: I know you've been picking at soething.  [Chris]: This is alright.  [Christian]: So so far we've kind of [censored] around about bad marketing which is very subjective. Because… [Chris]: Welcome to the water cooler. [Christian]: What's that? [Chris]: Welcome to the water cooler.  [Christian]: Right, you know, like I myself when it comes to marketing try to put myself at the consumers shoes. And say “OK what's, you know, what…what's the objective of the marketing and am I accomplishing that?” You know, and so I think there's unfortunately most…at least in my experience, most, you know, brokerages and agents. You know, there's kind of the standard of like “Yeah well you do a farm, you know, and you just solds and just listed postcards and you have, you know, your face on your business card and, you know, just kind of all this really low bar like everyone does it. Everyone's told to do it.”  And people who aren't agents don't pay any attention to it. They don't care. You know, it doesn't bring them any value. It goes right in the recycling. You know, you direct me on stuff. And so that brings a question about what is…what is good marketing. Yeah I know what caught my attention as a new agent when I saw social media stuff that stood out or community events or, you know, things that I thought were interesting and unique in this space.  And I think that's kind of the key. Is like is it different? Is it gonna catch people's attention in an industry of white noise? Or, you know…And so I think a lot of that there's not just like hey you do this one thing and that's good marketing. I think in this world of noise, you have to have many touch points. It has to be consistent. It has to be driven towards a specific end result. You know, whether that's someone saving up for email or a meeting or liking your page or following you. You know, like it all has to be designed in a consistent way to…to push people towards a certain desired objective. And most people don't approach marketing in that way. There's kind of like half hazard-ly throw stuff out there without a desired intention in mind.  [Chris]: It's a weak thought Christian. Among real estate agents. [Christian]:  What's that? [Chris]: To think about how the consumer is gonna like the content and the message. [Christian]: Yeah.  [Chris]: You know, it's…I'm not a marketer. By all means like that's not my forte. I can train a real estate agent to sell and have a successful business. I could teach them some of the techniques that they should think about when they're finding how to market themselves. But by all means I am NOT a marketer. Like I'm not gonna create a campaign. I am NOT gonna run all that stuff. I'll leave that to other people who are more creative than I am and just let them do their thing. [Christian]: But it certainly had that desired effect to you once. And you could send that to a marketer. [Chris]: I…I know what we need to accomplish. And so here in Georgia, we…we actually do recruit new agents at my firm. So we have…we get all of the information for the people who pass and we send out collateral. We send out like we send out really nice marketing pieces to them. And so my wife recently got her real estate license to help out in the office because she's a part owner in the company. So some of the things that she's doing, she needs a license now. So she got her license and just for the hell of it we decided “OK we're gonna see what other brokerages are sending out.” And it ranges. Some of them send out, you know, one eight-and-a-half by 11 piece of paper that's a letter. Some of them send out postcards. Some of them send out…there's one KW office. They send out like this worksheet. Right. And it's got this three boxes or three columns and a bunch of rows. And each row it's like “Check about if this broker offers this.” It's like a broker checklist. Interview other brokers and see if they have everything we have. [Christian]: Like a comparison sheet. [Chris]: Yes. Yes that's exactly what it is. And that was probably the most creative. There was a Coldwell Banker office, it sent three po…three postcards from the exact same broker. Brokers face on it. And then it has like no message. Right like the postcard says like “Be bold.” Or like “Be strong.” Like on one. And it's like you've got two or three words taking up the entirety of this like six by nine postcard. And it doesn't say anything of value at all. It's just like motivational [censored]. So then like we look at what we're sending out. And we're sending out this like…we're sending out two mailings, in depth packet of everything that the company offers on this. Like premium glossy photo. And I'm like “You know what? This is why people call us off of this stuff. It's because these other brokers that are in our market doing this, it's garbage.” You got to…you got to focus on what the consumer is gonna want. I'm glad you do that. [Christian]: Sure. Well I think to, you know, the key in on what you said, you know, it's a little cliche these days or whatever. But talking about bringing value. Right. Like you've got to resonate with whoever you're trying to get in front of with something that…that they're going to, well, resonate with. You know, there's gonna be a value that they use. That…that catchphrase. And so it's typically not going to be “Hey I just sold this house or I closed in five days.” They don't give a [censored]. They don't know what that means. Like, you know, but if you are like, you know, you're specializing in a certain community. And, you know, you're sending out something who says “Hey have you checked out this new pizza joint that they just opened? Here's the interview with the owner.” You know, like that doesn't have anything to do the real estate. But you're getting your name and message out there. In alignment with “Hey this person is actually invested in the community. Actually supporting that business of actually providing something to the people that would frequent that business, who might find that interesting.” As an example of, you know, a community aligned marketing strategy that's, you know, one touch piece amongst many.  You know, whether that's, you know, if you're gonna do a farm have that be consistent. And there's technology you can utilize to do, you know, retargeting Facebook or Google Ads that, you know, have that consistent message to those same people you're mailing. If they, you know…you know that kind of thing. But that takes planning. That takes technical expertise. And I think that's a far cry from, you know, Nate was saying “Hey I'm not a marketer. Hire that [censored] out.” And I agree with. That but there's so a lot of low bar marketing stuff out there, that's like…My last brokerage, you know, they've had like a social media company come in who basically said “Hey, you know what Facebook is? We'll take care of that for you. And what they meant by that is “If you sign up with us, we're gonna send out this exact same [censored] generic posting…” [Chris]: That you would. [Christian]: Yeah right. And like, you know, I'd be falling for some this people. And you'd see the exact same posting on six different agents sites in the same company, because they're just sending out the same generic [censored]. I'm like that does more to harm you and your reputation that does to like not send anything out at all. [Chris]: Definitely. One of the major things that I learned when…when we started doing SEO on our website, is that for any third party, like if you really want to get your money's worth, you have to hire in-house. Like if you're not hiring in-house, you're just going out and hiring a firm, unless they are a premium level firm where you have a dedicated account manager that is spending X number of hours on your account every month…you're just not gonna get your money's worth. [Christian]: Right and it's not gonna be cheap. [Chris]: Hire in-house.  [Christian]: Yeah. [Chris]: Where you have to monitor it in-house and then outsource the work itself. But to just go out and say “Here take care of it.” That's…that's like, you know, you're eating in a den of snakes.  [Christian]: Right. Well and if you're gonna hire that out, if you're an agent you're like “Hey marketing is not my forte. I'm gonna hire it out.” you better make sure that wherever you hire is asking you questions. To make sure that that content is, you know, in your voice. It's, you know, it's not gonna be, you know, if someone who's following X agent knows you personally, and they see something coming out, they're like “That doesn't sound like them. They wouldn't send something out like that.” Like now you've got a authenticity issue. And, you know, you're going to be doing more damage. I mean especially as you we're seeing, you know, the demographic shift and the impact of social media. What people care about is…is authenticity, being genuine. If they catch wind of “Oh you just hiring out some generic someone, someone, some bot or some company is running your social media…yeah unfriend. Not interested. I'm not going to work with them because, you know, they can't even bother to post real stuff from themselves.” [Chris]: If you're looking to hire an ad agency, you're gonna be on retainer for a minimum of 5k a month. And that does not include your ad spend. Like if you want a good ad agency, if…if you're just looking to hire, you know, a marketing consultant who's gonna charge you, you know, 150 dollars a month, for this number of posts on social media, it…it's…you might as well light your money on fire. It's not going to do anything for you. [Christian]: Well there's different…I mean they're just from models, you know. I mean I'm a very DIY person. But I also know that me, I'm not a professional marketer. Like I know, you know, kind of the strategy aspect of it and…but, you know, I've hired like a local marketer. Who would sit down with me and flush out, you know “OK this is what you have going on. How to be aware where are your missing pieces. And not leverage things where they're not connected.” That kind of stuff and kind of map it out for me. And then I go execute it. Now if you can hire someone to execute it's, that is gonna be a lot more expensive. Because that's very times, you know, intensive.  [Chris]: Yeah I mean and that's gonna be the difference. Like you can…you can bring in a consultant, for almost anything. But then you have to do the work. And the consultant is not gonna come up with the whole idea for you. They're gonna help you work through it. So but if you want…but if you're…My point is, you know, if you're hiring, you know, the hundred and fifty hundred and ninety nine dollar marketing company online, that's a subscription, versus you really want advertising, it's a difference.  Like you've got that retainer every single month. And you've got to hit that spend limit with them. And that does not include your ads. [Christian]: Sure. [Chris]: They'll go through and they'll do everything from your direct mail pieces, to video creation, to all of it. [Christian]: Right. And that's gonna be an actual marketing campaign with multiple platforms and tiers. Not just “Hey we're sending out social media posts on your Facebook.” It's entirely different. And I mean it's some agents who don't, you know, see the benefit of that. Or like “I don't have time for that” you know, like Nate. I mean he stays busy enough and successful enough to not need that. But…but I mean the stuff he does organically is still marketing. It's just not your typical overt cheesy agent stuff. Which I think speaks…it's a lot more powerful than if you did the traditional “Just sold, just listed, hey look at me, I'm in an open house.” You know, and everything's just overtly real estate. Which it doesn't resonate with the majority of people, the majority of the time. [Nathan]: No and, you know, I think you actually…what's you're gonna see and unbeknownst to you guys, but you're gonna see me doing a little more marketing here in the future. But yeah well I have the luxury though of…Our company just brought on a marketing director that has a very strong marketing background. So we will have an in-house marketing department that… [Christian]: Nice. [Nathan]: Make, you know, will be able to take on what visions I have. Or I don't want to say visions. I call them thoughts. Yeah I mean I had a meeting with her last week. She's awesome and I…I equate what she can do to what like my tattoo guy does. Right. I come up with this wild little sketch on a piece of paper that looks like a third-grader did it. I say “Hey here.” And then a week later he hands it back and I'm like “I don't know how you got that, but it's perfect.” You know… [Christian]: Sure. They will take your vision and make it into something. [Nathan]: And make it into something and Karen will be able to do that for it. Some…a lot of brokerages I don't think have, you know, that good fortune of having a marketing director that has a very solid background with a large company that can create some of these things we want. Within the vision that you need to do. I think it's important that whatever your theme is, you have consistency with it. And a lot of people don't do that. I think a lot of real estate and what you do is marketing. Right. So if you're gonna do it, do it well. [Christian]: Sure. Well I think a lot of agents don't realize it like what they're putting out there, you know, is represent themselves. You know, because I mean you can have your marketing and your advertising. Typically people use them interchangeably. But they're not, you know. Like for us, you know, we just, you know, ponied…pointed up. And…and hired Max the designs to…to do our marketing piece, you know, pieces. Which is essentially a design firm, you know, small design team down Los Angeles that walks you through a creation process of like everything, from color scheme to…to fonts to like what's the feel, you know, your brokerage has. And all those kind of stuff to make stuff that's customized for you. All the pieces are consistent. Totally customized to provide a platform. All your agents can log in and create their own stuff. Customize it, you know, download it.  Like all that is like the bare minimum marketing pieces that you can then use for presentations or social media stuff. Or…or whatever. But, you know, something like that gives you a consistency for your agents, for your firm. But then on top of that you've got the actual “OK I'm gonna run a marketing campaign and that requires, you know, some intentional thought behind. What's my desire goal? What messages are gonna resonate with whom? What platforms win?” You know, much more complex than just aesthetic marketing piece.  You're muted.  [Nathan]: Everybody got quiet. So… [Chris]: No one's muted. We just were talking…[laughter]. All right. Well I think that is definitely you now… [Christian]: Helpful. Hopefully it's interesting. Oh boy this is the funny part.  [Nathan]: Anyway.  [Chris]: No I mean it's…it's great. We…we haven't put anything in place like that for our firm right now. Even though we have a…our listing coordinator has a marketing background. She's actually in portfolio school right now. So to kind of an extent we can…we have that ability. She'll bounce some ideas off of us. We'll bounce ideas off of her. Actually just to make sure we're not doing anything stupid.  But for everything with us, it's a lot of…it's word-of-mouth. And I think that that's another type of marketing that people don't pay enough attention to. Going back a few years to when Scott Stratten [phonetics] talked about on marketing. At Inman he said, you know “If you want word of mouth, what do you do? You do something worth talking about.” So there…there's that whole aspect to marketing our businesses. Doing things like Ritz Carlton. Doing things like Disney. Doing things…taking so much advanced precaution with our clients, thinking about their problems before they ever have it. That that way the client has no other alternative but to say how great their experience was. And I think that that's something that, you know, we need to figure out or put more focus on also, because that stuff's free. [Christian]: Yeah well and that's what, you know, for all that you're leveraging the client experience. Right. It's how you do your business, you know. All the marketing advertising is how you build up from, you know, getting in front of people to get them to that place where they're your client. And then that experience comes in and the referral business can happen. It's all part of a, you know, a long cycle of business. Hopefully. [Chris]: Absolutely. So I think that's good. [Nathan]: Yeah. [Chris]: Any final thoughts while you're at it? [Christian]: I would say as an agent, know your strengths, know your weaknesses. Don't try to do everything. Hire out the stuff that you're not an expert in. In this case marketing. But, you know, you got to find…you got to find someone that can draw out what that vision is. So that it's consistent. Enhances your brand as opposed to completely contradicts your…consistency. [laughter] Words. [Chris]: Nate any final thoughts? [Nathan]: No. Stay off Facebook. Don't request me. [laughter]. Get off my lawn you kids. Seriously I was like…all of that stuff that everybody else does, don't [censored] do it.  [Christian]: There's that. [Nathan]: I don't want to be your friend because you're not gonna sell me a house. All right. All right. Guys good luck and hope it works out for you. [Chris]: Yeah. All right so basically there's different types of marketing. Figure out what you want. Avoid the shiny object. Don't think that you're gonna find something that is going to solve all of your problems for one low monthly subscription. And then don't leave out the word of mouth. Make sure you're doing the things for your clients in your daily business. Make sure that your clients are your number one focus. Because guess what? Costs a whole lot less to keep a client than it does to acquire a new one. Everybody this has been re:Think Real Estate. We'll catch you next Monday. [music]  [Chris]: Thanks for tuning in this week's episode of the re:Think Real Estate Podcast. We would love to hear your feedback so please leave us a review on iTunes. Our music is curtesy of Dan Koch K-O-C-H, whose music can be explored and licensed for use at dankoch.net. Thank you Dan. Please like, share and follow. You can find us on Facebook at Facebook.com/rethinkpodcast. Thank you so much for tuning in everyone and have a great week.  [music]  

Download this Episode We've all been there on our real estate path. Today we discuss the difference between calling ourselves a professional and actually being a professional. reThink Real Estate Podcast Trannscription Audio length 28:02 RTRE 63 – Being a Pro vs. Saying You're a Pro [music] [Chris] Welcome to re:Think Real Estate, your educational and hopefully entertaining source for all things real estate, business, news and tech.  [Christian]: I am Christian Harris in Seattle, Washington. [Nathan]: Hi, I am Nathan White in Columbus, Ohio. [Chris]: And I am Chris Lazarus in Atlanta, Georgia. Thanks for tuning in.  [music] [Chris]: Hey everybody welcome back to re:Think Real Estate. Chris Lazarus here. Here with Christian Harris and Nathan White. Nate you've got a bone to pick with some people. What's going on dude? [Nathan]: I mean call it a bone or not. But so I was just recently on a trip with some buddies of mine. And I was ranting. Or we were individually ranting I should say, about our industries that we respectively work in. And of course I got some puzzled looks and different things and, you know, about my rants. And ironically enough, one of the guys on the trip called me the day after we got back.  And he says “I have new respect for what you were talking about.” I said “What do you mean?” He says “Listen, you know, my…my aunt, you know, she…she passed away and…and one of my family members is selling her house. And the agent that my aunt hired said ”Listen I don't really want you telling anybody that somebody passed away in the home. Yada yada yada.”” The agent responded with “Trust me this is what I do for a living.” My friend then said “Please ask me how many houses has she sold.” I said “Well Larry how many houses as she sold?” He said zero. And he said “I totally get it.” He said this individual, you know, is making it appear I guess if you would, that they're an expert in our industry and, you know, what we do, but they've not sold a home. They have a license. Right. They're a realtor. Right. But they've done zero business. So again there…there is there's some delineation here between who's an agent who is a licensee. Right. And I get it. Just wound up. I mean I get it, you know, but I don't I also don't get it. I was taught “Fake it til you make it.” When I started. And I don't…I don't think that's the way to go. I think there's a lot of other paths to go through education and training and certain things, that I believe, you know, yourself and Christian both provide. But what would you two tell an agent in this situation? Right. [Chris]: Oh I wouldn't say…I would tell the agent “Look don't tell people this is what you do for a living until you actually make a living off of it.” [Nathan]: Christian? [Christian]: I mean my whole thing…because I was kind of taught same thing. Kind of “Fake it til you make it. Yo here's some scripts to make it sound like, you know, what you're talking about that you don't.” What I tell my new agents is like, you know, “Don't…don't come out and say “Hey I'm brand new. I don't know what I'm doing.” But positioning in such a way where you're saying “Hey, you know, I'm working closely with my designated broker. If I don't have the answer I can get it. You're getting two for the price of one. It's not just new agent flailing out there trying to pretend like they know what they're doing.”” So, you know, essentially don't lie but also don't come straight out say “Hey I don't know what I'm doing and I have no confidence. You know, I'm probably gonna [censored] up and [censored] over your listing, you know, I'm a seller.” But at the same time don't…you merely like you yeah you have all experienced in the world when you don't. because it's not hard to find out information about how experienced or how long an agent's been licensed. [Chris]: Doesn't even require an open records request. You can just look it on Zillow. [Christian]: Yeah I mean and…and…and that's it. And it may not be the case with every real estate firm. But for us, you know, we closely work with our new agents to make sure they're providing the best experience. They know what they're doing. They're not, you know, floundering, you know. And I know business brokerages are supposed to do that. [Chris]:Floundering. Like flopping around flopping around [laughter].  [Christian]: Yeah flopping around the land.  [Nathan]: Like a fish out of water is what it looks like. [Chris]: Yeah. [Christian]: It's hard…it's hard for a new agent to mask that when, you know, you don't really know how the process works, and you don't really know the direction you're supposed to be going and what you're supposed to be saying to your client, you know. [Nathan]: Wouldn't this be an interesting industry change if you had to have some intern or externship with so many transactions under your belt before you were to able to go out and represent a buyer or seller? [Chris]: That makes sense. That's what we do for new agents. They have to have six transactions under their belt before the training wheels come off. At a minimum. And for the first six transactions they're heavily mentored through them. So they're…they're not alone. They have people like their first deals they've got a mentor that's going out. And…and working with them. Teaching them how to do the consults for the buyers. And for the listing consult. So that by the time that agent gets ready to go out and be on their own, they generally have a great idea of what they're doing. [Christian]: Yeah well that's a great way to do it. I mean I love how you formalize that. Obviously that takes, you know, a brokerage's,  you know, certain amount of experienced agents and size. And, you know… [Chris]: Yeah I'll let you know when we get at that level too. [laughter] [Christian]: It is a structure. Because you could say technically the industry requires it. but, you know, when the laws basically says, you know, “Additional designated broker oversight for the first two years” like that's really loose. And it's not, you know, it's not really…there's not really a standard for that. Even though technically new agents are supposed to be more heavily monitored. There's no…there's nothing in place a, you know, firm to firm, insuring that happens. [Chris]: Yeah I mean there…I was talking to somebody the other day he was telling me about a person who's making a switch from another firm. And this person was also a recruiter. And he was like “Yeah this person brought about a hundred and forty people over to the brokerage. And about a hundred and twenty of them left.” And I'm like “What?!” Like I don't even want to turn that number. Like I'll bring ten and one will leave. Like I'm not gonna turn a hundred and forty people to get twenty.  It's just ridiculous the lack of oversight that some of these brokerages put into actual retention and training and development. It's literally taking the pickle, throwing it at the wall and seeing which one sticks. [Christian]: Sure. Well I mean and it's well-known, and I've been saying this for years. You know, like most firms, you know, most of the industry is just focus on numbers. Like all we want is people in the seats. Licensed agents, you know. We're not really concerned about retention and training and empowering because there's gonna be, you know, a dozen new agents with, you know, dollar signs in their eyes waiting to take their spots. You know, when…when they fail. [Nathan]: It will be like “Oh let's look at our checklist. You have a license. Check. You have a pulse. Check. Oh yeah good. You can…you can join us.” And uh, you know, I often get the question “Hey what…what led to your success as an agent?” I don't want to call myself successful but I do well. And I know what I'm doing now. And I think a huge part of it and I will I will tap the shoulder if you would of the team lead, Tim Reel [phonetics], that I had at Keller Williams when I started, is…is that I…part of it… Let me rephrase this. I viewed it as an internship. Right. I knew I was gonna pay a steep cut on my team splits. And KW split. But I also knew I was gonna get an education. And I wasn't standing alone. I wasn't by myself. And I was constantly getting feedback or more importantly I was getting mentorship. I think that's what a lot of people want. And…and that helped me. And then when I did want to go out and do my own thing and kind of stand on my own feet as a solo agent, I had the capability to do that. So, you know, that's always been my win at KW. Don't…you're not a technology company. You're a training company. KW gave me some great bones. You gave me a great foundation. So any agent that is potentially listening to this, that's struggling or is thinking about coming an agent, I would tell “You…you want to do well? Go be on a team. Go…go learn.” I don't…I don't, you know, that's just me.  [Christian]: And I say you're pretty fortunate because, you know, I've heard, you know, I've heard many things as far as, you know, people kind of getting on team. I mean KW is kind of what they're known for. You know. But it's a…it could be very hit and miss. Because, you know… [Nathan]: Yes. [Christian]: I mean you could be, you know, you can be fortunate where the team lead is actually interested in mentoring and training, in empowering their team members. But I've also seen people that, you know, get on teams and all this is a call center. And they were promised “Hey we're gonna train you. We're gonna teach you this stuff.” And they're not learning anything except for making sales calls and scripts. You know, it could be very…very hit and miss, as far as the team structure goes and the attitude of the leadership. [Nathan]: Same as I tell a potential client. Interview realtors. I tell a potential realtor and if you have a lot of teams. [Christian]: Yeah. [Chris]: Interview teams. Interview brokers. Interview office staff. Interview whoever you can. I mean… [Nathan]: Interview your clients. You don't necessarily want all your clients that come to you.  [Chris]: No stay away from my clients. You're another agent. I don't want you talking to them. [laughter] [Christian]: Yeah I am gonna interview your clients. [Chris]: So…but this is…this brings us back to like a great point. Right. Because you've got three types of agents. You've got the full time agents. Right. These are the people that are in here all the time. These are the people that this is how we make a living. Then you have the part-time agents which I don't have an issue with part-time agents. Part-time agents they're putting in the hours. They may not be in at 40, 60, 80 hours a week. But they're in it 10, 20, 30 hours a week. And that's enough so that they generally understand what's happening in the industry. And they're able to build and maintain a client base and, you know, do a few deals every year. Then you've got the problem. The last type of agent it's the sometime agent. The agent that hangs their license. They're just a licensee. They're not in it full-time. They've got another job and they'll sell a house whenever their family member comes to them and says “Hey, you know, you're a real estate agent right?” “Yeah. Yeah I am.” And they're really not. And they…they don't fully understand what's going on. And when they take a deal that's when things go sideways. So I think the clarification is what kind of agent do you want to be? If you're…if you're coming into the industry are you going to be a sometime agent? Or are you gonna be a part-time agent? Because if you're…if you're just dipping your toe in the water and this is new for you, you have to be a part-time agent. If you're anything less than that you're never gonna learn enough to be successful. You know what? You know what? We can just steal from the Game of Thrones on that. Because, you know what we say, to us sometimes agent…not today. [Christian]: Not today.  [Nathan]: Not today. [Christian]: What I was gonna say so…so that's as we jumped into this, you guys are like “Hey let' talk about this thing.” “I don't know what you're talking about.” So…so we talked about licensee versus an agent that's [crosstalk]. That's what you mean? [Nathan]: Yes. [Christian]: I got you. I think… [Nathan]: I think I've told the story once. I insulted a woman. She's…we were having a conversation. [Christian]: You insulted someone? No way. [Nathan]: Yes. And she said something like “Oh you're real estate agent?” And I said “Yeah.” And she said “Me too.” And I was like “Great. How many houses did you sell last year?” And she's like “Four.” And I was like “You're not an agent.” She got all upset. I was like…what…like…I don't know. [Christian]: You have a way with words Nathan.  [Nathan]: Like I mean it is what it is. I mean I…yeah that's right. But there needs to be so many changes in our industry. And, you know, again we can talk about the barrier and entry. Yeah. Yeah. I do want to talk about two things on this episode, I guess. If we want to just get going and keep going.  [Chris]: Well let's keep going. [Christian]: But before we get away can I say something? [Nathan]: Go. Get away.  [Christian]: Get away. So to your point Chris about the licensee versus an agent and the three types of agents, and it's interesting. It seems like there's so many new agents that get into it just to be a licensee. It's basically like “Hey I can make, you know, a lot of money just, you know, accidentally selling a house now and then, to…to a friends.” So they're not invested in learning or building a career. They're kind of testing the waters. And memorably they fail and realize, you know, usually it's too late. “Hey this actually cost me a lot of money and I'm not really willing to put in the time. And real estate doesn't work”. You know. [Chris]: It's…it's like people come in here and, you know, you can go and get a real estate license and you can go and sell your own home and you can buy your next home and you can earn a commission. Great. Yeah it offsets your down payment.  [Christian]: Sure. [Chris]: But you factor in that you do that once every ten years and it's…it's really not worth your time.  [Christian]: Right. Well I like your distinction between basically, you know, the part-time, who is still again with the time they have, they're investing and learning. Versus the “I'm just sitting here with my license doing other stuff until something comes my way. And then I flattened my way through it.” And because I think it's a big difference. I think a lot of people in the industry inflate the two.  Like I was having a conversation the other day with, you know, some agents from another indie brokerage here in town. And I love that brokerage but they're very…very high standards on who they'll accept. Like if three times a week there or you're gone. You know, you have certain production what are you gone. [Chris]: Good. [Christian]: I think that's great but that means… [Chris]: I wish more brokers did that. [Christian]: But that means that they don't do part-time agents. And, you know, this particular agent I was talking to, was basically cuckooing part-time agents. I was like listen “The people that can do it full-time like you you're basically taking it elitist stance, because people have kids or they have other jobs or, you know, it's just not the priority in life to spend 80 hours a week trying to make real estate work.” And I think there's room for that because just because you're part time doesn't necessarily mean you're inept. Or, you know, don't know how to do real estate. It just made you're focusing on other things. You know. [Chris]: Wait really? Because I thought whatever my preconceived notions were, we're correct. [Christian]: But I'm saying I think there's a difference. Because part time agents can invest in their training and knowledge and experience just as much as a full time. But that's a lot different than someone who just is seating on the sidelines waiting for real estate to come to them. [Chris]: As long as they're putting in the hours. And…and it's actually interesting that you bring that up. Because there was a study done by a university talking about entrepreneurship and going and creating your own self-employed income. And the success rates. And somebody who does it part-time at first, believe it or not has a thirty percent greater chance of success rate, long term. Than somebody who just dives in off the deep end full-time. So you can have somebody who's coming in part-time 20 hours a week and as long as they're working those 20 hours there's a greater chance of success that that person is going to be a long-term successful real estate agent. Then somebody who comes in off the bat, full time and has one way to go. [Christian]: What…it's interesting. Is that because they're runways longer because they have a supplemental income. Or something as opposed to… [Chris]: Yeah. The caveat with this is that those people are actually putting in the work. Right. They're working 20, 30 hours a week.  [Christian]: Sure. Right. They're not sitting around at their home office watching Netflix and occasionally making a call or something. [Chris]: Yeah. [Nathan]: Well I mean aren't there plenty of full-time agents who work a lot of part-time hours? [Christian]: That's true. That's a good distinction. They usually don't make it either. [laughter] [Nathan]: I mean I know plenty of full-time agent, who I mean it's like “[censored] if you're full-time than you suck.” [laughter] I mean it's because you look at their sales history. Like great you sold six houses last year. But you're full-time. And then there's the part-time agent who sells twenty five a year. Right. So… [Christian]: Again that comes down to your hustle and your focus. Because I've seen full-time agent that, you know, that are there full-time, but they're mentally…they're all over the place. [Nathan]: Yeah right. So I, you know, I don't like to get into this, you know, “O you're full-time, part-time.” Again sales cure is all, where I come from. And if you have a history you have a history. That's what I…that's what I like to look at is, you know, it's what matters. If somebody says “Well I'm a full-time agent.” Well great you'd be a full-time agent with [censored] sales. Right. I mean that's easy. And so I'd rather say Hey you're an agent with a great history.” That…to me is important. That's where we can delineate the that whole thing.  Is…let's not get into full-time, part-time. Yeah, the sometime, I don't want to get around. But let's just get into “Hey what did you…” I tell them “What did you sell?” Ask them what did they sell last year. What they do. Which may be and, you know, part of this I wanted to ask in this kind of segues into the other side of this, is does area specialization in a normal market, like where I'm at, in Columbus, does that matter anymore due to the amount of data that is available? My argument would be “No it doesn't matter.” [Chris]: I would argue you, against that.  [Nathan]: I figured you would. Yeah Christian too. [Chris]: Yeah.  [Nathan]: But that's just me. So… [Chris]: And I think it comes down to the level of service that somebody wants to bring. If…if you have like three agents going up against one neighborhood, and one agent knows everything about the neighborhood, all the history. Everything that has taken place there. Everything that's going in. All the development that…that's happening. Then that agent can sell not only the house but also the story.  And if you could sell the story, you know, that…that's the best way to market right now. Whereas if you have two other agents that don't know that info, then they're just…they're either competing on price or they're competing on marketing ability. [Nathan]: All right go back in there. There's an agent you left out of this. What about the agent that has the capability to use their commission as leverage on a deal? That's not in the area. [Christian]: I mean I think it… [Chris]: Where would he use that laverage? [Nathan]: Towards closing costs. Say…saying…because in our market you can do that. Right. Say…say I specialize in Dublin. Right. Ohio. But I want to go to…I got a client who want…your potential client who's interested in buying in New Albany, that yeah I've done deals over there. But I'm competing against a New Albany realtor. And…and I can offer…say Christian's my buyer. I can incentivize him to use me because I can say “Hey you're gonna buy $500,000 home. You know what I'll do? I'll take three thousand dollars on my commission and credit that to you towards closing cost and pre-paids and closing cost.” Now in a competitive market I'm gonna choose the agent that's got leeway to give me something. Or that could bridge appraisal, help with closing cost or something like that. Over somebody who says “Oh I specialize in an area.” That's just me and my train of thought. [Christian]: I mean the specializing in an area, I…I'd say the value really depends on which side you're on. Like…like when I'm on the listing side I think it like I specialize in West Seattle. But I do other areas of Seattle in the suburbs. Like I remember specifically like I helped a military friend of mine sell this place and well the suburbs here.  Now I didn't…I've never sold a house in that area. And so one of the questions I had to ask is like “Hey tell me about your neighborhood.” Like “There's a main…there's a main road going through here. Our house is on this side of it. A lot different than this side.” Because I can look at the numbers all day long but as the stats don't tell me, you know, why people move to this area. Or what the demographics are. Or who the ideal buyer is gonna be.  You know, so you've got to do a lot more digging and you actually know the area for that. And on the buyer side I don't think that's as important. I mean it can be. You can leverage it. but, you know, you're not really…I think it's more important on the seller side. Because you're gonna use that information, that knowledge of the neighborhood to target that ideal buyer.  [Chris]: And I think… [Christian]: What to focus on. [Chris]: Yeah and Nate to your point, I think you're you're kind of comparing apples to oranges right now. Because you're…you're talking about two completely different value propositions. That the agents can base on. And, you know, all of them work. Right. There's a million different value propositions on how you can build your business. Whether you specialize in historic or new construction or this one area or whatever it might be. Or you…you leverage some of your commission income to incentivize, you know, the client base.  You know, you can pay. It's one way or another. If you want to take some of your commission and do that on the back end through a rebate, you know, who am I to judge? All of them work. They're all different business models. And I don't call one discount versus one traditional. They're just different business models. It just depends on what's right for the individual agent. And what's right for the individual agent has to line up with the broker that they're with. Because not all brokers will allow their agents to do a commission rebate. Or to donate some towards closing costs. Whatever that might be. But it has to…like they all work. Like one agent may have a value proposition. And their proposition may be “I know everything about this area. Use me because I'm gonna make sure you're fully informed.” And then another agent may say “Well we're not as familiar with the area but we'll make sure that you have this financial instead of…” And then it's just up to the buyer. Right. The buyer may want money or they we may want their choice to be 100%. So it can go either way. [Christian]: And I'd say I mean you can't you can kind of think about in terms of like your commission is one of the terms of the contract. And so it's something that you could leverage just like you can any other terms, you know. That's something that you directly have control over versus, you know, the buyer. But, you know, options. [Nathan]: Right. Just curious. I mean you see it often. I mean…and I've done it. but, you know, we'll waive appraisal. And, you know, I will use my commission as a bridge in case that commits…that appraisal comes in short. And I've had plenty of times. It never has. We've been fine. I've had times where it comes in short and hey that's fine too. Again it's…it's as much for the seller when I represent a buyer to offer, you know, to say “Hey I'm willing to use my commission as a bridge in case it doesn't.” Because then they know they'll, you know, they'll get that money. So… [Chris]: I think that that's something to be careful about. So you're… you're very well versed in that Nate. But for your average agent, like if they're going into putting their livelihood on the line, like they got…they're gambling on themselves. [Nathan]: Yeah they are. [Chris]: And…and that's what you're doing. And you're good. And I would probably gamble on myself if I had to take the bet. [Nathan]: I like it. [Chris]: But I think that there's a lot of agents that for general advice…Don't do that well.  [Nathan]: Yes. You also…you got to remember I am fair. I keep 100% of my commission. Truly 100%. Right. So, you know, I don't have a split. So you got to think on a normal agents, say they're on a 60/40 split, you know, they're already taking a hit. Right. So they're potentially gonna take a bigger hit? Like, you know, they do have to be cautious. I…I have a little…I have a lot more leeway. Let's be honest. But… [Christian]: Sure. Not all the firms are going to support that. You know, so… [Nathan]: No they're not.  [Chris]: And you know as general…for our audience, as general advice I'm gonna say don't do that. Mainly because I don't know, you know, if I'm talking about the average agent, right. [Nathan]: Right. [Chris]: They're not gonna be at that level to where, you know, I would feel comfortable just saying “Hey go out and put your commission on the line.” Because guess what? They do that. They say “I'll bridge the gap on an appraisal.” And the appraisal was four percent off instead of three. [Christian]: Well yeah… [Chris]: Now what's gonna happen? [Christian]: I mean you should always have…always have a cap, you know, as far as how far you'll go. You know, I mean I think in general, the principle I like. Because you're basically partnering with your clients, with skin the game. As opposed to you like “Hey, you know, here's all the terms. If it doesn't work out, well I'm fine. But you're gonna get [censored].”  [Nathan]: Well and my part in it is where I bridge part of the gap. My client will bridge part of the gap. But my commission will supersede their bridge. So but again what we're doing and like you said is, you know, kind of like in Top Gun. Right. You know, when you went fully inverted over the other plane and they're like this, you know. So that's the maneuver I pull. And I just haven't taken the picture yet. So…[laughter] [Chris]: International relations. [Nathan]: That's right. So anyway those are my two concerns or thoughts…would, over the last week. [Christian]: It's a creative way to do what you have to do, in a competitive market. [Nathan]: Yes.  [Chris]: Just make sure you run it by your broker. [Christian]: Always. [Chris]: And have your lawyers look at your language in your contract.  [Nathan]: Yeah you actually have to disclose that too, here. So… [Chris]: Yeah you do in Georgia also if you're doing that with the commission. The buyer has to pay tax on that too. [Nathan]: Really? [Chris]: Yeah. Otherwise you have to claim it. [Nathan]: Yeah that's true. [Chris]: Yeah. All right. Well I mean I think that was pretty good. So just recapping. If you're…if you're brand new in the industry, you know, you you're one of three people, you're a full-timer, a part-timer or some timer. Don't be a some timer. Because if you're a some timer, you're never gonna learn everything you need to know in order to be successful at this job.  And then, you know, figure out how you want to build your business. Right. You can…you could do a bit model like Nathan and use your commissioners leverage as long as you do it right. Or you can be the expert in your field. Know everything about everyone.  And everything that's going on in your neighborhood. And make sure that you're the source of information. Either way the business models work. Pick what's right for you. This has been another episode of re:Think Real Estate. Thanks for tuning in. We'll see you next Monday. [Nathan]: Peace. [music]  [Chris]: Thanks for tuning in this week's episode of the re:Think Real Estate Podcast. We would love to hear your feedback so please leave us a review on iTunes. Our music is curtesy of Dan Koch K-O-C-H, whose music can be explored and licensed for use at dankoch.net. Thank you Dan. Please like, share and follow. You can find us on Facebook at Facebook.com/rethinkpodcast. Thank you so much for tuning in everyone and have a great week.  [music]  

Download this Episode We've all been there. Life hits you like a freight train and knocks you off course. Today we discuss how to get the train back on its track. Tune in to hear about how we deal with death, struggle, and negative outside voices. reThink Real Estate Podcast Transcription Audio length 28:18 RTRE 60 – Breaking Out of a Rut in Your Real Estate Business [music] [Chris] Welcome to re:Think Real Estate, your educational and hopefully entertaining source for all things real estate, business, news and tech.  [Christian]: I am Christian Harris in Seattle, Washington. [Nathan]: Hi, I am Nathan White in Columbus, Ohio. [Chris]: And I am Chris Lazarus in Atlanta, Georgia. Thanks for tuning in.  [music] [Chris]: Everybody and welcome back to re:Think Real Estate. I'm Chris here with Christian and Nate is back. No longer sick. Welcome back Nate.  [Nathan]: Thanks. Thank you. [Chris]: Yes. All of energy today. [laughter]  [Christian]: He is possessed to be here. [Chris]: Oh. Let's see those jazz hands Nate. [Nathan]: Hold on. [laughter]. [Christian]: What are you typing? [Chris]: Not even…Not even ready to start. There we go.  [Christian]: Yeah don't worry about this.  [Chris]: So we were just talking before getting started here about, you know, what do you do when you're in a rut. Like you're just out of it, you know, listening to Nate's voice. He's in a rut right now. Even if it's just for the next hour. So like Christian what do you do when you're in a rut? Like how do you pull yourself out of it? [Christian]: I mean I'll tell you one thing that's key to not do and that's to quit, and to listen to the demons, you know, that are speaking…speaking lives in your head about how your failure and your, you know, nothing's ever gonna change and it's gonna be like this forever. I'm sure I'm just the only one that hears those negative thoughts but… [Chris]: It's gonna be like this forever. You're a failure. [Christian]: Don't listen to them. I know. See now I'm hearing the voices for real. This is so real. [Chris]: [laughter] In your headphones.  [Christian]: Yeah in my headphones. So that's the first thing you don't do. [Chris]: Yeah I gotta agree. [Christian]: For me personally, you know, I just kind of keep my head down and keep going. But I mean I lot of it depends on why I am in a rut. Is it like a family rut where relationships aren't going great? Is it work? Is it financial? You know. Because I think, you know, the solution to those are all gonna be a little different. But the key to getting out of those is leaning…leaning on people. You know, like being honest. Having people that can come around to you and speak truth into that. Whether it's co-workers or family members or, you know, besties, you know. Don't isolate yourself because that's…that's doesn't go well for most people. [Chris]: Gotta have your besties. Nate. [Nathan]: Yep. [Chris]: What do you think? [Nathan]: What's the question again? [Chris]: How do you get out of a rut. [Nathan]: Oh how do you get out of a rut. [Christian]: It's your topic buddy. [Chris]: Yeah this is your choice Mr. “I'm in a rut.”  [Nathan]: How do you…You know, I don't know. You got to find, you know, how you used to work triggers. You got to find….one you got to be able to identify you're in a rut. Right. I mean, you know, yeah I just kind of went through one. Yeah I was sick for a week. Had some unfortunate family things happen. And, you know, it was just [censored] death of you. I mean it's what it was but you know it side tracks you. Right. You know, as I call it the…the train gets off the rail. So you one you got to recognize that the…the freaking train you're on is off the rails. And then you got to figure out what's the trigger to get it back on. You know, for me it's being very scheduled and stuff. And just it's…I don't know you have to just recommit.  You know, what's the…I used to have a mentor who used to say “You kind of have to recenter the salt on the plate.” And I think that's what you got to do. You got to be able to identify it. You got to figure out, you know, why you're in it. OK get out of it, you know, and then , you know, there's certain things. I don't know you can read motivational stuff. I mean Gary Vee I, you know, it's not for all people but he's for me. And I can get on a pity party and he gets me out of the pity party. So [Christian]: Yeah nice kick to the junk to get you back on track. [Nathan]: Yeah and I think in our industry, I think we all get kind of jaded at times. You get….you get I don't know. You get frustrated and then you get sidetracked.  [Christian]: And it's just you. [Nathan]: Yeah all right. [Chris]: No it's definitely not just you.  [Nathan]: Yeah I know it's everybody. I was talking with a colleague the other day and, you know, he said “Man I just…” he said “I didn't do [censored] for six months.” And now you know, he knew it. He identified it. But, you know, he's like the worst part is now I gotta play catch-up. I, you know, we all, you know, we get these peaks and valleys. And I don't…I don't like to get in those peaks and valleys. I like to have, you know, a nice steady stream of income. Right. [Chris]: Well six months is a little bit too long. That…that's not all right. Six months is an active decision to say “You know what, I'm just not gonna work.” [Nathan]: Yeah. [Christian]: I think it's called clinical depression. [Nathan]: Yeah well, you know, he was working on his home doing some other things. Fine. But… [Christian]: OK so he's just distracted. [Nathan]: He's just distracted and I think we all can get distracted. And then I think we just get frustrated. You know, we can get in our own way. So and, you know, it's, you know, you hear a realtor say “Oh I'm…” You know, we talked about this before. You know, “I'm so busy” And you say “What do you have going on?” And they're like “Oh I got one house in contract.” But you're so busy like…I don't know. It's…when I'm not busy, I'm not busy. You know, I don't even like the question what people say “Oh it's spring time right now. You're, you know, you must be busy as all get out. I'm steady. I'm not busy as I'll get out. But when you talk to me in November, December, January and February, guess what? You get the same response. Versus a lot of people say “Well I ain't got nothing going on.” So staying out of a rut I think is important. I think it's important that you identify how long you're in one. And it only took two weeks to get in one. Just because of, you know, being sick. And we're all self-employed. Right. o… [Chris]: Yeah I think I think one of the things is it doesn't take too long to get into a rut. Like one thing can happen and throw you completely off the rails. And then it…you have to go through…well depending upon what it is, you've got to go through these stages of healing to kind of get back into your groove. So if it's…if, you know, if it's family that's throwing, you know, things at you that are like “Oh, you know, what you're wasting your time. You're not in a good environment. The industry is gonna end soon. Your real estate agents are gonna be obsolete. Everything's gonna be AI in tech.” I just got that from my [censored] father the other day. And… [Christian]: Ouch. [Chris]: Yeah like “Really, no I…I don't think it is but, you know, that…that's great that you're encouraging me. I really appreciate that.” But you got to go through this stage of accepting what has happened. Seeing it from, you know, multiple points of view. Realizing that, you know, you're either making the right decision and then you double down on your decision, or there's some corrective action that needs to happen. And then you need to make the corrective action. [Christian]: I mean I'd say that, this is kind of cliché, but I definitely say that it's very important to…as you're trying to, you know, realize, you know, “OK what's…what set me in this rut and how do I get out?” is to try to only focus on things that you can affect. Right. As most of stuff in our life we have no control over. You can't control other agents, can't control the market. You control what you do and how focused you are. And, you know, your attitude and all that kind of stuff.  But I'd say that's definitely key to getting out of it is not…not, you know, what we call catastrophizing, if that's a word, which I don't think it is. But, you know, essentially… [Nathan]: It sounds great. [Chris]: Yeah if it's not a word it sounds like a word and it should be a word. So yeah… [Christian]: It's…it's a word that would they use in in the military's newer…what they call it, resiliency training . Essentially, you know, one of the keys to, you know, not getting in a rut or recognizing when you are going into rut is recognizing, you know, a mindset that's a downward spiral of catastrophizing everything. Where, you know, one thing happens and then you just assume the worst and then that, you know, self-fulfilling prophecy happens. And you keep spiraling downwards as opposed to, you know, “OK let's look at the big picture. Let's not think of the worst thing let's think of, you know, outcomes that are positive and, you know, be optimistic as opposed to pessimistic”, you know.  This is one of the mental tricks of, you know, how are you going to position yourself mentally to get out of the rut. As opposed to, you know, staying in that rut. [Chris]: I like that. That's really good. So Nate, cuz you ran for 24 hours last year, what was like what was going on in your head and do you think that any of those things could be used to get you out of a rut ? [Nathan]: Well I'm getting ready to run for twelve hours soon again. I think it's just it's…it's a semental staying power if you would. Because what's the easiest thing to do in any of those scenarios are with what we do for a living, what's the easiest thing to do? [censored] it. Quit. Right. [Chris]: Like quit. Don't even… [Nathan]: Just quit. Right. I mean I think what most people don't realize and, you know, I can use it running wise or even and, you know, in this rut…What we think of and perceive is something that maybe feels like forever, is really not that long of a period of time. Right. When I did that race out in Colorado or run out in Colorado, there was a gentleman that, you know, he quit after, you know, about 16 hours. And he said “I can't do it anymore.” And I said “Dude just take a break. Don't leave the course. If you leave the, you know, if you leave the course, you can't restart. But you can you could take a rest, that's fine. It's OK. If you want a rest for thirty minutes or three hours then you could start back up on whatever mile you're on.”  Right. And he said no he couldn't do it. He went back to his hotel. About twenty three hours and thirty minutes into it I seen him at the finish line, start/finish line. And, you know, him lapping through and he comes and pulls up beside me and starts running. And I was like “What are you doing back out here?” He's like “I should have listened to you.” He's like “I left. I got back to the hotel. I took 30 minutes. Laid down and I was like nah I feel great now.”  So I think what we do is it's…it's how we perceive that. Right. like “Oh you're in a rut.” And I have been in a rut for two weeks. And it's that like Christian said, you get the self-fulfilling prophecy. And then it does spiral out of control. Right. versus if we can kind of slam the [censored] brakes on things, and go “Hold up. All right. Reset.” And…and grab a hold of it by the balls a little bit, you know, then…then you've got a good opportunity. But I think we just we, you know, society as a whole and what, you know, whether it's real estate or not, we…we just get caught up in that bad moment. So you got to be more optimistic than pessimistic. [Christian]: Yeah well I think it also help if, you know, kind of speaking to people getting into the industry, if there was a more realistic portrayal of what it's like to be a new agent. Because I mean I've, you know, speaking of our first quarter was very, very rough financially. And we have like five agents that just gave up. Just “I'm done. I'm not renewing my license. This was too hard.” And it's kind of that lack of resiliency because they'd…I don't think they had a realistic expectations coming into it. They're like “You can't just sit on YouTube while you, you know, quote to do your calls.” [laughter] Like you're not gonna get…You know, so there's a lack of resiliency. There's a lack of hustle. A lack of urgency and then, you know, no matter what, you know, your brokerage does, or people come up alongside you, they don't do it. They don't listen. And then they quit. And you're like “Yeah I kind of saw the writing on the wall.”  You're like, you know, it's…from the perspective of a broker like it's really easy to become jaded. And, you know, my version of a rut looks differently, you know, because I'm looking at agents and productivity and, you know, margins. And that kind of stuff. From agent perspective, you know, it's trying to get business, you know, having people say no to you. Or if you're new to an area trying to figure out how to get the word out there. And, you know, that kind of stuff. But either way it comes down to like not giving up, being resilient when things don't go perfectly, not letting that spiral and ruin the rest of your day.  [Nathan]: I would agree. [Chris]: Definitely, you know, you've got to be able to compartmentalize a little bit to know “Hey, you know what this is not that big of a deal.” Or, “You know what, this sucks. But, you know, I gotta keep ploughing on because if I stop I'm never gonna get this done. I'm never gonna hit my goal. So I've got to keep going.”  You know, it took, you know, I was in a rut a few weeks ago. And it took me a good five to six days to work my way through it. And it wasn't until I kind of saw some things from a different angle that, you know, it was…I realized, you know what, what I was doing was correct. And, you know, this one situation was an outlier. And it really didn't affect what I was doing as much as I thought it would. [Christian]: Yeah I mean a lot of what we're talking about here is your perspective. Right. And earlier I mentioned not letting yourself be isolated. And the reason for that is that other people can bring a perspective that you don't have. You know, they're looking at that from the outside. Where you may be, you know, kind of myopically looking at your feet. And, you know, where you just stumbled while they're looking at the big picture of like “But look at all this potential and look at where you came from and look at what's ahead of you.”  You know, I think that's very important to have that community around you, of people that can speak into you. Well that's your spouse or business partner or whatever. [Chris]: And sometimes you don't even want to hear it. Sometimes you're just like “You know what, I…I'm not even gonna listen” and you have to hear from some like third party that has nothing to do with you. Because, you know, those that are closest to us sometimes we feel like they're just, you know, boosting us up. And it's not authentic. [Christian]: Right. And then your wife says “That's what I've been saying to you.” And you're like “Oh sorry.”. [Chris]: Yeah. [Christian]: I get that [censored] all the time. My wife's like “Why wouldn't you just listen to me. That's what I was telling you.” And I am like “Oh [censored] you're right.” [Nathan]: Well that's…that's the funny flipside of being resilient. Another word for that could be stubborn. Or [laughter] hard-headed, you know. So what keeps you driving for it could also be what keeps you from listen to people. So … [Chris]: Yeah I think not so much that, but we have…we have this tendency that if something shakes us to our core. like that we're…if something happens it's that messes us up and throws us way off track, then we have this tendency to not exactly trust everything that we've done, up until that point 100%. So if there's something…if there's something that's in our core circle that's telling us something and then whatever happens throws us off our game, then we're gonna immediately have a certain distrust for this. And we're gonna go to an outside source to verify whether we're right or wrong. And once we do that, if we verify “You know what, what we've been doing is right.” then we come back to that circle and like “You know what, everything here is good.” We're happy. If something's wrong then we're gonna come back to that circle and be like “Wait what the [censored] is going on here? Like why…why are you saying this. Or, you know, why didn't…why…” You get it. Yeah it's…it's not just about listening to those that are closest to us. It's a mental thing. Like if something…mentally we've got to recenter ourselves. [Christian]: It sounds like you're saying that insecurity creeps in, depending on where we feel like things went wrong. [Chris]: Yeah definitely. And I mean it all depends on whatever happens. Right. because sometimes it's something small and it's not a big deal and it maybe, you know, maybe it's something that we're just disappointed in, and it's gonna take us, you know, a few minutes to get over. Or maybe it's something…maybe it's a personal attack or something that a relative is going in, the new agents is going. You're not making any money. You need to stop. Right. This is…you're…you're wasting your time, you're wasting your money, you're wasting our money, if it's a spouse. You know, even if you're doing the right things you may have not planned long enough. Nothing ever happens fast enough. Nothing ever happens, you know, the way that we want it. So you've got to kind of have that margin of error that you can work with. [Christian]: Sure and when you come into with…realistic expectations. Right. I mean so much of what happens in relationships that goes wrong, or getting in a rut that…that, you know, the reason we get there is because expectations are unmet, or our situation changes. You know, like if…if we think is gonna be easy and it's not, you know, we get in a rut. If, you know, we expect to make more money in the first quarter than we did, you know, it's easy getting in a rut. I mean it's just kind of…and not letting those quote failures drive you or dictate you. Because I mean what, you know, one man's failures is another person's learning, try opportunity. Yeah and that's something I've had to learn. Is like theoretically I understood. You know, as this ethereal concept I understood that failure was inevitable, and I need to be able to learn from that. But than going through that, that's experientially a lot different.  [Nathan]: So I need to get over this whole thing of how my job interferes me living my best life. [Chris]: You have the one job that you not interfere with you living your best life. [Nathan]: I don't have a job.  [Christian]: This is coming from the guy who's taken like several vacation this month to go down to…[crosstalk] [Nathan]: I know. I know. Listen you…listen I don't even have a job. I have…I do something I enjoy and love. I'm fortunate that I don't even do it as a job. I get to do what I enjoy. [Chris]: That's good. [Christian]: Yeah well let's…let's take us a little deeper and more personal. I mean Nate you kind of brought up the subject, cuz this last couple weeks have been pretty rough for you. I mean what have you found to be helpful kind of getting out of this rut for you? [Chris]: And first do you need to lay down on the therapist couch and put five cents in the jar? [Nathan]: No. Again it's…what's been helpful for me I mean again it's…I think, you know, what's the old saying? You know, you you're the average of the five people you spend the most time around. So I think it's also about the people you surround yourselves with. And that, you know, when you do get in that, they'll help you with that. You know, or they'll, you know, they'll they're kind of champion you and…and support you to say, you know, “Hey yeah…” You know, when you say “I'm in a rut or I'm this” they'll…they'll boost those spirits.  And it won't be an ego boost. It won't be one of those things like “You're the best thing in the world next to cotton candy.” But they know how to push you in the right direction to support you. And I think that's what…having that support is important. And I mean that ranges from colleagues that I have, to neighbors, to a wife. Like, you know, it's…it's all those things. You know, it…it makes, you know, surviving that period of time easier.  And…and sometimes you just need that outer push. And you also need it…I think you need the people around you that are honest with you. You know, what I mean? [Chris]: You don't need “Yes men. Yes.” [Nathan]: Yeah right. Yeah you need somebody to go tell you the truth. I mean that's, you know, that's, you know, my friends, the people I surround myself with will tell me, you know, what they think. And…and sometimes I don't want to hear it. [censored] A lot of times I don't want to hear it. But it is what I needed to hear. [Christian]: Sure. No one likes hearing the hard truth. [Nathan]: Yeah, no you know. [Chris]: But to be able to appreciate it though when it's in front of you. [Nathan]: Yeah. Yeah you're right. [Chris]: That's one of the hard…the hardest thing that I've found is when, you know, getting that criticism. Whe…when you just want to wall up and go into like active defence mode. Like just letting your body language relax. Having, you know, open gestures and trying to be open-minded to put yourself in the other person's shoes, and see what they're seeing.  [Nathan]: Right. [Chris]: And then trying to see if there's some corrective action that needs to be made there. That's…that's hard when you just go into like “Alright go ahead, give me the feedback because it's rare that I ever get feedback like this. So, you know, take advantage of it while you can.” [Christian]: Sure. Well it can be challenging too because, you know, no one's perfect and no feedback is gonna be perfect. So you have to like decide “OK what's an honest truth that I need to hear” versus “OK that part is kind of [censored]. I'm gonna not take that, you know, what I'll take, you know, kind of not throw the baby off the bathwater.” Like taking the truth where you find it whether that's in, you know, quote a rival or enemy, or that's in someone who's, you know, really close to you and has your best interest at mind. You know, like that could be…it can be challenging. Because, you know, typically I find that if you're playing it safe, there's gonna be a lot less friction and a lot less controversy and criticism. If you're really pushing the bounds, that's when things get tough and people can get ugly. So… [Chris]: Yeah. [Nathan]: You know, I know how to…at least I know how to do it. I know how to have a fight with myself. If that makes any sense. You find out [crosstalk] Yeah I know how to like… [Chris]: Elaborate on that. [Christian]: Yes do. [Nathan]: Because you've got to be willing to call your own [censored]. Right. You've got to be willing to kind of punch yourself in the face. Right. you've got to be… [Christian]: I need to watch conversations with you. [Nathan]: Yeah. Right. That's a staff meeting. Remember? It again it's, you know, you…it's like…I mean it sounds crazy but it's having that conversation in your head of “Hey Nathan, stop being a pussy and do what you know, what you need to do. Get your [censored] up off the couch. Or wake up on time. Or eat right. Or whatever it is. You're not doing these things. Stop…stop [censored] yourself.” And just having that honest, you know, that David Goggin [phonetics] said, you know, “You got to be able to look that man in the mirror.” Right. And that man in the mirror is, you know, me. And so if you can't have that honest fight, dialogue with yourself internally, I don't think it matters what anybody tells you then. [Christian]: Well the starting place for that is being self-aware. Like if you don't know yourself like you're gonna have a real tough time having that honest conversation. [Nathan]: Well most people can't do that though. They live in some [censored] fairyland. [Christian]: Well yeah, you know, I mean we all have our blind spots. Some people are more aware than…than others, you know. [crosstalk] The most important thing in life is…is being honest about that, you know.  [Nathan]: Right. Sorry. I don't know. You gotta find what works for you. I know what works for me. [Christian]: Yeah you…you be unique. [Nathan]: I'm good at doing that. Chris are we gonna wrap it up? [Chris]: Yeah so I think we…we hit on some good points. The…I think no matter where you are in your career you're gonna get hit with something that's gonna throw you off your game. You're gonna…you're gonna have a Nate moment where you got to be in front of the mirror and you got to kick yourself in the [censored].  You know, one of the things that I tell some of the new agents is, you're always gonna have a boss. And even when you're self-employed you still have a boss. It's the person in the mirror. And who do you want to work for? Do you want to work for a strong leader? Somebody who's going to step up and challenge the things that needs to be challenged to make sure that things are getting done that need to be done? Somebody that's gonna keep it on track? Or do you want to work for somebody who is just very lackadaisical and doesn't really care when you clock in?  And you have a boss, whether you're working for somebody else or yourself. So it's just a matter of making sure that you're doing the right things for you. When you get stuck in a rut, you got to pull yourself out of it. One way or another.  [Nathan]: Yeah, you know, Henry David Thoreau [phonetics] comes to mind. Sorry. Pulling out the big gun. But, you know, he said “What lies…what lies ahead of us and what lies behind us are small matters compared to what lies within us. And when you bring what's within you, out into the world, great things happen.” Right so, you know, I think you gotta remember what's inside. [Chris]: We need to set up Nate's…Nate's motivational quotes of the week. [Christian]: I know that's good. That's a good one. And as kind of closing thoughts…kind of reflecting on our conversation here. You know, obviously people's struggles are vary based on them, their personality, situation and what not. A lot of we've been saying is, you know, kind of “Don't give up. Keep trying. Push harder.” Yeah that kind of stuff. But I also want to say that it's not entirely up to you or it's not just about working hard or trying harder. Because sometimes, you know, you push too hard and you work too much and you get sick. And, you know, your body forces you to…to take a break. So I know for me one thing that's rejuvenating, and it can help me get out of a rut sometimes even when I feel like my rut is I have too much to do, is to act…intentionally take a break. Spend more time with the family. Unplug from work. Now some agents, you know, err on that side too much. Where, you know, spend too much time…they spend too much time relaxing. And not enough time working. I don't think that's our problem. And I think that's a lot of agents problems.  But give yourself permission to take a break, rejuvenate, spend time with family, you know, not always be…be working. Because sometimes that's all it takes to get out of a rut.  [Chris]: I couldn't agree with you more. And, you know, it's…sometimes it's hard for…for agents to take off, you know, an entire week from work. Just do a few long weekends every now and then. You don't have to…you don't have to take off a week or two weeks. Sometimes that's…that's not realistic. But make sure that your mental health is in check. And that you're taking some time to decompress and unwind and put things in perspective. What I've found is that when…when I'm able to do that, I'll come back with some new ideas. Because I'm not thinking about, you know, the day-to-day. I'll be able to just kind of, you know, day dream. Whatever it is. Read a good book and come back with, you know, a new perspective on what we're doing. So couldn't agree more with you Christian. Nate great points.  Everybody thank you so much for tuning in to this week's episode of re:Think Real Estate. If you haven't already ,please go to the website which is rtrepodcast.com. sign up for the newsletter so you never miss an episode, whenever we drop one, which is every single week. Thanks for tuning in everybody. We'll see you next week. [music]  [Chris]: Thanks for tuning in this week's episode of the re:Think Real Estate Podcast. We would love to hear your feedback so please leave us a review on iTunes. Our music is curtesy of Dan Koch K-O-C-H, whose music can be explored and licensed for use at dankoch.net. Thank you Dan. Please like, share and follow. You can find us on Facebook at Facebook.com/rethinkpodcast. Thank you so much for tuning in everyone and have a great week.  [music]  

Download this Episode In today's episode Chris and Christian briefly discuss their thoughts on home automation and smart technology. Let us know what smart technology you prefer in the comments! Rethink Real Estate Podcast Transcription Audio length 13:51 RTRE 56 –  Where's Tech Going? [music] [Chris] Welcome to re:Think Real Estate, your educational and hopefully entertaining source for all things real estate, business, news and tech.  [Christian]: I am Christian Harris in Seattle, Washington. [Nathan]: Hi, I am Nathan White in Columbus, Ohio. [Chris]: And I am Chris Lazarus in Atlanta, Georgia. Thanks for tuning in.  [music] [Chris]: Everybody and welcome back to re:Think Real Estate. I am Chris Lazarus here with Christian Harris. My man Nate is again out selling homes so he can't be with us here today. But we do want to make sure you're here with us getting the re:Think Real Estate treatment every Monday. So thanks for tuning in. Christian what is going on my man? [Christian]: Hi, I was just thinking about the future of the business and stuff and things and… [Chris]: Yeah what do you think… [Christian]: Things I am not doing because… [Chris]: What do you think it will be like in the future? Take a wild guess. [Christian]: Well I mean I spend a lot of time thinking about marketing, positioning that kind of stuff. [Chris]: OK. [Christian]: You know about 10 years ago podcasting was the new rage. You know it seems like real estate is finally as an industry is catching on to maybe podcasting as a viable medium. We have… [Chris]: Viable I don't know. It is a medium.  [Christian]: Viable like I mean the interwebs [phonetics]. It is not going anywhere. It might be here to stay. [Chris]: Yeah it is here to stay. [Christian]: Yeah you know I have been doing my own podcast for almost 3 years now and I felt like when I started that I was kind of like behind the curb. But I was just kind of thinking you know kind of the newer trends, and I think that there is a big…there is gonna a big push maybe or you know the masses are gonna start adopting kind of the smart homes stuff as opposed to just…I think previously it has been just kind of the more tech savvy people coming out of the fringes.  But I think with Alexa and Echos and Google homes and stuff become more popular as I think that audio content is gonna start becoming you know audio first content is gonna start becoming huge you know. I mean video is just so great but the problem with videos is you've gotta be dedicated to watching that video. And it is the only thing you can do. While audio podcasts are all flash briefing all that stuff that you can be doing something else. You could be driving a car or in your home you can be working. So I think it can be more…as our attention it continues to be demanded in multiple directions so it is gonna be more of a push in adoption for audio first stuff. [Chris]: Like audiobooks right?  [Christian]: What is that? [Chris]: It is like audio books. You just…The way our cars work now with the Bluetooth the moment you get out of the car it pauses, when you get back into the car it keeps going. You know, and you can be driving down the road of in your office and it just the continuity it stops and goes and keeps going and you are able to just load more content while you are doing other thing.  [Christian]: Yeap, exactly you know I was thinking about how this relate to real estate. You know how with the help of an agent or brokerage. And I think it is you know it could be another piece of the content marketing, positioning piece. You know, for me I have been thinking like OK you know I want to start like an Alexa flash briefing, right.  You know those are basically mini 1 to 2 minute…think of them as mini podcast and so you know if you have Alexa at home or Echo you could say…you could enable these skills and say you know, “Alexa play…play my flash briefings for the day”. And what would be a set up 1 minute Gary V sample and then you know social marketing with Chelsey Pites [phonetics] you know or whoever you subscribe to it will give you the little 1 minute blur you know. And the thing that is different about them is that you can't go back. It is kind of like it is today and that is it.  [Chris]: Yeah. [Christian]: So it is very try and forget but I am thinking like if this starts becoming the norm, the thing, you know if people start going to their Alexa for “Hey Alexa what is the weather, what is the traffic, what is the housing market doing?”. You know like there is gonna be more and more skills built out you know by brokerages, by industry leaders, by marketers you know, all that kind of stuff.  So how can you get in front of that? Because right now there is not very much in the real estate space. You know the couple I know about gear towards the real estate agents, geared towards the industry not towards consumers. So what would that look like? You know. [Chris]: So I am not too familiar with like Alexa and Google Home. And all that because frankly I don't want anybody listening to me and I don't need more tech for my kids to interact with right now. [Christian]: But they are already listening. [Chris]: I know I know. [Christian]: Here. Everything [laughter]. [Chris]: Yeah well so probably. But…so we haven't gone on board with the smart home yet. Our home is dump. It was built in the 70s. It is as dump as dump can be. But I did see an article the other day about some technology that is gonna become an outleap next year. OK so mid to late 2020 and we have a ton of cool things on the horizon.  So, Apple is gonna come out with their glasses. And I saw a report on this. And the things are super lightweight and I can just imagine right in 5 or 10 years you are driving down the street or you are in a showing, and you've got your real estate app on your phone and as you walk through the house it is giving you all the details about every room. It is giving you all the updates. You are driving down the street and there is a house for sale and just in your glasses, on your display it is telling you all the price, the bath and bed features, you know.  That is gonna be the world that we live in in a few years. It's…we're not far away from it and you know technology is exponentially increasing. That is not slowing down anytime soon. So like it's gonna be crazy where this all goes. I don't know about Alexa and all that. [Christian]: Sure. [Chris]: But you're probably right, pretty soon I am sure I will probably have one too.  [Christian]: Yeah well possibly I mean you know, it is hard to tell where the trend is gonna go. Because you know, Google has their glass and that was a major flop. Now maybe it was just ahead of it's time and people weren't ready for it. Maybe it is a platform issue you know, whatever, but yeah we will see. I mean I am definitely seeing the audio…audio first medium catching traction with masses. [Chris]: Good. [Christian]: It is not nearly as rare as the people have you know Google Home or an Echo. [Chris]: Well if you are listening to this episode, tell your friends to listen to this too because podcasts are cool y'all. [Christian]: Yeah and so initially…so my journey into the smart homes started with the Google Home. Right. [Chris]: Yeah. [Christian]: Because I think its…we bought a new house and we bought a Nest. And when I bought it had like a have and for 20 bucks you could get to buy a Google Home. You know medium or whatever I am not sure.  [Chris]: Yeah why not. [Christian]: And I was thinking “Hey you know Google versus Amazon of course the Google one is gonna be able to do way more”. But it doesn't. Like it's kind of weak. So…But you know as I experimented with the Alexa app which you can actually download for your phone and essentially you know use the same…the exact same commands and just integrate with your house, I started enabling skills and messing around with that.  And I am like “OK well this is cool”. And so I bought one of the nicer Echos because it has a better speaker because I didn't realize…well the big thing is it is able to like “Hey play jazz music or … you know whatever and it will start playing you know a Spotify channel or you know if it is Google it will play Google play or you know an Echo it will play your Amazon music.  And so you essentially have you know these diverse play list at your fingertips and so I wanted a decent sounding stereo and like the Sonos are actually integrated with the…with the Alexa platform.  [Chris]: The Sonos speaker? [Christian]: Yes. So there are some cool options out there but like that's what we use it for a lot but once you start getting like smart plugs and a Nest of [inaudible] stuff you can set up essentially you know, I don't know, work flows or what do they call it. Something different on the platform. But to say you know, “Alexa good morning and do you have a turn on your lights and start a soft jazz music and turn your heat up” or you know whatever you program it to do. You know. Now we could just make the argument “Hey we are getting lazy”.  But I think the future is going in that direction where I think the people are having to pull out their phones or their watches and like touch the screen is gonna become antiquated and too much of a pain. And they much really just be able to say “Hey do this thing” and have an app launch or have a series of functions happen. So for… [Chris]: Absolutely. [Christian]: So for real estate I think there is some huge, huge… [Chris]: And it is kind of cool. Like “Amazon prepare my house for a showing” and then everything kicks on.. the oil diffuser starts making it smell like cookies. The lighting dims, the music is playing. Like that would be a pretty cool Alexa app. [Christian]: Well yeah I mean and that is if you have a smart phone. It is easy I mean. [Chris]: Yeah. [Christian]: Set the workflow for this trigger starts playing this music station and let them. I think for real estate you know my point in this is I think it is starting to get beyond novelty to practical and mainstream. And I think the real estates… [Chris]: And it is inexpensive enough to do that now. [Christian]: Right exactly I mean there are nicer…I think the…I think the Echo starts at 40 bucks and the one I have has a decent speaker and it is like 110. You know like you spend hundreds on the Sonos but you know if you want a rocking audio system but…I think for real estate there is opportunities for things like flash briefings and different things that would put you as a leader in technology in providing value and giving up to the community.  You know it is just…And you could repurpose it from a Facebook live or Instagram live. Cut out the audio and there is your daily or weekly briefing or whatever, you know. So there is definitely ways to leverage content you are already creating for these new platforms to continue building your brand.  [Chris]: Sounds good. I will have to get on that Alexa new wagon. I am not there yet. We'll give it time. [Christian]: Yeah. [Chris]: Well I mean the only thing…[crosstalk]. Unfortunately you know my crystal ball is broken. [Christian]: Yeah is that why you are not rich?  [Chris]: Yeah it is one of those things you know where most predictions never come true but now it is like we are watching this app and… [Christian]: Sure. [Chris]: There is definitely something that happens over the next few years. And… [Christian]: Well right and I think the biggest challenge right now with where technology is, is lack of integration. Because you know Google has a proprietor thing. Amazon has theirs you know… [Chris]: They are gonna talk to each other. [Christian]: You know they're different IOT…internet…internet of things. You know I don't think there is a standard protocol so you will have to get stuff that is compatible otherwise you have 2 or  different systems that are smart separately but they don't integrate. Well that is more of a pain than it is worthy. You know. [Chris]: Yeah or you find some manufacturer that makes 2 versions. One that integrates with Alexa and one that integrates with Google. [Christian]: Sure. [Chris]: Pain in the butt. Well I mean it all makes sense. It is gonna be interesting to where this all goes. But I will be interested to see in a few years if you are not right, and that audio and flash briefings become a more important thing in real estate.  [Christian]: Well I am interested to hear what our listeners think. You know leave comment as in  the future how they are using this kind of leading edge technology whether that is audio or you know VR or AR you know. [Chris]: Absolutely. So please leave a comment. Let us know what you think. Send us a message. Contact us. Hit the form on the website rtrepodcast.com. Christian if you are right on this than maybe in the near future we need to step in some flash briefings together for the re:Think podcast.  [Christian]: Sounds good and you owe me a drink. [Chris]: Argh always. Get yourself over to Georgia and trust me drinks are on the house.  [Christian]: Alright. [Chris]: Alright everybody thank you so much for tuning in. This has been re:Think Real Estate. We'll catch you next week.  [music]  [Chris]: Thanks for tuning in this week's episode of the re:Think Real Estate Podcast. We would love to hear your feedback so please leave us a review on iTunes. Our music is curtesy of Dan Koch K-O-C-H, whose music can be explored and licensed for use at dankoch.net. Thank you Dan. Please like, share and follow. You can find us on Facebook at Facebook.com/rethinkpodcast. Thank you so much for tuning in everyone and have a great week.  [music]  

On this weeks episode of reThink Real Estate, we discuss ways to clear your mind and focus on your business. There are hundreds of headlines vying for our attention which serve as little more than a distraction to our businesses. We discuss our thoughts on what to pay attention to and what to ignore so that our businesses don't suffer. Rethink Real Estate Podcast Transcription Audio length 14:41 RTRE 55 –  Pay Attention to What Matters in Your Real Estate Business [music] [Chris] Welcome to re:Think Real Estate, your educational and hopefully entertaining source for all things real estate, business, news and tech.  [Christian]: I am Christian Harris in Seattle, Washington. [Nathan]: Hi, I am Nathan White in Columbus, Ohio. [Chris]: And I am Chris Lazarus in Atlanta, Georgia. Thanks for tuning in.  [music] [Chris]: Everybody and welcome back to re:Think Real Estate. I am Chris here with Christian. Nate can't join us today. He is too busy selling homes. What is going on Christian? [Christian]: Not much just running into the office after frantically dropping off my son at school and yeah trying to stay cool. What are we gonna talk about today? [Chris]: What is going on in real estate. There is some headlines out on Inman. Open Door picks up another 300 million dollars at a reported 3.8 billion dollar evaluation. Caldwell [phonetics] does some rebranding and agents how to become influencers.  [Christian]: Yeah I was really enjoying the comment section of the Caldwell [phonetics] branding. That is always gold you know seeing what people decide to what hill they decide to dive on [inaudible] [laughter] with rebranding and the broker decided to… [Chris]: Well brokerage that are not at and even agents…Everybody has an opinion and everybody wants to voice their opinion in trivial [censored]. I mean remember with NAR. NAR changed the logo last year. And it threw up such a sting that they changed it back.  [Christian]: Did they change it back? I didn't notice. [Chris]: Oh yeah yeah they…So… [Christian]: 100.000 down the drain. [Chris]: So they did a boxed R. The cube with the R on it. And then it threw such a sting that they got rid of it. They spend like 300 million dollars for some astronomical…  [Christian]: It was like 300.000. [Chris]: Yeah it was a lot of money. [Christian]: That's a lot of money for yeah, changing one R into a different type of R so… [Chris]: Yeah and then everybody hated it so… [Christian]: People do. It's funny as we're kind of going over the headlines of what is happening. What is getting all the buzz in real estate. You brought up a good point that all this stuff probably has nothing to do with my business or your business or any agents actually doing business. It's all distractions and shiny objects.  [Chris]: Yeah I mean for a…it gives people an excuse to not focus on doing what they need to do which is sell real estate. Or train their agents to sell real estate if you're a broker. You know it's like watching the local news right? It takes up a lot of time, but what is the same news every single day? Somebody died, somebody got robbed, something broke in the city and somebody is doing something crazy for consumers.  [Christian]: Sure. [Chris]: That is the same news every single day and people spend hours of their day, in the morning and the evening paying attention to that [censored]. [Christian]: Right. Well it is funny too I mean you know kind of running with that example. Because what we're talking about here is information, right? We're talking about our awareness of our world around us or what we considered the world around us. It is interesting if you do a little like kind of historic reading of like how technology changes, how we interact with each other and with technology you know like the value of information has changed from 100 plus years ago where the value was largely isolated to your local community. And it only had value if applied to your life directly. You know if like “What is the rainfall gonna be so I know what my crops are gonna be this year”. That's is what mattered. Nowadays most information is human neutral stories. Which means 99% of it has absolutely no bearing on your life whatsoever. [Chris]: What did…What did Breaderman [phonetics] write about today? And usually when he writes something it is pretty good. But you know like what is Zillow announcing. What evaluation is iBuyers gonna have now? And it all is… [Christian]: Sure in 10 years 60% of the market is gonna be iBuyers. So…That may or may not be true but what to do with my business today you know like some of that stuff can inform but by in large nothing comes of it and it doesn't really affect your stuff. Like you know so the question really becomes why do we get so easily distracted, wrapped around excel about stuff that doesn't help our clients or doesn't get us more business or doesn't grow our brokerage. It is just distractions… [Chris]: People need something to talk about. [Christian]: You mean today. Right. [Chris]: It gives people something to talk about at the water cooler. “Oh what about this? What about that?” But you know what, the water cooler doesn't make you money? Does it?  [Christian]: Yeah but you know it gives you that dopamine to be upset about something. Or enraged about something or worried. [Chris]: It allows people to feel about things that aren't important. [Christian]: Yeah. And I wouldn't say like these things aren't irrelevant. Necessary. But by in large it might affect things years down the road. But again you know it's energy. It's…You know you've got  a limited emotional and mental energy and response so much of it on Facebook or on this you know kind of what's the big distractor and whatever else.  As opposed to building something, doing our business, staying in our lane. Doing our thing. You know like when I was at a larger franchise yeah there is people shuffling around doing transactions but mostly it was people sitting around [censored] about other people's business or “Have you seen what that person is doing or that person is like”. What does that have to do with you? Like mind your own business you know.  [Chris]: “I think our broker is sleeping with the loan officer…[crosstalk]. I think our broker is sleeping with the loan officer”. “Really?” Yeah I mean think like that that those permeate offices and corrupt culture. And you know from a macro level it is important to understand where the industry is going. So that you know how to kind of steer and navigate the industry with your business. But for the most part every other day when you see a new evaluation all you need to know is venture capital funds are putting money at high buyers. That's it.  [Christian]: True. Yeah. Well for the average agent like you know if Compass is growing in a market or Open Door has you know some hundreds of million dollar you know the funding you know round fund how does that affect your business? You know maybe if your brokerage is thinking about the future and how you want to structure your business it could you know just looking at trends but I mean I think a lot of it comes back to you know, we've got limited time and resources. Why are we spending it on these things that don't directly impact us? [Chris]: It's easy. Because it is easy to talk about that. And it is harder to go in and put the work into growing our business and to talk about that. It's not…It's not cool to talk about the work that people don't want to do or that aren't doing. [Christian]: Trust me… [Chris]: And when you're at the water cooler and you're sitting there talking about “Oh I just made this call and that call” and people are like “Eh” and they clam up and they're crossing their arms because they don't talk about that because they're not making their calls. [Christian]: Sure. [Chris]: They're not out there prospecting. They're not talking about you know, the next best thing in growing their business. For a couple of reasons. So there is the idea of competition selling a lot of offices. They don't come up at their training and their culture from an abundant perspective. They think everybody is competing against one another and therefore they don't share ideas. And then you know the other side of that is they don't know what the [censored] they're doing. So they… [Christian]: I mean I think part of that…That is practically true but I think the other side of it is most agents know what they need to be doing but they're not willing to do it. [Chris]: Yeah. [Christian]: You know and so it comes down to why do so many agents hate being real estate agents [laughter]. You know they're not willing to like do the work. You know and thinking about this from a brokerage perspective, you know like I have had to think about whether the different models we could have. How much do we provide? Do we provide leads? Do we just provide systems? Do we provide nothing? You know and we try to do like this middle road of competitive commission split with the essential tools to help them be successful with serving their clients. [Chris]: Yeah.  [Christian]: But you know than there are some models that like provide you know leads and this and that. You know initially that is like “OK well that would be great if we got to a point when there is like abundance of incoming you know business that we could refer at those leads or whatever”. But at the end of the day if a brokerage is providing all that to their agents than what the hell do you need agents for if they're not…I mean what is their job if they can't even provide their own business? [Chris]: A brokerage at that point becomes a big team.  [Christian]: Right because essentially I mean that is what you're doing if you're providing leads. You're doing everything for that agent. They're just sitting there you know. [Chris]: Wrapped up and happy. [Christian]: Yeah they get it handed to them. It's like I mean the point of brining that up is you know what is the role of an agent if they're not willing to like do anything. If they're not willing to provide their own business, grow their business. Find new clients. You know than there can be a lot of different ways. That's not just I mean your classic cold call meeting. I mean you can do so many different things. But the point of it is you have to be doing certain actions everyday to move that ball forward. [Chris]: Oh yeah.  [Christian]: If they're not sure how to spend their time talking about the thread of Open Door or Compass or the NAR or Lumion [phonetics] Legal Battle or how that may change the industry like yeah that is interesting but it's not gonna help you in your business today, you know.  [Chris]: Definitely. I think that you hit it right on the money. If it is not gonna help you in your business today I don't think you need to be paying that much attention to it. Get back. Put the horse blinders on. Look down. One step in front of the other. And you know what a lot of agents don't do is they don't go out and try new things. They will just sit there and look at what other people are doing but they don't actually go out and try something on their own. [Christian]: Well they'll poop on it. They're gonna be like “Oh that is the stupidest thing ever. Until it starts working and they try to copy it. [Chris]: There was a…there was a video that I saw going around and you know gets mixed reactions. There is an agent. Erica Gotiwolf [phonetics] she did a home tour where her entire body was blurred out and looked like she was naked. I am sure she wasn't but she well picture it was naked doing a naked home tour.  A couple of days having that video out, property is under contract. She has 5 listing appointments and 2 referrals. There was a lot of negative feedback on that video but you know what half of the people really thought she was ballsy for doing it. And she got additional business out of it. You know I shared that example with my agents this morning. And low and behold they you know I think a light clicked and they started realizing you know what not everybody has to love what I am gonna do in order to be successful at this. So… [Christian]: Well and the reality is if you're doing something different or better you're probably getting negative feedback than positive. [Chris]: Definitely. [Christian]: And you just have to…You have to know that the people who you know the haters are people who are gonna be stuck in mud and go and hate anything that is new. Don't worry about them. You know if you're doing you know Sutton you know naked home tours, if the goal is to get more eyes in that listing for your client, that is affective. You know you called the stick or, you know, whatever but it was effective and aligned her wish people who likes the outside of the box marketing ideas so got her more business for her ideal client base. Who cares what people who don't understand that think. [Chris]: Absolutely. So I think the whole point of this episode is don't pay attention to everything that is in the headlines in real estate because it is going to distract you everyday. It's all the same stuff. Somebody has gotten more of an evaluation. Somebody is telling you how you can become an influencer. Somebody is saying that this company did something else. Focus on your business and just the how…if you pay enough attention to the headlines you don't understand where the industry is going. Don't worry about all the shiny objects. [Christian]: I mean at the end of the day I wanna say…You know I don't want to say “Don't pay attention to this stuff” but just be intentional about how much time you're spending. I mean I know like people who are really intentional and really killing it on social media they're not doing it that way because they're on social media all day but they're doing it because “This half hour is dedicated to me building my social media” and they don't touch it the rest of the day. So they're actually productive. Do the same thing with these headlines. “OK here is my half hour to read the most sensational headlines and then move on to my day”.  [Chris]: All right. Thank you so much for tuning in to this week's episode of re:Think Real Estate. Stick with us. Go to rtrepodcast.com. Make sure you sign up for our newsletter so you get notified every time a new episode drops. Thank you so much for tuning in and please make sure that you give us a 5-start review on iTunes. We'll catch you next week.  [music]  [Chris]: Thanks for tuning in this week's episode of the re:Think Real Estate Podcast. We would love to hear your feedback so please leave us a review on iTunes. Our music is curtesy of Dan Koch K-O-C-H, whose music can be explored and licensed for use at dankoch.net. Thank you Dan. Please like, share and follow. You can find us on Facebook at Facebook.com/rethinkpodcast. Thank you so much for tuning in everyone and have a great week.  [music]  

Download this Episode There are so many different needs that individual real estate agents have for their business. Many agents need detailed support and guidance in building and operating their business. Others need a framework that they can operate their business within that will lead to greater predictability in their income. Each agent is different within the real estate space and Brokers should understand how they can tailor their model to match different needs of agents. What do agents want from their broker? The re:Think Real Estate Podcast focuses on different aspects of the real estate industry. We share stories of amazing agents that defied the odds to create a name for themselves in the industry. We also share best practices for what works for us in our daily lives. Tune in every week to hear a new episode. Oh, and while you're at it please leave us 5 STAR review on iTunes! Real Estate Podcast Transcription Audio length 29:39 RTRE 51 – What Do Real Estate Agents Want? [music] [Chris] Welcome to re:Think Real Estate, your educational and hopefully entertaining source for all things real estate, business, news and tech.  [Christian]: I am Christian Harris in Seattle, Washington. [Nathan]: Hi, I am Nathan White in Columbus, Ohio. [Chris]: And I am Chris Lazarus in Atlanta, Georgia. Thanks for tuning in.  [music] [Chris]: Everybody and welcome back to re:Think Real Estate. I am Chris Lazarus here with Christian Harris and Nathan White and we're so glad to have you along for the next 30 minutes. Guys what is going on? [Christian]: Just trying to stay warm. It's snowing again in 2019 in Seattle. It's actually pretty bad so it's like adages of snow and lots of hill lots of nice… [Nathan]: Yeah I guess…It's tougher for you guys in Seattle with your skinny jeans that come up past your ankles and getting wet and you not knowing what to do. [Chris]: It was hard tracking to the local coffee shop this morning right? [Christian]: Yeah. I am a steady guy in the eye. [laughter]. [Nathan]: My Fedora blue is off in the heavy snow and I didn't know what to do. [Christian]: I got my flannel and my…down. [Chris]: I don't know if I can make it to the grocery store for more almond milk.  [Christian]: You can come here and try to drive down in the 18% grade in the ice and see how you do. [Nathan]: When I went to pick a granola for the day care it was really challenging. [crossover talking] [Christian]: It must have been really nice living in the woods and having… [Nathan]: It was a great episode. Guys I gotta go [laughter].  [Christian]: That's a little [inaudible] I get it. [Chris]: Thanks for tuning in to re:Think Real Estate. We'll catch you…No I am just kidding. So no what are we talking about this week Christian? [Christian]: Let's talk about what agents want or what we think agents want. Or what agents think they want but then they find out they don't really want that. [Nathan]: This is great since I am an agent and I can't wait to think what 2 brokers think we want or at leats…[laughter]. [Christian]: Well we're also agents. I mean technically we're brokers in Washington but…you know I know there's things that I want which is why I set up my brokerage the way I did. But then you also have the… In my experience you kind of have like what agents say they want, what they think they want and then you actually find out what they want. Because you provide them all the things they say they want and they don't use them. Or they still go somewhere else because they're lured by something else sexy and shiny. And then realize the grass isn't actually greener. So I think it's actually interesting conversation to have. What do you guys think? [Chris]: Well I think that you know…for that is gonna depend on where the agent is in their career.  [Christian]: Correct and what they want. [Chris]: You're got all new agents. You've got all different types of brokerages. You know your new agent is gonna need a lot more than your experienced agent so where do you want to start first? [Christian]: Yeah I mean yeah I would say there is probably you know on the spectrum 3 major groups of agents I would say. There's the agent who doesn't need the help, doesn't want the help, just wants a low fee, low cost structure to do their own thing.  [Chris]: OK. [Christian]: That's fine that's gonna be like Nathan, you know, what you're doing. You know you started at KW you got your feet under you and kind of went out to do your own thing. You know, after you figured it out.  And I think there is the bulk of agents which is kind of in the middle of. They want some support of some sort whether that's access to the broker for questions or marketing or CRM or systems or something. They're gonna want some sort of support and they're willing to pay up a higher split for that.  And I guess you could say maybe like Redfin or something is kind of the other, I don't know if I would say other end of the extreme, where it's employee based. It's not independent contractor based you know. So you're got no anonymity because you're not an independent contractor. You're playing your part in the cog as a cog and a corporation. [Chris]: I think…I think those are on the grand scheme of things. Because most offices don't operate on employee bases. I think we can probably categories those like team members. Those that don't want to build their own business, just want leads provided to them, go out close to sale, be a sales agent.  [Christian]: there you go so their value that they're looking for is being part of a team.  [Chris]: OK. [Christian]: Yep. [Chris]: Well let's start with the…with the bulk of the agent. What do you think most agents want in a brokerage Christian? I am putting you in the hot seat first. [Christian]: Yeah that…It's…As I figured out or trying to figure out this independent brokerage thing you know and discovered things as you know agents have come and gone…I think what they want or what they realize that they want or need…I don't know. You cut that out [laughter].  I think what agents come to value is some sort of system in the organization because they realize very quickly that most of them are not organized. And so they're gonna have that provided to them without them having to figure out technology and CRM and that kind of stuff. But I think it's something that a lot of agents have to discover. It's probably not something that they value up front.  You know they have to discover “OK I am getting business and I am bringing it with my head cut off you know and I cannot really handle so much because I am scattered, you know.” I mean that's…That was kind of my idea. I mean that's what I saw was agents want to be in front of people. There's not necessarily systems, processes organized. You know, that kind of stuff. So the whole idea is you come here, we provide that so you can go out and be in front of people and not have to worry about thinking you know the back end stuff. [Chris]: So basically all the behind the scenes taken care of so they can focus on selling. [Christian]: Yes and no. Actually I think it's not initially valued until they realize that they're not good at it. And they need it. So…It's not sexy so…but I think some things are sexy, they're a little more obvious. Would be like marketing. Like you know are there options for me to have a listing that I don't have to create from scratch. You know.  Whether that's internal marketing team or some sort of template platform. You know that they provide it for you. Or social media post of something. Something that makes it easy to get in front of potential clients or you know marketing stuff for your…for your buyers, for your sellers. That sort of thing.  I think a big one which is…seems pretty universal is access to the broker when they have questions. You know so…because I have had people come here say “I can't…it takes 3 days for my broker to get back to me”. You know and I am like “That's kind of ridiculous you know, you have one job as a broker. You know”. Technically I mean that's kind of the big thing it's like supporting the agents when they have legal questions. Contract questions [laughter]. You know if you're not doing that what the hell are you doing? You know.  [Chris]: Nate what do you think? [Nathan]: There's is many things here. Like you know me. I am the bear bonds. I don't moat, I don't need all the fluff. You know… [Christian]: Oh fluff huh? [Nathan]: You know what I mean with it [laughter]. [Christian]: I know what you're saying. [Nathan]: But you talk about like we go back to this you know agents being so busy, right. So you know an agent says “Well I need all this, right…Or…”. But than they don't actually use it. And so I…I…like I was in that box. Like I had all the stuff but I didn't use it. So why am I paying for it. So… [Christian]: Sure. [Nathan]: There are so many different directions you can go. You're right on the types of people I think that the sharks like myself that you know or hunter killers, whatever you wanna call us that you know we're happy going out and hunting and eating what we kill and that's…We really enjoy that.  And then there's that middle of the pack you know I call it your dad bought group, right. You know they're just happy standing in lane [laughter] and not doing anything. And that belly is gonna appear and they're not gonna be much about it. They're comfortable. That's what we are as a society. Were a [censored] comfortable. So they're not gonna challenge anything at all right. They're just gonna say “Yeah I don't mind giving out 60-40 split. I am good I am getting my CRM that I am not using.” All this [censored] that they're not really using but they're telling themselves they're happy. What they are they're just comfortable and they're not truly uncomfortable and I think to be a hunter killer or shark you've gotta be comfortable being uncomfortable.  And then you've got that far end of the spectrum of that person who's got really no ambition to me or they just…they don't know what the [censored] they're doing and they're on that employee you know plan. So go for it. You know that's happy. And that's fine. I…I love the middle of the road pack. There's you know they're great and they do a great job and people have different circumstances right. And I don't want to feel like I am bashing that middle of the road pack. Why? If you're a mum or a father, a single parent whatever it may be, you may need all those things to support you. Maybe you can't get out and you know be the hunter killer that you really want to be. Which I would challenge and say you could. But maybe that is just what works for you at this given time.  So you know I could…Again I could talk about a lot of different things. When I started I wanted leads. I wanted leads and I wanted to know how to talk to them. Converse to them. And become more educated and knowledgeable. That's what I wanted. So than once you get past that phase I think than there's the evolution. You kind of have that fork on the road to go down this path and you stay there.  And then you're just happy in your zone and you go “Well I wanna go this way”. And you go the opposite direction. So I think it depends on the type of individual or personality you are and I think it depends on where you are in your career. I mean hack, I might get to the later stages of this and go “Man I am good you know what”. And join a team and get comfortable and take a 60-40 split and be happy, right. I don't know.  [Christian]: Yeah I mean I'll push back a little bit on the characterization of the middle. Because to me it's such a broad…I think most agents would wall into that as far as agents are gonna line in franchise or whatever.  There is a good size group of them that are comfortable that aren't doing anything, that don't have a sense of urgency. You know I would say that's probably the same group that you know brings industry down as far as you know ill trained, ill experienced. Those are always gonna be there you know until we radically change, you know, where the bar is in the industry. Training or something. You know.  But I would say that I think there is a mischaracterization just because you're kind of in that middle, that you're not hungry. It doesn't mean it. Yeah I know plenty of agents who are killing it because they're hungry and because they're using…Because they're organized or you know have a team or whatever you know. I think you can be successful kind of doing that alone like you know not having a CRM or being an organized or refusing… [Nathan]: I am organized. [laughter] [Christian]: Not having a CRM and that sort of thing. But…Because I think if you're driven you're gonna be successful. Just a matter of you know kind of that quality of life or that you know…running with your head cut off. How much business can you handle. How much do you want to handle versus kind of having it…it systematized whatever so.  I think you can do it like you're doing it or be in the middle so to speak. And have that stuff provided to you. But I think you also hit an interesting point about leads. You know a lot of agents are willing to give up you know, splits because they want leads handed to them. And I am kind of divided on that because I mean in general my thinking is “Well if you as an agent can't figure out how to get your own business, what good are you? Like that's your job, is to figure out the business. What the broker is handing to you, the leads, the business, what do you need agents for? Like they did the hard work for you, you know.” The contract once you've been through the process is easy.  So I mean that's just kind of me. So that's not something we do and theoretically it's something that maybe we'll try to figure out or whatever but it's kind of ideologically speaking you know I don't want lazy agents that just want the business handed to them. You know I want sharks like yourself [laughter]. I want people that are motivated that are gonna go figure it out you know. [Nathan]: So than what would you provide to me as a shark? Like you know I do good business. So you're here in the Ohio market. You want me. You're like “Man I need Nathan on my team”. Or “How do I make this happen?” What are you gonna give me or what are you gonna provide me that's gonna change… [Christian]: I don't think that you would find value in the things that we provide so I don't know if that would be a good fit. Because for us is you know you come here, we give you your email, your CRM training. Back office stuff. If you're like “I don't need that I have my own thing.” well you're probably not gonna see the value in this let's give the culture we provide. You just want to go your own thing.  And I have had agents that said “Hey I don't think you're a good fit because all you want to do is do your own thing and you don't want any part in like the Sea-Town culture or what we give you. You don't find value in that so you want to negotiate a different split. Like it's not how we do it. You know it's not what we're looking for”. So it comes down to you know, what the agent values and what the brokerage's strength is.  [Nathan]: But you didn't pitch. You didn't pitch me. You didn't say… [Christian]: No I am not pitching you. I want agents that see the value that we bring. I am not gonna settle to an agent. I don't. I don't…I don't settle. I don't do pitches. I mean like this is what we do. This is what we're about. If you want to be part of it great. If you don't you know there's just no brokerage down there that won't give you anything. Wont charge anything either. [Chris]: So I think you both hit on some good points. But what are the key things that for…I think you both missed is humans are…We have a pack mentality. We want to belong to something that is bigger than ourselves. It helps with motivation. It gives us a sense of purpose in our lives. And I think the majority of agents choose their brokerage based off of how they…how it aligns with who they are personally. Yeah you have people that go out and do their own thing. But even the people that are…are attending you know their meetings in a video game are still a part of something that they feel aligns with their core values.  Another thing that I think is extremely valuable in the brokerage stand point is that a lot of agents don't know what they don't know. Their…their job is to make a living. Their job is to serve their clients and to go out and to make sure that the client is getting the best experience, that they are generating a referral and repeat business, that they're able to be the shark and to go out and get new business. Their job is not to follow industry trends. It's hard to do that stuff when you're doing a full time sales job. To be able to see what's on the horizon and look at the industry from you know, 30 thousand feet or 100 thousand feet versus being on the ground in the business are 2 completely different skill sets. And you know there are agents that don't see value in that. There are a lot of agents that they don't care one way or another because they just want some leads and they want to go out and sell. But then I think a vast majority of the agents really want to know what's going on and to have all the data that is collected really put into a form that is presentable and easily understood so that they can relate that to their clients and reinforce that they are a true expert.  I think that there is a lot of value that can be brought by the brokerage on this level and I think that a lot of agents when they realize that that is one of the core focuses of an office can really determine whether or not that is something that fits in line with what they want.  Now you guys both talked on leads and leads are a funny thing because leads can make a good agent great. Leads can help a new agent increase the size of a database very quickly. And if when they're done right form a brokerage stand point leads are not about giving handouts because for example our lead team has extremely strict requirements on their metrics and if their metrics aren't met their leads will be paused until they're able to complete the metrics that are required. At that time they will be reinstituted. And if they continue not living up to that message I've got a waiting list of people that want to be on that team.  And it's not to say that everything is done at a higher split. The leads are because we have a cost associated with that. But mostly the agents that are doing the leads they're only paying a higher split on the leads that we generate. Everything else is on their normal split for performance. So it just gives them an incentive to…if as a broker I can give some of my agents an extra 10 or 15 thousand dollars a year in their pocket that's business that they otherwise would not have had, and increase their database for future business down the road than I am doing my job well.  And if I can do that without you know hindering their ability to grow their business and be successful I am doing my job well. And when we're doing that along with building a culture and giving people that cause that they can believe in and that mentality of belonging than I am doing my job well. Now those are the things that I think a broker needs to do.  [Christian]: Yeah. I think you're exactly right. That kind of that culture I mean what we usually lead with as a brokerage is the culture and the experience. You know. And the experience is through technology blah blah blah, and things that we provide but the culture you know is not something that is replicatable.  [Chris]: No, culture takes years to develop. [Christian]: Yeah it's good. [Chris]: And it can be killed with one bad action. [Christian]: Right. And it's something that you know I see you know anecdotally I have seen here as far as…you know I can't speak about culture per se but definitely that hurt mentality you know I have seen you know form a distance like the brokerage I started off with like it started off…Because they're some big franchises you know within 2 miles of my office here. And you know I have seen you know the manager team left you know that brokerage, that franchise and went to another franchise and than you started seeing just and exodus of agents from that brokerage to the other brokerage just I mean just huge turn over in agents that had been with this brokerage for you know 10 years, 15 years.  And it wasn't because this other brokerage provides something better. It was because they like the people. Everyone is going there. That's the place to be. You know like it wasn't a tangible thing it was a more local grasp grip culture and the people you know. And you know and somebody I am trying to hack this. I am like how you know the people we're been bringing on they come to me already sold. They're like “We love what you're doing, the philanthropy, the culture. Innovation. We wouldn't be part of this.” But they're new agents and I am fond of that but that takes a lot of work up front to train and mentor and stuff.  What I am trying to hack you know is like how do I increase my ratio of experienced agents to brand new green agents? If you figure it out let me know [laughter]. Because it comes down to what the Sea-Town have that X, Y franchise doesn't have or can't provide. You know why would they leave some place they're comfortable and then no people as established brand or name whatever to this unknown scrappy indie brokerage?  [Chris]: Yeah so our focus is primarily on new agents. We...We put a ton of effort and time into training. So we have a lot of experienced agents that came to us back in the day when we were…just starting out. And our costs were so low that people came over. You know I bet back in the day Nate you would have been paying less with us at Sellect than whatever you're paying now. And we had to go away from that.  But interestingly as we got away from that we moved towards splits that were more in line with the services that were offering performance increased. Agents were making more now paying us a little bit more than the ever did. When they were paying us hardly little…hardly anything. And you know 100% of nothing is still nothing. And when we focused on production and training and we increased the splits people see a lot more value in what we do and our per person productivity has gone up since 2015. It was around 300.000 per person. Now it's a little over…Just under 1.1 million per person. So performance is tied to it. Yeah. [Christian]: Yeah I mean that's an interesting point because that is something that we're starting to try to do. Because before it was just kind of me doing 1 on 1. And I am a big believer in training support you know because my experience was you go to a brokerage, the brokerage is like “Welcome aboard. You know you have a heartbeat, good luck. Let us know if you need anything”.  And maybe would provide some training here and there but nothing systematized. Nothing is priorities. You know there's no organization to any of it. And as a new agent you don't know what you're supposed to ask. I mean like “OK I have a contract question.” “Do you have a specific question to ask me?”. You know that's not…”Teach me how to…how to business plan and how am I gonna generate you know, build my business”.  So we're starting to do more on that. I am very involved in that and since we're coming again to your point Nathan like agents you know, may say they want one thing but than their action maybe betray that they don't really value that. So we've had you know some agents sign up for you know our new training and stuff but you know there has been push back of “Oh it costs money?” And “Oh I don't have the time”.  And I am like “Hey listen like you put…you get out of it what you put into it and if you don't want to put money into it, you don't want to put time into it you're obviously not serious you know.” I am willing to work around scheduling stuff but I am not gonna pay for you. Like you know. So that kind of stuff can be difficult. Kind of trying to figure out who is a good fit and who is worth investing in versus they did. You know. [Chris]: So I've got a question for you Nate. So being in the style of brokerage where you're the hunter killer, you're the shark. You're going out and doing everything for your business, where are you getting the insight, the direction? Where do you find time to find that on your own without you know hindering your sales business? [Nathan]: Insight direction into what? [Chris]: Future of the industry. Strategy where you need to position yourself in the next few years?  [Nathan]: Well… [Christian]: The pivoting. [Chris]: We did an episode on pivoting. [Nathan]: I mean there is more than 1 real estate podcast in the world [laughter]. [Chris]: No no. [Nathan]: I am just kidding. [Chris]: I mean why would you say something like that? [Nathan]: It's amazing what is free out there right? You know again through reading alone and listening to other podcasts or you know you can gain a path of knowledge. The other side is to talk to other agents. You know there's…I have a few colleagues here you know I am very close with. And they're not at our brokerage at all but you know if I got an issue, a question “What would you do? What do you think?”. You know I call them.  You know you play in a playground and, you know, of like people and I think it helps grow. You know, its…You know secret agents don't make money. Well secret agents aren't gonna learn. If you don't go and mix and mingle and network with people that are like you. And it doesn't have to be a ton but you're not gonna learn anything right. You have to go to a place that does have a culture of sharing ideas and not the “It's all out for me”.  You know I applaud KKW when I was there. I had that culture you know with the people that I at least worked alongside. So I think that's important. You know there's plenty of ways. Again I think it's agents. Sometimes we love to act like we're so busy but we're not. I think it's about prioritizing your day and having a daily work flow and this is a job.  So many people sometimes you know, how do you do again this is a job but it's one I love, it's one I am passionate about. If you're passionate about something you're gonna learn more about it. You guys all know I love to run. Right. I know a [censored] lot about running. [laughter] I am not good at it. I am not good at it but I know a lot about it right. So…You've loved… [Chris]: Wait what are you talking about you're not good at it? [Nathan]: I don't know well that's the good thing about running. You…To be good all you have to do is be able to run right?  [Chris]: Yeah. You start moving you don't stop. [Nathan]: Right exactly. But something you're passionate about you're gonna be inclined to learn more about it. So if you're an agent listening to this and you're not truly passionate about what you do, if you don't truly care maybe you need a different occupation. [Chris]: Or you need to talk to somebody who is passionate about what they're doing and you see if some of that can rub off on you. [Nathan]: Yeah that's a whole episode of “Your why”.  [Chris]: Yeah you gotta find your why. [Nathan]: Yeah. [Chris]: Well I want to give kudos to you because most agents, and I think you're kind of the out wire there as Christian said earlier. Most agents don't have the time or the desire or just the energy to go out and do those things, mix and mingle and have discussions with people in the industry. And for those people that's where a solid broker comes in.  For the handful that can do it on their own we're got plenty of brokers that have a solo shop and they're producing. They own a firm. They do great work, they do great jobs. So it doesn't always take a brokerage. But they're…You've gotta have some sort of community or pack mentality. You've gotta have something you believe in, something you can grow with. And something that you can aim for.  Alright everybody than you so much for tuning in to this episode of re:Think Real Estate. I think it was a great talk. If you haven't already, please go to rtrepodcast.com that's for re:Think Real Estate. So rtrepodcast.com. Sign up for our newsletter. You will be notified every time a new episode drops. Also please, please, please go to iTunes, Google Play and leave us a 5-star review in Spotify or wherever you want to find us so that people know that we're good. I don't know. Thanks for tuning everybody. Have a great week.  [music] [Chris]: Thanks for tuning in this week's episode of the re:Think Real Estate Podcast. We would love to hear your feedback so please leave us a review on iTunes. Our music is curtesy of Dan Koch K-O-C-H, whose music can be explored and licensed for use at dankoch.net. Thank you Dan. Please like, share and follow. You can find us on Facebook at Facebook.com/rethinkpodcast. Thank you so much for tuning in everyone and have a great week.  [music]  

Ever wonder why some people leave a bad taste in your mouth after meeting them? Successful marketing requires building a relationship with your audience. Many real estate professionals avoid this and instead grab a bullhorn and shout at their audience expecting the same results. Tune in for today's episode to hear us talk about how to NOT be annoying in your interactions with the public. The re:think real estate podcast is hosted by Chris Lazarus, Nathan White, and Christian Harris. Thank you for tuning in. Please subscribe so you don't miss an episode. Audio length 30:15 [music] [Chris]: Welcome to re:Think Real Estate, your educational and hopefully entertaining source for all things real estate, business, news and tech. [Christian]: I am Christian Harris in Seattle, Washington. [Nathan]: Hi, I am Nathan White in Columbus, Ohio. [Chris]: And I am Chris Lazarus in Atlanta, Georgia. Thanks for tuning in.  [music] [Chris]: Everybody welcome back to re:Think Real Estate. I am Chris Lazarus here with Christian Harris and Nathan White. What's going on guys? [Christian]: Hey fellas what's happening? Alright [laughter]. Today we're gonna talk about being annoying [laughter].  [Chris]: That's a great intro for that Christian. Before we get started Nate how is your CRM doing? [Nathan]: Yeah…anyway… [Chris]: [laughter] Alright. So yeah, we definitely want to talk about being annoying and how not to do that. Today's episode we're talking about marketing. And our good friend Joe Rand over from JoeRand.com just came out with an article a few days ago which was “Stop being annoying-The 3 phases of communication technology and why nobody likes us”. So great article. Nate you found this. Why don't you tell us a little bit about it? [Nathan]: Well I didn't find it. It happened…you know I found it, whatever. I saw it. It was funny because I was having thoughts like Joe was having and Joe was much better with words than I, that's why he has a couple of books right? But I just…I was getting annoyed because like I get on Facebook right and it's just…it's just…It's not even Facebook anymore. What we used to know right. It's kind of like you know how MTV changed. It's all marketing. It's just marketing. And a lot of it it's realtors who won. I mean I'm not…I hate to be that guy to pick on our industry but again we got a content. It's horrible but again you know whether it's from…And I mean I am looking here right now. Some golf advert to realtor, to realtor, to realtor. Like it's just nonstop and it's poor. And I don't know I feel like we find a good you know what would you call it, a medium, and than we go and ruin it and people hate us for it. And Joe you know wrote the article about how to stop being annoying. He offers a 3-part solution. Phase 1 the excitement. Phase 2 solicitation. 3 is the protection.  [Chris]: Let's talk about that. [Nathan]: Well let's talk about it but I want to get to the point real quick on this and then we go back to the 3 phases.  And then he offers he says “What's the solution?”. He says “Well we can't do anything about everyone else”.  I agree 100%.  “But we can police our own behavior”. Instead of using email, social media, phones to make annoying calls that only serve our own interest we need to focus our outbound marketing efforts on providing a service to other people. Think about what they need not what you need.  [Christian]: But being client centric? What. That's crazy. Thinking about other people.  [Chris]: I've never heard of that before.  [Nathan]: I don't think we've ever talked about that have we? [Chris]: No it's completely out of line with this show.  [Nathan]: So Phase 1. Phase 1 is excitement. [Chris]: And so phase 1 like I think he compared it to people getting an answering machine right. Everybody got an answering machine and everybody wanted to see the red light blinking and then telemarketers just ruined it. And then nobody has an answering machine now and people barely check their voicemail. [Christian]: Sure I mean I think the idea is you know I mean there's quite a number of books on you know technology and evolution of it and this plays right into that theme of when something new comes out it's exciting. Everyone wants it. You know it goes back to like the days of pre-TV with you know door to door salesman. You know like being at home is boring so people wanted people to come to the door.  And then that got saturated and you know you had the mail. People enjoyed getting mail and then you know solicitations and advertisement got in the mail and now people you know hover over the recycling bin throwing away mail.  And you know now you're getting that you know with social media. Like you used to enjoy getting on social media and checking in with friends and whatever and now you have to whip 30 you know half of it is solicitations from agents or other marketers, you know, as agents. We're getting solicited for leading this or growing your business that you know by who knows who. You know so self-described gurus. And you know now you have to filter there. Now you know it takes away the joy of what once was. Looking forward to getting online or looking forward to getting the mail or looking forward to someone getting to your house. Now it's annoying. [Chris]: Yeah we find something that we enjoy. We get excited about it. New technology and all the advertisers start catching on to it. They start saying “Oh we can reach people in a new way through this technology”.  And then they start soliciting and soliciting and hounding us left and right through the mediums that we're enjoying. And that's the end game right? Because that's how these platforms make money. It's though advertising. They're advertising companies.  And then what happens next that's what Joe says is phase 3. That's protection. We stop paying attention to them. We develop coping mechanisms to not be solicited and not listen or not pay attention to the ads that are coming on. And I think that this is a big reason why our attention span has now become that's less than a goldfish. Because that has been a coping mechanism to pay…to not pay attention to all of these solicitations that we're getting.  [Christian]: Yeah I mean I would say that part of it is just a medium of social media. Not necessarily being advertised. You know it's you know there's another big leaf. There is a message in that medium so it's not just the only thing they're consuming is the message you know but consuming a message via print versus auditory, versus you know social media. You know like it's gonna do different things in your brain. You respond differently you know.  But it doesn't help that we now have all this extra white noise to filter through to get to what we actually wanna see which is typically you know friends and family and not solicitors trying and sell us something. [Chris]: Absolutely and so let's talk about how we cannot be annoying. You know I friend people in real estate all the time and last week somebody reached out on Facebook, sent me this message. This person is in real estate.  This is what they said “Hey Christopher I almost didn't message you because I don't want to come across spammy. LOL. My wife and I have had some great result with “Thrive”. More energy [cough] mental clarity, weight management. I even sleep better. It might be for you and I think or it might not and that's OK. Just wanted to share what's working for me. Would you be open to more info?” There's absolutely nothing of value that that person delivered to me. And it's just… [Nathan]: If you're not sleeping well it could be of value. [Chris]: Well do I want more energy or do I want to sleep better? I mean does…is it just me or those 2 are completely different ends of the spectrum?  [Nathan]: [censored] I just want my kid to stay in his bed at night and not interrupt my sleep so if they can fix that for me in that email. [Chris]: [laughter] I mean it's what has become of people. And that person is in real estate and they are paddling a multi-level marketing product on the side. I mean do you think that their real estate marketing may end up following similar pattern? I don't think it's a farfetched to actually see that leap being made. [Nathan]: I think-no go ahead sorry. [Chris]: No I mean I…kind of the point I kind of make here is if you're just going out and peddling something in front of somebody they're gonna ignore you. Those are the coping mechanisms that we have developed now. It's no longer…like we don't like being sold things.  [Nathan]: No I am attracted to the brands or things that eat my curiosity. That I don't feel like they're jammed down my throat.  And so I'll use a perfect example and in no form or shape I represent them but recently I have been doing the Purple Carrot Meal Delivery right. And I just hashtag it on my Ohio running realtor Instagram. You know “#purplecarrotblablabla”. The…I take pictures of the food which is really good. But I have had more people reach out to me just through organically saying “Hey can you tell me a little bit more about Purple Carrot?”.  I am not…I am not on there going “Purple Carrot is the bomb bla bla bla”. I put what the meal is. I state you know whether it is cous cous or whatever it may be, insert a joke there and take a really nice picture and then put it out there.  And I have had a lot of people private message me or DM me or whatever you wanna call it and say “Hey can you tell me more about it?”. I am not forcing it down anybody's throat. I am not saying you have to have this”. But it has created interest.  I am a brand ambassador for Prevail Botanicals. You don't see my thread on Facebook with Prevail every day. We use a hashtag. We don't jam it down your throat. Have that people say “Hey what stuff do you use with your sore muscles and your AT pains from running and bla bla bla” and I say “It's Prevail”.  If they wanna know more than they'll ask but I feel it's the same with real estate. Like if somebody is really genuinely interested in real estate they're gonna ask you. Just...you don't have to jam it down people's throats. At least I believe that you're a [censored] realtor. Like just I don't know I feel like we're so over the top. Like over the time. Like “What do you like better this back porch or that back porch?” “What I like is when you don't post [censored] like that personally but…”  [laughter] Like nobody cares right. I just…They don't care about interest rates unless they are buying a house. They don't care about houses unless they are buying a house. So that's me and it works for me. It doesn't mean it works for everybody else. And my colleague, Mr. Harris, has his hand up over there so I am gonna let him talk on that. I am gonna thank you Christian.  [Christian]: Alright. I am gonna play the devil's advocate here for a sec. What if someone…What if someone is listening and thinking “Well how do we know they're real estate agents there?” Where is the balance between letting someone know and being in sales and annoying when you talk about houses? [Nathan]: Because there is a way to be subtle about it. Like you know…like I don't…I just…like when I go to a closing the biggest thing that I do other than my hashtag that's on a separate entity but I check into a closing and I put “Doing a closing thing”. People know…I mean most people know, I don't want to say everybody, but they know that I am a realtor or that in some way I am doing that business. And there's other ways.  I don't know. I just don't want my social media feed filled with that crap and guess what I have taken the option of doing. I have taken the choice of filtering all that out. You know. It's that old advertisement. You don't like something on the TV change the channel. I have changed the channel. So… [Chris]: I think it all comes down to the message. Marketing is required. The marketing is the…it is the whole process of staying top of mind in our sphere but there are different ways that we can do it right.  So an example is, Nathan you just brought up rates. Your typical buyer doesn't care about the rate. Unless they're very savvy. They care about the payment. So if your post on social media “Up rates just jumped again” and all you talk about is the rate than that doesn't really provide any value to them. That your target audience may know that you have something to do with real estate but they're not really paying attention to that message.  On the other hand if you say “Rates just jumped again” so…and then you kind of put that in context and say “Well a $200.000 house now the payment went from on average about 12.000 to now about 13.000” that means something a little bit more that is easier for somebody outside of the industry to understand.  I think that marketing involves us putting ourselves in the potential client shoes. The shoes of the consumer, to understand what is important to them.  If you talk about due diligence right they don't care about due diligence. They buy a house once every 10 years. They don't need to know that stuff every day. They need to know what is going on in the community. Right.  Realtors should be the digital mayor of the community. They should be out there saying “Well we have these festivals going on. I'll see you there”. Or share a personal story that really somebody can resonate with that may reflect around what you do professionally that gives some sort of authenticity and come insight to show that you're human and that you're not just trying to sell them on something. Because that's…that's been the focal point for everything that we do. That's the idea behind client's centricity. Is putting their needs first. We need to do that in our marketing too.  [Christian]: I think you being up an interesting point. It's a lot of it comes down to marketing you know that is that. And in my experience yeah the majority of what is being peddled out there is marketing in real estate you know by franchises, by gurus, by trainers is pretty much the opposite of you know Joe Rants “Don't be annoying”.  You know they say “You gotta be top of mind”. And to them that's making your phone calls and pestering people and going online. And if you go “Oh by the way if you know anyone that can buy or sell a house” like everyone is taught to say that so everyone says it so no one…so it means nothing to no one. People are just like “Oh yeah that's what a realtor says” you know. It's like a stand up. You know that's bad marketing. That is low bar. I am not thinking I am just told to do this and I am gonna do it and supposedly that will give me result. They probably are not the results that you want.  [Chris]: I think you just hit the nail in the head there.  [Nathan]: I do too. [Chris]: Thinking. And that's the problem. If you're gonna market effectively you have to think about what the message is that is gonna solve the problem for your consumer. [Christian]: Well you have to start with who your consumer is. You know if it is the population that you asked well there is your first problem. Like that should not be your targeting market. You know. [Chris]: You've got different segments right. You've got …there might be an itch that you work. And that might be your thing to go after her whether that we based off of a previous profession, a hobby. Whether you're running or cycling or you just love giving back in the community and you're in the philanthropy space. You have geographic which is you can market based off of where you live and where you do business or you can go and just focus on something specific in real estate right.  If you focus on if you're in the equestrian market and you've grown up in the equestrian world and you understand horse ranches better than anybody else that is something that you can specifically market to but the fact is that no matter what you're marketing to, what segment that is you've gotta find out a way to provide value to them.  It's geographic. Share what's going on in the community. I can't tell you how many times I have heard that said, “Share what is going on in the community“ and how little people actually do it.  [Christian]: Yeah I mean even if you don't have all that figured out just be an interesting person [laughter]. I mean like I think like Peter Lorimer or something you know. Obviously he's got a big personality like British accent and stuff but like this guy has hands in everything. And it's all really interesting to watch or listen to. You know, and I get the impression he is trying to sell to me. Like it's always helping agents or you know “Look at this cool thing, this is what I am doing in my life right now”. Like it's never “Hey if you're looking to buy or sell you know in Los Angeles…” or whatever you know yeah I mean you could figure it out.  So going back to kind of our initial conversation about Joe Rants 3 things it's as you were giving that example you know you received a social message whatever it was. It is interesting that we have gotten you know most people think we are related to this. We've gotten so far along the hiatus to the sales pitch that they don't even pretend it's not a sales pitch. They just come up like “Hey I hope this isn't annoying to you” or “I hope this doesn't come off as spammy” [laughter] which really means “This is a standard sales pitch”. [Chris]: Yeah you know “I am about to annoy the hell out of you”. [Christian]: As if that's more authentic and will make it less salesly or you're more likely to you know like they think that that's they know that's a barrier and they think that admitting it will be less a barrier. When in reality that's just like “Oh thankfully I didn't read the whole message. Delete”. Just put it up front so I can delete quickly you know.  [Chris]: Definitely. I mean my response to him was” you know “You should have stuck with your gut. [laughter]. It was definitely spammy and annoying. And shouldn't have messaged me.” But agents do that all the time. Real estate agents they do the same thing that multi-level marketing people are doing. “Hey haven't talked to you in a while. Wanted to reach out and let you know I am in real estate now. Do you know anybody that is looking to buy or sell in the next you know 30-60-90 days”. Whatever it is.  Agents do that all the time and there's…it's actually really easy to not do that. Like if you meet somebody and they ask you what you do the first thing you're gonna say is “Real estate”. And they're just gonna come down and immediately ask you how the market is. That is the instantly question that the buyers or anybody that you meet are gonna ask you once they find out that you're in real estate. So what do most agents do? Well most agents the moment they get asked that question they say “The market is great. The market is great. When are you looking to move?” or “Are you looking to move?”. They immediately position themselves for the time share pitch. And that's the high pressure.  [Christian]: That's desperate. [Chris]: They come off as desperate. And the people that are on the opposite side they don't feel like they're on a conversation anymore. They feel like they're being cornered into becoming a lead. And people don't want to be considered a lead. They want to be considered you know their name and they don't want to be you know a prospect.  So a great way that that can be changed is instead of asking them “Well you know are you looking to buy or sell?”. “Who is your realtor?” “Oh I don't have a realtor I am not in the market”. “Oh great well not everybody is in the market at all time. So who do you call when you need to file your tax assessment? Who do you call when you're trying to figure out how much money you should spend on the renovation and you want to make sure that you don't get negative equity?” “Like these are kind of free services, they're complimentary services that we offer to everybody in the community as part of our company and I'd love to be able to be that person for you if you ever need to reach out. If some of these people end up using me to buy or sell some of us don't but it's not a big deal but we're here for you and we want to provide value”.  Doing something like that the conversation goes a whole different way. People have respect for you for not trying to sell them. They thing that you're a professional and that you don't need to beg for the business and it's just a different impression that we can leave on the people that we meet. [Nathan]:  That's just…it makes me think of this example of why we have a bad name. Next door you know the social site, right? OK right so somebody the other day posted “Hey I got friends looking to move in the neighborhood. If you know anybody looking to sell let me know.” Of course it got like 5 responses right. And one of those responses is somebody I know that is getting ready to least and bla bla bla. What they didn't realize as soon as they responded the person said “Well I am an agent and I've got clients looking in this area, what do you have and I'll let you…” It's the classic [censored] you know. They didn't have anything.  [Christian]: Switch.  [Nathan]: It was just the baiting switch. And my client was just like “Man that is so shady” and I was like “And people wonder why we have such a bad name. When you do [censored] like that it's just horrible”. I like…I wanted to message everybody in that thread and “Hey you do know this person is an agent and they're actually not looking for their family member, they're trying to find new clients. Like it's such a [censored] shady way to do things”.  [Christian]: Do you guys follow the broke agent? [Chris]: [laughter] Yeah on occasion.  [Nathan]: Yeah you're talking to him [laughter]. [Christian] Alright. You know there's a funny you know GIF meme he posted the other day. It was like it was a clip from one of The pirates of the Caribbean movies where Jack Sparrow is being chased across the beach by a mob, you know. It's like I think the subtext was like “You know when someone posts online about their selling their house and these agents just the mob of agents chasing them you know”. It's like pretty much sums it up. [Nathan]: Yeah they go “Opportunity oh my God lets start salivating and jumping over each other”. [Chris]: So lets talk about that. If someone posted online that they want an agent what do you do? [Christian]: They usually won't though. They're usually more cryptic like “I am moving to this area” or “I am fixing my house up to sell”. Like you…I mean no one goes out there and says “Hey I am looking for an agent”. [Chris]: Well like OK so whatever the message is whether that is cryptic or direct what do you do? [Christian]: Well usually there is over 150 replies by other desperate agents by the time I read it so I usually do nothing.   [Chris]: OK. Nate do you do anything on those posts? [Nathan]: It depends. And sometimes yes I will. But I try to spin it from what you said. What value I can give them upfront. And part of that I think it's just being honest you know. So…you know again if they choose you than great. I have never had it happen. Actually no. I take that back. I had person that I did speak with who actually didn't list their home but they appreciated that I was just honest. They felt that everybody reached out to him swung him some line of [censored] and I just told him what I felt. But we all know that's me so… [Chris]: Well you're good at that. So one of the things that has worked for me because I actually have gotten some business off of some of those posts. Everybody is gonna comment “Oh so and so is a great realtor. So and so is a great realtor”. What I have done in the past is I have reached out to them directly. Send them a private message.  [Nathan]: Yeah. [Chris]: If I knew them personally I would send them an email or text. I would just say “Hey I saw your post online. I know you're gonna have a million people that are hounding you for business. Just be careful who you hire. Make sure you vet them properly. If you need anything just know that I am in real estate and…” Throw a couple of credential in there but just let them know that if they have any questions you know we're here to answer it.   I have had more conversations with people like that and I have received probably 6 or 7 referrals off of threads where people were like hundreds steep. I have received 6 or 7 of those referrals where I have messaged different agents and let them know the exact same thing. And people appreciate that. They don't like being sold. They don't like being pressured. And it's just a different environment. You get out of this competition thread and you get into this 1 on 1 message. And people like feeling like they're the center of the universe so you just make them feel that way.  [Nathan]: I agree.  [Chris]: Good so I like being right. [Christian]: So awkward silence yeah. How do you sum up this episode? What are your takeaways here other than don't be annoying? [Chris]: Yeah I mean we've gotta be careful with our message. It's so easy to get out there and just want to tell everybody that you're in real estate. But I think that agents need to put some thought behind what they're saying. And really think about how it's gonna come across to the people that they're delivering the message to.  We've talked about proving value throughout the history of the show. And I think that now more than ever that's gonna be more and more important. Especially with the rise of the high byer where they're getting ads saying “Hey it's so easy don't deal with all the hassle. Don't deal with being hounded by 100 agents when you comment online. Don't deal with staging or showing or any of that just let us sell it.” And people are so willing to avoid us and to avoid the showings and the solicitations that they're willing to give up 20-30% of the total value of their house just to not do that. And I think that that is absolutely insane. So we've got to shift our focus. Anything else guys? [Christian]: I would say if this is confusing to you as an agent forget everything that's you know your broker or the better agents told you about it in prospecting and hounding people and being top of mind. Just think to yourself “Hey would I like someone else to do this to me?”  If the answer is “No I don't want someone calling me pretending like they care about me just to ask if I am looking to buy or sell this year” well don't do it.  If you don't want someone knocking on your door without you inviting them over, don't [censored] do it. You know I mean like it's really not that hard. Stop making excuses about “Well this is my job and if I don't tell them or bug the [censored] out of people, if I am not annoying than I am not doing my job”. Well figure out how to do it not annoying or you will find another job to do.  [Chris]: And I'll just add on to that because calling is important. It's not to say “Don't call your prospects” but when you call them don't say “Hey do you…I can sell your house. I can do this”. [Nathan]: [laughter] Don't lead with that.  [Christian] Provide some value. Yeah. [Chris]: You know provide value. “Hey what can I do to help? I am sure you're getting a million calls right now” or “It's been a while since we've touched base. What…Where are you in the process?”. Make it about them. [Christian] Right and I will add. The value is not you calling them as an agent. You know I have had…I have seen online threads where basically an agent has been told their whole career to provide value but they don't know what that is. They think just them showing up is them providing value.  You know like it's…It reminds me of the scene from Office Space where you know the guy is being grilled like “What exactly did you say you do here?” “I AM A PEOPLE PERSON. WHY CAN'T YOU SEE THAT?!” [laughter]. “I PROVIDE VALUE. WHY CAN'T ANYONE SEE THAT?” Like you're probably not providing value if people can't see that. [Chris]: Exactly. [Nathan]: Amen. Cool.  [Chris]: Hey any final words? [Nathan]: No. Don't be annoying. I agree that what Christian said, if it would bother you than you probably shouldn't be doing that. Just what sounds like common sense is really not common sense or maybe is that whole adage of the easiest thing to do are the hardest things to get done.  [Chris]: I like it. Alright. Well everybody thank you so much for tuning into our 50th episode of Re:Think Real Estate. We appreciate you tuning in and listening. If you haven't yet please go to the website rtrepodcast.com. Subscribe so you never miss and episode and give us a 5 star review on iTunes and Google Play. We'll catch you next week. Cool.  [music] [Chris]: Thanks for tuning in this weeks episode of the Re:Think Real Estate  Podcast. We would love to hear your feedback so please leave us a review on iTunes. Our music is curtesy of Dan Koch, K-O-C-H, whose music can be explored and licensed for use at dankoch.net. Thank you Dan. Please like, share and follow. You can find us on Facebook at Facebook.com/rethinkpodcast. Thank you so much for tuning in everyone and have a great week.  [music]  

Today Nathan throws out a surprise topic for us to discuss. We talk about the questions people should ask when determining whether a brokerage is for them or not. We want to know what you love best about your brokerage. In the comments tell us what your favorite part is! RTRE_Ep_48  Audio length 29:24 RTRE 48 – What to Ask When Choosing a Brokerage [music] [Chris]:Welcome to re:Think Real Estate, your educational and hopefully entertaining source for all things real estate, business, news and tech.  [Christian]: I am Christian Harris in Seattle, Washington. [Nathan]: Hi, I am Nathan White in Columbus, Ohio. [Chris]: And I am Chris Lazarus in Atlanta, Georgia. Thanks for tuning in.  [music] [Chris]: Everybody and welcome back to re:Think Real Estate. I am Chris Lazarus here with Nathan White and Christian Harris. Guys what's going on guys? [Nathan]: Hey what's happening? I am trying to stay warm in the polar vortex here but it's only one day people so don't panic, it's not a week long. [Nathan]: How cold is it there right now? [Christian]: It's about 7 degrees. It's the end of January we're recording this.  [Chris]: It's gone up a little bit since we talked last. Our entire state shut down for a little bit of rain so Georgia is closed now [laughter]. [Nathan]: And if it even gets flurries in Georgia it's like the apocalypse like it's hysterical. [Chris]: Well I mean no joke we are 5 years to the date from Snowmageddon. Like the time hop came up on Facebook “5 years to the date from Snowmageddon today”. And last time that happened I ended up having to walk 11 miles on icy roads back to the house because my car wasn't getting me there. So…Yeah I mean Georgia does not know how to deal with that stuff. [Christian]: It's legit. [Nathan]: Like 2 inches of snow or just a little ice? [Chris]: It wasn't 2 inches but it was like a maybe a quarter inch of snow on top of an inch of ice.  [Christian]: Ice will…Ice will mess up your day so… [Chris]: Yeah ice did it.  [Nathan]: When you were talking about ice I saw that you were talking about something. [Chris]: No yeah so… [Nathan]: What are we gonna talk about? [Chris]: Nate is gonna surprise us with today's topic. [Nathan]:[censored]. [Chris]: Nate what are we talking about today? [Nathan]: So you know we've talked about this before but I am gonna go to the…you know we're in a public group. I think all 3 of us are on it. The…the Inman coast to coast and somebody earlier this week posted again about how to choose a brokerage. And I want to say maybe it was Tanya or somebody. I forget who put the…the questions to ask out there.  But did you guys see that about an agent going to choosing a brokerage? Because some of this I agree with, some I don't agree with at all so I thought it might be good to go back and talk a little bit more about this. Maybe we have some new agents since we started doing this that you know are in that struggle bus of “Hey I am stuck here” or “I don' know what to do. I didn't…I didn't choose right”. And so these questions…These questions [background noise] Whats that? Sorry. [Christian]: Did you just say struggle bus? [Nathan]: Yeah. Struggle bus. [laughter]. [Christian]: OK I just wanted to make sure I heard that right. OK. [Nathan]: Yeah so if you guys check your email I just sent you that.  [Chris]: Yeah I am looking at it right now. [Nathan]: Right so like if you look through some of this like I don't know if I agree with all of this. Of course I never agree with everything, right. [Chris]: You never agree with anything. [Christian]: You're super agreeable. What are you talking about? [Nathan]: I am so… [Chris]: You're the “Yes man”. [Nathan]: Oh my God you all are ridiculous. [laughter] [Christian]: I am…I looked over this a little bit… [Chris]: I am seeing this for the first time. Let's talk through it. [Christian]: So you're talking about…You're talking about kind of the generic agent guide to choosing brokerage that is out there? [Nathan]: Yeah. [Chris]: Yeah. We're not gonna say who it is put out by but there's a guide out there. Alright so first step in this guide research. What's this? “Pull MLS numbers for at least 3 years for the office. Volume, transaction count, map the transaction if your MLS offers that feature. Know how far from the office they are.”  I don't know. If you're a new agent, you don't have access to the MLS.  [Christian]: Yeah. So what I found in general is that whatever brokers you go to in you're quote interviewing with them they're going to spat out the stuff that makes them look best right? [Chris]: Yeah. [Christian]: So if they're agent heavy they're gonna be like “Oh we dominate the market by agent numbers”. If they're you know actually killing it in volume or, you know, gross sales that's what they're gonna…that's what they're gonna highlight.  So you know the thing is if you're a new agent how does the brokerage production help you? I mean it…it doesn't directly. Now it might indirectly because OK maybe there is a lot of experienced agents that you can shadow or piggy back on. But just because they're productive doesn't mean it will help you do yours. They're busy. You know and now they're hinting like if you have in mind “OK I am gonna do open houses.” OK you're gonna need an office that has listings , you know. Now you don't need it in there they're not here. You can call other agents and brokerages if they're willing to collaborate… [Chris]: What they do that? [Christian]: Well it's not…it's not a culturally…I don't know. Some do. You know if they have a more collaborative mind set. I mean I all about that but not…Most franchises don't have that. Might be more in the “Protect your own” mind set. So…They'd rather not do an open house rather than have someone from another broker do their open house. [Chris]: That should never happen. Not in my state. [Nathan]: Well you know here's another one on here that really tripped me up. This is a value aid and establish. “Why the office of the brokerage you're interviewing with is or isn't successful.”  How do you define success in a brokerage? [Christian]: Right what are your metrics success? [Nathan]: Right I mean. [Christian]: Numbers and profitability but you're not gonna know the profitability numbers. [Nathan]: Right. I mean you know our brokerage doesn't do a gazillion transactions but I believe the ones that we do do are very high quality. So, meaning from…you know from a client experience. So again I don't know you know if that counts or not. It's like saying “Oh I am hearing another party say look at agent reviews on yelp or Zillow”. I mean [censored] I am not interviewing like…That's not applicable to me I guess so I struggle… [Christian]: But when it comes to researching a brokerage what would you say? I mean I don't think these are super valid because they center around like on traditional like sales like…Do they do a lot of business? And that than quantifies whether they're a good brokerage which I think has nothing to do with is a good brokerage or not. Maybe.  I mean I guess you could kind of determine market saturation or market share but again as a new agent is that really gonna help you I mean unless you're in a small town and there is a dominant brokerages and a bunch of other small ones that don't do anything. I mean here in Seattle there's tons of brokerage and they all have their…they're all getting those things. They're all doing sales. You know it's not one, It's like crushing it you know. [Chris]: Well I think it all depends because everybody's definition of success in real estate is different.  [Christian]: Yeah. [Chris]: You know I was speaking to one of my agents about this the other day because as we bring in agents you know depending upon where they are in their life cycle they may have different goals. Like some of our agents are retired from one career. Do we expect that those agents are going to hustle and grind and built a massive business working hundreds of hours every month just for a few years? Probably not. You know those people are probably getting into this to do a few transactions a year, have a place to come, learn, hang out, interact with people and have fun.  And then we have some other people that are getting into this for the exact reason I just mentioned. They want to grow something big. And it's not our job as the brokerage to define what that success is. That's up to them. Our goal is to provide the infrastructure, the culture, the support necessary for them to build what they want to build. At least that's my philosophy on it and you know…go ahead. [Christian]: Yeah I mean that's a good point is that there's not one definition of success as an agent. You know there's gonna be the younger people that don't have family and nothing better to do but grind it out for 80 hours a week. Other ones that are mostly, you know, full time, stay at home parents or something that are gonna do occasional job, you know. [Chris]: Absolutely. So this question that they ask in here, this bullet point I think is excellent which is “Ask the broker about his or her story as an agent, team lead, sales manager or broker owner. To what do they attribute their success? And you want to under…you want to uncover his or her core beliefs about what makes a successful agent”.  I think that is an excellent point. When you're…when you're looking for finding out what firm you want to work for it's gonna be the team of people that you're surrounding yourself with and knowing their core values. If they're not transparent about it. If they're transparent about it you should know their core values you know within you know the first round of interviews with them. But if they're not asking questions like this would be fantastic as an agent looking to find a right…a different brokerage.  [Nathan]: Yeah I agree. That's…That's a helpful question in there. Some of the ones like I said I struggled with. That one is good. I was talking to somebody the other day and they said “What about getting this person to come in and be a manager”. And I was like “Yeah but the problem with them managing is they don't actually have any history”.  I have a big struggle on my struggle bus that there Mr. Harris [laughter] for people who coach or who lead that don't have any history or is very minimal. And so how do you…Say somebody is running this office or brokerage X and they go in and they're recruiting and you ask them you know “How's your history” and they go “Well you know I stopped selling 10 years ago now I just coach”.  I kind of look at somebody like [censored]. Like that's not even relevant now. 10 years I mean that's like 100 years in real estate world so I don't think you would be helpful. I think you have to be current and I think you need to be somewhat of a producing broker to a degree or one that is heavily involved with their agents' development and still maybe…I don't know you guys would probably tell me I am wrong since I am the agent you all are the brokers but you know you only have to do a couple transactions a year just to stay fresh I would feel like. But to tune out I think it would be a mistake.  [Christian]: Yeah I think that's kind of a good point in regards to like I was listening to…I had something in Inman Connects New York livestream this morning and someone was talking about the difference between the focus of the brokerage and the agent or specifically in that context the team. And the brokerage model, traditional brokerage model is head count. They focus solely on head count.  Now you may do that through you know training or some other low thing to lure agents in. But [cough] I think part of the brokerage responsibility is when you're interviewing an agent flashing out “What are your goals for the expectations? Can we match that?” Or you know. Now maybe most brokerages don't care. We're smaller so I think we can kind of customize or at least make sure it's gonna be a good fit. Because one of these questions in here is ask if you can ride along, you know basically shadow an experienced agent. Because I mean that's a great way for a new agent to learn.  Now Chris I know you have like a required mentor program which is great but that's one of the…as many awesome things to see on offers that's one of our weak spots is that we're not huge and so we don't have a lot of agents that can you know that have enough business to be able to “Hey we have a new agent can they shadow you on your listing today?” Like… [Chris]: It took us a while to get to that. [Christian]: Yeah it's gonna take a while. [Chris]: Yeah.  [Christian]: But I think that's good because I did…the one agent I had lost and you know there's nothing I could have really done about it is just the nature of how big we are was they wanted to, you know, shadow someone's business. Someone who is you know doing a lot of business. And we just don't have a ton of agents doing you know huge amounts of business everyday. You know so they left so they can mentor under someone who was. And I totally get that, you know. Hopefully it won't get to the pace where, you know, that won't be an issue. But we're small, new and scrappy so you know your strengths and you know your weaknesses. [Chris]: Yeah I think that I saw here a description of the office culture, head count, tenure of the agents, breaking it down into head count and turning it over rate, the agent or broker's involvement in the local, regional NAR leadership. The broker agents' involvement in state and national associations, outside or NAR and the broker and agent involvement in local community school boards, charities.  I think that's a pretty good description of an office. Like if you can as a broker owner…If I am sitting down having a conversation with somebody these are things that I know and can recite you know in my sleep about who is doing what because these are things that we promote. But, you know, having an office that encourages involvement…A lot of offices don't do it maybe because they're afraid that when they put their agents around other agents the other agents are gonna try and recruit them.  That's not necessarily the case because there are a lot of agents that I get around that I don't want to recruit. Being in those positions. But it's still important that when we're in this industry that we do our best to support our industry and that when we are serving our communities we are doing the best to support our communities through local charities and organizations.  So having a company that supports that stuff goes to describe how their culture operates and it puts the priorities in perspective you know and just know that with turnover rate it's not always…Sometimes that needs a description. Because for us right now we're releasing agents 2 to 1 because we have become a lot more selective in who we are hiring than who we are letting go. We are letting a lot of licenses laps that are non-performers and that's one of the reasons that our productivity has gone from like 300k per person to like 1.1 million per person. So there are other things in there that need to be picked and taken into account. [Christian]: Yeah and I would say that that focus on culture is because big I mean it's really easy to quantify your split or you [cough] some of these other things that agents tend to focus on like how much money are they gonna be taking home. Now what that doesn't take into account is well “Is the brokerage is gonna support me? Am I gonna flourish there? I am I gonna hate it when I am working around. Am I gonna hate doing the work you know into the office you know. Are you gonna be part of something bigger that you're on board with?”  And I think all that closely ties into like the brand of the brokerage. What are they known for? Are they involved? Do they encourage agents involvement? And really if you hone that as a brokerage and you have a line with your agents and that's what they're drawn to you're not gonna be afraid of losing them because a big franchise down the road that doesn't have, you know, a healthy culture like that or doesn't…Isn't known for something other than name recognition of their franchise. Like there's nothing there for them. Like they're gonna love who they're asked you know what you provide. You know it's really hard to quantify that cultural experience, that feeling of satisfaction of knowing “Doing what I am doing, I am involved, I am helping, I am part of the listing and not just you know a number on the spreadsheet”. [Chris]: Absolutely.  [Nathan]: Well you know if you look at this document I mean it's great but I really think they could have skipped all the way to the bottom and point 4 like the bullet points there I think is perfect. “Do you fully understand what a brokerage is offering here?”. What I find most agents even when they switch to another one still don't understand what they're getting offered. “Do you trust the broker?” You would be working with them. I think that's important. “Do the claims of the brand line up with everything that is isn't offered to agents and clients.” “Do the principals and beliefs align with those of brokers and managers?” That's huge. “Does the brokerage provide what you need now in the future and for the development?” Like to me that sums up the only questions you need to answer almost but above the other stuff. Yeah. [Christian]: And I think it kind of makes sense. I mean I think it could be more concise but I mean those are kind of the…These are bottom line what you wanna make sure you're getting and all the questions up above will help you get to those answers.  [Nathan]: Right I mean those are the…That's the guts of my struggle bus for those people. I…And the reason I say like when you don't want people to make a switch…I've got a colleague who just made switch to another brokerage. And when she left her original one she thought you know  “Hey you know I understand everything”.  She went to the new one and 6 months down the road she went “I didn't really understand the numbers”. And I was like…you know I don't want to use her name but “Hey Sussie how did you not of all people”. Like I expected her to really understand the numbers and she didn't. I think she actually might have paid more at the new brokerage that she went to. You know because she originally left brokerage number 1 because her fees were so high. She goes the second one. Didn't know the math well and ended up paying more.  [Chris]: Sure. [Christian]: Well I think that tied into the “Do you trust the brokerage”. I had an agent who…who I think had made up her mind you know that she was gonna leave. You know it implements new monthly fee because we're losing money on not producing brokers…not producing agents. And I am like “Kate you may think that you're gonna pay less over here but let's talk about this”.  And you know after talking about it and she talks to some other people about “Oh I didn't realize that I had to be a member of the NAR which is another $600 every…” whatever, “I didn't realize that they also did desk fee” and blah blah blah and than I was like “OK you actually have it really good here”.  You know and so…and maybe you know putting some of that back on media and brokerage. Can you get the value there and so she thought she would find it somewhere else. But half the time you know they end up leaving thinking the grass is greener. And than “Oh hey they were sold at fallen stolen goods” you know. You don't realize it until after you leave. After you go somewhere else.  [Nathan]: Right. Right they don't understand it. [Chris]: I got that from a couple of agents. They left and now they want to come back and they were on like one of our old legacy plans and they don't get that option anymore. And that they're like “Oh [laughter] wow this is gonna cost me more?”. Like “Yeah yeah we're doing a lot more now. You had it good. You lost”. So I mean that's another thing for agents. If you're thinking about making a move see what your broker can do.  If you're moving…there was an article that came out a little while ago about why agents make a move. And a lot of brokers think that number 1 is because of the cost. But it's not. I think one of the number 1 reasons is the number 1 and number 2 but it was “Is the broker in their corner? Does the broker have their back?” And then the other one was “What is the culture like at the office?” Because if a lot of…for the most part brokers are gonna make relatively smaller amounts of money. And it's all gonna depend on what they're offering and what their expenses are but you know we're gonna make our profit margin. Hopefully. That's the goal. And if… [Christian]: Wait you're profitable? That must be nice [laughter]. [Chris]: We're investing a lot of it back into the company. But we are making what we need to be making off of them so that we can invest it back into the company and our agents see that but the second thing is culture. Are you working in an environment that you feel that you have the people around you supporting you?  And those 2 were the biggest reasons that agents make jumps. It's not because of the desk fees. It's not because of the NAR fees. It's not because of the monthly fees. Sometimes it is but usually that's when we see people going from very high splits to something that is a little bit more along the lines of the Indie broker margin. Kind of the Indie broker model. Where we have a little bit more flexibility there and we lose the franchise fees. But other than that it's culture and is “Does the broker have my back? Is the office there to support me?” [Christian]: I definitely have to agree with that. I think a lot of agents lead with the cost but I mean in the grand scheme of things I mean there's not…If you're productive I mean what you're gonna end up paying isn't that different over you know a year. You know but it does come down to that culture and that…what was that other thing you said? [Chris]: Culture and support. [Christian]: Culture and? Support yes. Yeah that's huge because I have had agents that come over you know who come over because they're like “How available are you? I can't get a hold of my broker when I have questions for 2 days.” And I am like “That's ridiculous. What are they doing? It's their job”. [laughter]  You know and so it being smaller and not having so many agents and you seeing my primary job and been in the office to support agents you know I mean that's big you know. And just a tip. If you had an office you're not really sure what their culture is, if you want to get a good gage of it pay attention to how they respond when an agent leaves. If they're nasty and two faced get out of there. Get out of that office.  And that was my first office. Like day to day it was OK. It wasn't openly hostile but as soon as you know…Someone who you know agent X was quote “friends” with and helping out one day and they left and the next day they're “Oh that person I knew blah blah blah they're terrible”. And you're gonna be like “What aren't we all in this together? What's this brand loyalty to a franchise that doesn't have your back? Like what do you care as an agent whether or not another agent left?” Like you know like they're being personally, like a personal slide against you know the agent that another agent left.  [Nathan]: Man the colleague that I was talking about earlier when she left her original team you know they went [laughter] Death Con 4 on her. I was like “You don't want to be in a place like that”. Like… [Christian]: It shows your true colors either as an agent or you know as…Like if I hear that as a broker I squash that. I am like “No we are collaborative, we are all on this together. I want what's best for them and if they feel going to another brokerage gives them what they need he no pep talk. I want to support them in there”.  [Nathan]: That makes me think of Tracey Chambers, who is my first team lead. I was…the team lead at the office at Callow Aims [phonetics] and I will applaud her. When I told her I was leaving she said “Nathan I wish you all the best and if you ever want to come back here know the door is always opened and I will welcome you with open arms and if you have any questions feel free to call me”. I still call her. She was awesome and that tells you a lot about her.  [Christian]: And speaks to character and that's what's gonna be the biggest differentiator and the difference between agents. It's not skills, not experience, it's character. Are you gonna do the right thing? [Nathan]: I don't know if we answered any questions actually on this list of things. But I think it's important to talk about again from just an agent perspective because again as a new agent and maybe even within the first year or 2 you just don't know all the questions to ask. And it's…and a lot of it is ambiguous because you can't put value on certain things.  [Christian]: Yeah I think it's a good starting point. I mean I have had one agent who came in with questions and I loved it. You know it would be like “Hey these are some questions I have” and I think they kind of got them offline or you know another brokerage they were interviewing or something. And I am basically like “That question doesn't matter because of this. This question is irrelevant because of that. That's a good question. Let's talk about it.”  You know. So it could be a good place to start but like you said as a new agent you're not really sure what you need to be asking. What questions mater or not. [Chris]: Yeah so I mean we…I think the last time we talked about you know choosing a brokerage and how the brokerage works. That was like early early last year, right around when we just launched. [Nathan]: First 5 episodes maybe. [Chris]: Yeah yeah something like that but I think regardless of where you are in your career if you are new or if you are a seasoned veteran I think the message is you need to understand if there is…if your office is toxic, if your office is not fun to work in, if your leadership is undermining management, if your…if you're not receiving the right support the message is there are brokers out there where that does not exist.  There are brokerages that do have proper support, that do have a good culture and that are fun to work at. And I think that a lot of the brokers who have quotas that they need to meet on the recruiting side I think that those…their attention is in the wrong place and that the broker owner does not have enough time to dedicate to the support of the office.  So that's my message. If you're in a position where you're not sure what's gonna happen with your career, if you're not happy with the people that you're working with my message is just go out and try and meet a few brokers because there are places that do exist where that's not a problem. [Christian]: Yeah. [Nathan]: Yeah I mean I agree. That sums it up about as good as you can get. If you got questions you know what you can do? Email us. We'll answer them [laughter]. [Christian]: I am interested and see what questions…you know…Yeah comments, you know. Leave comments. What are the questions? You know what are the questions that agents should be asking or brokerages should be asking to their agents to make sure it's a good fit?  [Chris]: And email us and tell us what you think about your brokerage. Why is your brokerage a great place to work? I think that… [Christian]: Yeah that's good. [Chris]: What do you like most about your brokerage? We don't want to hear the bad things. We hear the bad things all the time. Let us know what you think is the best part about your brokerage? I think that just about sums it up for this episode of re:Think Real Estate. Thank you so much for tuning in for this impromptu topic brought you by Nate. Thank you Nate. We'll catch you next week.  [music] [Chris]:  Thanks for tuning in this week's episode of the re:Think Real Estate Podcast. We would love to hear your feedback so please leave us a review on iTunes. Our music is curtesy of Dan Koch K-O-C-H, whose music can be explored and licensed for use at dankoch.net. Thank you Dan. Please like, share and follow. You can find us on Facebook at Facebook.com/rethinkpodcast. Thank you so much for tuning in everyone and have a great week.  [music]  

The First Amendment of the United States Constitution states that: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. That means that The First Amendment forbids Congress from both promoting one religion over others and also restricting a person’s religious practices. It guarantees freedom of expression by prohibiting Congress from restricting the press or the rights of people to speak freely. Today we are discussing one of the most pressing issues in the life of Church and culture today. And that is your free speech. Your constitutional and God given right to believe that: God is the creator of the Universe, the right to believe that that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Savior of the world, the right to believe that The Holy Spirit lives inside of you and changes you to look and behave more like Jesus Christ over time, the right to believe that there is ultimate truth that comes from the Ultimate Lawgiver (God) and the right to believe that there is this thing called “sin” and that sin has separated all of mankind from God. Our culture doesn’t like to talk about sin. In fact, sin is barely even acknowledged anymore. But even though the world, even though the government, and even though your neighbors may scoff and laugh at your beliefs as a Bible Believing Christian, does that give them the right to silence you? The LGBT thinks it does. We have this movement in America called the “Homosexual Agenda” and it has a few beliefs of it’s own. Make no doubt about it, The homosexual agenda is very powerful. They have lots of money and lots of attorneys. In fact, they are so powerful the Supreme Court of the United States of America stepped outside the Constitution to legalize same sex marriages back in June of this year. So what does that mean for you and your beliefs as a Christian? Well, filmmaker Darren Doane knows what it means. He is the director of the ground-breaking documentary titled 
“Collision” along with the box-office smash-hit “Unstoppable” with Kirk Cameron. Darren returns with his most bold, uncensored, and provocative film to date and it is titled “The Free Speech Apocalypse”. “The Free Speech Apocalypse” exposes the strategies of the anti-God, anti-traditional, hyper-liberal elite and offers perspective on the decay or our culture when it comes to homosexuality.

Episode 109: Dealing with Student Strife   The drama class is one of the only places where students truly examine themselves and their world through reflection and contemplation. Because of that, sudden emotional tides can sweep through your activities. Teacher Christian Kiley talks about the common teen issues that can expectedly and unexpectedly arrive in your classroom and how to deal with them. He also shares his latest play Inanimate whose main character deals with her own emotional issues. Show Notes Inanimate by Christian Kiley The Bright Blue Mailbox Suicide Note by Lindsay Price Split by Bradley Hayward Episode Transcript Welcome to TFP – The Theatrefolk Podcast – the place to be for Drama teachers, Drama students, and theatre educators everywhere. I'm Lindsay Price, resident playwright for Theatrefolk. Hello, I hope you're well. Thanks for listening. Welcome to Episode 109. You can find all the links for this episode at theatrefolk.com/episode109. I'm really thrilled about today's topic and sharing today's topic with you because it's one that most – if not all – Drama teachers have to deal with at some point in their career. Drama teachers have a very unique relationship with their students, right? The Drama class is like no other class. Those relationships sometimes are less structured, less traditional, and sometimes Drama teachers see students like other teachers don't see their students and hear things that normal teachers wouldn't normally hear. Things bubble up – whether they be events or secrets or even just emotions – so, when that swirling emotional tide that comes from a teenager comes your way, how do you handle it? So, let's hear how one teacher – a long-time teacher and Theatrefolk playwright – Christian Kiley deals with student strife. Lindsay: All right. Hello, everybody! I am here talking to Christian Kiley. Hello, Christian! Christian: Hello, Lindsay! Hi, Craig! Lindsay: How are you doing? Christian: I'm very good. Thank you. Lindsay: Awesome. So, we're talking with Christian for a couple of things. He's one of our long-term, long-standing playwrights. Christian, you just seem to know the kind of material that I think really hits home with students in a very unique way. Like, there's always something a little sharp. We like the plays that you write! Christian: Well, I think we're going for the same thing which is taking things that are fantastical and imaginative and merging them with a kind of reality, and when those two things come together, I think it really does resonate with audiences and with students. Lindsay: I think it's important to have those kinds of plays available for students, too, because, you know, in their world right now where we are so intent on television and movies, where everything is sort of replicated and maybe less theatrical, that when a subject matter is explored theatrically, I think that that's a win-win. Christian: Absolutely. Lindsay: Christian has a brand new play with us which does what we're talking about very effectively. It's called Inanimate and it takes place in a world where inanimate objects come to life for a teenage girl – a coffee pot, a door, her clothes – and we learn, as we get more and more into this play, that this is not some kind of Disney story, Disney fantasy, where animals talk and they're very cute. But there's something deeper going on and we thought that, before we get into the play, that that was a very interesting subject because the whole notion of “what's going on in the inner life of a teenager?” because, Christian, you are a Drama teacher. Christian: Yes, I am. Lindsay: How long have you been one? Christian: This is my tenth year at my current school, Etiwanda High School. This will be fifteen years total for me. Lindsay: And what attracts you to being a Drama teacher? Christian: You know, it's interesting because a lot of people are adapting and ...