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This is the second episode of the Mind Your Noodles podcast. In this episode our guest is investment banker, keynote speaker and author of Pitch Anything, Oren Klaff. We discuss how to use neuroscience when interacting with others, the importance of narrative and emotion in communications and ways to build trust. Show Notes [00:00:05] Mind Your Noodles Podcast [00:00:20] Episode Two - Oren Klaff [00:01:01] Transparency - I'm a Student of Oren's Work [00:01:53] Pitchanything.com [00:02:42] New Book Coming - Flip the Script [00:06:10] Time Passes Differently for Speaker and Audience [00:07:56] How Do You Get Information Out of Your Brain and Over to Someone Else? [00:08:25] Oren Breaks Down the Brain [00:09:03] The Crocodile Brain [00:10:54] Mid-Brain  Function - Social [00:11:32] The Neo-Cortex Role [00:13:00] Does this Thinking Apply to the Masses? [00:15:00] Adjustments When Addressing the Audience [00:15:20] Emotional Needs of the Audience [00:16:39] Collateral Damage and Narrative [00:17:35] Narrative Arc [00:18:50] The Pre-wired Brain [00:20:08] Programmed Narratives [00:21:15] Conflict and Trust [00:22:12] Trust as Too High a Bar at the Beginning - and What to Do to Get There [00:26:32] Conflict Raises the Stake [00:28:53] Conflict = Stakes [00:29:55] The Big Idea and it's Role [00:31:45] Role of the Big Idea [00:36:19] Big Idea Applies to All - Even the Furniture Business [00:40:00] You are Valuable - Use It or Make It [00:43:51] How Might We Engage Employees [00:47:13] Closing Thoughts     Transcript Tripp: [00:00:05] Welcome to the Mind Your Noodles podcasts take care of the brains that take care of you using neuroscience research and methods for a brain friendly organization and healthy you.   Tripp: [00:00:20] In the second episode of Mind Your Noodles My guest is Oren Klaff. Investment banker, keynote speaker and author of Pitch Anything. We discuss how to use neuroscience when interacting with others, the importance of narrative and emotion in communication and ways to get trust quickly.   Tripp: [00:00:46] Hi I'm Tripp Babbitt host of The Mind Your Noodles podcast.   Tripp: [00:00:51] My guest today is investment banker speaker and author Oren Klaff. Welcome Oren.   Oren Klaff: [00:00:57] Hey thanks. TRIPP I appreciate it. Good to connect with you. Glad we could get on the same schedule.   Tripp: [00:01:01] Very good. Full disclosure to my audience I am a huge fan of what Oren does and I'm also a student of his Pitch Mastery online class that that he has and workshops and call ins and also Oren you probably won't meet with us but you are the inspiration actually for this podcast. So no pressure.   Oren Klaff: [00:01:25] Great. And I can't wait to get the checks.   Tripp: [00:01:28] There you go. And one of the things I do a little bit differently especially for folks like you is instead of talking about all your stuff that you do at the end. Kind of like to just where people can go so they can get back right to the beginning of the podcast episode and just know kind of a little bit about. So I knew they'd go to like pitchanything.com I would assume if they're going to learn about you.   Oren Klaff: [00:01:53] If you want to get started here you go to pitchanything.com. Putting your name and we will flood you with really information on that will transform the way you get in front of people the way you talk to people in the way that you close deals. That's what you care about. That's the right place to be pitchanything.com   Tripp: [00:02:11] Okay. And do you want to say a couple words because I know you're kind of doing preorders for your new book Flip the Script. I'm sure we'll talk about as we get into it. But.   Oren Klaff: [00:02:22] So I wrote a book. Second Book because they said you have to write a book. Another one. Your first book is like everyone on Earth bought it. There's no one else to sell it to. I didn't read the book so I wrote another book. I said Yeah I'll do it in a year. and then two years later I finished it because apparently I put everything I knew in the first row.   Oren Klaff: [00:02:42] But the book the new book is Flip the Script. It is. I love it like I'm reading it myself. Oh my God this is so good. I should write this down. Wait a second. I just wrote this. It's like this infinite loop of the Flip the Script is full of scripts of how to make somebody chase you instead of you chasing them out to put your ideas. In the mind of somebody else so they think it's their idea. It is it. It's completely next level. There's nothing like it in sales. It's just revised what sales is about. So Flip the Script is the new book. It's out of control. Now that I've said that you can't get it.   Tripp: [00:03:21] Well you can preorder it though.   Oren Klaff: [00:03:25] You can preorder it. That's OK. Because.   Tripp: [00:03:27] I see it here on Amazon right now.   Oren Klaff: [00:03:30] I'm looking at it and I'm going to get two hundred galleys. So you know if you're in the media a galley is you know the copy that the editors send you that isn't really a copy. It's sort of the secret copy print on cardboard and toilet paper. But if you want that copy I have 200 of them.   Tripp: [00:03:48] Oh OK. OK. All right. So. So where would they contact you to get that.   Oren Klaff: [00:03:52] E-mail you if you want that copy. Go to Tripp's house.   Tripp: [00:03:55] OK.   Oren Klaff: [00:03:56] Talk to his dog.   Tripp: [00:03:59] My dog will kill them. They don't want to do that. All right.   Tripp: [00:04:02] So where I'd like to start Oren is because you were the inspiration for my my podcast that I'm putting together here. I do a couple of other podcasts I'd do one for the Deming Institute. We have about 45-50000 listeners every every month.   Tripp: [00:04:18] And also do one with a gentleman by the name of Doug Hall does innovation types of things. But the the thing that struck me you know I love sales from way back. So you know did the Carnegie stuff I did the Ziglar and I did Tracey and I did the Sandler sales Institute and then on a fluke I I ran into a copy of Pitch Anything actually from another book that was actually meh not very good. But but but in their bibliography your book was mentioned in there and as I started to read it. The thing that that really stood out. I know this is part of your your pitch process and I would certainly want to talk about that is this whole concept of people whether it's neuroscience or brain science or ever you want to say it it's this concept of people are not communicating between a sales situation or a pitch situation because they're on really two different planes in the brain level.   Tripp: [00:05:24] And so I kind of like to start there and I know I've listened to some of your interviews that you've done over the past year on the Life of Charm I think it was one of them and and some other ones that you've done with like the Project Management Institute.   Tripp: [00:05:42] Yeah. And so there's going to be some some it's going to be boring for you. But for the audience I think level setting kind of that component and especially because it really fits in well with the purpose of this podcast kind of walk us through how you. First of all arrive there and then kind of the basics associated with the crocodile brain and the mid brain and all that.   Oren Klaff: [00:06:10] Yeah. So I think you know one way you can get there they've never talked about but we'll do some fresh stuff here. If you think about how differently time passes in different situations so if you're a speaker presenter write to an audience and nearly everybody listening here you know whether it was in grade school, high school, college or in a professional you know sits up and had to present something longer than five minutes when you pass five minutes time begins to pass differently for the speaker and the audience.   Oren Klaff: [00:06:45] You the speaker. Are talking you're all the sound that you get warmed up. Think about five six seven minutes to get warmed up. You got the sound of my voice is pretty good right.   Oren Klaff: [00:06:55] And now you're sort of getting going in your juices are flowing and you feel warmed up and now you're ready to say the things you have to say in explaining the features and the benefits and the ideas that you have and the business of it. And. At eight nine 10 12 minutes your just getting going and the audience is just about cooked right. And so now as you get into when this happens to me you know I a half an hour into a speech. I feel like wow I could do this for three or four hours and the audience is thinking I want you to do this for another minute maybe. OK. So so things happen differently. Experiences that are in the same room happen very differently to different people especially when you're you're teaching or giving information or selling. So. So there's different parts of the mind that are engaged when you're the seller and you're the buyer. And then we follow that through and we sort of think of it like this that where. Do you. What part of the brain do you disgorge information from.   Oren Klaff: [00:07:56] How do you get information out of your brain over to someone else. And what part of the brain do they receive then when you start to look at that from a neuro standpoint you and you ask. Cognitive psychologists. You know what's happening in the brain by the way if you never hire cognitive psychologists to help you out with your relationship. Right. You don't give a fuck about relationships.   Oren Klaff: [00:08:18] They care about your feelings they care about how information moves in and out of the brain and up and down and how you react to things and why.   Oren Klaff: [00:08:25] But if you think about where you receive information into the human mind well it's received as you alluded to do something. Call we call the crocodile brain. And it's the most ancient part of the brain the least sophisticated the most unable to handle nuance, detail, emotion. Right. It really just trims things down to the absolute basics.   Oren Klaff: [00:08:50] Right now the part of the brain that I'm using that you're reading now listen to the part of bringing you you used to get to work and get a buy a laptop and get a job and think that of course is the neocortex smart thinking linguistic capable math problem solving.   Oren Klaff: [00:09:03] Also relatively emotionless but but that part of the brain thinks about complex ideas and talks about them uses the language communicates them and it's sending all this information over to the other person who's just receiving that information through their crocodile brain. We call that because it acts like a crocodile. Huh. What is this. Something is moving. Noise is coming from it. I gotta deal with it because anything that's moving that creates noise in an animatronic way right. That isn't a rock a tree or an insect. Anything is moving and making noise I gotta pay attention to and decide how to process it. And so the other person is. You're coming up with all your great ideas and that person thinking you know as I wrote is it's just something I should eat. There's something I should mate with. Is this a danger. Should I kill it. There's sort of some of the base angry hungry and horny. Right. That's so nature. That part of the brain is trying to process the thing you're saying. So unless you give that part of the brain the information it needs at the beginning to get it calm down and end to allow it to move information up higher into the brain. You never get past. Really the initial. Interest you don't get the attention because you go hey this is not something I should eat. There's not something I should mate with. This isn't something I should kill am I. I'll just ignore it and worry about other problems. So. So that part of the brain is very concerned about survival and self interest and if you don't placate it give it the information it need. Truncate you know your story so it calms down and is willing to pass information up to the higher order of the brain. You can't get anywhere. And that's why you go there eyes roll back in the head. We never got their attention you know and all these things. So. So you got.   Oren Klaff: [00:10:54] So that's a first part of the brain its gotta deal with then it moves up to the mid brain and the mid brain doesn't care about ROI IOR and you know these things that you know you've heard me talk about before you know with the benefits of the SAS software or how the insurance is going to know save you money or this car's better than that I didn't care about and sort of cares about social situations.   Oren Klaff: [00:11:15] So until it's safe. And it sounds and there's some things to be intrigued by by the crocodile brain. And then there is a sense of social order that you're a high status individual that can provide some valuable information.   Oren Klaff: [00:11:32] The neocortex won't engage so I really just start talking to neocortex with the details data story and the neocortex is not easy to access. So that's how I think about human-human communication. You got to give him the right information for the part of the brain that is actually paying attention. At that point in time you got it. If I could just simplify this by a million times when you go to merge on the freeway right.   Oren Klaff: [00:12:00] They give you an on ramp so you can build up speed to get up to you know by the time you get a freeway you're doing seventy five miles an hour. If you've ever been in a situation where somebody build a shitty road system somewhere in New Jersey or Pennsylvania.   Tripp: [00:12:13] The jug handles. Yeah.   Oren Klaff: [00:12:16] Yeah yeah what you sort of take aRight there's this right turn onto a five lane road where people are going 80 miles an hour and you go Damn how do I get up to that speed from a dead stop. Right. That's what most people are facing. How do we take a right turn onto this freeway and get up to speed without getting murdered. And most people's presentations get murdered on by by trying to do that incorrectly. You need to have an on ramp.   Tripp: [00:12:45] Okay. And so one of the things as far as this particular podcast you know my whole aim is applying neuroscience to organizations kind of how do I build a better system.   Tripp: [00:13:00] In that particular company now ours obviously you know a sales component to it. There's a pitch component to it when you're reaching out to even the masses. These things hold true right.   Oren Klaff: [00:13:13] When you're sending this devout to the masses it's even more true and I'll give you an example if you've ever gone to see a can a comedian right in a club.   Tripp: [00:13:22] Yes.   Oren Klaff: [00:13:24] They don't actually have to be that funny right cause you face to face people are having a couple of drinks you want them to do well you don't want them to fail you know the joke. If you're watching that same comedian on TV they have to be you know three 4 times funnier the jokes have to be amazing the content has to be you know that's why that's why people you know when they do these HBO comedy specials you know they can practice for a year to do that because when you're watching it on TV in an in-person way that the jokes have to be incredibly on point and funny versus being there in a club that you know just everyone's having a good time and and almost anything is funny. The comedians on stage you know these high status with your friends you want to have a good time. So it's the same thing right. When you go into the masses you're not there.   Oren Klaff: [00:14:14] To affect them in a emotional way. One to one or one to a few. And so the structure of the information has to be incredibly well organized and precise and feed these parts and respect neuroscience and feed these parts of the brain in the way that the brain is willing to accept information right. We're not talking about feelings or emotions or or wants and desires.   Oren Klaff: [00:14:40] We're talking about how the brain is actually willing to accept information from you. Another human in what order they need the information and what amount of detail at what speed and what level of emotional color and depth those things have to be pre-programmed. If you want to meet the masses.   Tripp: [00:15:00] Okay. And I know you do a lot of public speaking and keynotes and things of that sort. Is there are there adjustments that you're making as you're doing a keynote versus doing a a pitch for capital. Or is it still pretty much the same blueprint. How do you approach that.   Oren Klaff: [00:15:20] Yeah my sense of it is that. It. If you're making midstream adjustments something is going wrong right. Because what you're doing is you're tuning yourself to the emotional needs of the audience at that moment. OK then they're not.   Oren Klaff: [00:15:43] Now you're on this slippery slope or going down to the circling the drain because their emotional needs will change. You know in a few minutes from now. Now you need to feed those emotional needs to keep them happy. The emotional needs of the audience aren't the same as their information needs so in my experience it is incredibly important not to have every word written but you've got to have the structure of a your narrative laid out. I mean think about a movie right halfway through the movie. They know all the actors tired well let's give them some easier lines and you know fuck it let's just having fall in love now instead of 20 minutes from now because the actors are tired right. So. So in no way do and those scripts go through infinite rewrites until the story is right and then you deliver the story. And yes do the actors have some variant variants you know during the turn the screenplay.   Oren Klaff: [00:16:39] I give a perfect example. Good friend of mine wrote a movie called Collateral Damage starring starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and this guy is a brilliant writer. You know he was a partner at Goldman Sachs and a very good friend of mine an excellent writer. You just just Mensa genius level guy.   Oren Klaff: [00:16:55] Love him David and I said you know the collateral damage not the greatest movie the plot. No no no no. The script is amazing. Right. Best script ever. The problem is Arnold Schwarzenegger goes I would not say my lines in this way. You know when he changes the lines change the lines and changing the narrative really affects the grand scheme so whenever we see somebody changing on the fly there tend to be feeding reacting to the emotional needs of the audience in that moment. And that usually leads to circling the drain.   Tripp: [00:17:35] Okay. And so you know it's interesting it's some of the people that I have lined up to talk to are on what you call the the narrative arc I believe is the words that you use. I just interviewed a gentleman by the name of Dr. Paul Zak and I know if no Paul at all but he does the dramatic arc and he wrote a book a book called The Trust Factor and where you do neuro finance. Zach does neuro economics which is basically measuring brain activity while people make decisions and one of the things that they found apparently is this in this whole narrative component that you guys talk about is that only are two areas of the brain are activated when you're talking about facts and figures and details and things of that sort and seven parts of the brain are activated when you're doing a narrative of some sort. And so how are you using that in your pitch in your whether it's a pitch to you know again for capital or whether you're pitching to a group of of you know employees in a company about the direction that the organization is going to go.   Oren Klaff: [00:18:50] Yeah. So I wrote about this a lot in my new book and I think you know I certainly had that same layer of thinking but I simplified it in this. That there are these pre wired pathways through the brain that are just acceptable narratives that people you know. Then there's you know seven or eight of them that that you know when they're getting that narrative all the parts of the brain are paying attention and somebody is riveted. Right. So man against man right you wants to snap somebodies attention you go. John and Mark are outside fighting over Susan. Boom. Everybody in the office drops what they're doing. Run to the fire exit to watch this parking lot incident you want to get so much attention you say two people are fighting. That is a pre wired part of the brain that has to pay attention to conflict. Right. And so we pay. We have to pay attention to movement right. Every single book on script writing or story writing or ply writing should drop people into rapidly unfolding action. Do not start. It was a dark and stormy night.   Oren Klaff: [00:20:08] Ok. You have a job even or under so. So man against nature man against himself man against man. Right. Ah ah are these ancient narratives that are pre-programmed the mind that you know people accept and follow and will pay attention to. So. So my my sense is in order to fully engage the brain it is not to find what engages the neocortex what engages the amygdala what engages the you know the mid brain what gauges the left temporal lobe. Trying in some complicated format. Get all of those fired up. Instead I say what. Pathways. Are available in the mind of this buyer that I can just feed into. What are they looking for. In what order and in what amount of detail. And then I just follow those pathways instead of trying to do something new and creative.   Tripp: [00:21:15] And I've heard you talk about this on numerous occasions as well as in your book. As far as conflict and things moving away and things moving. Are you manufacturing conflict. And if so. I know you also kind of go into this trust factor where you can't get to trust especially when you're doing a pitch real real quickly. Obviously if you're dealing with some employees that are out there a large group of employees you might have more time because they're employees but but as far as the conflict and getting to the autonomy associated with that can you can you kind of help me with the and help the audience too with the how you deal with bringing up conflict. How how are you gonna get that. You know Sally and Joe are out fighting in the parking lot type of type of situation.   Oren Klaff: [00:22:12] So. So a couple of things I think I'm less concerned about trust right. Because trust takes time to build and trust comes at the trust is not something you build upfront. It comes towards the end. Once you've done everything else correctly. Right. So I think it's a really high bar to try and build trust right. I think what is easier to accomplish is to build expertise and to build status and to provide information in the way that somebody can is interested. Continues to be intrigued and provides insight to move them past the information age when you can help somebody understand their business better than they currently know it. You've provided them insight when you establish your self as an expert.   Oren Klaff: [00:23:11] Then you've provided them the confidence to spend time with you. And believe in you when you've provided them that the enough sense that you're not going to beg for their business you're not going to chase them. Right. That you have got the status as a peer. Then all those things lead to trust. Right. So again I just want to put trust in its proper place and it is very hard to say as a marker hey we're going to try and develop trust. Trust comes automatically if you do everything else.   Tripp: [00:23:45] Okay. So. So. So what you're saying is there's kind of an on ramp to trust if you will. There are certain things that you need to have in place in order to build that. And certainly cycles of time that you talked about one of your friends in an interview recently you know that the trust has been developed over a longer period of time when you're trying to say if you're a new CEO walking into an organization you aren't going to have trust at the very beginning. But doing these other things you know the fact he has status he's been named the CEO of the company. You should be an expert in something you know before he even became CEO. But developing that intrigue and insight then would kind of be the the on ramp to getting to that trust component. Do I have that right?   Oren Klaff: [00:24:37] Yeah. So I think all those things are a proxy for trust or a replacement for trust. So what happened is somebody come to you and says hey listen trust me right. This is the best solution. This is the best water heater for your house that there is right there. That is sort of pressing to "do not trust me" Button. Right. When you ask for trust or go after it initially it has the exact opposite effect.   Oren Klaff: [00:25:04] Right. So what can we replace trust with that has the same impact expertise status insight. Social proof. The the just quality of presentation. Right. What I try and you may have heard me say Well but what would I try and develop very early on instead of trust with somebody you go Oh crap. This is awesome I'm in the hands of an expert. This guy knows how to pitch I can relax. This is not stressful. I don't got to be on alert that you know this information is true I don't have to you know think about every statement this guy seems to know what he's doing. I'm going to relax. Listen to this pitch 15 20 minutes whatever it is I'm in the hands of a professional. For me I try to achieve that feeling in a buyer rather than hey you should trust me.   Tripp: [00:25:59] OK.   Oren Klaff: [00:26:00] And we can circle back around the conflict right. The job of conflict is really to manage attention. Right. People pay attention to human conflict. So. So there's no movies about rocks interacting with each other. Right. Nobody. But there's lots of movies with rocks in them. But they have to you know whatever the word is anthropomorphize them. Right. If I maybe put too few or too many syllables in the word.   Oren Klaff: [00:26:32] But you know they have to make inanimate objects animate in order to get kids or anybody to pay attention to it. OK. SpongeBob Square Pants or whatever. Right. So so everything has got to be put in human terms and we're only interested in humans. Interacting with each other in a way to solve a problem and that generally means conflict. Right. And so if you want to raise attention raise awareness raise the stakes. It always has got to lead with conflict. And then you can move on to. And so how would you do that right. I mean if you get on a conference call with me about a deal you know and be the CEO of 3M of Xerox of you know I don't care what it is you know I'll get on the call. And typically you know this always happened if the CEO of a large company they'll come three or four minutes late and I go Hey John you here for the 3 0 3 meeting you know writes Funny and boring we laughed at it I just doing it for so long and I'm sorry. So I got the CEO of a Fortune 500 company apologizing to me because I'm in conflict with him but in a fun. So. So it's not that you can't challenge him or accuse him or you're all that there's lots of wrong ways to do conflict right.   Oren Klaff: [00:27:48] But if it's if it's social and socially aware and fun but it makes the point you know makes the point you know sometimes they'll bring six or seven people to the call and we'll have two you know which is always a bad sign socially anyway and we'll say OK you know here we are and you know tribal council. Right and there's trouble of us here and only nine of us will advance the next phase or a boost in the three people to kick off this island call here in the next few minutes. And you know that's it's fun. But you know it's also true is like hey you brought too many people to the call and you know you're making them aware of it. So you've got to find your own forms of this. But if you want people to pay attention there's got to be some sense of conflict if you you know if you're uncomfortable with that it's just like when I go to speak in Texas. Yes conflicts. Right. Like you mean bring a gun great Crudup Hey man I'll bring it in. Go to that meeting right. And so. So that's what they think of.   Oren Klaff: [00:28:53] You know conflict in Texas when I go to Silicon Valley they're really uncomfortable with in Palo Alto. You know invariably some women will stand up and say you know this is and this feels very male centric. No you're just you're hearing my voice. Right. But but you know women can and should do this as well. And so I wouldn't feel comfortable but so. So a word you can replace conflict with IS stakes. Mm hmm. Is the stakes. That's good. It's an other way to do and say hey glad we could get together today. On this call notes introductory call. All right but there's something going to be decided and as much as you're evaluating us. I'm evaluating you.   Tripp: [00:29:41] And we're going to figure out A if our product and services are right for you. But we're also going to figure out on this call if I'd the interest in working for you and if you're right for us because we only work with the best.   Tripp: [00:29:55] Right now you're talking. You're lucky you've hit on several things associate with this one is your talking. And we haven't talked about it as the frame that you're coming in to a situation with or it's coming to you and then you kind of hit each of the pieces but just kind of bring it together and then I'd like to go back to frame is the narrative arc that you talk about. So you said the the thing that you talk about all the time is the big idea. You know a problem that something that's difficult to solve and then what our solution is. And so you've touch upon some components of the big idea. Can you kind of rather than me just kind of hitting around what the big idea is can you tell me how that fits into the broader narrative.   Oren Klaff: [00:30:44] When you start working with someone talking to someone get on a Skype meeting phone call you know sending out an email there minding their own business.   Oren Klaff: [00:30:54] Oh my god is my wife going to see this email from this woman I met at the conference. It's not really like that but if she's attractive and all the kids are graduating from grade school and you know we can send her private high school and you know I really want the promotion. I love the team I'm working with. And should we go on vacation here locally and grandma is sick but the kids got here before she dies. My diet is not going well. I can't believe I didn't get to the gym the last two days. I promised my trainer and is on and on and on. Right. And then you're like hey our SAS software can deliver three times more throughput you know on your Amazon S three server side compared to your current on prem systems and we do it at a you know per whatever. And those thoughts dreams are just incompatible.   Oren Klaff: [00:31:45] And so for me the big idea. Is about getting someone's internal dialogue. Whatever happened their last meeting wherever they were. It was going on for them over the last 50 minutes last hour the last day getting that thought string. Tamped down and tempered and getting your ideas stream introduced and sort of switching the amount of attention they're paying to their own thoughts from you know being internally and so focused to being focused on you. And for me there might be other ways to do it. So I know for example like you know the state police use a taser that gets people real focused away from what they were doing under what they want to you to focus on. And so other professions you do things in a different way. But for me I don't can't use Tasers in the conference rooms that I go to. So I used a big idea.   Tripp: [00:32:39] And that's your way of getting them to now.   Oren Klaff: [00:32:42] And yeah. And so the big idea. Right. And most people get this wrong. They hear me talk about the big idea and they think oh the big idea is our software can make you money. That's not a fucking idea. Right.   Oren Klaff: [00:32:53] That is about you. The big idea has nothing to do with you it's about them. And the greater world around all of you. Right. The big idea is all software has now moved to the cloud and is being rented. OK. And so if in fact you want to have a customer for software in today's world. Right. You need to you rent them the software everything's in the cloud. That's an idea right. We have software that's in the cloud that can make you money is a value proposition. There's a solution that come to way down the line. So ideas truly are ideas right. And so you know and typically as you know there to me there are a lot of things that are changing right.   Oren Klaff: [00:33:44] So fundamentally the the you know obviously politics we don't want to get into here because I just say the word politics and a divisive political discussion in the country and you know red versus blue and you know support of a Republican Party and sort of non Republican way. Yeah I was going to light up.   Tripp: [00:34:05] Right.   Oren Klaff: [00:34:06] Right. And pay attention because that is changing and those are those are important issues but you know what else is changing. I mean if you think about Samsung you know if you saw the release of this folding tablet thing right.   Tripp: [00:34:18] Oh yes.   Oren Klaff: [00:34:18] I mean I had you know in my company we might have 700 Apple devices. You know I mean maybe maybe 15 hundred I don't know. You know I've I've owned 60 iPhones and 20. You know i pads and 15 iMacs and you know just myself and I see that device and I'm like Oh man I'm I get a Samsung Android whatever that stuff is right so.   Oren Klaff: [00:34:41] So even you know technology is constantly changing the relationship with North Korea is confusing, the terrorists, with China. I mean everything's changing. You know all the time and so big ideas are around change.   Tripp: [00:34:55] You know it's interesting you know one of the things that that I really struggled with that that you helped me through coming up with with the big idea for for my consulting practice was you know I'm a long time follower of of a man by the name of W. Edwards Deming who you know went over to Japan and helped turn them around and do all that type of thing. But you know.   Oren Klaff: [00:35:18] Sure.   Tripp: [00:35:19] He died in the early 90s. But I mean and and I think the difficulty associated with his teachings it's more of a philosophy as opposed to a method per se. And one of the difficulties I have and I think it's important to kind of bring this out because I think people are gonna have a hard time going oh but I'm not in the investment banking business or not in this. But but what you do extrapolates a method for helping people even if they know you're talking about Samsung and all the new and exciting things associated with that. But I might be in an h vac business. You know what I mean. And and I. How do I you know get a big idea or make shots here or you know right.   Oren Klaff: [00:36:07] Yeah.   Tripp: [00:36:08] And I think it's an important thing right. Yeah.   Oren Klaff: [00:36:10] You have to take you know or even worse you're in the furniture business.   Tripp: [00:36:16] Yes. Yeah I.   Oren Klaff: [00:36:19] So if you're in the furniture business. You're fucked. That's we can't know.   Tripp: [00:36:26] If you're a furniture business skip this. No. Yeah.   Oren Klaff: [00:36:29] Okay listen on the phone for business. You know what I would tie that to without knowing too much about it is logistics right. Something about logistics. There's 18000 too few truck drivers in the United States right. And so what's hot and what's driving that. It's Amazon and these package delivery you order a toothbrush you know some dental floss and some throat lozenges. It comes in a box. You know the size of a small desk right. And so all these empty boxes moving everywhere back and forth to deliver a toothbrush is causing a huge Oh you know over demand on logistics. And so if you're in furniture logistics are are becoming a huge problem and you know a big cost of the you know of your final delivery product. And so that industry is changing a lot and it's tied directly to Amazon which everybody can relate to. So again I might say hey so you know if I'm a furniture company and I'm looking for example for an investor right or a partner I would say hey look today if you think about furniture the business has basically been the same for two hundred years you make the furniture you know you put it in a box you take a picture of it you put in a catalog it's shipped to the store.   Oren Klaff: [00:37:53] People browse the store. They they pick a model and they go to the warehouse and they deliver one to your house. Couple days later is basically how furniture has worked today. It's quite different because because of the difficulty with logistics there's there's 18000 truck drivers that need to be hired that aren't currently available and you cannot get the inventory to where the purchases are happening so the salespeople. Have to tell the buyer the furniture you're not going to get your delivery for three to six weeks. People want to finish that home tomorrow. So the salespeople. Are the key to revenue today in the furniture business. It never was that way that you had to hire you know for 50 60 70 thousand dollars base and get real salespeople used to be able to pay commission because the furniture sold itself. So I don't know. Right. A big idea in of your business. I know nothing about.   Tripp: [00:38:53] Yeah. No. And I think that's good I just want to point out especially to the audience that you know one of the things I found I find fascinating well know it took me six months to build up the courage to to to actually talk to you about my pitch.   Tripp: [00:39:07] But but as I listened to you talk to people in different businesses I mean everything from pharma of pharmaceuticals to health care to you know furniture you know that you have this mindset that that is associated with being able to come up with a big idea in whatever situation it is by kind of looking more broadly at the industry and what's going on or or trends of things that are happening within an industry. And I saw you more than once. Certainly probably 20 times where you pulled somebody out that hadn't thought in that particular you know with that particular mindset it's one of it's one of your redeeming qualities that you have associated with what you do is is there any hints that you might be able to give folks as how did they get that mindset.   Oren Klaff: [00:40:00] So for me then the number one thing to drive the mindset for all this stuff is you know you and you know I talked about it before it is. Internal understanding of our own value. Write that in the relationship. With a potential buyer investor partner whatever it is we don't have the product and the service or the company or the investment that's valuable. It's the relationship with us right. I know things about how to buy this product how to invest in this kind of company that will help you avoid losing your money or making them or making the wrong choice. I can help you if you go somewhere else. You're not going to get me you're gonna get some other very likely less connected less experienced less caring individual. So if your priority is to get a low price. Or some other value for yourself and you're willing to work with somebody who has less experience less value less caring than I do. You should go do that because I'm a unique person. I have experience and I'm only going to share that with people I'm connected with. So that has got to be your an internal set point until you feel that believe that and let somebody actually walk away that you could have sold. Otherwise because of that issue it'll be difficult to adopt the other mindsets that help you sell and clothes. So. So that's your entree point into this world is understanding your own importance to the deal not just the product or the service.   Tripp: [00:42:05] Ok. All right. I have two more questions. The first one is one of the things that when when I when I joined Pitch Mastery you had in there a bunch of articles under what you called Psychology in it. And this is one of the things that set me down the path of doing this podcast is there is something in there it was an acronym. It was called SCARF which is stands for Stand our status certainty autonomy relatedness fairness and it just because I respect your opinion so much. Well it's a good ticket a little bit out of your realm here but I know you have this kind of perspective that I am very curious about and that is when you look at organizations and the way that organizations are run today and you've heard all the numbers about you know to two thirds of people are not engaged in their work. Those types of things. What do you see as what needs to what needs to be happening within organizations in order to get people engaged and how you know from all the things you've learned about neuroscience all the things you learned about pitching you know those types of things. What would be your perspective on that. I know again I'm thinking a little bit out of your your comfort zone here but you are so you know you have a broad thinker.   Oren Klaff: [00:43:28] Yeah yeah. So when you say engage. Yeah just chased that down. Sure. And unpack that a bit.   Tripp: [00:43:36] Yeah. So peep peep. There was a Gallup survey in essence that was done publicly about five years ago. Now we're something like two thirds of all people are not engaged in their work.   Tripp: [00:43:51] They're checked out basically. Yeah. You know they're they're just you know I've got I need a pay check and you know I have obligations I'm there but I'm not innovating. I'm not excited about coming to work every day. Well what would be what's your perspective on all the stuff that you've learned about neuroscience everything you've learned about pitching. How do we move these people way. How do we in essence my business is designing organizations that are basically brain friendly if you will where people look forward to coming to work every day. What needs to change in these corporate cultures from your perspective that they need to be doing in order to do it. I think you've hit upon some of this. Bye bye by just talking about what you know coming up with an a narrative that in essence engages people you know making more money for the guys at the top is not always that exciting. So. Right. So so so what what what what's your view.   Oren Klaff: [00:44:46] I mean my view for an organization is is you know very much the same as yours. It's you know micro goals or Gamify. Right. So it's funny we ran the cabin this last weekend up in Big Bear and they had a Galaga machine right. The videogame Galaga.   Tripp: [00:45:04] Ok.   Oren Klaff: [00:45:06] And. The you know in essence your goal is to get on the leaderboard right so they've got the top 20 people and you only their initials. But that is a huge reward you know to play the game well get the points and get on the leaderboard right. And so for me engagement is about you know my organizations is these goals that are doable that are tangible. And I think a lot of organizations have that. But you know you move up the leaderboard you know for accomplishing something as you know as close to you know as close to the blueprint as possible. So that's my experience in the organizations we run is is you know hard to connect people to our goals which is to grow revenue you know sell the company make 20 million bucks distributed to three guys and buy another plane. You know people don't come into work to help you do that. They come into work to you know write a blog post put it up get the most amount of clicks on it you know log that and move up the leaderboard. So maybe over simplistic but you know I'm not a management you know expert as you are but that's what I feel. It drives our organization forward is these micro goals and the gamification or the moving up the leaderboard. I mean you look if you watch the show.   Oren Klaff: [00:46:31] Darn, the British car show or come to me as soon as we hang up right where they race cars on the track and if the celebrities in the car and then and then the celebrity gets on the leaderboard right to see what their time was and that's very exciting for them. And it's hard to get except you know celebrities excited about much.   Oren Klaff: [00:46:49] And so getting on the leaderboard to me for accomplishing something that is manageable but challenging I think is really drives organizations.   Tripp: [00:46:59] Ok. And then my last question is when I typically ask which is there anything that maybe we talked about that you'd like to provide more clarification on. Or is there any question that you wish I would've asked that that I didn't.   Oren Klaff: [00:47:13] Well yeah I think for me you know the clarification is if you really want to give a great pitch a great presentation captures people's attention have them listen. It's really about raising your status to one as a peer. And then so I think most of understand that. But then I think it's important to go further as being more than appear as an expert. So those to me are the goals raise the standards a peer and they go further. Be seen as an expert. Now somebody will listen to you for an hour.   Tripp: [00:47:50] Mm hmm. Look at that. That's good. So that's kind of you again you're on ramp. The trust that we get that we kind of talked about earlier to.   Oren Klaff: [00:47:59] Yeah absolutely. OK. So. So I think yeah all somebody has to do is do all of these things we've talked about here today and do'em by tomorrow morning and be way way ahead of the game.   Tripp: [00:48:12] Okay. All right. And just just for my audience as I said I. Full disclosure and transparency I am part of Oren's Pitch Mastery of a huge advocate of the program and not only that but as far as the personal time that Oren spends going through pitches and giving suggestions those types of things it's well worth the investment in joining the Pitch Mastery piece and think it's it's you know for what the value you get out of it it's it's of great value.   Oren Klaff: [00:48:48] So thank you Tripp. OK well great connecting with you today. You know again love to meet people over at pitchanything.com we're pretty accessible there and we'll take it from there. I can't wait for this to come out. I want to listen to it again. The I mean these these these topics are. You know as you know part of my experience but also we've research them heavily and even more so we've deployed them in thousands and thousands of business and those businesses come back and said that works. Right. And so that's why I'm talking about them here. because they really work.   Tripp: [00:49:19] Absolutely. All right. Thank you Oren.   Oren Klaff: [00:49:21] Thanks Tripp. I'll talk to you soon.   Tripp: [00:49:27] Thank you for being a listener. of the Mind Your Noodles podcast if you'd like to learn more or sign up for our newsletter or upcoming podcasts go to MindYourNoodles.com    

Joining us today is John Sterling. John's been in a number of markets and was previously with Keller Williams and most recently was in San Francisco California and is currently in Colorado. John's background is fairly extensive in real estate. John is known for his work in Europe and London as well as working with multiple team leaders and market centers and helping them attract agents. John talks at length about his challenges in real estate and really not really getting EXP at first. John I'll give you his insight in terms of why he ultimately moved from Keller Williams to EXP and he hasn't regretted it and never looked back. Learn More about eXp Realty - Click here to watch a quick 7 Minute Intro Video. Remember our disclaimer: The materials and content discussed within this podcast are the opinions of Kevin Cottrell and/or the guests interviewed.  This information is intended as general information only for listeners of the podcast. Listeners should conduct their own due diligence and research before making any business decisions. This podcast is produced completely independently of eXp Realty and is not endorsed, funded or otherwise supported by eXp Realty directly or indirectly. Why EXP is growing fast Why Successful independent brokerages partnering with EXP Keep your Brand, grow your income with EXP Big benefits of being at EXP Earning publicly held stock. EXP listed on Nasdaq EXP innovating and game changing technology made simple   Stay tuned for Part 2   Transcription Kevin: Welcome back to another episode of the EXP explained podcast. I'm joined today by special guest John Sterling. John's been in a number of markets. He was previously with Keller Williams and most recently was in San Francisco California and is currently in Colorado. John's background is fairly extensive in real estate. He and I met years and years ago when I was a team leader at Keller Williams and he was doing some leadership expansion and attraction of agents. Certainly if you're listening to this and you're from Keller Williams you're more than likely will know John from his work in Europe and London as well as working with multiple team leaders and market centers and helping them attract agents. John talks at length in my interview about his challenges in real estate and really not really getting EXP at first. So if you're a little bit skeptical and you want to hear from somebody who was right there where you were dug into it didn't pay attention to the rumors and misinformation in the market and did quite a bit of due diligence over about 15 months. John I'll give you his insight in terms of why he ultimately moved from Keller Williams to EXP and he hasn't regretted it and never looked back. Stay tuned for my interview with John Sterling. Kevin: Welcome to the show John. John: Hey thanks for having me. Happy to be here. Kevin: I'm looking forward to it. We are reunited again and I'm sure we'll get into a lot of that on the conversation today but before we do for people listen to the podcast that maybe you aren't familiar with your background and history and real estate and all that you've done. What did you take a couple minutes and just give a little bit of your highlights in terms of some of the stuff you've done. Because I've known you a long time and I know you've accomplished a lot. John: Oh well thank you. Yeah I'll keep it short and sweet. So I started my real estate career in Chicago back in 2002 it was with a traditional firm then they had a great training program. So I got up and running very quickly. There were some changes there so I went off and started my own brokerage after about two years and then eventually merged that with Keller Williams back in 2004. My time at Keller Williams was mostly spent opening up new offices and markets where we didn't have them. And most of that work was before the financial crash and after the crash I was the guy who would go fix these struggling offices. So it involved a lot of moving. So I got to go all over the US and then even opened up our London office. So I was in the UK for two years. Packed my flat on Brexit vote day and came back to the U.S. and had been engaged in real estate and just sales in San Francisco and Denver ever since. Kevin: Fantastic. And you're very modest. I mean I first ran into you I probably was about two thousand five or six when I was in St. Lewis with Keller Williams And you were part of the group that was essentially acquiring market centers and expanding and you guys were rocking and rolling and obviously lots changed for everybody after the market shifted. I was excited and it was a long very detailed due diligence process before you moved over to EXP you and I had conversations over I don't know probably 15 months or so. And I think for people listening because the whole genesis for this podcast is to allow people you know it doesn't have to just be a Keller Williams but people that run their real estate business like a business and are seeing all of these agents like you were changing brokerages and coming over to EXP. I remember like you like everybody else had healthy skepticism. You wanted to understand it you were from the outside you were part of a gigantic franchise system and there was a lot of misinformation and noise out there in the marketplace. What is it that you learned that really caused you to start to shift your mindset and say I need to dig into this further. John: That's a good question. As you mentioned you know it was a long process for me it wasn't an overnight type of thing and I'd been paying attention to EXP for a long time. In fact I remember when Glenn the CEO was with Keller Williams back in the late 2000s and he left the start yet. And it was you know I just thought it was an interesting move and I was doing some unique things in the business but didn't really give it much thought. I was happy. Keller Williams still think they're an amazing organization. So I don't have any you know any issues with Keller Williams. It seemed like a better opportunity and fit for the future that I want to create and kind of where the business is headed so the things that got my attention over the past few months and ultimately led me to making the move is that you know I had ignored EXP for a long time as you mentioned a lot of people do this. And the people I've talked to who are in the process of joining you know people who are my friends who never would have given it a second glance if it wasn't me calling. You know it was or someone else. The gist of it was there is a lot like you said misinformation or half truth is I'd like to explain it which is understandable. You know it's like EXP has come out of nowhere. I have never seen growth like this in the real estate business and I was with Katie when I early days when it was growing like crazy. But even they didn't see growth. This is great. So there's just a lot of fear from the incumbents that they're going to get squashed because if he keeps up this pace then they're going to have some serious problems. Kevin: So it is interesting I want to touch on one point because that is something that you know you hear the comments of well they can't keep up growth at this pace or I can't believe they're growing that fast or there's no way they could be growing that fast. And I'm going to touch on something in the franchise system you know there's very well Gene Frederic knows it well I know well we'll come out of the same franchise system when somebody goes to expand a franchise system, this is for listeners to understand and why EXP can sand grow so much quicker. I'm going to contrast the two let's say that John and I are in the franchise system and we decide we're going to open up an office in Palo Alto California and we get a conversation going with a great great huge player hugely influential big producer and the producer says hey John and Kevin I'm ready to join. I want to do something with you. How do we get started in Palo Alto. And that starts the clock in the process right. And they have to go through the approval process and there's a whole bunch of steps involved in the point that I'm making here is from that conversation assuming you get some sort of a green light go I'm willing to do it. There are steps like getting an investor getting it approved getting the franchise awarded in the net net on it is on average it's 14 to 18 months before mega agent key influencer walks in the door of an office or can announce that they're part of that Palo Alto location hypothetically. Now when John and Kevin have a conversation with that same agent in Palo Alto. And assuming they're excited about the EXP and they due to due diligence. We're having them change brokerages in as fast as 10 days. I mean you listen to Brent Gove's interview. He made the decision in 10 days or less with one hundred and fifty million dollar team. It's unheard of. In the franchise systems. Now the follow on to that is when like we had in San Diego we had Daniel beer Carl Wessel and Mary Maloney and all of the others joined in it like a really short 10 day period EXP because they're influential has tons and tons of agents joined after it. So for somebody and I want to get your perspective on this from the outside we you're seeing these mega numbers of agents right. You know a thousand plus fifteen hundred plus agents a month and you are. In the franchise mindset or a bricks and mortar mindset where you're used to being in a physical location. Many many people. And this is why I think that they talk about this. Not being sustainable. Look at it and go. There's no way they're going that fast. We never did. We can't. How can they. And I think that that's the driver is John and I can go out and have hundreds if not thousands of conversations as well as every other agent that EXP. And if somebody says go. It's like when you say go it wasn't very long before you were alive and over at EXP. You actually were waiting for some things. To occur in your business world. But from the process where you're like OK good. I'm ready to go. It was fairly quick. It wasn't like the franchise world. John: Yes. All of that's true. Interestingly enough probably the most fascinating part to me is the large number of independent brokerages so they're not affiliated with any franchise or big regional company. You know he could be one person or a few dozen agents. You know it's typically the size of these things of those types of organizations that are going to need EXP. That was eye opener for me too because it's a fairly common thing in our business for people to get a little experience and then decide they'd like to be their own boss. They want to be their own broker so they leave the company that they started with they got some training or whatever else they're no longer working under someone else's brand they start their own. So it happens all the time. So the fascinating part is how many people have gone through that process achieve their independence so they have their own business with their own branding and their boss their names above the door. I can tell everyone in our neighborhood that they own the company and they're still coming to EXP. So they are profitable businesses that are doing well. They're helping businesses that are growing. Everybody's happy. And even with all that they're still choosing to partner with EXP. So they just see that there is more value with EXP you know from a small item I'd have to pay every year through their split the system was just good for agents at any level. But it's the big winners are the ones who were showing up with teams which are essentially you know they could be standalone brokerages but these big agent teams are like you mentioned they're moving very fast. Then you have the small brokerages who are looking for some more leverage because if you're a brokerage that has 20 or 30 agents you're probably still selling right. It's probably not making enough from the agents splits in order to support yourself. You're probably still selling yourself. So that's just a lot of work. Like you have to manage all these people and you have to do your own business well with the EXP you get to leverage a lot of the stuff that's already built in for very low costs. You can send your agents the training or bird virtual campus any time you are reading online. You can then go hire more people because you don't have to babysit them all day like there's no 30 or 40 training events we have every week. I don't think you can just sit down in front of the computer and say OK here are the training you need to go to go to these and come to me with questions. It's much more leverage and just a much better way to scale. So that was an interesting thing that I discovered just as I paid attention to all the people who kept showing up. Kevin: So absolutely and one of the things just to echo what you're saying and this is happening all the time in fact there's one by the time this goes live that's in the Dallas Fort Worth metro. They have ninety five agents. They're an independent and you know the model is almost this hybrid model which we're seeing pop up more and more where the broker/rainmaker is a weather pick your flavor. Right. Zillow preferred or premier whatever the program is and they feed their agents. And so the lead gen side they've got wired right they might be spending one hundred thousand dollars a month in this case. And what was interesting is she was so excited about EXP. Her biggest concern is I don't know if this is going to translate throughout my key people right? My leaders within my office and then the agents downstream. And what was interesting is Gene and the leaders were in town meeting with this Rainmaker and the key people and he called me yesterday afternoon and his conversation is "I only stayed half a day because they all get it. I met with a handful of people". I talked to him again this morning and he said we're done all ninety five or come and they're just basically working on the onboarding process with ninety five agents making sure everybody's applications and the revenue share piece is set up correctly. That is the wave of the future. I mean I've talked with people within the company they're talking to 25 agents smaller brokers and the driver for that. And if you think about the NRA numbers 55% of the agents aren't independents right. It's the biggest piece. We spent a lot of time talking about franchise systems. They're more in franchise system likes to tout that they're number one but you had the agents that are at independence. It's way bigger than they are. And so when you look at the opportunity this is the next big wave that's occurring. And you talk to these broker owners I'm talking to some in the United States in the southeast U.S. And the number one thing they say is they love being producers. They love mentoring and training agents. They love the Legion and helping people in the case of this this gal in the Dallas Fort Worth area. She'll be on the podcast shortly but what she's going to tell you is I don't like being a broker. I'd rather be brokered by EXP get out of compliance get all the systems and all of the things in place and just go do what we do well the brokerage stuff is not sexy. The brokerage stuff is not fun. The compliance stuff nobody enjoys. Previous to EXP it's been the necessity right. You didn't have somebody that said hey keep your brand keep your look and feel. Go do what you do well and then we'll take over all the other stuff. John: So it really is the best of all worlds. And I think that's really I mean just spending years and years.... I mean all again all over the US and even in Europe. One of the hardest things to overcome when you're having conversations with people about joining your company is it's really just ego. They like that their name is above the door. They like to tell everyone in their world that they own the company and the fact that that's happening at EXP is very telling. We've overcome that objection. You know people are like oh it's like well I could still on my company. It's just kind of you know using some of the EXP stuff too which is great. I mean this is it's a huge advantage for us just because it's you know the more or people show up the more examples we have to point to and say See we told you everything worked just fine except you're you're growing faster and you have fewer headaches. Kevin: Yeah. You know and part of what you did John is you talk to over the course of when you talked about turning around market centers and moving around there was a long period of time where I consider you a non team leader Team Leader. In other words you were having conversations with hundreds if not thousands of agents but virtually on the phone at conferences. So you've got a pretty good basically a take on mindset of agents. You personally were responsible for many many agents that went into Keller Williams When you look at this. John: You wanna know my number? Kevin: Yeah What is your number? I was going to ask you next. John: I had my office lady look it up before I left Keller Williams. I directly recruited sponsors like brought to the company just me but named me as the reason they were with Keller Williams one hundred and sixty two before I left. And there were many many more of those that like top of a hundred sixty two that I recruited on behalf of other people because that was my job right. So it was really just a hundred sixty two that I found on my own. And then as you know it's like hundreds or like you said I don't know how we'd be able to tabulate that but we'll just say north of a thousand. Kevin: You've got a great take on this you know so enjoining EXP and you know coming from a franchise system. If I'm an agent. Whether I'm a rainmaker on individual age a mega agent and I'm an expansion agent that's thinking about this. What are the two or three things that you think that. You learned about it that if you were on the phone with these people going forward you would say you really have a couple of options you could go to a franchise system or you go to EXP. And here are the big benefits of being at the EXP. John: Yep that's a good question. So if I had to put it in bullet form first the money has to work right. You know it's a Financial decision this is a business like we're in business to make money. So we do other things too. There could be a bigger purpose for our you know working in real estate but like the math has to work. So the. That was a good thing for me because you look at EXP everybody is on an 80 20 split the 20 percent caps at sixteen thousand dollars a year no matter where you are compared to my San Francisco office with Keller Williams where I was paying fifty thousand dollars she here is a cap. I mean that alone by you know in two hundred eighty dollars a month in an office these you know it's just a huge expense to be there now. Sounds like you don't have to do to any deals the same let's go to cap but still like I can have that same environments like comparable stuff or even better tools and only pay sixteen thousand here. So that seemed like a much better deal to me. So that was part of that. There's you know a small transaction fee after the after the sixteen thousand but it's nothing substantial nothing to worry about. In addition to that there are certain ways you can earn a publicly traded stock. So it's not privately held. There's not a king of EXP it's all up it's on the Nasdaq. It's a publicly traded company. So for longtime I guess it's a good side note just as far as this goes that EXP was traded on the OTC exchange. So it's just another stock exchange out there. But the trick with that is that it's there's not as much liquidity because it's not like you know we'll call Big Boy exchanges. So really it's like you got to be a publicly traded company you want to be on one of the big exchanges in the US. That's the New York Stock Exchange with the Nasdaq. I go to the two that are reputable and that's where you want to be. So earlier this year another sort of catalyst to me opening up the conversation to joining. Was when EXP was Listed as what they call it. You get up listed to the Nasdaq. So they went off the OTC. Exchange and onto the Nasdaq. You don't get to do that just by choice. I mean you have to be performing well and behaving well and. Know. The analysts and everybody else has to be compliance people the FCC everybody has to. Agree that everything is legit. So I like that. I like that there is some third [arty accountability to everything that we do. Versus you know it's like we have it we have a board of directors into the people on the board of directors are agents that real estate people so they're not just the financial types and the bean counters that you would find them on a traditional board of directors. So when the board of directors of stock analysts and all those people get involved. You know there's some accountability. Versus when you have a company controlled by essentially one person. There's not. Any real accountability I have no piece of ownership and that's I'm contrasting with where I came from. And it's more of a dictatorial sort of environments. So. You know being able to earn stock being able to purchase stock at a discount. I mean. The portion of my commission checks can go toward purchasing. This publicly traded stock and I get it at a 20 percent discount. So basically every deal that I do I'm getting a 20 percent gift from the EXP. It's like I mean you know it's like if you invest in stocks like 8 to 10% consider pretty great. So if I'm getting an instant 20% regardless of how the stock performs feels like likely going to continue to grow then that's good news for me. So those were the big financial components. Oh and then I almost forgot the getting into technology which I'll come back to in a second but the Web sites that we get I mean these are some of the best lead generation sites you can get for your business. We work with Konversion. You don't know them check them out. I think last time I looked to their retail prices were a thousand dollars to set up and then 500 a month just for the system and then you have to pay ads and everything on top of that. But at EXP that's all included in the 50 dollar month technology fee. So it's a 500 a month I'm paying 50 a month. So you don't like anything else about the EXP or you don't care about revenue share and you'll care about the training you care about the virtual world. If you don't want to do your own business whatever you could make an argument that it's just the Web site by itself basically pay for your affiliate vision with the EXP if you want to do any of the rest like you're going to stumble across other great thing that you expected. I'd like that by itself is a good enough argument to make the move so. So that was the money piece as far as the technology goes so we'll continue that thread just for a little background there. I've been involved with tech startups as both an adviser like a formal advisor and an investor for years. In fact I looked it up the first one that I did was back in 2007 was a property portal that was competing with like Zillow to really realtor dot com didn't make it as far as those guys did just it was funding and leadership and whatever else. But you learn a lot through that process. A lot of people understand kind of the dynamics. So I'm very comfortable vetting technology and more importantly not just the technology it's the teams working on the technology real estate in general as an industry as a late adopter for most technology things even today. So for example there's a zip code valuation thing that's clogging my Facebook timeline right now with people asking their clients you send me your zip code I'll give you a valuation. Well that technology has been around for about 10 years now for many years. I was a customer of the company that developed first just as a real time market valuation estimates are now 10 years later everyone's acting like it's some revolutionary thing. You know.. Give me break... it you know if it's fancy tech that's going to disrupt the industry and that's the fancy tech then there's not much concern for me that like that's what I'm competing with. So going back to the teams that worked with technologies I mean the technology itself is great. It's like there's the wonderful stuff I get to use. Everything works fine. I have to worry about it like of course the EXP is going to continue to expand those offerings of course are going to develop their own proprietary stuff. So right now we're just growing so fast that you know the priority it seems to be like we need to be sure our basic system scale. So the people that are joining to get deals done right. Like we'll worry about dressing it up later. But really the team behind the technology is the most important piece for me not just in real estate but like everywhere because technologies involving at such a rapid pace that we're going to have to pivot we're going to have to make changes we're going to have to make decisions that are going to alter the sort of trajectory of the technology that's being used and developed. And it's like I have the full faith in the team the technology team at EXP to get that done. Again it's like we're not a real estate company pretending to be a tech company right. It's like technology's been built in from the very beginning. Right. So it's like yes real estate sales is our focus but it's not a sort of copycat thing after the fact. Thinking hey we need to get on this tech train. I'd like to know I've been tech focused from the beginning. That's where the team's focus has been and so with the company's focus has been that's been our game from the very beginning. You know I trust the team to be able to make the right decisions and keep us ahead of the curve and those sorts of things. Kevin: A lot of people know this because I've mentioned it before. You know I was one of the first sites up on real geeks when Jeff Manson rolled that stuff out and S. Lewis from my team. So you know you and I are fairly tech savvy and we do this and that was a huge draw for me as well. I also find the whole post your social media and give me your zip code I'll give you a report. This just shows that the average agent who's wowed by that doesn't realize that as a member of the National Association of Realtors they have an RPR account and that functionality is built in there too. So everybody has this not just the EXP agents everybody has it. So it's fun for some of us to understand technology to kind of smile at that but you know a lot of agents are not as tech savvy and certainly when they look at the suite if you look at the you know the platform for conversion you look at the enterprise application all of the back office stuff the workplace platform and the collaborative tools. You don't have to be super tech savvy to plug into EXP. And then again that's another misnomer that you know this is for you know super tech savvy agents. We have plenty of agents come through the onboarding process hit the ground running and they're like very commonly saying Wow I had no idea I could use all these tools and you know raise my hand get answers that super easy if you could use an iPhone you can use everything we have. So it's not that big of a deal. Sorry. Or Android. For those people out there.. You know I'm not overly concerned with today's hottest apps on stuff. Right? It's like it's just not really that much of a concern for me. My clients choose me because of our relationship not because of my fancy shiny tools like shiny things are going to change my relationship. It's like Sure it might make it easier for me to keep up with all my clients. Like give me some leverage but it's really about me and the value I provide to my clients. It's like that's you know that's not going to go away. So that was the answer to the technology.

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How to Use Social Proof on LinkedIn to Generate Sales Leads: Do you use LinkedIn's recommendations to differentiate yourself from your competition?  You should. Watch the video below to find out how. Video Transcription: Hello it's Chris Hamilton here with Sales tip a day, www.SalesTipADay.Com and today I'm going to show you how to use social proof on Linkedin. You can learn how to beat your competition by using LinkedIn recommendations. Before we get started I'd like you to access a 14 part LinkedIn little known tips and tricks course, it'll give you lots of tips and tricks on using Linkedin for sales, and prospecting and how to land more clients. It's a $199 value but you can get it for free, and here's how you get it. Go to bit.ly/28and14 or you can text "LinkedIn14" to 44222 in the US or "LinkedIn14" that's LinkedIn one four, to 1 855 969 5300 in Canada. So let's get started. One of the things you want to take a look at with social proof is: 92% of customers trust referrals from people that they know 71% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase based on social media referrals 81% of US online consumers purchase decisions are influenced by friends and social media posts 74% of consumers identify word of mouth as a key influencer in their purchasing decisions Referral marketing generates three to five times higher conversion rates than any other channel Basically, social proof is something that will help you sell your product or service and we're gonna show you how to do this through Linkedin. Now, on Linkedin there's a section, it's a recommendations section and relatively easy to use, I'm going to give you a secret when it comes to getting recommendations that no one else will probably give you, so, what you want to do is you want to click on the receive section and then what you're going to get, you're going to be asked to get recommended. When you click on this it's going to bring up a section, it's asking for recommendations. What you do in here, think about who you want to ask for a recommendation. You put their name in, it'll start popping up and you can click on that. Now, when you do that, you want to put in kind of that relationship that you have will them. It's going to be, "I worked for John, John worked for me" Whatever it is, then what you want to do is also select your position. Linkedin will have looked into the positions that you've had in your profile and pull them up as well so this is where you get that.Now, then you get to the screen where it says, "Ask John to recommend you, include a personalized message with your request" They've prefilled it, it usually comes with, "Hi John, can you write me a recommendation" here's where people fall down on this stuff. If you just send this out, someone's gonna look at it and go you know what? Yeah I'll get to it when I get to it, they'll never get around to it. So here's the secret to getting recommendations. Write your own recommendation. So what you can put in here is something like, "Hi John, can you write me a recommendation, are you willing to give me a recommendation, I've written one based on our relationship when I was working at this company, here's what it is, feel free to wordsmith it any way that you want" What you do is you hit send, that will go to John or whoever you're sending it to, they can either grab it, paste it and put it into the recommendations so in essence, what you've done is you've dumbed it right down for them so that they really don't have to put a lot of effort into writing a recommendation.So, here's some tips that I've got on getting recommendations. So first of all, your recommendation should improve some positives for potential clients. Once again, if clients are coming and they're looking at your recommendations, make sure that you got some very positive aspects, especially towards your target demographic or market that you're going after. If you can get facts and figures, put them in. So for example, Chris helped us reduce turnover in our company by 47%, Chris increased sales by 17% quarter over quarter by doing his magic or whatever it is, make sure you use facts and figures. Let the other person know that you'd be happy to write a recommendation for them and follow up if you don't get a recommendation, so for example with the one that I sent to John, if I don't get it, I can send him a quick message to say, "Hey, I sent you a request for a recommendation on Linkedin, was hoping that you could actually follow through and do that for me if you don't mind"Then what happens is you'll get that recommendation. So, once again, we're back to the 14 part Linkedin little known sales tips and tricks course. If you want to access this course go to bit.ly/28and14 so that's two eight and one four. You can text "Linkedin14" Linkedin one four to 44222 in the United States or "Linkedin14" to 1 855 969 5300 in Canada, once again it's literally a $200 value course that you could get for free, lots of great tips and tricks in here on how to use Linkedin to generate sales leads. If you need to reach out to me, feel free to, Chris@SalesTipADay.com. Phone number is 403-630-1243, and as always go to www.SalesTipADay.Com for great tips and tricks on Linkedin and sales and marketing.