Nathan (00:02):

Hey, what's up everybody. It's Nathan with a broker to broker real estate podcast. I'm excited that you're here today because recently I was reading an article that real trends had put out and it was, it was kind of fascinating to me because there were, there were talking about profitability and there's really five key driving factors and profitability that they found with a research project that they did. And two of those top things were monetizing elite programs and making sure that you have a technology platform that works. And so as a part of the broker to broker podcast, what I want to do is make sure that we're interviewing and talking to people that live in this space, right? That's not, that's typically not the world that we live in is real estate brokers, but we need to have people in our world that that can help us when we need it, especially when it comes to supporting our agents. So I'm excited about the guests that we have on here today, and let's get started.

Nathan (01:25):

All right. So like I said, we're have a special guest on today and his name is Randy Carroll. He's a good friend of mine. He's with chime technology. So Randy, welcome to the show.

Randy (01:37):

Thanks Nathan. I really appreciate being here. I'm excited about today's topic.

New Speaker (01:41):

Yeah, absolutely. So you know, like I shared with you a little while ago, I was, I was looking at the REALTrends post and the two things that came up where the Eli program and technology, and immediately you came to mind whenever this topic came up because that's kind of the space that chime lives in. Right?

Randy (02:00):

Absolutely. And I'm actually, I was unaware of that article. So right after this podcast today, I'm going to start Googling that cause I'm really interested in seeing what some of those other topics were because profitability isn't talked about enough in this space.

Randy (02:16):

You know, it is talked about as GCI, GCI loves UCI, but it's not until you get to the upper echelon of business people in this space that you actually begin having the profitability conversation. Whereas that should be something that's taught and in real estate school, I mean, ultimately, no, one's no one's in this business to sell homes and lose money. Like we're all here to make money. So understanding how to be profitable, very important. And I'm very underserved.

Nathan (02:49):

From an agent level, from a brokerage level, we're all running businesses and we have to treat it like a business. And that's one thing that, that we firmly believe at the locker room that is that it's, it's not about the amount of money that you make. It's about the amount of money that you keep. And so that's, that's what really piqued my interest with this and kinda got me on the topic whenever you and I were talking actually last week and I was like, you know what, we need to, we need to bring some awareness to this because whether you're an agent, whether you're a real estate broker, like we need to be aware of, of technology in our space, because the reality is technology is totally disrupting the real estate industry today. Would you agree with that?

Randy (03:32):

Oh, a hundred percent. It has been for a, I don't know, since that big green Z came along, but it's, it's only getting its hands and claws deeper and deeper into the space. Yeah,

Nathan (03:44):

Absolutely. So, well, so let's, let's talk a little bit about, about the importance of technology. Let's just start with, with agents. Like, can you, can you start talking about that a little bit?

Randy (03:56):

Yeah, absolutely. So the very first thing that an agent needs to understand about the technology that they're investing their hard earned money into is that it is an asset and it should be giving you a return on that investment. Right? So when you are looking at the money, going out towards CRMs and eLeads and things of that nature, you should be hypervigilant about understanding the money that comes in from it as well.

Randy (04:22):

So with that, a CRM in order to provide you a return on your investment or to put it in the words used by the article, you mentioned,uutechnology that are easy leads that give you a return and then technology that works right. Technology that works, it's only working if it's making you more money.

Randy (04:48):

So let's make that abundantly clear with the CRM. It's going to increase, increase your productivity so that you have the ability to reach out to all of your leads, to reach out to your entire sphere, to garnish and gather more referrals. Without that CRM, if your productivity does not go down, then obviously it hasn't worked for you.

Nathan (05:13):

Yeah. So you've lived in this space for, for a little while, right? Like how long have you been in the, well, we'll just see our first off CRM. Most of us know what it means, but what is CRM mean?

Randy (05:24):

So that's customer or client relationship manager could give you a little back, I guess I should introduce myself to, to your audience here. I've been in the real estate tech space since February of 2015. So you know, five and a half years now worked with another CRM space another CRM company that we ultimately grew and sold for a quarter of a billion dollars to fidelity national financial came over here to chime technologies because I really enjoy working in the fast paced, innovative startup environment. And when you sell to a fortune 300 company, that environment doesn't exist in the same way anymore. What I've seen in the past five years is that there has been this really splintering of technology.

Nathan (06:21):

What do you mean by that?

Randy (06:21):

So before I think it's fair to say that the real estate space has been slower than others to adapt to technology. Fair fair. So there was this notion at one point that there could be a service that would be your quote unquote, all in one, because there wasn't really a lot of technology PropTech, wasn't really a thing. And there certainly wasn't quality pieces of technology to cover different aspects of the business, right? Talking about websites, CRMs lead, gen transaction management email marketing, things of that nature. So this all in one type solution became a concept that everyone was kind of chasing after. Well, in a very quick way, the real estate space caught up in technology. I think they had kind of a hockey stick type movement in terms of how quickly people adopted technology or how much more technology became available.

Randy (07:26):

And consequently, the quality of said technology became increasingly better as well. So rather than these all in one solutions, people realized, well, there's all these companies that are very niche at what they do, but the reason why they're so niche and so specialized is because they're so good at what they do. Right. So that's what I mean by this re splintering of technology. People got away from trying to chase after all in ones and they wanted the best of breed best in class technology services and they wanted them to work together. Right. So that's kind of where we are right now in this space is we have, we have great technology over here and great technology over here, but getting them to do this is, is, has been tougher for some services.

Nathan (08:13):

Yeah, I know, I know, whatever I was in production, that was a big challenge because I, you know, kind of a nerd living in that tech space and I, you know, I was doing videos and I was doing Facebook and social media and all that kind of stuff. And I was also doing you know, at the time it was like the hottest thing, these new automated call sign, like riders that were coming out, you know, it's like all these different things that you're like, this is amazing. It's next level service. Like I'm bringing it to my people. However, none of it communicated with each other. Right. And even though there's these things called API keys that are supposed to make it all connect, it didn't work. Right. So I had to end bringing on a virtual assistant, helped me connect all the database into one central location to make sure I stayed in touch with people. So, yeah,

Randy (09:03):

Totally. Yeah. And that makes you more inefficient, which consequently bears itself out on your bottom line when you are working from multiple different systems and they don't speak to each other that well, and you have to hire a virtual assistant that you're paying by the hour. Suddenly that bottom line becomes thinner and thinner and especially from a broker's perspective, they already fight margins hard enough. You just can't afford literally to, to have inefficient systems. Yeah,

Nathan (09:35):

Absolutely. Well, and you were talking about having everything in one system and there have been, like you said, massive like hockey stick level improvement in technology in the real estate space, really, even in the last five years. I think that there's been a lot of talk around artificial intelligence. There's been a lot of talk of really just getting very crystal clear on the consumer. Right. And identify what does the consumer want, which is a fantastic thing because ultimately that's going to help agents as well as real estate brokers. Right?

Randy (10:11):

Absolutely did. But one thing I would say funny enough is I think some of the vernacular, or maybe some of the verbiage of technology actually preceded some of the technology coming to this space. And in recent years, AI, artificial intelligence have become buzzwords and everyone's throwing it on there. Everyone's throwing it out there. We have artificial intelligence, we have artificial intelligence. You know, I hear machine learning used here and there. But that's, that's not really the case, right?

Nathan (10:47):

Yeah. Well, I mean, I think artificial intelligence, you know, being kind of a nerd, I'm going back to the movie artificial intelligence, I'm going to these cyber robots that are walking around that can function pretty much like a human within certain guidelines. And I'm kind of going, hold on, is that what's actually running some of the technology? No, it's not. It's not, it's not that level of artificial intelligence yet. Maybe one day, but not right now.

Randy (11:14):

Exactly artificial intelligence is defined this way. By Oxford dictionary, it's the theory and development of computer systems. Being able to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence. So you're telling me that this keyword based if then statement type technology is artificial intelligence. There's no critical thinking. There's no contextual no contextual cues. That wasn't the case. But many, many services were pitching themselves as artificial intelligence when they were not artificial intelligence is something that we at CHIME are really proud to say, we were bringing it to the forefront of the industry and we're empowering our agents and our brokers through genuine Google backed artificial intelligence.

Nathan (12:05):

I liked, yeah. I liked that. And you just said something that a lot of the artificial intelligence that's been promoted in the past has been if, then, then that statements. So actually wasn't thinking it was actually going, okay, this was the task. Now this is what I need to do. Now. This is the task. This is what I need to do. So it's actually just a program.

Randy (12:23):

Sure. Yeah, absolutely. Yes.

Nathan (12:25):

That's cool. That's an interesting way to like look at it and change the context of the term AI. So I like that.

Randy (12:32):

Well, there's no, there's no critical thinking in that environment. Right. And there's plenty of error for misinterpreting or, or recognizing the wrong keywords. Right. Especially when you're talking about interacting with consumers, especially consumers in a text based environment, whether it's literal text on your phone or chat bots, consumers throw grammar, spelling out the window. Right. Absolutely. Absolutely. Everyone, everyone does everyone. Everyone has their own little kinks about how they communicate via text. So when you're using something like an if then statement it's going to, it has a high risk of misfire misfiring and that could negatively impact an opportunity.

Nathan (13:20):

Yeah, absolutely. Well, let's, let's bring this back. So we talked about real estate agents for a little bit. Let's bring this back to real estate brokers, right. And I know chime partners with real estate brokers all across the United States, but as far as the technology sector in, in helping a broker improve, like improve their technology or anything like that, like what do you see as the most important thing that a broker needs to focus on for their agents right now?

Randy (13:48):

So, you know, more brokers than I do. So let me, let me answer a question with a question first and say what do you think that the top two or three most important things are for brokers when it comes to recruiting agents? Because it's been my understanding that agents want training, they want leads, they want opportunities.

Nathan (14:11):

Yeah. Well, and let me, let me cover this real quick. So this is so based on this article from real trends, I'll just cover the five points real quick that, that they feel are the most important based on the, the survey that they did. So the first one was empowering team productivity. So making sure that technology is in place and systems were in place inside of a company to support team productivity and helping a team actually grow within the company. The second thing is monetizing eLead programs. So actually providing leads to agents and making sure that they're getting a return on their investment monetizing training and coaching programs within an organization. So actually implementing training, coaching inside of a company to support agents leveraging ancillary services. So what does the ancillary services mean? Title, mortgage doing that kind of stuff, and then creating a technology platform that agent's desire to have. And the way that I looked at that was going, okay, a technology platform agent's desire to have, would they be willing to pay for this by themselves without me being there. And, and so those, those are the top five. Now I think it goes a step further. I think I have been seeing a lot of people leaving, whether it's franchises to open their own small independence right. And start their own team bridge. Right. Right.

Randy (15:32):

The team leaves and they don't want to pay a broker, their team breaks.

Nathan (15:34):

Exactly. And so now all of a sudden we have a ton of independent brokerages popping up. Well, they're small, they're providing tremendous value. They've got great systems in place and their training's really good. Right. So I think it's, it's a mixture of those five things that, that REALTrends was talking about. But I think it's also, it's important to have a good culture and real estate brokers have to know who their client is and not necessarily anymore. Do you have to grow to have these massive large audience or offices? Like you can do a lot of the same thing with, you know, 20, 30, 50 agents in an office now, if you want to grow bigger than that go for it, but yeah. Go bananas. Yeah. So that's, that would be my response to you on that.

Randy (16:19):

I think there's been two major events, I guess maybe one major event has occurred. And one we're kind of in the middle of that has thrust the professionalism of the industry forward. So the great recession, the, you know, the housing crisis that eliminated a large degree of, of average agents who do four deals a year. Right. I think we went from having over 2 million to having about three quarters of a million agents in the United States. So those who survived were the professionals. And now COVID-19, I think is pushing us forwards towards having more and more professional agents and less and less hobbyists. So this idea, like you said, that brokers have to recruit hundreds of agents in order to have a good business is, is is outdated, right? So now we have a higher degree of professional agents who are making proper use of CRMs who are getting a return on their eLead investment.

Randy (17:26):

Those are the professionals that, that build a team. So back to the real trends article, you have to foster an environment where teams can thrive. And if you take a look at the industry as a whole, and you consider brokerages who are thriving in brokerages, who are less than thriving, it's because brokerage a has a has a business structure that promotes teams that helps teams grow and thrive in business, be just not. And a lot of that can be empowered by your technology. Absolutely can. There's a difference between a CRM for an individual agents, a team, and a brokerage. And if a brokerage has a CRM that is built for a, for an agent or a team there they're immediately going to alienate, alienate so many people within their brokerage, and it's not going to work the way it needs to be in order for you to be successful.

Nathan (18:27):

Yeah, absolutely. I've ran into that in the past. As I start developing and building out my team and everything, all of a sudden I'm going well, it was great for me. Okay. But how can I manipulate the system to make sure an assistant or a virtual assistant can gain access to it and get the system running to where if I now have, you know, agents underneath me that they have the same level of service and access that I do without having to pay just for holding out for them. Right?

Randy (18:56):

Sure. Absolutely. And then if you're a brokerage using a team only CRM, how do you, how do you keep your team separate? How do you recognize a team leader versus an agent on the team? These systems are built the way they're built for a very specific reason is to maximize the productivity of the ideal client. Yeah. That's why some of these brokerage provided CRM. I'm talking, I'm talking about big brand franchise CRMs. That's why they struggle to release a company wide CRM because they're catering to so many different audiences. When you tried to be everything to everyone, you inevitably fail. Yeah. And they don't have the luxury of being able to be hyper-specific on who their client is because a certain brand that's red and white has 170,000 agents who are completely different aspects of their business or their different life cycles.

Nathan (19:55):

Well, they're a little different life cycles and everybody's business is different. That's the beauty of real estate, right. We can design and build it the way we want to where, you know, whenever I first got started in real estate, I was really heavy investors. And it catered specifically to that. Well, then I made the transition to be more database driven and relationship driven on top of this. So it's integrating that into it. Well then all of a sudden, like, that's my model. Well, even the person sitting right next to me in the next office is running a completely different business model where they focus a hundred percent on open houses and that's their lead gen and that's it like, so there's so many different ways that they have to incorporate it. So that makes, that makes a lot of sense.

Randy (20:35):

So let's, let's continue to go down the path and get a little deeper in the weeds in terms of how a brokerage or team for that matter can maintain profitability and agent really some of this actually kind of fit just depending on the size of your business. One of the things that really heavily impacts profitability is headcount. Yeah. You know, all the startups I've worked at, we've maintained very lean departments. Everyone kinda does a little bit of everything. And so ultimately a lot of brokerages should be thought of as startups. One of the positions that can really start to eat up profitability and time is the ISA position

Nathan (21:27):

What do you mean by that?

Randy (21:29):

So that the inside sales agent is the individual who is responsible for really getting you to an ROI on your elites. Right. They're the first person who gets the lead generally speaking, right? The role of an ISA is to take incoming leads, call them and then set them. Sorry, I fidget. I just got,

Nathan (21:53):

Okay, cutting over there.

Randy (21:56):

It's not, it's, it's, it's like a fidget spinner with consequences. There you go. But ultimately I say can really impact profitability in two different, two different ways. One you're paying them to they're responsible for converting leads to opportunities, which is where you make money. Interesting.

Nathan (22:19):

So let me pause you real quick. So you're saying, because this is a, this is a fascinating idea and concept. So you're talking about an actual broker hiring an ISA for the entire company to convert the leads that are coming in and warm up essentially. Is that what you're saying?

Randy (22:35):

Yeah. Well, well, so if a broker wants to get the most out of broker in this, I guess it's only applicable if a broker just providing leads, not all do, but ultimately those are the leads you get the best splits on unless you're in personal production. Yeah.

Nathan (22:52):

Okay. Well, that's a, that's an interesting idea because, you know, going back to monetizing an elite program, well, how are you monetizing it? And I think that's a, that's actually a very interesting concept. I haven't actually thought of it is from a brokerage level. I bring in an ISA and say for the leads that are coming in, I do a different split or something like that with, and that person that converts leads warms them up, maybe even sets the appointment of course, and turns around and now is getting compensated based off that split difference. Right. So yeah. So small salary maybe, and, you know, you get a bonus for the leads that you said

Randy (23:32):

Exactly. Right? And then you can tack, so you can keep your traditional brokers split with brokerage provided leads, but then you can tack on a flat fee to the agent and say for every ISA qualified lead, you're going to pay three nine, you're going to pay 500 bucks extra. Right. You know, kind of adjust that to your market. But you know, there, there is an ability to monetize that position. So rather than it actually decreasing your profitability, it could make you more profitable. Simply because you are getting more out of your eLeads and then there's an additional fee for using that ISA, which will still be cheaper, or at least that will require less overhead than an individual agent or a team hiring their own ISA. If they're, if they're paying per performance, then they don't have to have that.

Nathan (24:23):

Yeah. And combining that, and just say, you know, if I'm, as if I'm an individual agent or even a team, and I hire an ISA to do this for me, I'm still having to pay advertising costs. I'm still having to pay that ISA for the hour base, whatever, you know, time and, you know, possibly even doing a bonus on when they convert a lead, but from a brokerage level, if now all of a sudden I'm bringing this person in. And even if it's a flat fee, like for every lead that's converted and it goes to an agent yeah. They're on their normal split of whatever it is. But if you get one of these leads, then it's going to cost you 250 bucks, 300 bucks. Well, I mean, if I'm an agent and I can have those leads set for me and everything else, all of a sudden I'm kind of going all right. Like, is it worth 250 bucks for me to go get another deal? Sure. Yeah. If I'm good at converting and actually closing deals, then absolutely. It is like I'd pay $250 all day long for a five, $6,000 commission. Right.

Randy (25:22):

Absolutely. I mean, and, and proof is in the pudding agents are paying 30% commission 30% referrals all day long for opposite 80 or Zillow. They're, they're paying on this performance, which resonates with agents because agents typically don't have a lot of room for overhead. You know, some, some highly profitable teams or brokerages can maybe, but individual agents, especially they're, they're much more prone to pay more on the back end because there's less risk upfront. So naturally there's, there's less reward. That's just kind of the life cycles of of investing. That's cool. So continue to go down this path just a little bit further the quality of the ISA and managing a person can be difficult, right? Especially if you start to scale and you have to add more and more that is increasingly more difficult. So your technology should empower your ISA to be able to work through more opportunities, more efficiently.

Randy (26:32):

And that's one of the ways that chime has introduced artificial intelligence is to help brokerages and teams and agents qualify more leads on the front end and give them more qualified time. Our artificial intelligence will actually engage with a consumer, either on the website or via text and hold a full fledged conversation and consequently categorize them as hot or not. Right. And when you have some additional qualification going on that not only happens on the front end, but also continues to nurture further and further down the down the timeline. You have an, ISA whose time can turn around and be focused on others.

Randy (27:21):

Technology should empower you to reach more people because this is a people business, this is a people business. This is a contact sport. It's all about who and how many people you can contact. And if technology isn't empowering your ability to contact more people than you're missing, you're missing the whole point.

Nathan (27:41):

Yeah. Well, that's, you know, that's our slogan at the locker room. It's, you know, real estate, it's a contact sport. It's time to get your Jersey dirty. I mean, that's our, that's our whole slogan. I mean, that's what it is because it's about, it's about numbers it's business, right.

Randy (27:56):

Absolutely is. And you can look at any professional sales organization across any industry, and they're all going to have KPIs. They're going to have, you know, dials context, demos you know, quality conversations. These are all KPIs that fortune 100 companies track. Why wouldn't you want to run your sales organization? Like a professional sales order.

Nathan (28:19):

Yeah, exactly. Right. Cause that's, that's what it is. I mean, it's a business, right?

Randy (28:24):

Yeah. It absolutely is.

Nathan (28:26):

Cool. So like covering, we covered a lot of stuff today. Like we talked about eLeads we talked about technology platforms and all that kind of stuff. Like what is some like one piece of information or a little bit like closing this out a little bit more information that we need to know as brokers, as far as technology

Randy (28:46):

Embrace virtual showings and 3d tours is as fast as possible, as fast as possible because they're going to continue to have value even beyond quarantine. Yeah. One of the most time sucking activities agents have is showings. If you can reduce the number of showings on the front end, you can per client, I should say you can increase the number of clients that you're showing homes to. So embrace virtual showings, 3d tours. There's some really good programs out there. You've got you. You've kind of got the higher tier of Matterport. There's another camera called a feta. I believe it's still some quality, but not nearly as expensive. And you've got services like ice by three 60 embrace virtual showings and 3d tours because you are going to be able then spend more time with more people.

Nathan (29:44):

Yeah, absolutely. Well, and that goes back to, you know, time spent a listing, right? It could take me 10 hours to do a listing from start to finish. Now there's a lot of tasks and everything involved in that. However, on a buyer side, there's more time on tasks, right. I mean, it could be four times as long, essentially with driving time, setting appointments, doing the showings and everything else and coordinating all of it. There's, there's definitely just more time because you're having to drive around and do all that stuff. And yeah, definitely. I agree with you a hundred percent that virtual tours are the way to go virtual walkthroughs because an agent should be doing that just across the board. I was actually looking at Facebook and I'm just going through and scroll and the other day, and I saw one of the, one of the groups that I'm a part of a question came up and says, do you, do you reimburse your agents for these type programs? And it was just a huge discussion. There was like 85 comments on there on that. And I was like, Alan said, it's a hot topic. So that's good advice. That's good advice.

Randy (30:45):

Absolutely. It's just not, it's not just for luxury properties anymore. Yeah. I think there was a stigma that if I have a $2 million listing, it's got to have the best 3d tour out there. Well there's 2 million or $200,000 listings. 3D tours are going to be an integral part of this business.

Nathan (31:04):

Yeah, absolutely. Well Randy, okay. Tell us a little bit about, about you about China. How do people get in touch with you? If they want to learn more about this, cause this is exactly what John does, right?

Randy (31:17):

Absolutely. I mean, chime in some form or fashion and can touch on just about everything we talked about today. That's I really love the, the strength of our program, but also the ability to work well with others. We're one of the only companies, if not the only IDX CRM solution in this space to maintain an open API. So take all of the products that you know, and love today or best in breed. And when earlier, when I mentioned it's difficult for companies to do this, we have greased the wheels there, and now we have a much better ability to interact with other programs and some of our competitors to find out more about chime, go to chime.me, Sean dot M E to not go to [inaudible] dot com. We're not a bank. We're not going to ask you to open up a bank account. So, so please save yourself the time and in trouble, chime.me. I'm headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona, I'm personally in Atlanta, Georgia as my

Nathan (32:17):

I'd say I can see the flag behind you there. Yep.

Randy (32:20):

You have go Falcons. And reach out to me on Facebook, Randy, Carol. I'm usually I'm in, I'm in all the big groups check out our YouTube channel, just chime technologies chime CRM. We've got a ton of great content on there. We've been interviewing some of the best minds in this space for a while now. And I'm excited to get Nathan on there as well. Yeah. So there's tons of content and you're going to be able to walk away with some nuggets.

Nathan (32:54):

Awesome. Well, Randy, thank you so much for coming on the show and, and just talking about technology and everything that's going on in the space today. It helps us as brokers to be able to know what's going on and how we need to handle that as everything just continues to evolve. So I appreciate you being on the show.

Randy (33:12):

Absolutely. It's my pleasure. Thanks for having me.