Episode 428 - Wayne Einhorn, President - Inner Circle Broker Coaching

Here's the thing, as I call it, and that I remember Bill talking to a banker and it was when I had my own business. And he said to me, just what you say? He said, well, Wayne, I hate your business. And I said, why is that? His name is Bob. I said, why is that, Bob?And he goes, well, your assets go home every night at five o'. Clock. And I said, well, that's true. But you know, Bob, for the last 10 years they've been showing up the next day at 9 in the morning. Right.And so, you know, when you, when you get an established business, Bill, it has repeatable cash flow.

You're listening to the Real Estate Sessions and I'm your host, Bill Risser. With nearly 25 years in the real estate business, I love to interview industry leaders, up and comers and really anyone with a story to tell.It's the stories that led my guests to a career in the real estate world that drives me in my 10th year and over 400 episodes of the podcast. And now I hope you enjoy the next journey. Hi, everybody. Welcome to episode 428 of the Real Estate Sessions podcast.As always, thank you so much for tuning in. Thank you so much for telling a friend. Today we're going to continue our Canadian run, we'll call it with Wayne Einhorn.Wayne is the owner of Inner Circle Broker Coaching. He coaches brokers.And I think that's fascinating because, you know, we know that a lot of other coaches who work with agents, of course, Tom Ferry with us, you know, in our relationship. But I thought it would be really cool to find out the angle that someone like Wayne takes when you're talking with broker owners.And so very interesting background in the business. A long time we're going to talk about that.And he's partners with Norma Rawlings, who we recently had on the show, who was a blast and, you know, there. I can imagine these two really know a lot about their work. So let's get this thing going. Wayne, welcome to the podcast.

Well, thanks very much, Bill. It's quite an honor to be here with your podcast.I know over the last 10 years you've had some really distinguished guests and it's an honor for me to be one of them.

Yeah, well, look what you've done in the industry. I can't wait to get into that because you've been here a long time and doing some really cool stuff, so that'll be fun.First off, I have to say, Wayne, you're a Canadian who has relocated to Florida. You know, that's not uncommon.

Right. Well, especially around this time of year. It's kind of cold up there, you know?

Yeah.

Yeah.

There's lots of, lots of tags on those cars that we can see. But this is the best part. Here I am, we're doing this remotely when we record this episode yet. I'm in St. Petersburg, you're in Bradenton.We're roughly 25 miles away from each other.

You've got to come over the bridge for a barbecue. That's what I was thinking.

I'm in on that. Are you kidding me? Yeah, that'd be. That'd be sweet. So we'll have to figure that out. So let's. Let's talk about this.You know, I know you've had a long.Over 40 years you've been in the business, which I think is unbelievable, and starting in Canada and eventually, you know, making your way home here to the Gulf coast to Florida. What. Can you just share a bit of that journey? And then. And ideally for us. What brought you to Florida, other than the weather?There had to be some other things, I'm sure.

Well, yeah, you know, I, I've had the privilege, if you will, Bill, of working in every aspect of the real estate industry. I started selling when I got out of high school, and, and then I became a manager and went through the kind of corporate.Corporate life, became a regional manager, and we sold that company, or I helped the owner sell that company back in 1992 to Emmanuelite Financial, and we, we. It gave me an opportunity to start my own brokerage, which I did, and I operated that for 10 years.I became the ninth largest brokerage and the largest MLS in the country. And, and so in North America, actually. And, and then we sold that, or I sold that and got into consulting, working with brokers.And of course, the United States, the US market is 10 times the size of the Canadian market.And so that's what drove me to the US we started to do a lot of work in the United States and have a lot of relationships there, and this was a natural force after that.

Yeah. And so you were. Are you from the Toronto area as well, or at least Ontario?

I am. I was born in Toronto, actually.

Oh, okay. Awesome. So, so, you know, I, We've just recently had Norma Rawlings on the podcast, and we're going to talk about. Yeah, that in a minute. But by the.I, I, I actually have been to Toronto one time. Cool.It was called the Sky Dome at the time, and I was working with the Padres, and my wife surprised Me with a trip around my birthday to go to a game in Toronto, and we stayed in the Hotel Overlooked Field.

And how long ago was that, Bill?

Oh, 93, 92.

You gotta come back. It's. That area has turned into Manhattan. Like, it's skyscrapers. It's just incredible, the growth. It's just amazing.

Well, I'll tell you, back in that timeframe, it was. It was still an amazing downtown. I mean, we could walk straight out of the hotel, was the ballpark.

Right.

Well, I remember just walking straight down to a very major street that took us to some very cool restaurants and.

A little bakeries and great food scene for sure. And clean. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, so you left that. So tell me. Tell me, what was the impetus for the. For the relocation? Because probably family.So everyone's, you know, probably moved with you. How did you do that?

You know what? We. Well, my wife's a nurse practitioner, so it's easy for her to kind of relocate and.But I have a good friend, Jim Morton, who owns, actually, a company that services the real estate industry called Prospects Plus. Jim and I have been friends for 35 years, and he's my neighbor, actually. So I'd visited him enough times, Bill, that he pretty much sold me a house.Nice.

So that's great. Yeah. Bradenton area is cool. For those that don't kind of really know the Gulf coast area, Tampa, St. Pete.And if you just go south, you go over the sky. Skyway. Sanger Center.

Right.

Skyway Bridge, you're right into Manatee County. And that's where Bradenton exists. Yeah. And if you keep going, it's. There's other things, but I think it's nice.It's nice to be there because you do have that. First of all, the airport for Tampa is probably a little easier than the one down in Sarasota.

Yeah. Well, we got. Tampa's only 45 minutes. Sarasota is 15 minutes. If we want to go over to St. Pete's we can get out of that airport.I mean, it's really well serviced. It's a great place to be from a locational standpoint.

That's cool.

You.

You mentioned you got into the business right out of high school, that that literally means you were a realtor, like, at 18.

19.

Is that 19? It was 19. Really? So what.

What?

There had to be some reason why you went to real estate, because you could have done anything or a myriad of kind of different roles, but you went to real estate. What was the trigger for you there?

You know, we had a Family friend. And of course back in those days the real estate brokers were kind of one man shows. I remember my first office.It was a single black tile phone and that was the phone. But there was a family friend that and his son and I played hockey. So we had a great relationship.And he said hey, I need somebody to help me with the real estate business. So I went to work there and I've always been a bit of an entrepreneur.He started my first company when I was 16 and I just saw real estate as kind of the perfect entrepreneurial outlet, if you will, to, to be able to do that. And so I got started. I, I will say this Bill. The first three years in real estate I failed miserably.I, I didn't sell a house and did everything wrong and. But it was a great learning experience to then start doing everything things better. I wouldn't know everything right but certainly things better.

I love that story. That's. I mean look that had that. A lot of people have had a lot of success in this industry started the same way just trying to figure it out.Yeah, I think that's great. I do have to go one off, off like off the rails one time here. First of all, I feel really bad for your Blue Jays.

That's a heartbreaker. Was it, you know buddy, I said to my daughter, came down to a hundred feet like that last hit. A hundred feet more would have been a home run.100ft less is a pop up fly, you know, so it's. Hey, it was a. God bless the Dodgers. They, they prevailed and it was a hard fought series.When you go to the bottom of the 11th in game seven, I don't think you get any tighter and any more exciting. So it's, it was a heartbreaker, but we're proud of them nonetheless.

I think that team's going to be a force to be reckoned with going forward. I mean you got a lot. I mean when you talk about Barger and Clement and there's some guys in there that they're going to be right there with.Bichette, Guerrero, that's. And the pitching was unbelievable. So. Yeah. So as a. Now I'm a Rays fan because I live in St. Pete. I'm not too happy about how good you are.It's not going to be fun playing in that same, same division. So the other thing is. And I got to, I have to go here. I, I'm going assume you're a Maple Leafs fan.

Oh, I try not to be Bill. That's the. There's a. There's a 12 step program for that. I don't know that or not, but you. You gotta get into recovery if you become a 12 unfilly fan.Cause it's, it's so heartbreaking, you know?

Yeah, well, that. All right, I'll stop talking about it.But that leads me to Norma, because I asked the same question to Norma and she said, oh, no, I'm a Jets fan, because her sons are playing in the. The system, I guess.

Yeah.

So that's. That's pretty cool. So tell me, how did you. How did you meet?

Norma and I did our MBA together back in 2002. We went to the Richard Ivey School of Business. And as it were, I. Norma's a bit of a rebel rouser. She sat at the back of the class.And I can be a bit of a rebel rouser too, Bill. So I sat at the back of the class and I don't think the two of us moved from that seat for the two year program. And we became friends.And of course, Nora went out and did some big things and was very successful. And, and when we, we identified the mergers and acquisitions opportunity, I knew she was perfect for that role. So that's how.

Yeah, we talked about that. With her mediation background and all that great stuff. Yeah, it just worked out perfectly.And then you have what she doesn't have, which is incredibly extensive real estate background. What a great partnership. That's cool. Well, let's talk about the coaching side of things. Right. What, what was driving you that way?You said consulting, but you know, running a coaching company is much different than consulting. Right. Because there's a lot more staff, I would imagine, and some other things. Yeah. So how did that, how did that come about?

You know, really came about, Bill, from my own journey. You know, when I got into. I. We talked about my sales career and my brokerage career was very similar. I can remember having started a brokerage.I, I got first two years. I recruited a hundred people and thought it was successful. And I was at that time. I incorporated December 27, 1992. So that's 27.Fast forward two years. I'm 29. I know nothing about business. I know nothing about numbers.I know nothing about really brokerage other than how to recruit agents and sell houses. And I remember vividly it was a November day.Our banker came in and he put all the papers on the table and he, he looked across the table at me billing. He goes, well, Wayne, you're bankrupt. What? How do you figure that? Like the lights are on boy came to work and he's gonna run out of cash, like.And he, he mapped out this kind of path to disaster that I'd set myself on, you know, and, and, and I very quickly made some changes and solved the problem, but I, I never want anyone to go through that again. Yeah, that. What I had to go through, I had to really get my degree quickly in the university hard Knox.And I always say that I became the coach that I wish I had when I started the business.

Yeah, you talk about a lifestyle that you. A lifestyle you envision. Right. I mean, that's kind of something that you help people build towards.Obviously, that probably came directly from that experience. So let's talk about that a little bit. How do you. How does that work?

Yeah, you know, I mean, we went from that day to, you know, the time. By the time I sold the business, I had very little active involvement. I, you know, back to Florida, that business was in Toronto.But I used to spend months, a year with the kids in Florida down the Fort Myers area. And, and, and, and really the business served us. And I would say, Bill, there's three purposes of a brokerage.The first purpose is we've got to have a. We've got to provide services in a way that agents are excited to pay for. Right. They're excited to work there. That's number one.Number two, it has to provide the owner the time and money to live a great life. Now, people get to, you know, choose that themselves, but to me, that is not having to work in the business all the time.Being able to take vacations with your family, being able to go to the little league game, you know, all of the stuff that we want to do. And then, of course, have a lifestyle.Because most brokers, Bill, if you think about it, I mean, myself included, we mortgage our houses, we, you know, imperil our financial futures. We put everything on the line, right. We work like crazy. Weekends, nights. We don't go to the little league games. You know, what, what comes of that?Well, we've got to have a lifestyle. And then the third thing is we've got to have something to sell at the end. We've got to be able to exit and get some money.And if we're not going to do that, I would tell people not to get in the brokerage business. You know, it's not worth it. You.

You know, I think the, that sellable word, you know, it definitely is. I think people understand maybe, I think layman may, may not that that brokers definitely have to sell something that need to have something to sell.I think, you know, I talked. I dealt a lot with agents over my career in it, you know, in the title business.And agents need to do the same thing if they're not going to go the broker's route. They need to be thinking about what am I going to sell when I'm, you know, done. Which this is database of really important people, right?

Yeah, totally agree with that.You know, and it's interesting because in talking to agents, when I sold my brokerage in 2002, Bill, it was around the same time as graduating from Ivy. I'd gone back and gotten an NBA and decided I wanted to do something different. And. But I was one of the first brokers to sell their brokerage for.For money for a check. Everybody up till then just handed the keys over. And I often tell. And I got a lot of money for it. And I. And I.And because it had a lot of repeatable cash flow.And I tell agents that story because, you know, just because nobody sold, no agent sold their business for cash in their market doesn't mean it can't be done. Right. You know, you've got to figure out, you know, what is it that people will pay for and then provide that and then you'll have something to sell.

Now I've seen some agents, you know, turn it into like an annuity. Just. I'll just keep. I'll just take a split that maybe gets smaller over time, but, you know, there's some good stuff. So let's. Let's talk about then.What is it? What does it look like to be a sellable business?And this definitely ties into, you know, the partnership that you have with Norma, because obviously it's going to be an acquisition more than likely. So, yeah, probably not a merger, because if they're exiting, there's no merger. Right. So talk about that a little bit.The flow of that and how that really. How it ties together so well with the two of you.

You know, I think the first thing we've got to do is we got to get set a goal. And when, you know, somebody gets into coaching, though, we have an exercise we take it through called what I Want.This is what I want for my business. And I like to start working on exits five or 10 years ahead of time because one of the key parts or key.One of the most important components of an exit is what do you want the check to look like? You know, how much do you want? And then we can start to work backwards and say how do we achieve that? Right.And then start to put the plan in place to say, hey, on this day and whatever, 20, 30, we're going to exit for a million or two or three or whatever the number is. And then once that time period comes, then as you said, we've got a secondary business, a complimentary business, I guess you would say.And the broker evaluations, mergers and acquisitions, they could take it over and actively run a sales process for us.

If I, if I, if I have a company that manufactures stuff and it sells this, all the, it sells things and it's really very easy to kind of value what we do. It's a whole different world in the world of real estate, right?Because first of all, the, the, the thing you have are people who are really good at what they do, who can leave whenever they want.

Yes, yes.

And they do sometimes.

Yeah, that's true. You know, here, here's the thing, as I call it.And then I remember Bill talking to a banker and it was when I had my own business and he said to me just what you said, he said, well, Wayne, I hate your business. And I said, why is that? His name is Bob. I said why is that, Bob? And he goes, well, your assets go home every night at five o'. Clock.And I said, well that's true. But you know, Bob, for the last 10 years they've been showing up the next day at 9 in the morning, right?And so, you know, when you, when you get an established business, Bill, it has repeatable cash flow. And some believe there's going to be a Trend where probably 10 or 12% leave a year.But if the business is built in a way to be able to sell it, you're going to replace that 10 or 12% plus a few, well now, you know, as you said, people leave and people come and every year we have repeatable cash flow. And if, and when you think about selling a business, Bill, when people buy anything, any, any asset, a business is an asset.It doesn't really matter, matter whether it's a T Bill, they, they, they buy it for the same reason and that is promise of future earnings. And the question in coaching is how, how strong can we make that promise? Right? How can we help somebody make that promise Airtight.So somebody will write a check today for the promise of future earnings in the future.

If you had to break it down because, because there's obviously in what you do, you have to help them really understand the process of being a broker. Right? It has nothing to do with selling it. It's there's that. There's that. We call them assets. But yeah, it's those agents that you bring on and some.Some you have to let go, and some you need to do other things with. So if you had to say like, well, what I do is 20% this, 30% that, and 50% that, what would that look like for you?

That's a great question. I mean, in terms of helping brokers, we have a system we call the seven core competencies.And really what they are, Bill, is seven key strategies, and recruiting and retention are two of those seven. But really it starts with leadership of the business. Right. Leadership in terms of, hey, where do. And I don't mean personal leadership.I mean, where do we want to take the business? Right. You know, and how do I communicate that to others? So they get excited about getting into the business. Right.So we start with leadership as the first competency.Then we move to business model, which is creating a model that's profitable and all the economic drivers and the key performance metrics that we need around that. Then once we have business model, we work into uniqueness, which is our differentiators. That's how we. We justify the price and the business model.And it's only after we do that we complete those three competencies that we can. We can work on recruiting and retention.One of the things, frankly, that brokers, a big mistake they make is they go out and recruit people and they have no idea it was. They're like me, 100 agents and going bankrupt. Right. I was really good at recruiting. I just didn't know the business model. And so that's a problem.Yeah, it's a big problem. Right. And so not defined. I was not defining success in the way that I needed to in order to achieve my goals.

Right. So that. Yeah, that obviously, as a coach, that is massive.That's exactly what they're paying you for, is to make sure we get this all in the right place. So, yeah, I love that. That's great.I would imagine the target size of the brokerages you work with is not, you know, because you look compass and anywhere that's really weird. And we'll see where that goes. There's. There's. There's other, you know, all kinds of other things going on. What's. What's kind of the.The sweet spot for you?

That's a great question. I mean, we call them a profitable broker. And what we mean by that, Bill, is anybody that wants to run a brokerage, so a profitable brokerage.So in other words, if Somebody wants to sell houses and subsidize their brokerage, and we call those guys subsidizing brokers. And nothing wrong with that. Some people like to, hey, I own the place and I sell some houses and that's how we pay the rent. And I got a few agents.That's not our target. Our target is somebody who says, hey, I want to build a profitable brokerage. Right. Typically, I mean, we've got. I was just on the.In a meeting with somebody that came to us with five agents that now has 150 agents. You know, the size that they come to us with is not, you know, it could be a startup, and we've done that many times.But really we want to help them chart a path to that profitability. Right. What does profitable look like?And ideally, kind of when they get into coaching, Bill, we want to not just chart the path to profitability, we want to help them chart the path to exit.

Yeah, right. And the end, the lifestyle and the whole thing is all part of that. Yeah. It just makes sense.

That's.

I was, you know, peeking around the website, looking at some stuff, and I, I thought it was very interesting that you, you used the phrase health checks. You have these key health checks. Can you talk about that for a second?

Yeah. When you look at those core competencies, we have a health check for each of them.And you, you asked a great question, which was, hey, what, what percentage of time do we spend? It really depends on the outcome of the health check. So you might have somebody like me who's great at recruiting. We don't need to figure that out.But, boy, their business model really isn't going to work well. We're going to spend our time focused on the business model to begin with. Right, right.And so those health checks are really designed to identify challenges in the business and where people ought to focus.What's cool about the health check, though, Bill, is if people, if they're online and they, they see a health check asset that we have, they can do the health check and it actually gives them a written report.

Wow.

It says, hey, here, you know, here's, you know, if we use business model as an example, hey, here's where we see the holes in your business model, and here's the recommendations to check some. They're very, very valuable resources for the brokerage community.

Yeah, that's. I mean, look, a broker who's serious about their work loves that and lives for that.

Yeah.

Help me, tell me what I can do.

That's great.

I made a, you Know, just a quip about, about any. Anywhere. Anywho. Yeah, anywhere and compass. But tell me what's your perspective?You know, and, and I'll, I guess we'll talk about like the US Real estate market. Right. Because is, is the Canadian real estate market different at the moment?Like or at any point in time, is one doing something different counter to.

The other industries function the same? Part of what we do is give economic guidance.Every year I host a meeting with our members, Bill, and I forecast the future, forecast the next year, particularly in terms of transaction count because that's going to impact the profitability and typically the trends in that are very similar. I mean in the United states right now, 2025 will be in my view probably just under 4 million transactions, which is.Is number that we haven't seen since the mid-90s. It's well below 2008, you know, and that's the third year running. And so that, that creates a challenging environment.But what I would say for your listeners is this, even in that environment, our best practice brokers are hitting their, the, what I call the best practice profitability. We do, we create something every year called the market adjusted margin target.And so we look at the industry, we say look at based on where the transaction count is, where the industry is. Here's what our margin target ought to be. And we've got 80% of our book actually hitting that target now.

Wow, that's awesome.And look, bottom line is if you're really good at what you do and you're paying attention to things, a bad market is sometimes, I mean look, there's always opportunities.

Right.

And we saw that in 2008. 9. I was running a branch at the time. So you know, we saw a lot of people come out of there doing really well.

Yes.

Because they were able to pivot and you know, short sales became a thing and they could do it and all of a sudden, wham. Right. So that's, I think that's awesome, Wayne, how we talked about this, the, the lifestyle you've envisioned.But how do you encourage know broker owners to like overcome the feeling of being stuck in day to day and like thinking they have to be stuck in day to day.

Right? Yeah, absolutely. We call it on the hamster wheel. Right. They get up in the morning.I remember my, my kids used to have a hamster and they'd get up in the morning, have a coffee. Bill. I watched this thing running and running like wow, that's motivation.Like it didn't go anywhere, you know, and, but I Think what one of the things that we're really able to provide value to the brokerage community with is what's possible. And I think a lot of times people, you know, they're on that hamster wheel because they don't understand what's possible, right?And you know, somebody once said to me, not that long ago, just recently, Bill, he said, wow, you're really smart. And I said, well, I'm not that smart. I said, you know what you need to do?I've done 12 times and I'm not telling you about the first 11, I'm only going to tell you about the 12 that worked. Right.And the reason I mentioned that is because if somebody's stuck on that wheel after 41 years in the business, and I don't want this to sound arrogant, but very few times can you show me something I haven't seen before or a problem we haven't fixed, right?And so we're able to say to people, hey, you know what, There's a guy named Bill over in St. Petersburg just like you, and here's what his situation was and here's what he did. And we helped him go here and they go, oh my gosh, I had no idea. And so we really help them see what's possible.And I have never seen a brokerage business yet that can't be, can't be turned into a profit maker. Just haven't seen it.

We've talked about brokers and what they need and what they need to be taught or how they need to react and those sorts of things. For all the coaching you've done, is there a certain type of person, you know, it could be an agent. Like I know agents want to become brokers.That makes, it obviously makes sense. But is there a certain personality or something that you go, this is great. Or like, oh, we probably shouldn't take this.

Yeah, you know, it's integrity is number one for us. I mean, you know, somebody's got to have integrity. If they don't, we're not able to help them. Work ethic would be another piece.You know, I can't teach integrity and work ethic, Bill. I can teach a lot of things, but I can't teach integrity and work ethic.You know, and if the kind of trailers of that are professionalism and you know, how they deal with people and we have turned clients down before, if I interview somebody and I get the sense that we can't help them, coaching is a long term relationship. Our average customer is within seven years, you know, it's funny because whenever we sell coaching, we don't even take payment when they say I'm in.We wait till the onboarding meeting. Because if somebody, you know, wants to. It's not like a hey, you know, press hard, cheap carbon, third copies, yours kind of relationship.You know, it's something that we're going to be doing for a period of time. And so it's really important that if it's not going to work, we'll tell people. Right at font.

Yeah, you got to do that right away. Yeah, yeah. I do want to touch on recruiting a little bit and retention. That's. I can't imagine anything more important to really. To a broker. Right.I know there's. You have seven pieces to the puzzle.

Yeah. But. But those are. Those are showstoppers right there.

Yeah. So what. What is, you know, are there typical struggles or are there things that, you know, that you can see that you can correct?Is there something com. Some common denominator there, you know?

Yes. I mean, most brokers, despite the fact that it is a showstopper, they are not good at as particularly recruiting. You know, they focus on retention.The challenge with that, though, is that you're always going to have a natural percentage of attrition. We call it the XYZ factor. People get sick, they die, they move out of state.They, you know, not so much anymore because of the demographic, but people used to go on maternity leave and that kind of stuff. And so I've got to recruit people. And it's really interesting because I went to my first recruiting training session in 1989.I guess that makes me old, though. I don't know.But I've watched the evolution of recruiting and really what we developed about two years ago is a referral system to help brokers get referrals from agents. Now brokers will say, hey, you know, oh, yeah, I got a referral. I got three referrals. I got.But no, I'm talking about two referrals per person per year. And so the reason that that's so important is, you know, agents. And it's not just agents, Bill, but society as a whole.Post Covid in our experience, don't answer the phone. And so that idea of cold calling, it's not working anymore. It hasn't worked for the last few years.And so we needed to find a strategy where we could get in front of people in a credible way and help them understand the broke. Help brokers communicate the value proposition.

Yeah, yeah. No, as you're right, things of things have well, things are changing a lot super fast. How's that in our world, right.Just thinking AI and some of the other things that we're dealing with, you know, here FNF as well. So cool. Beyond, you know, the current market.I mean this is always a question I ask somebody in your world, kind of your world where you're helping in consulting, you know, what do you see as the biggest long term trends or shifts that your clients. Right. Broker owners have to prepare for?

You know, it's interesting. Tomorrow I've got a presentation to 150 brokers on it's called future proofing your brokerage.And I go through seven trends, first of all on what I see changing and a couple of the big ones, Bill, that I see you talked about AI. You know, I think that the AI conversation for brokers is focused in the wrong place. And so people, it's funny, I just.Very well respected industry pundit talking to brokers about AI and they were talking about what people talk about, which is the change in the buying cycle and how the buyers and the sellers are going to use it and all that. But from a broker's perspective, there's going to be a key difference, a key benefit, and that is this.20 years ago, Bill, we used to have big premises. Premises used to eat up about 31% of every dollar that came in.And then over a period of time we realized, hey, we could rationalize, shrink premises. Today average probably 20% of every dollar that comes in instead of 30. And best practice is 15, about half.And so premises used to be the biggest line item on a broker's expense. Now at 15%, the new biggest line item is staff. Well, that line item is going to shrink in half.

Yep.

Right. And so, but we're not focused on that. And it's interesting. We have a, I have a monthly workshop with our big brokers.And recently this year we added a continuous part of that workshop or agenda item, if you will, which is the AI primer. And we're all bringing AI, you know, hey, here's what we're doing.And it's interesting, yesterday I was on one of these and, and somebody had a, a transaction processing solution that drives the pro cost of processing a transaction at $8 per transaction. You know, and, and so those are the kind.Now the technology wasn't perfect, it's not ready yet, but, but those are the kinds of things I see that are going to take that line item, shrink it in half. Right.And what I always tell brokers, Bill, is if you let's say it goes from right now laboratory 25 cents, and let's say we take it down to 10 cents. Don't put the 15 cents in your pocket.Take 7.5%, put it back in the business, invest it in the agents, take half, put it in the business, take half and improve your margin, right? And so you want to reinvest some of that in the business, but it will help brokers drive 5, 6, 7% extra margin to the bottom.

Wayne, this has been fantastic. Let me, I have to ask the same final question I've asked every guest as I've, you know, been doing this and this, it's the same thing.What's one piece of advice you'd give a new agent? Just getting started.

You know, if somebody was just getting started, I, I think what I would do, Bill, is tell them to find out what's possible.You know, I think at the end of the day, I remember doing this event for a large national franchise and, and there were 300 brokers in the room, and the room cleared out and there's this one lady sitting at the front and she's sobbing. And you know, you've done speaking before, Bill, you're cleaning your stuff up, right? And I'm looking over there and I'm a little uncomfortable.What should I do? Right. So I finally get down off the stage and I said, well, can I help you? And, and she said, well, I, I, I think I made this huge mistake.And I said, well, how do you figure? And she said, well, I bought this franchise and everybody I've talked to says that you can't make any money in the brokerage business.And that's just not true, you know, and so find out what's possible. I had a call with another group at the opposite end, 300 agents this week that isn't a coaching program.And they spent 10 minutes trying to sell me on the idea that you can't make money in the brokerage business. It's like, no, you're talking to the wrong guy, right? And so I think my one piece of advice is find out what's possible, because here's what I know.I've been 41 years in this business, 35 years at a management level. There has never been a better time to be a real estate broker ever, full stop, you know, and people like to talk about the good old days.No, the opportunity is way better today. And so find out what's possible.And if, if real estate's your passion, if helping people is your passion, you know, and Then, then get into it and go full bore.Because I can tell you from my own experience and the experience of those around me or clients, there's a heck of a, heck of an impact you can have on people and a heck of a lifestyle you can have for you and your family. Wow.

Wayne, if somebody wants to reach out to you, what's the best way for them to do that?

You know what? We are probably a website built. Really people know what we do. So we came up with this really complicated website.It's called RealEstateBrokerCoaching.com okay.

Pretty simple.

So go to RealEstateBrokerCoaching dot com and there's a ton of free resources there. They can certainly get a discovery call booked with us, and if that's what they want or if they just want resources, it's a great, great site.We built it with brokers in mind.

I agree. I've been there, so it's a great site. Wayne, this has been awesome. Thank you so much for your time today. Continued success, continued good luck.We had a wonderful year. There was no, no storms at all on the Gulf Coast.

So crazy. You know What? Milton passed 10 miles the eye wall from our house, and now we were fine. I shouldn't complain.A lot of people were really negatively impacted. But, but you're right. I mean, it's been the, the hurricane gods have been shining on Gulf coast of Florida this year. You know what's interesting?I, I, I had a, I did a quick bit of research, and I believe it was 2006 to 2013. There was a run where there were no hurricanes that hit the Gulf Coast.

Well, let's find some wood and make that happen. I'm knocking right here. I want to see that happen here. Well, that's, that's awesome.I will try to find time to get down to your barbecue that you mentioned earlier.

Yeah, no, I'd love to have you as a Bill, and I just want to say thanks again. You're. It's been a really enjoyable experience, and I can see why your podcast is so successful.With your great guests and the way that you interview, you're a great asset. Thank you.

Well, Wayne, thank you so much for your time today. I appreciate it.

Thanks, Bill. Thank you.