Real Estate Sessions Rewind - Ep 358 - Building Relationships: Lessons from the Podcast's Eighth Anniversary with Shelley Zavitz, Sean Carpenter and Joe Rand

So Bill is presupposing that I'm a Giants fan, which I.

Of the New York teams, the football.

New York football teams.

And they're not even New York.

They're really based in New Jersey.

That, that I'm a fan of the Giants.

And I am.

But as Bill also knows, what I'm really a fan of, more than any individual NFL team is, I am a fan of myself.

I am a fan of me and the teams that I select in my fantasy football leagues, which are reflection of my intellect and my judgment and my good luck and wisdom in selecting teams.

And, and, and, and I root for them because I often have jelly beans riding on the outcome of these particular leagues that I am in.

And I do like to collect the jelly beans at the end of the year and all the various other things that might flow from it.

You're listening to the Real Estate Sessions podcast and I'm your host, Bill Risser, Vice President and National Sales Empowerment Specialist with Fidelity national financial.

With over 26 years in the business and 11 years producing this podcast, please listen in as I continue to seek the stories and journeys of real estate professionals.

State hi everybody.

Welcome to episode 358 of the Real Estate Sessions podcast.

As always, thank you so much for tuning in.

Thank you even more for telling a friend.

This episode is going to be a bit different than normal.

You know, really not normal or maybe abnormal is probably what nails this episode.

It's being released on the eighth anniversary of the very first episode of the Real Estate Sessions, featuring Jay Thompson, then of Zillow.

What started out as like a way for, you know, me to understand how to record and publish a podcast with a few episodes so I could talk to people about it.

Is it going to be entering its ninth year with over 400 episodes, when you factor in some special episodes along the way.

So I wanted to do something a bit different.

So I've invited three of my favorite guests at the expense of pissing off those I did not reach out to, but all of whom know I love them too.

All of these guests that I've got here today have been on the podcast multiple times and they have a lot in common.

All are great creators.

They've presented around the country.

Two of them are authors of multiple books.

But most important of all, all of them know how to have a good time.

And they're incredibly funny.

So let me introduce them with a quick thought on each.

I'll start with Sean Carpenter.

He has listened to every single episode I've ever published.

That is the Truth.

Every single one.

Now, for the other two guests, they're looking at me like it's a bit problematic, like there's no way they could do that.

But.

But not for Sean.

A couple things.

He's been in the industry nearly 25 years.

He's a nationally known speaker focusing on building relationships, solving problems, having fun.

His blog, Carp's Corner, over a thousand posts, right?

Consistency.

The guy is nothing but consistent.

So.

Can't wait.

We'll get on there.

If you.

If you see him on your association's calendar coming up in the near future, go see him.

He's amazing.

His episodes September 1, 2015, episode 5, September 2019, episode 206.

Live from the Florida association of Realtors convention, August 2020, episode 248.

The fifth anniversary show.

Remember that one, Sean?

January 2021, episode 267.

I had to have him back on.

It'd been a long time.

December 2022, one of my first shortcut episodes where I revisit a guest.

So that's Sean.

How are we doing on time?

Okay, good.

Can I jump in and be like noise?

That's pretty awesome.

Yeah.

Next up, Shel Habits.

I met Shelley right after she published one of my favorite industry books.

Your first 365 days in real Estate.

No matter your experience level, it's a great read, an awesome writer with a. I'll call it cutting sense of humor.

She grabs the reader and pulls them through with her.

It's just a great read.

You gotta find it.

Her second book is Marketing that Moves People.

She combined marketing with case studies of artists in the music industry.

Exactly what you think.

You got to read it.

And then there are platforms which might factor into my questions for Shelley.

New Agent365, an on track agent.

We will be chatting about that for sure.

The episodes for Shelley.

June 2019, episode 196 November 2021 after the second book, episode 301.

And she hasn't been on a shortcut yet, but it's going to be scheduled probably at the end of this call.

Last and least.

Did you get that, Joe?

Joe Rand is here, I think.

Yeah, sure.

Studied law at Georgetown, a J.D.

From Stanford, taught law at Fordham, and then joined the family business after all of that.

Now known as Howard Hannah Rand Realty.

But it's, you know, his mother started this brokerage in the Westchester county area north of the city in New York, and so he's been a part of that for a couple of decades.

Also an author, Joe penned a couple books.

Disruptors Discounters and doubters and how to be a great real estate agent.

This is with shelley's, you know, first365.

This is another book that's a must read for every single real estate agent.

It's unbelievable.

Joe and I also spawned, I think that's the right word, the Ranting and Raving series in the podcast a couple of summers ago.

And I'm.

I'm sure that we'll talk a bit about that.

And.

And I can't.

And really, I can't forget to mention this.

He's preparing, doing all this prep work for eight fantasy football drafts.

He's got a lot of work to do.

So we really thank you for the time today, Joe.

Busy time.

Here's.

Yeah, here's Joe's March 2019, episode 184.

March through August 2021, we did 20 randing and raving episodes.

March 22, episode 319.

I got Joe in for the buyer agency debate, which is.

Which was, you know, which is still going on.

And June of 2023, his Shortcut episode.

So thanks for letting me do all that and talking about these people, the format.

I've asked each of these guests to come up with one question for each of the other guests, and I'm doing this as well.

This kind of calms down my OCD of always preparing exactly 12 questions per podcast.

Every episode, I send 12 questions.

This has not been done before.

It may never be done again.

I fully expect this episode to break the record for longest episode set by Stefan Swanepoel at 56 minutes and 32 seconds.

And that was just him.

That was time to go.

Yeah.

Talking for 56 minutes and 22 seconds or whatever it was.

You said, hello.

It was an hour.

And you said, time to wrap it up.

It was over an hour 30.

A lot of good editing done in that episode.

Let's get this thing going.

Hi, everybody.

How's it going?

Fantastic.

Hello, Bill.

Good, Sean.

Joe.

Hey, Bill.

How are you, man?

I gotta tell you, I listen to every single episode, but I listen to him on one and a half times speed.

So listening to your intro on regular speed sounds like you're stoned.

I guess that makes sense if you're used to me talking fast.

That's right.

Yeah.

So look, this is gonna be a blast.

I think we just jump right into it.

I think we know what we're doing.

We're going to be asking questions of each other, and I think I'm gonna let.

I'm gonna designate Shelley.

You get to go first, and you get to choose who you'd like to.

I like that.

Choose who you'd like to ask a question to and say the name, the question, and we're gonna just roll from there.

Joe.

Oh, boy.

Yeah, yeah, You.

I was watching a keynote that you did recently.

I'm sorry, Canopy.

Remember that one?

Yeah, that's right.

Canopy down in North Carolina.

Yeah.

In that you were talking about the keys to a successful agent.

And one of the things that you said is that in your research, some of the best things that you learned is that if you're just a great agent, you will make a lot of money.

Yeah.

Do you remember saying that?

Yeah, I've said that a lot of times.

So my question to you is this.

In the last decade or more, it has been an industry standard for a lot of coaches and recruiters to ask people like me who sell real estate to build businesses and become managers instead of being great agents and providing great service.

Why do you think that is?

Do you think we need a course correction?

Tell me everything.

Great question.

I think that's really dumb.

If people do that.

Like, I've never done that.

I've never gone to one of my top agents and said, listen, you're making the company, you know, $100,000 of company dollar.

What I want you to do instead is to me pay you a salary, and you work, and I pay you salary and benefits, and you stop bringing all that money in and start managing people.

It tends to go the other way.

I think people that go from sales into management, they want to do it because they want a little bit more consistency in their lives, and they want to be able to have more control over their schedule and stuff like that.

But if you're asking me whether or not it's a good thing in the industry to take productive real estate agents, take great real estate agents who are good at helping people buy and sell homes and turn them into managers.

I think that's the dumbest thing in the world.

Is that actually a trend that other brokers.

Do people do that?

Well, we consistently are creating real estate agents that are recruiters for large brokerages.

Oh, I see.

You're saying.

I mean, let's get to it, fellas.

Terrible idea.

Okay, if you're talking about that.

If you're saying taking.

I'm talking about everything.

Okay.

Because if we're, first of all managed.

Down you go.

First of all, the skill set to be a really great agent and the skill set to be a really great manager are not all of that overlapping.

There are very different skill sets.

The one thing where you get some overlap is that a really great real estate agent tends to be somebody who is really good at managing deals from contract to closing and keeping them together.

And that's being a good deal.

Doctor Is a really good thing for a manager to be.

And there is some overlap.

Like if you're really good at prospecting, you might be really good at recruiting because it requires the same sort of resistance to rejection and whatnot that you could do it.

But generally speaking, you know, to be a manager is a lot of different things.

Like, put it this way, I am a terrible manager.

Horrible.

Like, they don't have me manage anybody.

If you look at the, if you look at the.

The org chart at Howard Hannah Rand Realty, my brother Matt, who is a wonderful manager, worldclass manager, he's up here.

Up top.

Well, you can't see me on this podcast.

I'm doing something visual.

But imagine him at the top of like a big sort of chain and underneath him are like 50 different arrows or whatever lines going to all the regionals and then from the regionals to the managers.

And then over on the side is me.

And there literally is not one line.

There's like a sideways line going from Matt to me.

And then for me, there is nobody.

Nobody reports to me why I have a terrible skill set for managing people.

I have a wonderful skill set for doing creative things and for speaking and for coming up with ideas and, and that's what I do.

But I can't manage people.

And I think a lot of really great real estate agents, I mean, some of them would be good managers, but there's no reason to say that somebody who's a great real estate manager would be or real estate agent would be a great real estate manager.

So I think that's a terrible idea.

If people are doing that.

And if what you're also saying is like, hey, there are companies that all they want to do is turn their real estate agents into recruiters.

I think that's stupid too.

I think that that was a hot idea 20 years ago.

But I just think, I think that it's crazy to, if you want to say to your agents, hey, listen, we're going to give you some incentive that if, if, if you help, if you give us a heads up and you put us.

But, but don't make them recruit, that's distracting them from the thing that they do well.

And quite honestly, I never even bought into that.

That was the thing that a lot of people attributed Keller Williams expansion to the fact that they had agents out there doing recruiting.

I think that their expansion was much more due to other aspects of Keller Williams, including profit sharing, including just having higher splits than everybody else at the time, than it had to do with putting them in recruiting opportunity.

Because I don't think the recruiting really worked.

I just think there's something really gross when an agent's talking to you and trying to recruit you to their company and you know that they get.

You're going to be in their downline.

I don't want to be in anybody's downline.

Being someone downline sounds like it's a terrible thing to be being downline.

I'm down your line.

That's like being downwind.

Being downwind is never a good thing either.

I get those calls.

All right, so I'm going to.

I wish I had a buzzer.

Great answer.

Yeah, you should have a buzzer.

All right, I'm done.

I'm done.

Terrible idea.

That was a good answer.

Outstanding answer, I think.

Thanks, Joe.

You get the next question?

You get.

All right, I have to ask a question, so I'm going to ask Risser a question.

No, let me ask Sean a question.

I'll save my wrist a question for later.

Sean, as we all know and as I've talked about many times on this podcast, you have a slogan, and I actually have with me one of.

So I can get it right, because I always do it wrong.

I have one of your personal notes.

Because I will say this to everybody.

Carpenter, he.

He walks the talk.

He.

He says to do these things.

And I get personal notes from him all the time.

And he's showing them to me.

He's on the screen, which, again, you can't see.

It's not a visual medium.

But he's got personal notes in his hand right now that he's about to send out.

The man must have a budget for stamps that is crazy huge.

And I get them.

And he's actually sent me some very clever things.

At times, I usually lose his cards before I actually open them, which is a source of disappointment to him.

But I do get them.

So I have one in front of me.

And on the front, he has his slogan, his motto.

And his motto is, build relationships, solve problems, have fun.

And my question is, where did you come up with this?

And have you ever considered adding something to it or changing something with it?

Where did it come from?

You know, I. I can't trace back exactly where it started.

It's been something that, in my blog, as Bill referenced, I'VE been blogging for almost 18 years now.

And I, I, I think it, where, where it came is when I, when I left sales to become a manager, one of those horrible ideas, right, that Shelly just talked about.

And it was an opportunity for me to, to have a paycheck and benefits and some stabilization in my, in my career and, and also going to leadership opportunities.

But I, a lot of times people would say, what's the key to success?

And what is real estate all about?

And as I looked around, as I looked at what I was doing in the, in the business early as a young, you know, aspiring agent, when I watched agents, I said, you know, there's really three things that you got to do every day.

You got to build relationships with people, right?

You got either a new relationship with somebody you've never met or deep in a relationship with someone that you've known for years and gotta solve a lot of problems in our business.

And, you know, every day you're solving problems of some sort and if you can have fun doing, it's a pretty good way to go through life.

So I, I don't know where it came from.

I never sat down one day, Joe, and said, I have to, you know, I wasn't in a class where they said, you know, take quiet time, we're gonna play some broke music and you got to come up with a slogan.

But I just started thinking that that's kind of the easy thing to say and it kind of has become a tagline.

It's funny that people do kind of recognize me or know me for either all three of them or they know I have a six word slogan that's somewhere about those things.

And so if you read my blog post, I kind of almost use that as my sign off each time, you.

Know, you do, you use it to sign off on your emails as well.

I mean, and you're, and your messages, you've left me messages again.

You live the life that you tell people to live.

And I, I totally respect that because I'm a complete fraud and I tell people to do things that I don't do at all that I never do.

You know, it doesn't make it easy, Joe, for the newer agents that join the business, you know, if you say, you know, of course they want to go out there and get listings and get buyers and earn referrals, but they can't do that if they don't build the relationships and, you know, be able to solve problems.

And if they can have fun doing it, because we all, all four of us know people in the business that I don't know that they have any fun in the business.

We've seen them come, we've seen them go.

But the ones that we know, the ones that we love in our business around the country, around the globe, are the ones that have a great time doing what they do.

And their customers and their clients and their community, I think, sees that and feels that.

Joe, you've never dropped off a bag of rock salt for someone who had to clear off their sidewalk of ice.

I mean, you wrote about it in your book.

Damn it.

Bill's referencing a story I told about somebody else who did that.

I'm very good at collecting stories.

Shelley will tell you.

You from.

I've.

I've read her stuff.

Storytelling is a big part of what we need to do in any business, really.

And so I tell stories that other people have done amazing things, and then I just tell the stories.

And that's my.

That's my gift to all of them.

It's not that I actually do any of these things.

I just know how to tell a good story.

That's it.

All right.

All right.

So my question.

I'm going to go to Mr. Wrist.

We're just kind of going around the horn here.

All right.

Obviously, Bill, the reason why all four of us are together is because of real estate conferences.

We.

We all have connected at or met the original time at a conference.

So in your role now with Rate, my agent and previously in the title business, you kind of part of your business was to go to conferences.

And my question for you, Bill, is, is do you have a favorite conference that you've ever attended?

And.

And what was it about that.

That one that you maybe are thinking of, that what makes it so special?

Is there a specific location?

Was there a fun story you want to share?

Because there's lots of conferences.

So I'm not asking for a specific time and year, but, you know, was it a certain event?

Wow, that's.

There's a lot of events to think about.

Let me ponder for a second.

Oh, man, there's so many Inman events.

I'll tell you what, I'll go with this one.

It was January 2013.

We're in New York at the off of 42nd.

Right.

We were not over in Times Square yet.

And it was the year that I was going through chemotherapy or therapy, as I call it, for the colon cancer surgery I had had in September of 2012.

So surgery in September of 2012.

Started therapy in late October and was concerned that I Wouldn't be able to make it to Inman in New York.

And I was able to do was uncomfortable at times because of the cold weather and the neuropathy I was experiencing from the treatments.

But to be able to be there with all the ambassadors, it really was.

It was the first thing I had done since the surgery.

And it was the first thing that kind of got me feeling positive about where we were headed with this whole thing.

So I would say Inman 2013 in New York, probably the most special for me.

Good answer.

All right.

Not as funny as Joe, but that's okay.

Shelley, you haven't answered a question yet, have you?

No.

What do you want?

It's your turn.

I want you to tell us.

I mean, look, first of all, you know, you came out of.

This is a second career for you, and I think that's really cool.

I mean, you worked in radio and advertising and marketing and all kinds of cool stuff in Canada, right?

And then you come down to Portland, you don't know anybody, and you become a realtor, a really good realtor, and.

You just still out on that, but I hope so.

You decide to write a book and then that book leads to another book.

But I want to know what was the impetus for you for Ontrack Agent?

I want you to explain what On Track Agent is to the listeners, and then I want to find out what was the need, what did you see and how did that all come about?

Okay, well, On Track Agent to me is a platform that is for everybody.

And people keep asking me, why did you do that when you can make it for yourself or put yourself on there or promote yourself or become a coach or whatever.

In my view, and the things that I've been watching is that the industry needs a place that is kind of safe and free of click funnels and all the garbage and all the other things where people can go and learn and then they can learn in a way that's affordable and they can learn in a way that's achievable.

In my view.

Going to conferences is awesome, but it's like a water hose and you take all these no's and then you get home, you're overwhelmed and you don't do anything.

So what if we baby step that and you and I did new agent365 together.

It was the first inception of the idea, it was the first test of the idea to see if it could be successful.

If an agent could learn from more than one voice, more than one coach, and more than one phone call, a month and I think that we proved it very successful.

I will say so.

To me, on Track agent is hopefully a change in habit.

And my hope for that is that it's embraced by the industry that way.

And when people look at me and say, what do you want out of it?

I want to see it succeed.

And that's it.

Nice, nice.

Give us the 30 second elevator pitch about how it works because I don't know if everybody even on this call maybe possibly doesn't know.

So I want to find out.

Yes.

Ontrack Agent works on a revenue share each trainer.

Imagine you could go to Thinkific or Kajabi and you could build your own course and you have to pay to host it there and then you have to pay for advertising.

Then you have to find people to buy your course.

And 90% of the time that never happens.

So what if we created a spot that has free hosting?

You can just put your course up, set a price for it, you have a store in the background and then you along with other people who train other niche ideas can grow an audience together.

And then the other thing that I was hoping to do with it is make it so that we could have more vetted content.

You can go to YouTube right now and find the answer.

It's going to take three and a half hours for you to get something that's actually tangible that you can implement implement in your business.

So how could we do the job of vetting the information first so that we stop wasting people's time?

Because I don't know about you, but I don't have a lot of it.

Busy agents and people who want to be successful don't have a lot of it because we should be in the field.

Right?

Awesome, awesome.

Any follow ups?

I should ask that Sean?

Joe, follow ups to any of this stuff.

Shelly, do you have any cool success stories?

You don't have to specifically name people, but maybe a cool story from someone that either took your class or that reached out to you after reading your books and specifically had some success.

And it's one thing to read the book, it's another thing to implement the book.

Joe, you might follow up on that one as well because I know you shared the same stories with your books.

Yeah, I'm really grateful to tell you for the first book.

The reason why I even kept going was the amount of feedback that I got.

And they started on Instagram and then they were sending notes to, to my office and you know, I have felt because it's a lonely business, we can be silos especially if you're a new agent, right?

There's not a lot of, well, it's better now.

But when I wrote the book, it was like, mentorship was tough, and it was hard to find people that would give you a shot.

From there, we moved into new agent365, and we were creating rookie of the years.

Like, crazy Bill can attest to this.

Like, they were.

And it was all over the country, and it was fabulous to see.

And they could actually afford the training, which was lovely, you know.

And then for marketing that moves people, the feedback has been, I have a rejuvenated way to present myself in the market that doesn't, like, suck my soul.

And that's what I wanted.

Like, be yourself.

I'll show you exactly how to do it.

This is what Persona is.

You know, all those things.

All those things that I taught folks that, you know, we were making radio ads for them and stuff, I would bring them in and we called them Creative Encounters.

How lame is that?

And we would spend an hour just, like, doing exactly what I say in that book.

And every single one of them were successful.

Otherwise they wouldn't keep buying.

Right?

So, Joe, how about you?

Any cool success stories off your book?

Either a broker or owner agent.

Never.

Not one.

No one has ever contacted me to ever say, I just.

I'm gonna write you a note.

I feel terrible.

The best thing I could say about my whole experience of being an author was when I'm going to look at my book to see if there's any new reviews, and someone was selling a used copy of it for like $4, and I'm like, I'm now competing with people that bought my book.

And it was probably one that I gave away at a conference.

They schmucked, Sell them, give my book.

You know, I get.

You do get.

I mean, I have some people.

In fact, I.

The reason I met Bill was because he had someone on the.

On the podcast who mentioned reading.

Reading how to be a great agent and liking it was a Canadian agent.

Her name is escaping me right now, but she was up.

Melanie.

There you go, Melanie.

And she.

And then he said, oh, I gotta look this guy up.

Because he'd never heard of me because I do such great marketing of myself that he had no idea who I was.

And then he had me on the podcast and then we hit it off.

So, yeah, there's, you know, in my thing is that, you know, the book, I get a lot more because I have, you know, 1200 agents that.

The company that I'm working with, you know, and I make money when they make money.

So my success stories tend to be more with that.

And I do get occasionally get nice comments from people about the book, emails or something like that.

People don't realize like how nice that is.

Like they think that, I don't know, maybe like when you're Stephen King and someone sends you an email and tells you how much they love the book, you're like, oh yeah, okay, fine with whatever.

I'm Stephen King, I've sold a billion books and I have a billion people writing me this.

But like I don't get that many.

Like if someone writes me an email and says how much they like the book, that's like, that's thrilling.

I love that.

I don't know if Shelly's just.

Maybe Shelly gets so many that she doesn't, but I think, I think anybody that gets like a thank you note from somebody, I think, Sean, you do a class somewhere and someone takes the time to take five minutes and send you an email and say, I really got a lot of your class.

Thank you.

Like those things are, I try to do that as much as I can when I go to stuff because like, like I, I think that everyone takes it for granted that you know, oh, this person doesn't care.

They're not going to care if I send them an email.

But it's nice.

So yes, I'm, I've gotten some good feedback from people and stuff like that and, and, and I'm working more on trying to come up with ways to, to make more of an actual impact letters that he's got.

Sean, for those of you on the non video visual medium of this, Sean keeps insisting on doing stuff on screen that we see that no one else will see.

He has a box full of thank you notes, I guess.

Is that what those are?

Those are notes from the years of either agents I've coached or managed or.

You saved all the notes that people have sent to you.

Not all of them, but probably 80, 90% of them.

That's awesome.

That's great.

I believe that's called dropping.

I think you do tremendous job of talking about your book without brand.

We need a new question.

Shelly, you have me or Sean left.

I'm going to do carp because listen, I believe that you and I share the same brain.

Okay?

And this is my test to see if that's true.

Okay?

Ready?

Okay.

What TV show, past or present, had the best soundtrack?

And before you answer, I have written my answer down on this thing and I Would like to see if we share a brain.

Talk about TV show on network.

TV show can be any past or present ever made.

Soundtrack.

Soundtrack.

I love that, man.

Best music.

It's a great question.

So we're looking for something that's.

Man, I have to cut this dead airpod.

That's okay.

I can edit this out.

Keep going.

TV show past or present with a good soundtrack.

You know what, what keeps coming to my mind is lost because.

Because of the guy in the base.

Desmond's record collection.

But they didn't play a lot of songs on that show.

We can come back.

We'll think about it.

Can you cut it in?

Come to mind as Happy Days.

But that's super, super old.

That's okay.

Is that your answer?

Yeah.

Wonder Years.

Oh, I thought for sure you would say, you know what?

He was in there.

He was in the ballpark.

He was in the.

He was very retro nostalgia.

Yeah.

Can you just say Wonder Years so that it's funny?

Let's see.

Winnie was in it.

Wonder Years.

Yes, that's exactly what I have.

All right,.

Again, again, for those of you who are listening to this video, Shelly has a card that says Wonder Years on that.

She's showing up to us to prove to her us that if.

If Sean had guessed the right thing, that it was like going to be a mentalist trick that she played.

Now, for all we know, Shelly has 50 cards with 50 TV shows on it that she would just fan out and pick one.

If Sean would have just read his text messages before the.

Before the show, he would have known it was Wonder Years.

Okay, Sean, I'm gonna ask a question.

To Mr. Rand and Joe, I'm gonna ask you a two part question here.

So get your thinking hats on.

You are located in the.

In the greater New York area.

So if you go just due north, you got Saratoga Springs.

And if you go east, you got Long Island Sound.

Joe, if you had a racehorse, what would you name it?

All right, it's one of my programs at night, the programs, horse's name.

So for the racing in Saratoga or in the, you know, in the.

Whatever.

Well, the racehorse is the Saratoga question.

The second question, the follow up part is if you had a yacht, what would you name it?

So you got to come up with a name for a yacht or a name for a horse.

All right, If I.

The name for the horse would be I don't want to be glue.

All right, so that would be.

So as it comes down the.

Comes down the track like I don't want to Be Glue is in third place.

He's falling behind.

I Don't Want to Be Glue.

As always, he's falling off the pace.

Oh, a sad, sad story for I don't want to be glued because we all know that how this story is going to end.

If I had a yacht.

Oh, no.

If I had a yacht, I would name my yacht build relationships, solve problems, have fun.

That'd be the name of my yacht.

It's a lot of paint on the back of a boat.

Kind of go around the boat, a lot of words.

But some people would see the boat, and they'd say, oh, it's the build relationships boat.

And then they, you know, I kind of turn.

They would say, oh, no, it's actually.

There's more.

There's more to the name of.

Of the boat.

I would.

You know, I actually owned a boat once, and I don't know if I even ever put a name on it, because I was the.

I destroyed it almost the first time I took it out.

Did I ever tell you that story of, like, I. I went on a boat.

I.

Boat before.

I'd been on a boat before, and I thought I knew how to pilot the boat.

And the boat had this very strange gear system, which.

It involved having one stick that you would put forward to go forward and then back to go back, and the other stick was the speed.

So if you wanted to go forward, you put one stick forward, and then you put the speed forward.

But if you want to go backward, you got to put one stick back and the other stick forward.

So as I'm coming out of the dock, I put both sticks forward, go much too fast.

I go right into the dock in front of me.

Like, I zoomed right into it to the point that.

And I'm trying to go backwards, but I have to go backwards.

I got to put one stick back and the other stick forward to go backwards.

And who thinks to do that?

You think you bring them both backward, but they don't.

It didn't work.

I. I'm going forward, forward.

My boat is inclined like, it's facing the sky.

Like, I am this close to using the.

By the dock that's in front of me as a ramp and flying into the condo complex behind the dock.

There's tons of people out on the docks watching me do this.

And.

And that was my first.

I. I'd taken my new boat out for a total of six seconds before I ran it into a bunch of pylons and docks and did about $10,000.

Joe.

I have a Suggestion for your boat.

I have a suggestion for you.

I think it's crash and burn.

I was going to suggest.

I was going to suggest bonus reading.

That also might be the name of my.

So futile.

He was sitting on the dock of the bay.

Yeah.

Otis Redding is the name of the boat.

Oh, that's good.

So, yeah, so I. I would not own a yacht, Sean, because if I own a yacht, I would need to have enough money to have a yacht that actually somebody is the captain of the yacht.

I need to, like, at that level where, like, somebody pilots the.

The boat for me and I just ride up on the top and hang out.

Joe, you're heading for that right now.

You're going to be the mayor of Nyack, New York.

Yes.

I'm sure you have enough to get a yacht and a castle.

Well, the mayor job doesn't pay that much.

It's like $25,000 a year.

So that's not really going to help me get to the next level.

But there are endless opportunities for graft, so I'm looking forward to that.

I'm looking forward to the people showing up with big wads of cash in envelopes and dropping it off to get various.

Their tickets taken care of and various things like that, by the way.

No, someone's gonna find that, and I'm literally gonna get like, there's gonna be something on Facebook about Joe Rand joked about, you know, taking corrupt, being corrupt on this podcast.

So, yes, no, I'm not graft.

I am.

I am not gonna do that.

That is not.

I'm.

I'm looking forward to being here.

This happens every time you get on the podcast, Joe.

You always say something you regret.

Didn't I admit to, like, tax fraud at one point?

I know at one point I admitted to tax fraud.

You did.

You did.

You went tax fraud.

Joe.

Joe, you're next.

Next.

Ask a question.

All right, Sean, you know, we haven't asked you a question.

At least I don't remember if anyone's asked a question, but I have a question for you, Russ.

It's time for you to get on the hot seat.

And my question is this.

What exactly do you do?

It's very vague.

I know you do the podcast, but you have some sort of job with rate.

Your.

Rate my agent.

That.

I don't really know what it is you do.

You just.

You were late to come to this call.

People don't know this, but I got a text from you.

They had some sort of staff meeting that this sort of, like, Australian venture that you're a part of which always seems to me like it's some sort of money laundering operation.

They've hired you to help them, you know, move American dollars in and out of the country.

What exactly is your job?

What do you do?

What, what is your day to day?

I think everyone wants to know who listens to this podcast.

Well, after that you're not a full time podcast.

After that it's probably.

After that, it's probably not Rate my agent.

So no, my role is vice president of strategic partnerships with Rate my agent, which means I'm working closely with MLSS and franchises and other tech companies trying to figure out ways we can work together in order to grow our company.

Now, having said that, I think another big part of my role is to filter the Aussies because Aussies are very straight up, like they're not holding back on anything.

And I think a lot of the times when I hear an idea at a, like a meeting I was at tonight, I'm going to go, great, let me handle that.

And I'll have a different way of saying that because that's not the way we say it over here.

But they're very direct.

I think if you've ever known in Aussie, I mean, we all know Peter Shravamad, we all know, you know, Box Brownie guys, you know Brad and, and Mel and they can be, they can be very, they can be very loud.

Yeah.

So it's my job to kind of calm them down.

Well, they all used to be prisoners, right?

Well, yeah, they love that when you talk about that.

That's why you brought me here, that the invitation came from you.

Yeah, they started as a penal colony, you know, in about the 1880s.

Yeah, that's exactly true.

And they for some reason don't like us talking about that.

I don't know I will say this about, but I've met a bunch of people that you work with and they're all delightful.

Everyone I've met, we've had a couple of meetings and stuff like that, talking to them and they're great.

And I'll be honest, like, I have, I've met a lot of Australians in my life and they've all seemed to be very pleasant people.

They seem like they're so.

I'm surprised that you say that.

They're so uncouth that you need to be able to in, you know, interpret for them when they want to interact with Americans, that you have to be as a go.

I don't think I said that.

I said it that way.

Joe, I'll just jump in.

What I said was in business, you know, it's a little different than it.

Is when they're being Aussies and they're totally like that.

They do not.

They just, it's shooting from the hip, it's as sharp as they could give it, you know, and they, then they just turn around and walk away.

And you're like, oh, I'm bleeding.

No harm, no foul.

All right, all right, all right.

Sean.

I'm going to Sean.

I'm asking the question of Sean.

Sean, as you look back over your career, this is, this will be post coaching training.

You've already started doing the things you were doing with, with Coldwell Banker and then out on your own, what stands out as the most fulfilling, energizing piece of your business?

The thing you do that you just dig.

You know, I think it's the speaking part.

Being able to be, be up on a stage and, and share with the audience that, you know is getting what you're saying.

You know, whether they're taking notes or just listening.

There's always the, you know, I know Joe and Shelly have seen it.

There's people in the audience with their arms crossed and as Seth Godin says, you know that those aren't your people.

Then, you know, you gotta look past them and find the people.

But there's just something cool about after a presentation when people come up and you know, they just want to say thank you.

Or you get a note after, you know, as I showed you, you know, it's just a really energizing and then to have to be able to kind of have carte blanche to do the, create creative delivery of the message, you know, whether it's in pictures, whether it's in music, whether it's in, you know, stories or interactive workshops.

But that's, you know, when I left sales, you know, and went into management, went into teaching, you're still selling every day, right?

You're selling the business, you're selling the industry, you're selling the company, you're selling the brand, you're selling the tools and the training.

So you're always selling.

But I think that's a cool.

If I had to pick just one to do from here forward, it'd be speaking.

Yeah, cool.

I like it.

All right, you're up.

All right.

Unless there's a follow up question from.

The gallery Shelley question for you, similar to the think outside the box question I just gave to Mr. Rand.

Shelly, you have to spend 24 hours alone in a retail store.

What store?

Are you choosing.

And why?

Toy store.

A toy store.

Do you have a specific toy store in mind?

No.

Nope.

Just if it has toys.

And if I could be there alone, that would be hilarious.

And I would have a lot of fun.

Don't come and get me until it's morning.

Okay.

This is.

This is more like this.

I would just.

I'm down.

Shelly, you.

You are probably in a station of life where you could actually make this happen for yourself.

You could go to a guy who owns a and say, listen, I just want to spend the night in your toy store, and I will pay for everything that I use, but I just want to spend the night there just to hang out, like you could.

If that's something you wanted to do, go do it.

Go live that life that you wanted.

You want to live.

I think.

You know what?

Yes, sir, I am gonna do that.

Awesome.

You know, Shelly, you know that hike you're gonna take in Nepal?

Yeah, screw.

Screw the hike in Nepal.

Do the Toy Story toy store overnight.

Yeah.

Forget that bucket list.

Item shoot.

FAA sports.

Here.

Here she comes.

It all comes out of Sean.

My butt will thank me.

Just.

Just my answer that would be, I would want to be locked inside the It's Sugar franchise in the local mall, which is nothing, but, you know, just sit there.

She's got diabetes.

I would.

I would be bouncing off the walls when you came to see me in 24 hours.

I would be, like, shaking.

But I would have had my fill of gummy bears, I will tell you that right now.

And sour.

I pictured you naked too, by the way.

Sorry about that.

Just, like, losing it.

Just, you know, that's rough.

Well, that's okay.

It's my turn to tell.

It's my turn.

Pictures of me naked, so it's not unusual.

Carpenter is constantly, constantly emailing me.

Fascinating.

So there we go again.

Mayor Rand, we have to have a conversation.

I've learned a lot about you today.

Go ahead.

Okay, my question is for Bill.

And it's funny, because the person that is attached to my brain asked a very similar question, which was, you attend a lot of conferences.

It literally says that who's the best speaker and why?

But now I'm thinking I should abort that completely and talk about reviews.

Actually, what is your opinion?

Ooh, I got a spicy one.

What is your opinion of somebody who.

Going back to our conversation with Joe about people actually doing great things for your clients, what is your opinion of team leaders who do not practice real estate anymore getting reviews under their name?

We constantly are saying to Agents, we are trying to say to agents, do the work, do the work, show up and then they don't get the credit on their review.

It doesn't make any sense to me.

If only there was a company that solved that.

Wait, let me think about it.

Oh, yeah.

Rate my agent.

When Rate My agent works with a team, here's how it works.

The team lead generally is going to pay the fee for the entire team.

However, the review is first recorded for the agent.

The agent gets the review in their profile.

With Rate my Agent, it stays there, it's theirs.

If they leave the team, it goes with them.

Then that same review flows up into the team profile and now all of the agents reviews are combined together in the team profile.

Lovely.

So I think that, you know, we, we really handle that situation well.

You're absolutely right.

The agent deserves it.

And we make sure the agent gets that review first and then the team can.

Then, you know, the team will probably use a whole different level of marketing with that review than the agent will.

We kind of know that, right?

Some agents are really good at marketing.

Others haven't read Shelley's book yet.

So they're, they're a little different.

Why, thank you.

Thank you.

Yes, you're welcome.

But, but, but yeah, we don't, we don't just write a review for the team lead.

It's for the team.

I take it's one review that goes to the agent and that same review praising the agent goes to the team.

Nailed it.

Good.

Great answer.

Basically, she teed you up to explain a feature of Rate My Agent that she said you should have and you're like, we actually do have it.

We do exactly what you think we should be doing.

Let's see, let's talk about.

I have to ask Joe a question, Joe.

Yes.

Does.

Does the signing of Saquon Barkley to this kind of semi franchise tag thing, but it's a one year deal, right?

To kind of give him some slack.

Does that bode well for the future of the G man?

Do you think Saquon's going to stick around?

Do you care what's happening with the Giants?

I just got to know.

All right, so Bill is presupposing that I'm a Giants fan, which I.

Of the New York teams, the football.

New York football teams.

And they're not New York.

They're really based in New Jersey.

That, that I'm a fan of the Giants.

And I am.

But as Bill also knows what I'm really a fan of more than any individual NFL team is I am a fan of myself.

I am a fan of me and the teams that I select in my fantasy football leagues, which are reflection of my intellect and my judgment and my good luck and wisdom in selecting teams.

And, and, and, and I root for them because I often have jelly beans riding on the outcome of these particular leagues that I am in.

And I do like to collect the jelly beans at the end of the year and all the various other things that might flow from it.

But to go to your question, I really feel bad for Saquon Barkley and I hope they keep around because I think he's a wonderful player.

And more to the point, I think that, that running backs get a raw deal in the NFL right now and they are so much more valuable than they are paid because they get on these rookie contracts for four years and the teams run them into the ground and then after four years they have trouble getting their second contract, which is where you make your big money because they have a short shelf life.

Like they, they get, they get worn down very quickly of all the positions in the NFL.

So like in a very serious way, I think Saquon's getting screwed and I hope he gets a big payday and if it's not with the Giants, I hope it's with somebody else.

And I will be drafting him in probably late first round, early second round and hoping he gets a lot of receptions from my fantasy football teams.

Bill.

Go Joe Rams.

I got to get.

Well done.

Go Ran.

I'm not going to wear.

See for those of you, again, it's not a visual medium, but you don't know this, that Bill Risser came to this, this podcast wearing a Tampa Bay double raised baseball cap and a Tampa Bay Devil Rays T shirt.

And we don't, we only see him from the neck up, so we don't know what the rest of his outfit looks like.

He may be one of those guys that is fully decked out in Tampa Bay Delray Couture.

But like, what I want to get is, I want to get shirts that just say me on them when I.

So when I'm watching football, it's very clear where my rooting interests lie.

It lies in me.

That's who I'm rooting.

Oh, that.

That shirt's on its way.

Dude, you told the wrong crew.

Yeah, just make sure it gets.

I know where it's coming because, because I've occasionally gotten mail from somebody in this podcast that I have successfully lost.

And it's very disappointing to both me and him that I lost It.

So just let me know.

All right, Joe, that excellent answer.

Yep.

You and your eights spreadsheet grids, each week where you shut.

Shut out your family for four hours or six hours, they know not to go into the den because you'll.

They'll get in trouble.

Okay, let's.

Let's.

You have a question for.

I'm.

I only.

Oh, sorry.

I have one question left, and that's for Shelley.

Shelley, I haven't asked you a question yet.

So here's my question.

Knowing your background you started as.

I understand this, I may get.

I may be a little vague on some of the deals you started in advertising, or at least you were in advertising, and then you moved from advertising industry to the radio industry, and then from the radio industry to the real estate industry.

Is that correct?

No, my first job was in radio.

Was a radio, then advertising.

It was a 55 plus radio station.

We were crooners.

I was 20 years old.

I wrote Catholic cemetery ads.

Nice.

So if you can write that, you can write anything.

Did you use the phrase, people are dying to get in?

Did you use that in your copy?

Because that's a gem right there.

For advertising, did you use Gated Community?

Oh, yeah, I went to a whole bunch of them one time, actually.

Do you want to hear a story really fast?

Sure, yeah.

Yes, absolutely.

One time.

So they bring the writers out.

The salespeople are like, and here's our writer.

That's just for you.

And I walk in.

They're like, she's 20 years old.

I'm like, got my pen out, you know, and we're walking through this facility, and it was like, the beginning of age in place, you know?

You know those ones.

Yeah.

So we're on, like, the main floor, and there's this lady in a wheelchair.

And I didn't think that she was like, you know, around to even see us walk by.

And as I was walking by, she grabbed my arm, pulled me straight down, and she's like, what are you doing here?

Get out.

And I was like, are you okay?

And she's like, send help.

Like a Jordan Peele movie before Jordan Peele was born.

So I get back to the office and I talked to the creative director's name was Paul.

And I'm like, paul, I don't think she's okay.

And he's like, she's fine.

It happens all the time.

That's great.

Wow.

I only stayed there for two years because I didn't have the heart for it, but.

All right, so you just.

Back to my Question.

That's a great story.

And that sounds very frightening.

Yes, that.

And I hope that that doesn't happen in any of my offices, because that would be very sad if people are.

The new agents walk in and there's a senior agent saying, escape while you still can.

Don't get into real estate.

But.

So anyway, so you've been in advertising, radio, and now real estate.

So I guess my question to you is, what is it about doomed industries that seems to appeal to you, to draw you in, to start working with them?

These.

These cursed industries that are dying, that are subject to disruption, that are.

Are clearly doomed to extinction sometime very soon.

What is it?

Do you just have a fetish for that?

What is the deal?

Yes, yes.

I was born a fighter.

Otherwise, I get bored, you know?

Yeah.

So radio is funny because the.

I think I talked to Bill about this in one of the interviews that we've done is.

Is that the ipod came out and everyone was like, oh, the music industry is so dead.

And then it turned out that it.

Most people didn't know how to either program it, get music on it, or figure out playlists.

So radio was fine.

We made a ton of money, and we continued to make a ton of money.

Unfortunately, we'll call it the bean counters of radio have destroyed it.

And that's one of the reasons why I was leaving, because I was looking down the road and I was like, when I hit 50, I want to do something cool.

So then I got into real estate, and the disruption in this industry is super fun.

I don't think that it's the same as music because, you know, I spend a lot of times with people in houses, and when they get scared, they don't want to talk to just anybody.

They want to talk to somebody they can trust.

And that will be true always of real estate, in my view.

That's great.

That's great.

Yeah.

So take that, Joe.

I'm on her side.

I'm in the industry, too.

Everybody seems.

We think we're all dead.

Yeah, that's great.

We're dead people walking.

Like that woman in the.

Listen in the center she was at.

It was already shown to us.

It was shown to us during COVID when a certain model where they had the little thing and any consumer could go in and look at the houses that they flipped with poor paint and bad appliances.

And they said, okay, here's a way for the consumer to skip the real estate agent.

The moment that Covid happened, though, they changed their policy immediately, and you had to go in with an agent, because they needed creative person there.

We just have to have enough confidence as real estate agents to believe that we have enough value every single meeting that we show up.

And if we are afraid of a button, we'll increase your value.

Go do some soul searching.

There's lots of meditation.

Yoga's all the rage.

You know, hook it up.

Marijuana's legal in most states now.

All right, nice.

There's another mic drop, everybody.

Okay, Shelley, do you have one last question, or do you already.

No, I've done all mine.

You're done?

Yep.

Who has a question left?

Sean, to you.

I've asked all three.

Joe.

Good.

We've all asked our questions.

So here's.

We're going to wrap this up, but I want these stories because I've heard them all.

I'm going to start with Joe.

Joe, I know you know the story you wrote.

You wrote it.

I know it was years ago and you're older like me.

So I want Bill's story.

Bill's story.

And I'm not even sure Bill was his name.

I just sort of assigned a name to him.

And I like the name Bill.

It's my middle name.

Or Williams, my middle name.

So Bill is like a good stand in cool.

So Bill is a real estate agent.

All the cool guys.

It's a real all cool guys.

Bills are always cool.

Bill is a real estate agent up somewhere around Albany, north of Albany.

And I don't actually know him, but he was at a conference that I was at, and it was a Brian Buffini conference that I went to probably in 1990 or 2003, because I think.

I think the world of Brian, I think, is great.

And my wife was getting into the business, and so I said, this is who you should listen to about how you establish your relationships and build from relationships.

So we're there, and this guy tells this story about.

He got up and he told the story to the whole audience.

And so it's his story, but no one else has ever written it up.

And I've actually tried to track him down to find him, and nobody can seem to.

It's like a ghost.

He's disappeared.

But what he did, he told the story.

Here's how he told the story.

He says, every year I do.

And what.

What Brian Buffini calls a Popeye, he does a Popeye every year, where every year this guy goes out and buys a gift to all of his top referral clients and brings it to their home.

And what he buys is he waits for the first snow of the year.

Which in Albany is like mid to late August.

And what he does is he goes out and it's a joke, by the way.

It's not mentally.

Oh, my God.

Nobody even reacted to that.

So, yeah, he gets the.

He gets the ice and he buys a box, a bag of rock Salt, like a 20 pound bag of rock salt, because it's the first snow of the year and nobody remembers to get rock salt.

And everybody uses up the rock salt the year before.

So it's a nice, very thoughtful gift.

And he ties a little ribbon around it, writes a little personal note, another Buffini thing, writes a little personal, taxes it to the.

To the bag.

And then he puts in his truck with his son.

He drives around to all that.

There's a little list of where he drops them off on if they're home.

He says hi, and they talk for a little bit.

If not, he leaves it on the front steps and then he goes on.

And he does it every year.

And it's always very popular and people are always very happy about it.

And it's a nice thing he does.

It's a great little gesture.

And I think of it, I talk about it like it's, you know, you're hitting a single, maybe a double.

It's like the kind of thing where, you know sports metaphors.

So it's the kind of thing where, you know, you're doing something good.

And it's a good solid gesture of goodwill and personal contact.

Well, one year he does it, and he gets a call at the end of the day, and it's one of his top referral clients who calls him up and says, hey, Bill, I just got to tell you something.

And the guy explains that he had been at the.

With his wife who's have some health problems, and he had been to the doctor with her to get a.

To get a report, get an update.

And the news wasn't great.

You know, not that she's six months to live or anything, but just that there's.

They're going through more.

It's going to be more trouble, more hassle, more pain, more treatment, more everything, and just bad, right?

Bad news.

And they're driving home and they're both very upset.

And as they drive, the guy's saying, as I drive home, it starts to snow.

And as I'm driving, I'm looking at the snow, I'm like, God damn it, I have to go.

I can have to.

I don't have any rock salt.

I'm going to have to drop her off.

I can't Be with her.

I can't sit down with her.

We can't, like, commiserate and think about what we want to do because I got to go out and get some damn rock salt.

And as we pull into the driveway, we see the bag of rock salt sitting on the front stoop, and we both just start to cry.

That's the story this guy tells, that he tells to Bill.

So Bill tells this story at this event, and I picked up on the story.

And now here's the thing.

I've written about the story in my book.

I've told the story, I don't know, maybe a hundred times at this point.

It's something I tell routinely when I speak.

I close with it.

Because the lesson I want to give to people is if you keep trying to do these gestures of goodwill, every once in a while, you can't predict when it's going to land like that, but it does.

Every once in a while, one of them is going to land like that.

And that's what I wish for all of you, that you have that opportunity.

But, you know, from a purely, you know, business standpoint, I've told the story how many times.

How many times you think the guy who found the rock salt on his front step has told that story about the real estate agent that brought him a bag of rock salt?

Like, how many times has he told that story?

And so that's one of my favorite stories.

That's why I think I.

It's.

It's.

It's in the book, and I close a lot with it.

But to me, it's.

It's a meaningful thing because I really do try to teach agents about identifying things that people need and finding creative ways to service the need.

And build.

Build relationships, which is one of Sean's mantras.

Build relationships by providing them services that are meaningful to them.

And that, to me, is a.

You know, it's not really about a real estate transaction, but it's about property management, which, to some extent, our expert expertise.

And.

And I've always loved the story because I think it just.

It articulates what I want people to do with their business, which is to look for opportunities to do great stuff like that and hope that it lands in that kind of way.

Nice.

All three of these stories will have.

That will have a message to which I love.

Shelley, I want you to go next.

You know the one I love?

Well,.

Yeah, my first gig in radio was not great.

Okay.

I almost got fired.

I start the story in my book.

I'm basically begging my Program director not to fire me because I had this incredibly brilliant idea to take our most, like the biggest, strongest staple advertiser that the station had and build this campaign.

It was around Jack Handy.

Deep thoughts, you know, but then over the, like spot the dog and Paul the parrot and Coco the cat, obviously funny.

So not funny though, when I probably wrote like 25 versions of this and one aired that was around the dog just pooping a crayon.

I don't have a nicer way to say that.

Gotta get pooping crayons.

Pooping crayons.

That's all I'm gonna say about it.

And a listener called in and she was like, I am devastated that you would air that.

And I end up, his name is Gene in his office.

And he's like, what are you doing?

Bam, bam.

Paul's in the back, you know, my boss.

And he's like, ease up, she's just a kid.

And I was like, what has happened here?

And he's like, well, you have to write a letter that's going to go in the public paper that apologizes to every single one of our listeners.

You're lucky I don't fire you right now.

And I'm just shaking.

I'm like 20.

I'm like, I don't know what happened.

I don't know what happened.

I get back to my desk and Paul drops in front of me.

The baby boomers.

He's like, this is the demographic that we're writing for.

You are not writing for a 18 year old rock station.

You are writing for a female who has probably lost people in her life and her animal is the only thing that matters to her right now.

And you just had it shit in a park with a crayon.

And I was like, dang.

So my first lesson really was when you create anything, any kind of marketing message for anyone, you first start with how do you want them to feel?

And then write to the feeling.

And so to all the folks out there who might ever write a commercial, for the love of God, don't do that.

Yeah,.

And that ties into real estate as well, right?

I mean, you got to know who you're talking about.

It's not about you.

Like, what do real estate agents want to do?

It's not about you.

What emotion do you want to evoke and write to that?

Yeah, that's cool.

Sean, you can be the anchor on, you know, the Story I want.

So I've heard them all.

All right, so it's my Fred story.

And you know, when I, when I Travel to speak.

I.

For years and years and years, I never park at Port Columbus, where I fly out of.

I parked at a place called Thrifty, which was off the airport grounds.

I would show up in the morning, and a valet would get in my car, and I would drive the seven minutes to the airport.

I would get out and fly away, and they would take my car back and park it at Thrifty.

And when I land back in Columbus, I would grab my luggage.

I would text or call and tell them I was there.

I'd get on a shuttle bus and they would drive me back to the compound where I'd pick up my car.

And in the wintertime here in Columbus, it would be.

The heat would be on and to be defrosted.

And in the summertime, the air conditioner is on nice and high, and you get back to the terminal and you get off the.

The shuttle bus and get in your car and you go home.

They just.

They just bill you.

It's really, really good system.

Same every time, guys.

It was the same every time.

Luggage, shuttle, bus, car, home.

Every single time.

Luggage, shuttle, bus, car home.

Except one time it wasn't.

It was end of summer.

It was late.

So it's hot and humid in Columbus.

I've been traveling a couple days.

My kids were still little.

I wanted to see my family.

I got the luggage.

I trudged across the parking lot.

I saw the bus sitting where it always sits.

The doors open up like they always open up, except this time out jumped the driver with a gregarious smile on his face.

He says, let me get your luggage for you.

Climb up in the cab.

I've got the air conditioning on nice and high in there.

It's been very hot and humid in Columbus, and I never had the shuttle bus driver jump out and help me with my luggage before.

And I sat in the front row, and I watched five or six other passengers come from baggage claim and have the same exact reaction before we drove away.

The driver gets on the bus, and he walked down the aisle with a basket of candy, and he offered each of the passengers a basket of candy.

With a big smile on his face as he buckles himself in the driver's seat, he says, folks, my name's Fred, and if you're from Columbus, welcome home.

And if you're not from Columbus, welcome to what I think is the greatest city in America.

He goes, we'll have you your car in about eight minutes.

But let me just tell you what the weather is going to be like in Columbus for the Next couple days.

And here's what's going on downtown, and here's what's going on on campus.

Once again, thanks for being passenger of Thrifty.

My name's Fred, and we'll have your car in just a few minutes, Bill.

I leaned forward from the front row, and I said, fred, you work for the chamber of commerce.

And he smiled.

He says, nope, I just love what I do, and I love where I live.

And I got to tell you guys, I had the greatest shuttle bus ride in my life that night.

I had the exact same shuttle bus ride I had every other time, but this time, it was different.

When we get back to the terminal at Thrifty, I asked all the other passengers to get off the bus ahead of me.

And I said to Fred, on my way, I said, fred, can I take a picture of you?

He goes, why do you want to do that, Mr. Carpenter?

And I said, I travel around the country, I talk about customer service, and you, my friend, just gave me the greatest shuttle ride of my life.

I'm going to go home and I'm going to write a blog about you tonight, and I want to take a picture with you and your candy basket.

He goes, I don't know what a blog is, but I'll pose for your picture.

Fred's an older guy.

Fred's probably in his mid-60s, late-60s.

And I went home that night, and I wrote a blog post called the Fred Factor.

In real life, one of my favorite books is by Mark Sanborn called the Fred Factor, about great service.

And I just wanted my readers, Bill, to be able to hear the story of Fred, shuttle bus driver.

And the next morning, as I published it, I called Thrifty to just get a manager's name so I could send him maybe the link so maybe he could give Fred a pat on the back.

I wasn't looking for anything.

I wasn't looking for free rides or anything like that.

The manager was thrilled, obviously, that I sent that positive thought process or blog article.

About two weeks later, on Facebook Messenger, I get a message from a stranger that I don't know who it was.

And it was Fred sending me a note on Facebook messenger to thank me for the article I wrote about him and his service that night.

And he said, I believe the world is full of Freds like you hurl.

Phil was acts of kindness and doing things every day.

And so I was so happy that number one that he got recognized by his manager.

The manager later, a month later, sent me a note saying, thanks for the recognition.

Fred Got employee of the year or employee of the month for the whole country.

And he's nominated for employee of the year.

And I tell that story everywhere I go.

And for years and years and years after that Bill, I would get off the plane in Columbus and I would get my luggage and I would walk to where the shuttle bus always parked and I would say to myself, please be Fred, please be Fred, please be Fred.

And I remember the first time it wasn't Fred.

And the doors opened up and it's Steve.

Why's it got to be Steve?

I just, it was this guy named Steve and he was just sitting in the shut in the driver's seat, buckled.

Up, no offer to help, no candy,.

And it's no big deal.

I lift my luggage up and, and listen as we're pulling away, I said, hey, Steve, you must be new here.

Isn't Fred working on Tuesday night?

Because Fred always works on Tuesday night.

He says, oh, he's on the other bus.

We're so busy.

We have two buses running tonight.

I said, man, I can't believe I misread.

Hey, can you get on your radio and tell him Sean said hi?

He says, are you Sean Carpenter?

I said, I am.

He goes, I've read your blog.

I go, you've read my blog?

He goes, yeah, it hangs on our employee room.

And when you're new here, you have to sign the bottom of it because that's the kind of service we're trying to give to everybody.

And I looked right at him and I said, steve, where the hell's my candy?

And you know, I tell people it wasn't about the candy.

It was about, listen, listen.

Fred drives a shuttle bus for a living.

And he was the Michelangelo of shuttle bus drivers.

He, he gave me the most amazing, unbelievable shuttle bus ride.

We have agents in our business that list million dollar houses and take photos on an iPhone.

This guy drives a shuttle bus, but he does it the way Longfellow writes poetry.

It was unbelievable.

And I can't tell you how many people that are based here in Columbus, real estate agents that heard my story would send me selfies with Fred because they got Fred as their driver that night.

And it's much like the story that Joe told.

If we could all be like Fred to just make sure every passenger that rides with us on that journey to their new home or from their existing home that we provide them what I call blog worthy experience that makes them want to tell other people about how good we did.

Now I feel like crap because I made Shelly talk about a dog that pooped crayons.

Yeah.

I have cool things to say.

Okay.

Actually, I have about five stories about me almost getting fired.

So that was probably in line, you know, almost at Virgin, too.

It was awesome.

You know what?

Just leave it in.

Look, I.

You guys.

Oh, you've all been great.

This.

This was.

This is a wonderful way for me to spend the.

The.

The eighth anniversary of the Real Estate Sessions podcast.

And I want to just say thank you to each and every one of you for your time and your energy and for one.

And I'll tell you what, for your professionalism and all the great things you do in the.

In the world of real estate.

Joe, you made a joke about, you know, dying industries are doomed or disrupted.

It's what you all do that keeps everybody going.

So, yeah, just keep.

Keep spreading the word.

Keep doing what you're doing, keep speaking, keep creating, keep doing all the great stuff.

It's been wonderful.

So thank you all very much.

Congratulations to you too.

It's awesome, awesome stuff that you do.

It's my number one suggested podcast.

I tell all my audiences.

It's the first one I listen to every Tuesday.

Thank you for listening to the Real Estate Sessions.

Please head over to ratethispodcast.com resessions to leave a review or a rating and subscribe to the Real Estate Sessions podcast at your favorite podcast.

Listening.

Applause.