The Intersection of Creativity and Real Estate: Marc Davison's Journey with Thousand Watt

Hi, everybody, and welcome to another real estate session, Rewind of the Real Estate Sessions podcast. Thank you for tuning in and as always, thank you for telling a friend.Today we revisit my January 2020 interview with Mark Davison, Chief Creative Officer at Thousand Watt. I selected this episode because Thousand Watt's Signal event is currently taking place June 2 through June 5, 2026 in Denver.Mark's unique journey from the music world to real estate makes this one of my all time favorite episodes. Let's dive into Mark's fascinating story. Enjoy.And most brands in America, most brands in the world are rational brands. They appeal to us on a rational level. If you think about, like Fruit of the Loom underwear, it's made from cotton and it is white and it's cheap.Buy Fruit of the Loom. But if you ever watched the Luth Trading Company and seen their ads, it's amazing. They don't even really.They show you an illustration of the underwear. They don't tell you how it's made. They just, they're playing to your emotion.You will go buy that product because it struck a chord inside you emotionally, not intellectually.

You're listening to the Real Estate Sessions. I'm your host, Bill Risser with Fidelity National Title Tampa District. Thanks for tuning in as we uncover the stories of leaders in our industry.Hi, everybody. Welcome to episode 219 of the Real Estate Sessions podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in. Thank you so much for telling a friend.It's how we continue to grow in this little corner of the Internet and today I'm, I'm very excited. I'm always excited when I have a guest on the show, but this, this takes it to a different level for me.There's going to be a little bit of fanboy reaching out. I'll try my best to keep it under control, but I'm with one of the, one of the gentlemen today.I'm going to be talking to a guy who makes me think about things differently, makes me look at things a different way. And I'm really excited to kind of pick his brain and talk to him about his life and really what he's doing with his company.So without further ado, I've got Mark Davison of Thousand Watt with me here today. Mark, welcome to the podcast.

Hey, Bill. Nice to be here. Thank you.

Yeah. So I know you're currently in Portland. You and I can see each other. I see you have a nice toque on. I'm sure that the weather is a.

Bit nippy up in the Portland area, very cold here. Yeah.

So I mean, we're complaining about in Florida. It's 62 today and everyone's screaming about how cold it is.

No. And I'm in. My office has got really old single pane windows and it is just. It's, you know, cold in here.

It's cold. I can tell. So Portland's your hometown now. Where'd you grow up?

I grew up in New York city during the 60s and 70s. Great time to grow up in New York. I started out in Brooklyn, New York, where I was born. And then we moved to Manhattan around.I was like 10 and a half, 11 years old and stayed there until I went to college.

Okay. You have family back there still, I would imagine.

No, at this age of my siblings, they've all been lassoed down to Florida, which is typically what happens. I moved out to the west coast to escape that.

Are you afraid of Florida?

You know, I have lots of good friends and family and have many good memories, but it's not where I don't want to spend the rest of my years. Inside of netting.

All right. Making fun of the knives and the. No, see them. I get it.

That's all good. Exactly.

I would think growing up in the city has to be a unique, like a. It's a very unique experience. I guess that's the way I want to say that. I love visiting New York.I go to every Inman and I enjoy the cold winter week. But talk about, I mean, growing up, whether it's Brooklyn or in the city, in Manhattan, I mean, what's that like?

For me, it was. And for everybody who did it, it was what you thought life is. It's diverse, extremely diverse population. So you don't grow up.I certainly didn't grow up seeing race, color or creed as anything other than that's what my friends were and that's what I am. I'm part of a big melting pot.And so you're exposed to so much stuff, cuisine and beliefs and spirituality and just ways of thinking that you become very well rounded. But you take that for granted. You just think that that's how the whole world is. New York also was very competitive in everything.Everybody's moving quickly, everybody has somewhere to go, and you're racing against a lot of other people. So you don't certainly want to be last. So that might explain the pace that a New Yorker has.You also need to speak up because if you're not, if you're shy and don't speak your piece, well, then nobody's Going to represent you for you. You have to represent yourself.And you know, growing up during the 60s and 70s and 80s, like what a great time in American history to be in a city and be subject to and witness all of the various culture changes that took place during those three decades.So it was fascinating and it didn't really hit me until I moved out to the west coast to a small coastal town that I realized that there's a different part of the world that was never exposed to any of those things and what a difference it made on the, on the people who live there. And it ultimately, like it's why I ended up moving back to a big city.I felt like this is sort of where I feel, I feel most like myself in this kind of surrounding.

You talked about the, the 60s and 70s, the culture, the, the art. You know, I think of things like the way the comedy scene changed and, and for you it was music. I know you're an accomplished musician.Let's talk about first of all, how old were you when you picked up that first guitar and started, started playing?

I found a guitar in a, in a garbage can when I was nine and I took it home to play. It had some strings on it, so it turned out I was playing it the wrong way. I was a lefty and the guitar was strung for most people who play righty.And so I was having some difficulty making sense out of it, but I was able to scratch out melodies just by virtue of having strings.But I went and took lessons and the teacher decided it would be easier to convert me to a right handed playing style than to change the strings on the guitar, which meant changing the bridge, it meant changing the hardware. So I ended up, I'm more natural as a lefty, but I end up playing righty.And I started when I was nine and I pretty much figured out every Beatles song got really, really close within a year. Just pulling out melodies, figuring out the chords. I had an ear for it and I'm now 63 and I've not stopped since. Wow.

Yeah, let's, let's talk about those. You mentioned Beatles, which is an amazing place to start. What were some other influences on a 10 or 11 or 12 year old mark?

Well, you know the first song that I ever heard that got me focused on music was a song called the Unicorn by the Irish Rovers.I had my mom, I must have been six or seven and I had my mother write down all the lyrics so I could actually sing the lyrics and have it in front of me. And I had A make believe guitar that I would strum while I would sing. So that's really kind of when it started.But when I was that age 11 12, I was fixated on the Beatles for sure. So I had this little transistor Radio is Blue and I would listen to wmca, the Good Guys and it was all the AM hits at the time.And I would make my own top 20 list. Every Tuesday they would do the top 20. I would compare my choices. I didn't have access to record sales or whatever.I was just coming up with it on my own. But I was just so enamored. I would sit in class with that earbud through my sleeve in the palm of my hand.I was a straight A student so I was able to do both at the same time.But I got busted one day because I had turned the music up a little bit too loud and it could be heard and I had my radio taken away and my folks were not happy about it. So you know, it was, it was the beginning of a. You know, I was sort of an 11 year old radical dealing with things in my own way.But it really shaped my whole music is, you know, I still do it and I still do it semi professionally. But there was a moment in time where I did it professionally and it was one of the best times of my life.

What's first for you when you're done with school?

I got, I got hired at an ad agency. So I worked at Y and R in New York as a junior copywriter, began to learn the advertising business. And I found that I had kind of a knack for it.I could come up with not just clever lines or clever slogans or clever ideas, but I really, I was trained to think about how to align those ideas with like what the brand stood for. So they were sort of on brand ideas, not just like random reckless advertising that isn't tied to anything fundamental.So I did that gig for like two years. You know, we represented yr, represented some huge major international brands. So I got to write for some of those products. But my passion was music.And I decided to take that skill set that I had and that knowledge of the music business and apply it to young artists.So I began to manage and build the careers which nowadays I can say I was actually building brands, young artistic brands, but I was representing some comedians and some talent that I would find in New York. I remember I got a call to check out this group in Louisiana.So I flew down to Shreveport to size up a potential act that I Could cultivate into a label deal and get them on the center stage. So I did that for 21 years. But the music business started changing in the 90s.Guys like Lou Perlman were creating boy bands and girl bands, and you had NSYNC and the Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears and the singer, songwriter. Talent wasn't as in. We began to see the change, the change toward hip hop and away from rock. And I didn't quite understand that world.I didn't know how to do that. I didn't know how to create and fabricate art. So one could say that I was sort of old school and I wasn't moving forward, but I didn't know how.I didn't even think I had the skill set to do it. And so I moved to California and focused all of my energy on the comedy side. And I had one client who was a very promising comedian.Radio talk show, had a comedy show.I wrote a lot of comedy with him, and I got him a slot on the morning show in Los Angeles, number two market in America, and would sometimes appear on the show. I would write for the show. And we were building his career eventually, like, the goal was I was going to write a sitcom around him.I very much was modeling myself after Larry David. I felt like I had my Jerry Seinfeld. And we had come up with a very cool theme for him, and we pitched it to NBC.And that was an interesting experience, being at this. We were in Brentwood at his home, where my client was running through the routine at this guy's house. And we left with a plan in place.And a week later, his actress wife locked him out of the home, closed him out of his bank account and sued him for divorce. And it completely derailed him. I was never able to get him back into his headspace.And it was at that point that I realized that my career is too dependent on other people. At some point during that. Oh, this is interesting, because it's a tie into real estate.I bought a home in California and I had it inspected, and I didn't know what a home inspection was. And I was so enamored by the inspection process that I decided to make the home inspector a client of mine. And I was going to build his career.So I created a brand for him, and I got him placed in over 400 newspapers with a syndicated column. We sold that content to thousands of websites.This was sort of that burgeoning time in our history when the web was really starting to want and need content.And that's When I got a call from Brad Emin asking me who was I with this very popular, singular columnist when he sort of owns the real estate column syndicate thing.And one thing led to another and they asked me to come on board, this was 1998, and help build in the news, you know, as a brand and build their product. And that's how I discovered the real estate industry.

How old was Inman on the online. By this time it had been a.

Couple, just a couple of years already. Nobody really in real estate knew who they were really. Right.I mean, they were certainly making its mark, but like to a very, very small percentage, not like it is today, but like back then it was. Brad had gone off to build home games.So basically was myself and Inman's president, Brian Boero, who's been my partner in crime for the last 20 years. We met at Imin. We began working together and we. We found this sort of interesting creative chemistry between us.It wasn't music, which for me was a nice departure from that world and that life of entertainment, but it was something real and something people needed.And we were building a company and building a brand, building awareness, and got to meet a ton of cool people in this industry who many, many are still very close friends of mine.

You talked about Brian, you also met Joel at Inman, right? So, I mean, these are. You've been with these guys a long time.

And Jessica, Jessica was a managing editor.

At Emin in the late 90s, a.

Little bit after that, a little bit after the late 90s, into the first part of 2000, the 2000s, and when we started Thousand Watt in 90 in 2007, it was Brian and I for a couple of years. And then we. Joel was our first hire and Jessica was our second hire.

Let's talk about Thousand Watt. I, first of all, I dig the name and I'm curious, you know, where that comes from and what. There's got to be some sort of meaning.

There's. Well, there is meaning. It's simple really.The Thousand Watt is a light bulb that marijuana growers use to grow indoor weed because it emits enough daylight or that spectrum of light to take a weed and help it blossom these potent buds. And I'm not making a statement whether I'm for or against marijuana. It's nothing like that. It's.I just love the metaphor of being the instrument by which we could help a client discover its potency. So Thousand Watt.I also like looked around the landscape of real estate consulting companies and they all had these very corporate Names to them, you know, Clarity Consulting, Wave Group, know fine companies, but they all felt corporate. And I wanted to project a little more creativity.

Yeah.

Around us. So I needed a name that sort of, you know, beckoned that interest in like, oh, I wonder what that's about.

See, so you launch, you launched thousand watt in 2007. I mean, we're talking about right at the beginning of this explosion of social media. This whole new world's kind of, kind of popping up.

Right.

Is that a safe way of saying that?

It's a very safe way. And the recession.

Yeah. So what, what a time, right, to. To jump in there. What was it, what was it like working with those first few clients is there to me?Do you have a story you can share?Obviously, you know, probably not naming anybody, but you know what it was like because you probably were coming at things from a much different way than these other people in the space.

Yeah, it's, you know, if you look back on history, some of the most innovative things in our lifetime, in our world or even before us, came out of desperate times. You know, Boeing was invented or created during the Great Depression.Microsoft, Apple came out during that, you know, terrible time in the late 70s, early 80s, and we had financial crisis. Like, it's during a bad time. It's where, you know, maybe people lose a job and they have to go out and be entrepreneurial and create their own thing.And it's within that little sort of environment of conflict and despair and excitement, there is massive opportunity. So I think the early clients that we had, I think in a way understood that, like they saw these.I remember one client saying to me, we're hiring you because right now all of our competitors are not spending a dime. And while we technically don't have it, if we invest now in ourselves, when this recession ends, we're going to be way ahead of everybody else.And they were right, because while everybody else was doing nothing, they were coming out with all kinds of stuff and they were actually the one making money during a bad time. And this was Florida real estate brokerage. So, yeah, it's, you know, there's a lot of talk about a recession coming, maybe.Although, you know, it's hard to sometimes when you look at the stock market, wonder, well, when that's, when is that going to happen?But I'm not afraid of it because I think that's when, sure, we might lose some clients, but that's where a whole new, you know, crop of ideas and people are going to create something and need help from an agency. Like ours.

I know the listeners can't see you like I can see you, but you, you lit up when you said that last phrase. I mean, you're, you're looking forward to it in a, in a way.

Well, I don't look forward to a recession.

No, not that. The opportunity.

Well, I look forward to is. I've always like, way of.I have four kids and the way I would always raise them is to embrace life in general, but really embrace life when you hit conflict. Because it's at that moment that you're basically being tested. And if you can pass the test, you strengthen yourself for the next.Life is going to be filled with conflicts. But if you can get to a point in life where any conflict can come at you and you can deal with it like it was nothing, well then you win.That's how you win the game of life. And for anybody who travels a lot for business, like, this is an interesting example to illustrate my point.If you travel a lot, there's always conflict. There's conflict with airlines, there's conflict with hotels, there's conflict with getting the meetings on time.And if you do it long enough, you, you run into every single potential conflict once you learn how to deal with it.Like a flight that gets canceled, you know, notice how many people are standing at the gate yelling and screaming at the gate person like it's their fault. I now look at it as like, okay, this is an opportunity for something really good to come into my life. And you put out a good vibe around it.And you usually. So this happens more times than not. I'll be waiting online to get rerouted.And instead of yelling at the gatekeeper, I'm offering sympathy to him or her for all the flack that they're getting. And I'm smiling, I'm happy. And you know what I end up getting?Oftentimes not only a ticket on a flight that they didn't tell anybody else, but sometimes even a first class ticket. Like there are ways to turn conflict into, into gifts and success and opportunity.So, you know, maybe to a degree, I look forward, I now look forward to a little bit of conflict here and there. But I know how to deal with it. And so I make the most of it.But I really think that it's during these times of great conflict where you really find out what you're made of and you, you discover new and interesting people and things who are taking advantage of it.

Thousand Watt is defined intentionally as an agency, not as a consultancy. Why? Why is that?

Well, because we Actually do stuff.Like, to us, a consultant is somebody, you know, you have weekly calls and you're accountable to them, and they'll give you some advice and tell you what to do and make some recommendations. That's not us. We could do that, but we get hired to sell problems and we physically, whatever the task is within our wheelhouse.But if it's like a brand needs a new brand positioning, brand story, it needs a new campaign. It's like 2020 is coming up.What is the message that you're going to have to the marketplace that's going to retell your story in a new and interesting way to get them to pay attention to you? We don't just tell them what they can do. We actually do it. We write it, we craft it, we design it, we will help them execute it.That's what an agency does.

I. I recently viewed a webinar you did. And I don't think you do many of these, but it was on.

I never do any of them.

Yeah, a masterclass on branding. In fact, I. I hosted a watch party at one of our branches in Cape Coral.So I had about 15 people in there, and we, we put the computer up on the screen and I'd love for you to. I. This one piece would be great if you'd share just a bit about the difference between rational and meaningful brands.It was a great part of the conversation.

You know, I got a lot of feedback on that part. Good feedback. People have never really thought of it in those terms. So as simply as I can state it, most brands are rational brands.In fact, it's today is Cyber Monday. And if we check our inboxes, it is filled with ads from brands. 30% Off, 50% off. Type in code Cyber Monday. And that's what they're marketing.It's all rational. So I look at these ads and I think, do I need a new pair of sneakers or not? Do I need a new this? Do I need a new that? Should I buy? Should I not buy?And they're presenting to me rational reasons why I should buy. You should buy these sneakers because you're going to get 50% off. And that's like rational branding.And sometimes even emotional brands will resort to rational advertising like today, because they're just playing right into, like, our thinking. And most brands in America, most brands in the world are rational brands. They appeal to us on a rational level.If you think about, like, Fruit of the Loom underwear, it's made from cotton and it is white and it's cheap. Buy Fruit of the Loom. But if you ever watched the Luth Trading Company and seen their ads.

Yeah, amazing.

It's amazing. They don't even really. They show you an illustration of the. Of the underwear. They don't tell you how it's made. They just.They're playing to your emotion. You will go buy that product because it struck a chord inside you emotionally, not intellectually.Like, I can look at an intellectual and go, wow, that is very clever branding. That's very clever writing. But their appeal is being made on an emotional level.The brands that we are extremely loyal to are the brands that have succeeded in capturing our emotion. And I named a few during that session, but there's many.And the point that you derive from all this is that it's very hard for any brand to, let's say, displace Apple. To get a core Apple user. I'm one. I have my eye, my earbuds, and my iPhone, and my.I'm sitting here with like 5, 6, 7 Mac gadgets just on my desk, my keyboard, my mouse, my phone, my two computers, my headsets. I realized that I can pay a lot less for the same exact product. Like a Samsung is no worse than an Apple phone. I just don't relate to it.And intellectually, I don't even understand what that means. It's just a phone. I don't need to relate to it.But when I take out, and this is the whole thinking, when somebody takes out, like, you wouldn't be caught dead in a Starbucks with a Dell computer if you're a Mac user. It's just not how you want yourself presented to the world. Emotional brands understand that. They play to your psyche. They play to your sense of self.And you use those products because, in a way, it helps you define you, but it also helps you define yourself to the world. Think about the person running through the airport with their fake Louis Vuitton bag. Like, why?For the price that they spend on their fake Louis Vuitton bag, let alone the real one, they could have gotten an Osprey to carry the same garbage in their bag as their Louis Vuitton bag. But they need to tell their world, the world, that they're of a certain status.Emotional brands play in that reality and they're very hard to dislodge, Whereas a rational brand, they're easy to dislodge. All you need is in any category for some emotional brand to play to your emotion, to take you away from the rational brand.So, like, as I stated in that presentation, any brand That's a rational brand. Faces.They face daily, this daily reality that their brand is just not sustainable, that at any point in time somebody can come along with a more emotional reason to use them. And we leave our intellect behind. Simon Sinek did a great study of that with his book Start with why People are They. We think with our limbic brain.We make decisions with our emotions, not our intellectual. This is a problem I've noticed throughout all of real estate. Most brands in real estate, if not all brands in real estate, are rational.They're not emotional. And the few that are, like Zillow, really captured the consumer's emotion.And I mean, ask yourself, what's the difference between searching for homes on realtor.com or searching on Zillow? But why do more people do it on Zillow? They just like the feeling that they get from it.

Yeah, that's true.

So it's, it's an interesting study.

I would consider a Thousand Watt, the branding that you've done with your company, to be very meaningful. I, I'm a huge follower and I, I think I'm responsible for hundreds of subscribers, I hope, to your 2000 watt blog.And, and I'm also, I love copywriting, really good copywriting. I don't think people appreciate that.

As an artist, I know you're right.

It's really, really hard to do well. I think everybody thinks they can do it, and you've got to be, you know, it's just fantastic to watch.What is the effort that goes into each one of those blog posts?I can only imagine whether Jessica writes it or you're writing it, or Joel, is there this talk about competition and you're a New York kid, you know, how does that part work?

Well, I mean, we set up an infrastructure here where there is a process. So we may have an editorial meeting and discuss amongst each other what we should write about, and we'll pitch ideas.And if an idea is not right for us. Look, I've had a lot of ideas that were rejected because it's not on brand.It's not something Thousand Watt would write about because we've developed the core readership and we have to think, well, we don't just want to give them garbage or give them random stuff. They're coming to Thousand Watt for a certain reason. And once we understand that reason, we have to continue to feed that reason.Otherwise you, you, you break your brand continuity. And then you set out and you write, and then it goes through an editorial process.We all read it, we all decide if Any one of us who penning it has executed on the idea well enough. And if we've determined that, then, then Jessica, who is our head writer editor, will maybe take an edit on it. Brian will take a look at it.It goes through stages before it goes out the door.There's been a lot of stuff, even really, really good stuff, that just never made it public because it just didn't feel like it would be right for us to write about that.And that's a hard one, because, like you, you know, you can take a few hours, sometimes a few days, sometimes a few weeks, to put a thought together, to put it together and make it right. And then you realize we just can't put this out there. It doesn't have the right tone, it doesn't have the right voice.And it's the same with copywriting. My job, essentially, as the chief creative officer, is to spend almost the whole day in a room getting pitched ideas from the various creative teams.Here I'll see a positioning statement, I'll see a campaign slogan, I'll see headlines, I'll see strategy. And I got to nitpick it, nitpick it, nitpick it, because it's just, it's not.It's not perfect, it's not 100% right, it's not on brand, it's not the right tone, it's not the right voice, it doesn't have the right. It doesn't connect all the dots that it needs to.So when you see a slogan like, nowhere but here for Michael Saunders, weeks and weeks and weeks went into not only coming up with that, but then testing it against design. How do we design those three words? What headlines do we put with it? What's the content strategy? What is the whole campaign strategy?How do you prove those three words are meaningful? Before we ever show it to the client, we have to make sure that this idea we came up with actually has legs.Because you don't want to pitch somebody an idea and they go, great, we love it.And then you try to build it out and find out it's only got, like, it's got a weak shelf life or there's only a few things you can do with it, and then it ends. Yeah, like it's not a good enough idea. So it's, there's, there's talent that's involved, for sure.You have to have a knack, an ear, but it's a lot of hard work and a lot of skill, and you need to have a lot of hours to be able to not just write, but to then look at things objectively and know that. That even stuff you've written, like that presentation I gave two weeks ago, that was the sixth draft.There were five completely different drafts prior that. After writing it all, I read it out loud, Said, this isn't what I want to say. It's not right.

Wow.

Yeah. That's what it takes.

Thousand watt focused early on, I think, in the early years, you know, brokerages, MLS's other, you know, industry partners, companies. But I'm seeing. I'm seeing more and more conversations about helping teams out there now. Right. This a new direction.

Yes, it's a new direction. It comes after a decade of wanting to do teams and agents. We tried it once before and it was unsuccessful.And the reason why it was unsuccessful is a single individual trying to build a brand around themselves has a really hard time creating the separation between brand and self.And, you know, unless you're a celebrity, but even if you're a celebrity, you know, when you think about personal brands, you really have to go down into the celebrity route, which I have a lot of experience in building. So I understand this very clearly.When you get to a level where you're building your celebrity brand profile, your celebrity brand stuff, that's not who that person really is at home. When they're in their sweatpants and haven't showered for a week and there's no makeup on and they're not.The camera's not on, that's a different person.And I think what we discovered early on is like, the mechanics that we were and the disciplines that we were using to create brand for agents, we were not successfully able to help them understand the difference between who they are as a person and what their brand and branding needs to be.And this is the misfire or the missing link in real estate thought leadership, where people are telling agents, oh, you need to build personal branding. They're not explaining the mechanics around what that actually means. So I'll give you an example, and then I'll get back to your answer.We design a logo for a client, and after three weeks, they get back to us. Now, this is two weeks and five days longer than they were supposed to get back to us.They come back and say, well, we showed this to our spouses, our kids, our friends, our neighbors, like the whole entire world. And the feedback is that we don't like it as if this were artwork.And as we know, we all have art in our home, and not everybody loves what we love, but they're failing to understand is like a logo is not a piece of art. It's not meant to be enamored. Name me a logo that you love because it's beautiful. There is very few that are at that level.Look at the logo on your hat, tb. I don't know what it means, but it's probably important to you. And. Yeah, what does it stand for?

It's the Tampa Bay Rays. Right? That's our baseball team here. Yeah.

I mean, it's very basic, sort of serif font, slab font with some sharp points at the end. There's nothing beautiful about it. But it means something to you.

It does. Thanks. Thanks, Mark.

Yeah, it's meaningful, which is why you wear it. And to you it's beautiful because you're tying, when you see a tv, you're tying your experience with that team into.You're imbuing it with real life experience. What we would try to tell an agent is like this, Mark, we're creating for you is not. It's not artwork. It's not meant to please you.It's meant to distinguish you from everybody else in your marketplace who has very similar branding. We're giving you something very different that is also built from sort of ingredients that we've crafted.We had a hard time bringing agents through that. So, anyway, getting back to your question. We've always wanted to help agents and teams, but the way to help them is to also not frustrate them.And we needed to figure out a process and a discipline in order to get an agent from beginning to end and help them and educate them in what these things mean and why they should appreciate it and how they should look at it, and how should they determine whether it's right for them or not. So it took many, many years for us to figure out how to do that.And now that we have, we've come up with a price that we think is the right price for the work that we do. And we've built out sort of an onboarding process to be certain that not everybody is right for us and we're not right for everybody.So as an example, if an agent has never had a mentor, has never had a coach, if during our interview we discovered that the agent has done everything themselves, built everything themselves, most likely they wouldn't be a good fit for us because in this relationship, we're going to tell them what to do, we're going to tell them what to use, we're going to give them things, and if they've never experienced the give and take of coaching and mentorship and partnership, they're going to have a really hard time.And experience has taught me that every time we ran into a struggle, it was with an agent who just took credit for everything and did everything themselves and had never been part of sort of a. A collaborative, creative effort. So now that we even know how to choose people, man, we're having such a blast doing this.

I can't let you go. Malafronte will kill me if I don't.Have a quick conversation about what you're doing in the music world today, because I got to hear a few songs from a band. I think you know them. The band's called Henrietta Swan.

Yeah, Henrietta Swan.

Anthony likes to have a little boombox hanging from his push cart on the golf course, so. So we were all enjoying a few songs. Let's talk. Talk a little bit about what you're doing today.

Okay. Well, thank you for indulging me in this passion of mine. So, you know, once a songwriter, always a songwriter.I've scored a lot of the music on the video commercials that we do for clients. So a lot of the stuff that's out there in the world that we've made, I've written the music for and recorded it.And so I had this bank of material, and, you know, I knew somebody who owns a record label in Nashville, and I presented him with some of the. Some of my music, who thought, man, there's something here for sure. He wanted to give it to one of his artists.And I didn't want to do that because I didn't need to do that. I don't need to sell songs and have it completely changed and on the radio.And then I could say, oh, I wrote that, but not really, because it was completely redeemed, done. So my offer was, what if I can put an act together that could become another one of your artists?Like, at least give me that shot to take the song and take it all the way through and show you my vision for it. So I reached out to a very close friend of mine who I used to manage. He was in a band. He was an amazing guitar player back in California.One of my clients who's been doing a lot of studio work and session work, and he's been touring, he's got his own group. And I went to a singer who I've known long before she was born, and very close friends of her parents who were best friends. We still are.She was born, and I helped babysit and my kids played. They were the same age. She was the same age as My oldest son.So when she started learning to write music and play music, I would help her with guitar.And then when she started to perform, and then she ended up getting a record contract and touring, I played on the record and I did some live shows with her. I invited her to write lyrics and sing. And I put together a band. I called it Henrietta Swan because a. I'm very into science.I'm very into science fiction. I'm very involved in the women's movement. Henrietta Swan Leavitt was a scientist who discovered how to measure a star's luminosity, which was a very.A groundbreaking discovery back in the late 1800s. But she was a female scientist in a man's world and got no credit for her discoveries. And I wanted to resurrect that.And since we had a female lead singer, it just made sense to combine my passions for things. And I call it Henrietta Swan because it's a cool name. We put out a record, one song last year, and it was nominated for a Grammy.And so the label invited us back to do a four song ep. We did all the recordings at Zach Brown's studio in Nashville, Southern Ground.Got to play a lot of guitar and enjoy a professional recording session at a really cool level, working with a very cool record label, Pure Music Nashville. So they just put it out. I think we've had close to 150,000 plays on Spotify, a lot of downloads like it's happening.And I got a call two weeks ago wondering if I would be interested in performing live at some big event. And I'm like, no, I don't want to do that. I draw the line at performing live. I don't like putting myself out there like that too much.I also don't like leaving home, and I have to do enough of that for business travel. But I like the confines of a studio. I like getting the music perfect. When you're playing live, all kinds of things are not right.The sound's not right, and it drives me nuts. Yeah, I appreciate Anthony's passion for music. And we share a great love for the Grateful Dead.And that was a huge musical influence on me musically and a huge cultural moral influence on me as a human being. If anybody is aware of the Grateful Dead culture and lore, there's a lot of goodness that came out of that world.And my singer in Henrietta Swan, her dad was the Grateful Dead's booking agent for many, many years. So I got to meet the band, I got to play with them. I got to perform with Phil Lesh, the bass Player.So I have very close connection with that whole world and it has a massive impact on how I think.

Look, Mark, I could go on for another three hours with you, but I'm well past the time I asked of you, so I'm going to. I'm going to wrap it up with the same question I've asked every guest on every episode. And I'd love. I can't wait to hear your answer on this.And that's. If you could give one piece of advice to a new agent just getting started, what would it be?

A new agent getting started. This is an easy one, Bill, because my son was an agent for a couple of years, and this is the exact same advice I gave my son.It went something like this. Buying and selling a home is a critically important moment in someone's life. There's a lot of money at stake, a lot of decisions at stake.There's a lot that can go wrong. Coming out of real estate school, you know some legal stuff about real estate. But taking people through this arduous journey is a powerful.It's a powerful responsibility. And you should never, ever, ever do it on your own. For the first at least year.You need to find somebody that you could team up with, somebody who can mentor you. So find a team, Find a broker who will nurture you. Do not.And if you land a client, bring an experienced agent in on that deal so you're not running it on your own. Yes, you won't make as much money, but, like, that's not why you became a Realtor.If you became a Realtor to make money, there's a lot of professions in which you could make as much money and not have somebody's financial life riding on your decisions. So, like, the best advice I can give an agent is get mentored, get coached. There's some fabulous coaches in real estate.I'm a big fan of Tom Ferry and that organization. I think if you're going to get like, Bill, becoming a Realtor is not a game. It's a job. It's a career. It's a profession.Anybody who gets into any profession, like, has to learn what they're doing. You just can't jump in with no experience and knowledge, especially if something is complex as a real estate transaction.So I would say just don't worry about a brand. Don't worry about building a brand, don't worry about a logo, don't worry about anything like that.All you need to worry about is getting really good at your craft, getting really good at knowing what you need to know to.When you tell somebody what to do, you can tell them with confidence because any mistake you make either has to get dealt with by the agent on the other side. And if you're fortunate enough to be in a deal with the agent on the other side of the transaction is really good.They'll protect you and your client, but that's a big responsibility to put on them. So, you know, spend the first year learning how to be an agent and do not do a deal on your own.Without help, it will pay off in spades a thousand times over. That's the best I got, Mark.

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

My email address mark@thousandwatt.net is really the best way to get to me. And I am really good at getting back to everybody pretty quick. And I would give out my phone number because I have no problem with that.But lately the amount of robocalls that I get, I can't answer my phone anymore. So if I see a call coming in and I don't see a name, I just won't answer it. And I'm getting 20 or 30 of these a day. So email is now the best way.And you might be surprised, it might answer right away.

Nice.

But yeah, I mean, just whatever. If you have a question or want to talk to us about working together, that'd be great.I really appreciate this and I feel like this has been a very one sided conversation. I haven't asked you about you at all, so, so let's.

Let me explain this to you. This is the perfect episode for me. People don't want to hear me talk, they want to hear my guests come on. And this is great.So, so I can't thank you enough, Mark. This is, this, this has exceeded all expectations that I had beforehand. Really love what you guys do. Thank you so much for your time today.This has really been a treat.

Anytime.

Thank you. Appreciate it.

We'll do it again. I enjoy talking to you.