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Why Competition Is Good for Your Real Estate Business · The Investor Shed Podcast

• Nick & Jeremy: We need our tab stick before we start. ⁓ no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We're live, buddy. ⁓ no, no, no, no. Welcome back to the Investor Shed podcast. Today is a special day. This is our first day. We're live on Twitch. Whoa. What's up, Twitch audience? We have zero followers. ⁓ yeah. What's up, Twitch? What's up, Twitch? Make sure you like and subscribe. Smash that button. We tried to also go live on LinkedIn and they're like, ⁓ you don't have enough followers for that. ⁓ maybe we should have my account. I guess so it need 150. Oh, I got 150. Okay, we'll have to use you didn't even tell me that I didn't know All right, everybody. We're talking about real estate for those twitchers I don't know you son of a twitch you guys just want to watch GTA clips and you're not going to today you're gonna be sucked in to this incredible experience of the Investor Shed podcast where we talk real estate we talk investing and we talk Our personal lives that nobody gives a shit about. That's true for context for anyone watching on Twitch Welcome, of course. My name is Jeremy kitchen co-host of the investorship podcast. This year is the glorious and magnificent Nicholas beverage stop No, won't stop actually very nice of you Nick's been in real estate for I don't know how many years like 15 15 years like almost half your life at this point just about yeah And he's got a wealth of knowledge and I'm just kind of here to make sure the ship runs smoothly and you also run a business I do a very fantastic business that brings in lots of cash Well, we say fantastic like people listening to this are like you just have a very glorified job Well, I don't know. I mean you don't have to show up some days if you don't want to that's it That's true. But if I don't show up, I don't get paid. So like there is that caveat Jeremy's in the he's in the you were in the startup phase for a while now you got things Dialed in a yeah, I'd say we're past startup, but we're at like we're definitely feeling growing pains of like what what are we? do we want to be? What do we want this experience to be? And right now just I'm captain of the own ship and you know when I'm post credit scenes rolled the end of movies and like all these people are involved like all those people are my names right now For context for those that are never heard the show before I'm Nick beverage. I am a real estate investor I'm also an agent. mostly flip houses. I do have rental properties. I've got an RV park I've got pretty cool projects in the pipeline right now. I've got two Houses that I'm flipping and I'm also doing a development deal where we are building out lots and we're already under contract to sell them to a builder ⁓ So that's that's me and then we also ⁓ I run a business with a partner where we ⁓ Sell real estate too just as agents. Yeah, and Jeremy runs a media business I do and I thought he might run it into the ground, but he did not he ran it up to the sky Did you think I was gonna run into the ground? Absolutely. Really? I had no faith Thank you. I appreciate that. Now I do. Now I want to it into the ground. I'm just kidding. Go against what you want. No, I tried running into the ground. started. we did. Yes. Yes. Let's bury this thing. Yeah. And then you're like, ⁓ let's make it good. what if we didn't do that? ⁓ Yes. ⁓ So you mostly work for real estate ⁓ agents. Those are your clients. You run your own business. You make you had a a goal a couple of years ago to make 100 grand. You you blew past that, which is awesome. Taking photos for people. Yeah. This day and age where everyone has a wonderful iPhone that takes amazing photos, were still capabilities, right? Yeah. You're still able to make a pretty good living. Yeah. It's more than just the photos. It's the whole business experience. Right. What I'm to promise is that you don't have to do this yourself and that you can actually rely on other people who get it done cheaper, faster, better. Yeah. And it's not just photos. You do videos, 3D tours. You do the whole pat media for agents to yeah, yeah, there's a lot of things and clone their voices and make videos of them Acting like they did stuff that they didn't do the voice this weekend. Nice. Tell me about that ⁓ I do a sponsorship for women's council reals hers as well So in order to you know, do the sponsorship I change I change videos for the sponsorship basically Perfect keeps cash in my pocket keeps cash in their pocket. Yeah nice little trade and then they they promote me at their events and everything like that So it kind of works we we work like symbiotically with each other, if that makes sense. So I helped them grow. helped me grow. Anyway, we went into this project. We didn't really have a script. And I'm like, you don't need one. Yeah, you don't need one straight into chat. GPT and like, hey, this is what I want. This is what I want. This is what I want you to focus on for a script. Please give me something that's 30 to 45 seconds. Took that into 11 labs and said, make me this voice. And it said, you got it, partner. Yeah, the voice of the agent that's running it. Yeah, right. Yep. So it's not just some random voice It's actually that actually cloned her voice and then you really refined it over time. It's kind of It sounds just like her. Yeah, because it is her voice. It is her voice manipulated with AI. Yeah, just and numbers and computers. It's pretty impressive Yeah, pretty cool. Also, so I am on the investor shed. like Nick does a lot of active stuff You know, you're a flipper you do all these development projects. I'm more the passive guy ⁓ I like lending money out of my IRA my HELOC and my 401k two real estate investors And I like borrowing money. you like borrowing that money. So we can give it here. I'm always out of money. Any more money? Yeah. I spend money every day and lots of it. I actually just re-upped another loan this weekend. So one of my loans on Wolf Lodge got paid back. Cool. He paid me back $22,500 plus all the interest he's paid me. He's paid me $300 a month for a year or something like that. That's awesome. Anyway, as soon as I got it back, I'm like, hey, thanks for sending that money back. Do you have any other projects? And he's like you funny you should ask I do so I took instead of sending him 22 5 I sent for 27 5 Uh-huh because I had extra contributions and money that he sent me nice, right? So then I'm giving his own money back to him and he's giving me a bigger rate of return on it now instead of making 16 % I'm making 18 % And I'm making a good return. Yeah, so I went from $300 a month on that to like 422 or something like that, which like that's just how that money works I love it compounding those returns Jeremy what? You're playing with house money. I'm playing with house money. That's awesome. Yeah, no, like I said, like the money game and I just like you have anything else that you want this money for. I know it's not a lot, but it's a little engine that could money. That's awesome. Yeah. So that's what we do. That's kind of the dynamic of the show. We're actually like it's the first episode and we've been here for like 300. Well, I think it's important to catch people up because I think we just kind of assume that we have regular listeners. Yeah. But in reality, we actually don't. There's people that just randomly Tune in, find us online. of course now on Twitch. For all you're reading, we're gonna have nobody listen to me on Twitch. But this episode is geared towards Twitch. No, I'm just kidding. We wrote a whole episode for you. Just like our X episodes where we always have... Hey, remember how we always had like one view on X when we started going live on that? There's like 15 now. Do you pay AI accounts to go do that? No, not yet. I'm I'm still obsessing over AI tools all the time and we're not gonna get into that today We will later. So if you like open claw and the gentic models, we're gonna talk a lot about that in an other podcast I'm light years behind you. I finally got paid up. I got finally got caught up on a paid subscription to chat GPT Okay But it's gonna do what I needed to do for media and stuff cuz now I can feed it clips and they can like AI that really easily and I don't have to touch it and just Good. Yeah, you should. Yeah You got to implement as much AI stuff as you can. Stay ahead of it, or else you will get ran over by other people that are going to use it. yeah. Ran over. Especially in your industry. Yeah. And mine is coming. ⁓ yeah. Yeah. I think yours is already there, honestly. Like, if agents aren't utilizing AI right now, they're going to be so far behind the schemes. They will. Very quickly. ⁓ But today, we're going to talk about competition. I love it. ⁓ A lot of people view competition in their ⁓ business as a bad thing and maybe it is. ⁓ It depends on how much, how many people you have in your industry, what their success ratio is compared to like how many people go in. Like for instance in my real estate sales business, ⁓ we have a very low bar to entry. Our competition is insanely weak. In general when I when you when you take all them as a whole like 80 percent of agents really don't do much Right. That's true. Even if they have the abilities they just they just don't yeah so when it comes to collaborating with other agents Some see that as you know a pitfalls that hey, what if they're just gonna copy what I'm doing and take all the business Other people have been doing it for a while. Don't see it that way. They're like Hey, let's collaborate. Let's see what kind of ideas that we can throw off each other and use whatever is working because there's actually plenty of business out there. ⁓ yeah. And it can also be a recruiting opportunity, too, if you find the right person. And ⁓ so in my business, for instance, ⁓ we put on networking groups ⁓ every month where we get 40 to 50 or so people that show up just to talk about real estate investing. And ⁓ surprise, surprise, there's a lot of agents that show up to. Yeah, of course. Initially, when I first started running this group about 10 years ago, I really wanted to limit the amount of agents that came in or took them to the side and be like, hey, please just don't poach my clients. I'm like, this is my thing where I'm trying to get new clients and it's fine that you're here, but please just be here for educational purposes and try not to, you're at, basically you're at my open house. ⁓ These days I don't look at it as much like that way anymore. I feel like people are just going to work with whoever they're going to work with. Very true, yes. But it can be a good recruited opportunity. like we've actually over the years, some people that have come to our meetups, we've recruited them as agents. Yeah. Like the talented ones that we see. And that's what I've learned is like competition is kind of a boogie man. Yeah, 100%. In my business, maybe not others, but what about yours is a little bit different because you have less people competing. I would say yes, there's less but there's also like You know like if there were 60,000 people or how many realtors are there in the northwest 20,000 something like that 2000 Oh like 2000 2000. Okay. Wait 2000, right? That's a lot of real estate agents and like 200 that are doing things right, right and as far as like real estate photography like I think the ratios Match for the amount of people who are doing it, right? Because like there's probably 10 to 20 in our area 10 to 20 competitors. Yeah of media Wow. Yeah, there's okay now Cause I only hear about like three of them. Sure. I mean, I never hear of them. You're one of the, would you say you're in the top five? Yeah, ⁓ top 10 top 10. Yeah, okay Who would you say are the your the top five competitors that probably do the most business? Do you have any way of knowing or is it just like how often you hear? It depends like what what are your metrics for defining top? Are your metrics quality? Is it quantity is it more quantity like like who's who's cranking out? Would you say the most appointments? Do you have any way of knowing or is it just kind of a guess? I mean some of the other media companies have posted on social media like hey we did ⁓ Thousand shoots last year and I'm like cool. I did like 500 or 450 or something like that, right? So like obviously you've done more but you've got a team so you're not like yeah Thousand shoots is a lot thousand shoots is a lot. Yeah inside media spoke and did that by the way, like they do incredible inside media spoke in Yeah, okay. So that's a but that's a bigger market spoke him. Yeah a little bit bigger market. That's a that's a different state I think over here too, like they're worried. We're in like the same similar fields, of course, but you do spoke in as well Okay, how often are you in the Spokane versus the North Idaho market? Probably about 10 % of the time I'm over in Spokane. Okay, so it's not often. Not often. It's one-tenth of your business. Yeah, and I mean like a lot of times I go north, I go south, I go east, I go west. When you compare this big company, ⁓ what products they offer, what pricing, and their services, their quality, how would you rate yourself against them? I would rate myself against them as far as like pricing I would say I'm like a ten like I beat them in price But they beat me in quality. Okay, and that's fine. That's a different different agent experience for a different person, right? Yeah They do incredible like video the video is their specialty. Okay Photos they look pretty pretty similar to mine like on a one-to-one scale. We're using the same editors So we're using the same systems to pump out our product. You know what? I mean, what makes their videos better? They are implementing a lot of AI and they're just they're really good at getting agents to be comfortable They're getting a good agents to be scripted. They're good at just the choreography of the whole thing and making almost a song and dance Okay. Yeah. Yeah, cuz there's a lot of that these days. Yeah. Yeah agents are just being annoying There is that hey been there and I don't I am there I don't think that's a bad thing. Honestly. Yeah, I think You being on camera and being annoying is way better than you not like just dancing in a house. Yeah, and not really Well, I think there's a fine balance between like people they want to tune in to see like a house Maybe yeah, I don't know what they want to tune into anymore, but we'll talk about it. don't yeah i'm so a lot of times like the consumer actually wants to see a lot of times Versus what the agent wants to do you've seen this before too where i've tried to go really fast on the video You're like, hey, don't really like like these like quick jittery things. Give me a slow thing. Yeah A lot of times social media is just like fast fast fast right now I'll watch a video and I'm like what what was that? None of that was real. There's just explosion There's explosions and there's a house being morphed and like cars and I'm like what I gotta admit what product is this I Hate that. Yeah. Yeah, and I don't know what my wife thinks I need to ask her because she's more of a Retail sure type of you know, just interested in houses not seeing it from a real estate agent's view I got to talk to more people about like, what do you actually like seeing when it comes to just real estate agents showing off a house? Do you like the fast, crazy AI stuff with morphs and all that? Do you like it quicker or do you like kind of a slow burn? Yeah. Do you like the agent kind of walking through and showing or just no agent at all and just showing the house with music? I'm curious. Do you have any insight on what consumers actually prefer to see? So consumers Like to see that their agents are online Right. So this is a good way for people like I always say like instagram is not going to sell your house You know what? mean people don't go to instagram to go buy a house, but they will go to see how well you present a house Okay, you know what? mean so that can help you bring you future listings, but I don't think it's actually going to sell this listing and I could be wrong there but you know Agents it's it's all about who you know like and trust and just staying in front of camera and staying in on top of these things like right you do your networking event because it keeps you relevant Sure, and this is just the way that agents are doing that pace. It's just my way of getting in front of faces Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and that's that's necessarily contacts on the phone but like face-to-face seeing people Letting them know I'm a real estate agent. Yeah, and there are signs behind it that it actually works Like I post a lot on Instagram on YouTube and everything like that When you get a booking and I always ask new people like hey, how'd you hear about me? They're like I found your Instagram and I'm like great cool something works. All right, something is there. Yes. Yeah And then same thing with like Google, know, like you don't think anybody finds you on Google But I was asking how'd you find me? I don't mark it on Google I mean, I'm like I have a website but have a page. Yeah, I found you on Google people give you reviews Yeah on Google. Do you ask for every now and then? Yes. Good. Yep. Yeah I'm trying to bump that system back up but ⁓ Funnels are being put in process, of course, I want to email people and when I send them photos, I'm going to send them reminders to give me five star reviews. All this is in the back end, like cooking right now. Yeah. Yeah, I think agents want a couple things. So they want to they want to almost keep up with the Joneses. Yeah. Right. So like seeing that being in front of people is important. The people who are not in front of people are so bad. Like social media. did a I did a real estate listing for somebody who hasn't listed it feels like in 20 years Uh-huh, and he's asking me all these questions after I delivered the photos. He was like, hey, can you organize the photos on the MLS? I'm like I cannot organize the photos on the MLS for you I can organize them on my ordering platform then when you download them you can put them in the MLS that way but if they're already on the MLS just Talk to your broker. I don't have access to that. You know what I mean? So yeah. Yeah anyway, it's just like You don't know anything about social media and that's okay Well, could you at that point be like well my wife runs this listing business and she could do all this for you I could Do you ever recommend that I do people you can tell when people are wanting the help versus wanting to do it themselves So yeah, know what? mean, like he doesn't want to pay an extra $400 to get signed up for a TC and then have to he wants to just get it done Okay, cool. Good luck Yeah Anyway, that's just gonna put up boundaries. Yeah. Yeah, you got to put up a couple boundaries Like I always pitch the service like my wife does this I mean, she'll answer like a question or two for free, like any more than that, she has to sign you up as a client if you want to get deeper in it. Yeah. So I had to fire a client for the first time. Yeah, you did. A couple of weeks ago because of boundaries. Yeah. Like it was it was hard, hard for me because I've never actually I don't think I've ever actually fired a client before. Like literally I'm terminating your listings. Yeah. Based off your behavior. Yeah. And I know that was a client you're talking about. Yeah. And it's tough. But like Boundaries dude, gotta be you gotta be strict with boundaries with certain type of people that will take advantage of it because I I kind of like let the boundaries not totally exist sometimes just based off how much time I have available because I like to just do things and help people and then sometimes I get busier and it's like I can't do as much but I can refer you people blah blah blah. I feel like that's good karma to put back in your business when you're helping people like that right? It's I'd put into a karma bucket and eventually this karma bucket might pay me off it might not. Yeah. Like never expected of course, but when it does pay off, it's kind of cool. It does. Yeah, it does pay off eventually So, ⁓ how do you feel about firing this person by the way like it? Relieved good. Okay. That's great. Yeah, you weren't hard in the mullet. Yeah ⁓ yeah, it's nerve-racking because it's just like somebody that you've worked with for two years Yeah, there are three properties of self you bit I basically sold all three sure and then he screwed up two of them Yeah to like get him back like actually like I think he intentionally tried to just, just cause he's such a dick, tries to ruin things. Just that type of personality. Some people like to see the burn type of thing. And eventually I just had enough. And I have a pretty high patience for clients, pretty high tolerance for putting up with some bullshit. I just let it roll off me, I don't care. Like you kind of have have thick skin in this business. You really do. got to a point where it's just like, you are asking and demanding us to go way above? Like he was emailing my assistant who works in the office, by the way, go out an hour to his house, things like he should have been doing, like go in the crawl space and make sure that the water, when the water gets turned on, go in the crawl space and make sure that the, you know, certain valves are shot. yeah. watch for the washer because that could be leaking. Things like, I've already told him, I'm like, we're not doing this stuff for you. Yeah. This is this you got to get the house ready for an inspection. Right. Like we will will gladly coordinate, make phone calls and all that stuff. But ⁓ we're not like she's she's not a field tech. She works in the office. Yeah. Looking over contracts. ⁓ And and then I but and then we got somebody for him to do all this stuff very cheaply. Yeah. Like we went through the hassle of trying to get him bids for somebody to totally get this house ready and she they gave an unbelievable price and he was just like this is bullshit. No. OK. OK. What do you want now? Like you want me to go get more bids cheaper than I've ever seen in my life? Yeah. To do things that you are not willing to go and do yourself. ⁓ Anyway, eventually it didn't work out. Right. And obviously, like you've been in this business long enough, Nick, where you know that like You know that My stool broke you just pulled and broke it while I trying to get it back up it was bending downward Obviously you've been in this business long enough, you know that obviously there's an abundance of business out there there But it is hard to realize like sometimes you do have that scarcity mindset of like if I mess up this one thing it is going to snowball and nobody's gonna run to work with me the funny thing was after after I finally, you know fired him and He agreed we terminated that night. Joe text me said Hey got a 1.8 million dollar listing we're gonna get I love it and this guy's easy. He doesn't care what the commission is. I was just like what and that's the point I wanted to get to and this is you know basically lost like or not lost but forfeited about 500,000 and you know sales prices and sure just exchange it for a much easier client 1.8 million. Yeah Worth a volume and it's just it's amazing how the universe can Say hey, have plenty more Yeah, absolutely. universe is always like there's plenty. Yeah. There's plenty always. And I think like a lot of people go through this obviously if they get rid of a customer they think like wow this is this is the worst and like you should really switch that mind frame because there is this abundance out there in the universe. ⁓ My wife does this specifically when she wants to fire a customer. I'm like fire them. Seriously like fire them and watch and make room for somebody new. Yeah. Give openings for that. Yeah exactly. I mean I fired a couple clients in my life and then it's it's nice knowing like I don't have to work with you. Yeah. Good luck Chuck. Yeah, have fun with the next guy you try this on. Yeah But yeah and speak specifically in our businesses like, you know, we're talking about competition. That's where this you know All kind of comes in. It's it's an abundance mindset. Yeah, like really I think it's it will serve you more To have an abundance mindset versus scarcity mindset. I've never actually been in a situation where but the scarcity mindset has worked. Yeah That I can think of a lot of times my thought it comes to you know, I mean I've intentionally tried to be as cheap as possible Yeah, it's always backfired. Yep ⁓ and So it's it's I think it's just important to be like just Choose to be an optimist if you can. Choose to live with the reality that there is a lot of opportunity out there. Yeah, there's plenty of people to work with right? There's plenty of competition out there ⁓ and it's not a big deal because there's Even more opportunity than there is competition, right? I agree and I think go ahead. Sorry No, no that but I think that's the big point where we can almost wrap up this podcast early if we could just say That the biggest thing i've learned at least in the real estate industry and i'm sure I speak to a lot of people in other industries ⁓ but it seems to always be the case that there's way more opportunity That your competition can never have the ability to go get yeah. Yeah, so you don't have to worry about them. Yeah, just just They're a distraction. Yeah, I think I'm truly the mindset too of you know, like you never Clients don't just switch. You know what? mean like so like if someone is using you and they go to somebody else It's it's not because that person took them from them. It's because you didn't Provide enough value to keep them. Yeah, and and I fully believe that like it happens all the time in my industry Like I'll see a new listing and I'm like, wow, I used to work with that person, you know and there's an instant Tinge of like that hurts. Yeah, but then I'm like That's what this business is for. Yeah, this is is my fault and that's okay If my wife cheated on me, mm-hmm It probably wouldn't be because she was swindled by just the most charming person right ever. Yeah, there might be something wrong with the relationship Let's look at the baseline foundation here, right? There might be something that I'm not doing. Yeah, exactly That led to that Yeah, it's a really good opportunity to almost self-reflect honestly like cuz I'll see it and I'm like, cool Like I used to work with him all the time. I wonder what happened. Yeah And sometimes I'll just ask them, like, hey, like, I'm not trying to be weird or anything, but like, why do you get switch? And I'll open up that conversation because I want to know what it was that made them switch to see if I can provide the similar value or know where my my leaky holes are in my boat. And it's not enough to be like, well, we're under contract. Right. Yeah. You were not in contract with any of this stuff. You're free to do whatever you want. Like with my wife, for instance, we're under contract. We're married. She's not allowed to cheat. But I can't just I can't just be like, that's hard. That's our thing. And I don't have to worry about it. I can treat her like shit forever because we're married and she's already agreed that she can't go have an affair. It's illegal. You also agree that you'd be a good husband and like support But some people think about this when it comes to their business relationships with their clients. Like, hey, they already signed up or they already agreed to be a client of our brokerage. They're under contract. They will be penalized if they go move somewhere else. People do it all the time. And it's very unlikely that you can hold someone's feet to the fire with fear. ⁓ You always get more with honey. Yeah, you know Yeah, absolutely like in those type of situations like you've already created a not win-win on both sides Yeah, and if you're going to be that person that is going to they're going to talk about that but there are plenty of agents that like Back to my industry where they feel if as long as they've gotten somebody under contract a buyer like with a buyer rep agreement or a seller with the seller rep agreement Then some people think in their mind. ⁓ I'm good Yeah, it doesn't matter how we treat them now ⁓ and I've seen that on the back end well. Not true Yeah, apparently ⁓ people will abandon you even if they've already a paper doesn't make it It's a little it's slightly more inconvenient for them to abandon you but people will do it I've shot the same house for different agents three months apart ⁓ Because the house didn't sell and they didn't it was it was properly marketed Yeah, and like there there's awkwardness when I get there I'm like, ⁓ shit Did they not like the photos like it's gonna be the same dude showing up to take the same photo ⁓ But like, you know, I try to keep these relationships going and then in between the two agents one of them was like Hey, do think we could get the drone photos from the other guy? And I'm like, I'll ask. Yeah, it doesn't hurt to ask. I'll be that meaty eerie. don't sure I'm gonna try to give anything go this last time was the first time they ever declined it Okay, usually people like I don't care just whatever I don't want to talk to those people these people gave you $20 I tried giving the money I tried giving you money out of my own pocket. Okay, so you can charge Yeah, so I was gonna basically pay it forward but I was like I'll give you $100 credit on your next shoot Which is basically the price of the drone photos sure hundred dollar credit on your next shoot All I need is access to the drone us and they're like, nope And I'm like I respect it and I will not give it to them Yeah, even though I could because I don't own though I own the produce either pissed at the client or pissed at the new agent They were pissed at the client Yeah, anyway, and the client was pissed at them. It was a very toxic thing. Yeah and just trying to negotiate with them I'm like I'm paying you back Like if you want financial compensation, this is how you get it. Yeah Anyway, it didn't work. That's okay strong. Yeah logic to make and that's okay to make it work, right? And again, it was so weird because I was like I was here three months ago shooting these exact same photos Okay. Yeah, I'm just seeing yes your cut made the noise. ⁓ my cut made noise. Yeah Like that? Yeah, I think so. I was just stirring it up. Anyway, we have prework. You're not drinking enough prework. I'm sorry. Here. Cheers. Okay. I need to talk about this because this part's important. Yeah, let's go. All right. So it's actually kind of segue a little bit. I was at an event, just talking to a person in the industry, asking them how business is. And they said, how are you? Aren't you a little scared of the competition? There's a lot of competition in your business right now. And and seriously without missing a beat I said no, I'm not scared. I said I'm confident and I'm competent like instantly I'm like those two things. Yeah, I know what's coming I know how to see it if I lost all of my business like if everyone decided to lose me I would still build this up the same way even better, right? Yeah, like there is so much fresh out there. I could just start over I would do expectations right new new standard. Yes. I mean I I probably have like 10 to 20 percent 10 percent of the market maybe of like what I do. That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. So there's 90 percent 90 percent unexplored is what I'm saying. Like I can go find new agents to work with. Yes. Absolutely. Not not saying that I don't love my clients because I love and adore them of course. But it's if you were all to leave like I would find a way to not die. It's funny I had a call from a guy yesterday who he's done a lot of contracting work for me and he wants me to list his house and in the Pinehurst area, 20 acres. he was almost, the biggest, he wanted to make sure that I was gonna get drone photos. Yeah. On a 20 acre property. I'll think about it. Like he's definitely, wants to work with me, he's just like, I, do you mind getting the drone photos and stuff? Like, I think I, yes, of course. If we negotiate a higher. It's gonna be a million dollar house. I think we can get drone photos. It's gonna happen. But it is interesting how some sellers think in advance who haven't done it before. Yeah, like gosh I hope I actually get the media package Yeah, and you guys do this but and I love this but like the one thing I've seen on the back end because I talked to you guys as clients as well Right. I just do small talk like hey, how'd you find Nick? How'd you find North Idaho? Are the real the REI team? I still want to call you the North Idaho REI team. Yeah, our name has changed Yeah, REI team. How do you hear about REI team? You know, oh we did this Oh do that and like I hear this all the time. Are you gonna do the 360 tour? You're do drone photos? Oh nice. Yeah, like 360 tour is the one thing I will say that clients like homeowners Want of their house they want a floor plan and they want to click and walk around the room Which is silly because most agents don't want that No, it's great. Yeah, I know you think it's great But like I talked to a lot of people who were like, nah, nobody looks at those and I'm like you'd be surprised Oh, yeah, do you want to see the metrics of ten to twenty thousand views per property? No, okay, but it's a cool new feature for Consumers. Yeah, it's for it's for consumers. It's for consumers to like look browse around in a house and stuff and it's a cool little feature it's Especially if they're really interested in the house Yeah, if they're really actually interested in the house and they want to toward early. Yep by do the little 3d towards like it's sneak peek Yeah, and it's more than just photo. It's this disconnect between agents and their clients because agents don't think it's valuable Sellers do think it's valuable and it's the cheapest add-on I have Yeah, how much is it 50 bucks? That's super cheap Yeah, build you a floor plan and a 360 tour. It's nuts. Yeah nuts cheap. Yeah. Yeah, you need to push that more or raise the price Yeah, yeah, we'll see. I mean I've got ideas in the pipeline it but things are things are firing on I wouldn't say all cylinders about most cylinders right now and again like competition like there's a few other agents in the area or real estate photographers in the area who do really great work and I love connecting with them and I love talking business with them like over my Instagram right now and we can talk to a couple other Real estate professionals in the industry doing it that house that you shop for us on Thursday We already got an offer last night and I haven't even had a chance to edit the video yet. Nice But maybe somebody walks around the 3d tour and they're like I need this yeah You never know. Yeah, it was also, you know, you guys have your thing and you've said this before It's a price worn a beauty pageant, right? Yeah, that's actually the most important thing that people like still it always comes down to that It doesn't matter how in my experience how much AI you can throw in to a quick 30 second reel. The house is only going to sell if it's priced well and presentable, move and ready and all the things at the same time. Those are the homes that sell. Those are the homes that always have sold and like more AI visual effects will not sell the house. And I'm still curious though if that's if consumers like that or if just the agents like it. Yeah, I think consumers like it based off the amount of likes and comments and engagement. I see on those videos ⁓ I think they do but I think it's it feels like a novelty Yeah, like like the AI and the exploding houses which like we do in our podcast. Yeah, it was fun at first But I feel like eventually it gets like sloppy. Yeah, like or not sloppy, but like it just feels like okay, so ⁓ if everything's special, nothing special Well, it just doesn't say well, that's not a real house. You're just throwing in. Yeah Visual stuff. Yeah, like it makes it almost there's a ballroom in your kitchen to some people. Yeah repulsive, right, you know Um, but yeah, like I said like if everything's special though, nothing special I think we're at that point where everything just feels so grand and thematic on on social media That is very underwhelming when you see the house in person. Yeah, and that that's a problem too, right? Because you can be all excited to see the the potential of what this could be but then you get there and you're like Wow, this thing's kind of a pile of shit. Yeah I'm glad I have my expectations all up. Yeah. Yeah, where are the explosions? Yeah. Yeah, where are the explosions? think that can actually like it can backfire to a point where people see that You know the perceived value of what they see online is is this grand thing and then they get there and they're underwhelmed Which makes them, know not feel that the value of the property is there. Yeah I do feel though that if I had to guess most people that are seeing these AI real videos of a house They're not the ones that are actually going out and looking at the homes. Sure. Most people I think that Are going to see these homes. They saw it on like realtor.com or Zillow and they saw the photos And maybe a 3d tour. Yeah, you can still add like a nice cinematic video on Zillow, but like you said like people aren't buying homes based off what they say on instagram. Yeah If they're buying homes, they're typically not on instagram because they don't have time They're working and stuff. Right, right like That's just my guess I did a social media presentation a couple months back and I'm like, you know like as a real estate photographer It's so easy to find realtors online. Your pro process realtor up there, know, but we're hiding you guys It's so hard to find people to buy your house online You can't just like go to somebody's Instagram page and they're like, I wish I could buy a home with a realtor That's right. If they say that they get clobbered by you know, yeah 800 comments saying I can help you. can help you. can help you. My friend can help you. My brother can help you. know, you seen those where they make a mistake of being like, does anyone know a good agent in the Hayden area or something like that? I love when then it's just like 800 comments of everybody chiming in. Yeah. There's a couple of cool things like I don't pay my people to market for me, but I really need to start thanking them more. Some of the real estate agent pages, they're like, hey, I need a real estate photographer. And like 10 people will comment and seven of them will be about me. Yeah, and I'm like, ⁓ that feels like every time I see those I try to tag you. Yeah. Yeah, but like that that feels good I'm like these people trust me so much that they're they're willing to you know, give my services away. Mm-hmm. It's incredible So, let's talk more about competition. Yeah, what? Have you learned from your competition that you've implemented anything? Yeah My competition has what about anything lately? Yeah ⁓ my competition started using ai to edit their photos Yeah, and i'm like this is crazy like this is the world we're in right now like first It was virtual editors and I thought that was nuts. Yeah now it's ai and then it's done in 20 minutes Yeah, and for some context for those who ⁓ don't know which most should not know this. Yeah, ⁓ a real estate photographer when they go and shoot a house with their camera They they typically have to go back And they spent a lot more time editing these photos to make sure that they look good. They have to bring multiple photos together through this HDR process or whatever it's called. You got it. know what you're talking about. Yeah. They got to do crazy things with the windows. And when we started this business, because I started it with you in 2019, think, that process took two to four hours to edit photos. So it was half the day on one photo shoot. of editing and then we always promised we would get up the next business day. Yeah. But now with AI, you don't even have to really start your car before these photos are pretty much almost done. Yeah. Yeah. And I haven't got that far yet. Like I haven't started uploading when I'm driving into my next shoot or anything. That's work in progress. But they get home and they upload super fast. And then by the time I'm done eating dinner, I get an email that's like your photos are ready. And I'm like, I love it. Yeah. So and they're they're even better like honestly like they're better than what I can do by self and they're cheaper It's anywhere between like 45 and 60 cents of photo Yeah, and you know the funny thing too like I spent a lot of time and effort and money In just this podcast studio to get the lighting just right. Yeah There's now a button an AI button on here That I can make studio lighting and it's it's on right now, but if I take it off, ⁓ well, it's weird gross And that's with the enhanced lighting, but like you just click a button. That's so much better. And it looks it looks like professional studio lighting. Yeah. This stuff used to take effort. Yeah. A.I. is changing everything. Yeah. It comes to media and other businesses. Yeah. And obviously you're using it and this is a different episode. We talk about A.I. a lot because it's kind of relevant, honestly. But like your business, you guys are integrating so many cool things on like, you know, A.I. virtual assistants. And yeah. So I've got a new Mac. coming today. A new one? Another one. A Mac Mini. What's this one's name going to be? ⁓ Well, I was going to name her ⁓ Raven Wolf and she was going to be operating off of ⁓ Olamas, ⁓ QAN 3.5, a local LLM open source ⁓ where we're not using any tokens and it will just use the office energy basically in that computer. ⁓ you can run a larger model if you buy more RAM. Sure. So with this Mac mini, so with this Mac mini, I spent an extra 200 bucks. That's all it was. So was $800 total. And I had 24 gigs of RAM so that I could run the smarter model. You can run dumber models on lower RAM, but this is like almost equivalent of like, know, chat GBT and Opus and Grok 4.1 reasoning with reasoning. And so the plan. Was for the last couple of weeks once this thing finally shows up because mac minis are hard to get now Yeah, it's going to be talking to my other mac mini bot But it will be doing research 24 hours a day ⁓ Trying to find the hottest stock tips. Okay, so this is gonna be your stock machine Yeah, but it was it's gonna be the researcher. but it's gonna click on every two minutes every two minutes and scan Tick tock and x and yahoo finance and all these just seen is there anything? that was just announced that we should make a move in ⁓ 24 hour markets or stock market or do any put options or call options, ⁓ any crypto trades, because there's also three brokerage accounts that I have my other Mac mini set up ready to trade. It just needs the instructions. Got it. ⁓ And so this thing would be researching and then once it thinks it has a tip, it will ping the other machine to do some quick research. ⁓ on that topic. Verify that this is a good tip and then if so just make the trade like all within you know 30 seconds or so because then it will use the crock model which with reasoning to do a little bit deeper dive smarter reasoning make sure it's not looking at something that's you know fake or ⁓ or anything like that ⁓ and then i'll make the trade that that has been my plan for the last couple of weeks and i have this grand plan on how to implement it I might not even do it though. I might just run that model locally ⁓ and just have that as the new ⁓ real estate AI assistant. ⁓ Just because I don't know why. I feel like maybe there's even more opportunity to just ramp up this real estate sales business on insane levels to where It's doing some sort of research constantly nationwide to find opportunities for buyers and sellers in getting leads and then ⁓ maybe sending them to the other machine once it has a lead to qualify that lead and try to refer it to another agent in the country. There you go. Maybe a little bit more safer money than just, you know, investment funds on fire for an experiment. I feel like this would be I'd have a little bit more control over staying in the same industry. Yeah, or just I have so many ideas in my head. I bet. But that was the initial plan. Yeah. You are a visionary for a reason. Like your job is to have these grand ideas. But I think I'm going to try out the trading bot and see how it works for like a week or so. Sure. ⁓ It's just it's a lot to set up. It's exciting. But then I'm also like, why am I trying to start a new business when I've got this perfectly good business that I have 15 years of experience knowing the good businesses I could just take the next month or so and just like all the little standard operating procedures and just figure out how to implement these two bots into all those things. And Alex, when was he talking about this all the time? Is this interesting that you bring this up here? ⁓ What you're referring to is like you've been in business for a long time. Would you consider yourself bored of it is are you not doing the boring work? ⁓ I it depends on what week it is, right? But I mean like like I I think you're you're not putting into that system because maybe you feel like you've got it all figured out or You know what? mean, and I don't want something new and exciting. Yeah It's the new shiny button that you want to push which try it out i'm not saying you shouldn't but It's usually the boring work that gets you the money. You know what? I mean like it's sure well That's why i'm thinking going back to instead of like abandon the idea Setting up this trading bot. Mm-hmm Even though it sounds like it could really work. Yeah, and I verified it with You know grok and Gemini and anthropic and I had inputs from all three of those AI's To kind of come up with the perfect plan. Yeah to like for How to mitigate risk as much as possible and keep it as efficient as possible and low cost as possible but I keep going back to, I've watched it a lot of Alex Morozzi over the weekend too. why don't I just implement this in my business? Why start something new? I already know the ins and outs. I have 15 years of experience in real estate. Just plug away at the standard operating procedures and replace what normally we would do. Like if I could just take time doing that, I feel like my income is more likely. To have it's more likely to grow into something special or you could even like I mean like And I know we've talked to a person who goes into your business systems on the podcast before I forgot her name was that weightlifting chick? Anyway, she ⁓ she like goes into your standard operating procedures and like starts the bikini model Yeah, the bikini model girl anyway, like even like you don't have to do this You could hire somebody to like pick apart your systems because I think an outsider's perspective could help you not get tied up in that ⁓ I want to be tied up Okay, well that's that's up to you like but like yeah Again, like we talked about this with like my CRM to like I don't know how to run it I should pay somebody then you're like you should just figure it out and I'm like, yeah, but I want to pace open cloud can now manage a database if you set it up, right? Okay, It can like you won't have to love is just listening this morning to this agent using open claw to like now He no longer goes on the CRM anymore He just like telegrams messages and gives it updates about his client and then it'll move it into the proper. Okay, cool seizure. That's so cool So anyway one more Hormoz. He talked about he talked about he was one of his colleagues He works with ran a garbage truck business and he sold it and he asked him. He's like, okay What are you gonna do now that you sold your garbage truck business? He's like I'm gonna build another garbage truck business and Alex and roses like are you crazy? And he's like, why would I not I've known every I know everything about this business. Yeah, I know how to acquire customers I have to acquire trucks and how to do it I'm just gonna do that again and sell the same shit back to the same people. I just sold it to nice. I was like, that's incredible Uh-huh. So you can just like rip your business and then just do your business again. Exactly It's the same with real estate. It's the same thing. Yeah. Mm-hmm Totally agree. You could sell your whole clientele to somebody and then just be like well, I'm gonna go get new clientele The HVAC I did it here locally. Yeah Yeah, you did ⁓ The gosh trademark mechanical. ⁓ okay. Cool. Built it up sold it and you started another one. I it. That's so cool ⁓ What a flex I know I'm so good at this I've done it twice Conflux. Yeah. ⁓ anyway, like obviously like we Nick and I get distracted, of course So you're talking about all these cool ideas, which I do think are like seriously cool. but like just diving into your business is Probably the most the best bang for your buck. That's what I agree. I agree It's probably but it's not shiny and it's not new and it's not exciting and that's the problem. Yes You to build a crypto mine here? No We invest with our Gemini cards well, I do Yeah, I would like once I get the My cabin all set up that's completely off-grid I would like to try to tinker and set up a crypto mining machine out there because the power would be free sure, you know So might as well just use it. Yeah, love them. So that's how my brain thinks It's like how can I get it as efficient as possible and not step over? Opportunities sure when they're just right there as long as you have like a little Macbook mini out there or Mac mini out there that can Talk to you and something like that Yeah, yeah, that's cool. So in the competition I guess just to kind of wrap this thing up like I view competition is great to be honest with you like the more competition in my business the real the more it really solidifies how good I am and how I can overcome obstacles I don't want to become complacent. I don't want to just be this I want to continually evolve and and and do better and I know what and I know that because I look back at my photos from three years ago and I'm like these are really bad You should have seen the first set. Yeah, so bad I do need to make a social media post about it. Like, hey, this is the first shot I ever shot. I got a scar on my arm from the drone because we didn't know scar is still there. It was right. Yeah. I don't know. It's in there. So he grabbed a drone out of the sky. And it the blades and Nick was there and there was a puppy that was pooping on the couch or had a party, something like that. I didn't know how to remove it from the photos. So I just got weird angles. Nowadays, I'm like, leave it there. I'll fix it. Like, it's so easy. Yeah. Anyway, yeah, like I love competition. ⁓ We love our clients, of course. And yeah, this is this is a good episode. It is great. So don't be afraid of competition out there. There's plenty of it. There's plenty of abundance. Plenty of clients. ⁓ Be afraid of your own distractions. Yeah, like us. Have a good day.