Latest / The Nick & Nick Podcast / Byron Thompson w/ Meraki Realty
Transcript
- Nick Prososki: welcome to the Nick and podcast. This podcast is sponsored by Royalty Roofing and Sighting, crown your home and your commercial property, and then wrap it with royalty. Today we got a guest on the podcast. His name is Byron Thompson. Thanks for being here. Appreciate it, man. Thanks for having me. Mm-hmm. Now I've been studying it and been working on Meraki. Meraki. That was pretty good. I looked and went through the actual pronunciation. Meraki. Realty group. No, but yeah, thanks for joining us. I really appreciate you being here. I don't know you real well, but I do want to get to know you. Yeah. ⁓ before we get into Meraki and then the event that you have coming up. I wanna put you on the spot. Are you good with that? I'm bringing on, I'm ready all day. I see you at the gym all the time. Let's play ⁓ on the spot. Let's go over under. Over under. Okay. So here it goes. I see you running around quite a bit. Looks like you're in pretty good shape. I'm going over or under 20 miles a week. Are you running? Ooh, great question. It depends on the week. Okay. On average. On average, we're gonna say under. This year I made a commitment. Okay. 15 miles a week or more. Okay. So Average is let's call it seventeen. ⁓ really? So some over, some okay. Some days over, some days under. And more importantly, the reason that came about, mm-hmm, guy on my team, we're big on fitness, growth, personal challenges, right? Yes. Guy on my team's doing a two hundred mile race and he asked me to pace him on a big two hundred mile run. Two hundred pile two hundred mile run. Yep. Okay. And ⁓ hold on. This is at one yeah, in one time, yep. You just you start and you're not done until you get to two hundred miles. And ⁓ To train for that kind of stuff, you think you train miles at a time. Right. But the biggest thing you gotta train is time on feet. So for me, it's more about time than about distance. So that's why sometimes if I'm feeling good, it's over 20. Because an hour of a run, you might get a lot. You just go based on how you feel and at the time. That's right. So are you gonna commit to that 200 mile run? There's no chance in the world I can get to two. I was gonna say. That takes a special individual. I know one and I've heard of a couple, but I'm definitely gonna get in there and ⁓ help him out during some of the I'm trying to wrap my mind around that. Two hundred miles at one time. I mean that's that could be a twenty four hour house No chance. So ⁓ he just did a hundred miles. It took him about thirty four hours. ⁓ shit. So this one's gonna be I'm out on that one. It could it could be a few days. Depends on how good he's feeling. We'll see how it goes. Okay. I see you at the gym pretty regularly. That's how I know you, how I recognize you from socials as well. ⁓ yeah. ⁓ let's go over under how many times a week at the gym. I probably see you there once or twice, but I'm assuming you're there about every day like me. It's that's great. ⁓ you'd be spot on. Not even over under, spot on. It's literally every day, seven days a week. And it's woven into your operating system. Yeah. That you didn't didn't just start yesterday, but it's a part of who you guys are as a as Meraki and part of who you are as a ⁓ I think an athlete, right? Yeah, you better believe it. College basketball and it's just once you have those habits, they just carry into everything. They carry into working out, it starts to carry into business, it carries into relationships. Yep. So ⁓ it carries in I mean, I'm meeting good people in your office and like instantly you can ⁓ connect with people over certain things and that for sure is one of them. I was gonna ask you how old you are, but over are you over or under thirty? What do you think I am? That's I ain't even gonna go there. I ain't gonna go there. You look like you're in shape, young, just got married. Just got married. Okay. Any children? Just got married. No kids. None yet. ⁓ but when I grow up, that day's coming. So no, I'm ⁓ over 30. Okay. I didn't tell you the number, but I'm over 30. Okay, I got you. And then last question on on the spot. Let's go ⁓ favorite. Are you more of a beach guy or a mountain guy? Ooh, beach all day. Okay. ⁓ same. Yeah, yeah, yeah. ⁓ I'll take warm over cold anytime and more likely get that on the beach. Okay. Then let's go here. If you're running twenty miles. Or would you rather do it on the beach or in the mountains? Because you're from Colorado, I just found out. Yeah. ⁓ Is that how it works? If you're from the mountain if you're from Denver or whatever, you prefer the beach, but if you're from the beach, you prefer the mountains. Yeah, as long as you're not doing fitness, because if you're talking fitness, everybody prefers the beach. That altitude will kill you if you ⁓ if you're not ready for it. It doesn't stack up very well against humidity. No, no, not even not for a second. No. Okay. No. So you're from Colorado, just got married. What else do we need to know about you? I know you're from Berkshire. You did you start at Berkshire and then transition into this group or bring yourself to speed if you don't mind? Yeah, I'll bring you up to speed. I'll give you the ⁓ TLDR. Too long didn't read. Okay. So ⁓ Denver native moved to ⁓ Nebraska for college, ⁓ went to Wesleyan, small college in Lincoln. Nebraska, Westland, they have some ball school. That's a ball school. Ball school, right? So ⁓ graduated there. ⁓ Physics degree, had a dream of being an engineer my entire life. Physics? Physics. I know a lot of people give me that look when they hear that. They're like, what in the world was that? so ⁓ engineering was always my path. Okay. Did aerospace engineering, did two internships, hated it. Okay. Got into leadership and loved it because ⁓ all the athlete stuff just aligned. Okay. You get to compete, you get to win, you get to motivate a team, all that stuff. It all aligned. So I started doing leadership. I worked for Target. Okay. That got me to Omaha. Nice. Working for Target. Bought me a house, buying a house got me into real estate. And ⁓ I joined Meraki as just an agent back in twenty eighteen. Okay. ⁓ when it first started. And ⁓ Is that a n is it a national organization or is it local? Meraki is just local. Okay. ⁓ for now. Okay. And ⁓ yeah, when I joined it was l just a team at Berkshire Hathaway. So I was an agent at Berkshire. Okay. Yep. And then ⁓ So who was all a part of that initial team? Yeah, so let's see the three founders, you. Me, Jack Harvey, Eric Carriher. Yeah. Those guys have been in the business a lot longer than I have. Okay. And ⁓ they know the game unbelievably well. But they brought me in, okay, taught me, got me successful really, really quickly. ⁓ but ⁓ one of the things that I'm blessed with being a physics guy, ⁓ I'm a fast learner. Like that's my thing. And I'm an athlete, so I'm competitive. So you combine fast learning competitive with ⁓ I picked it up really quickly, but there were other people on the team who didn't. Right. And so then the question is like, how is it that I was able to, but other people weren't? And what we found out is we didn't have a system, we didn't have a way to teach consistently to people like what we were doing. And ⁓ So Berkshire didn't have a system in place that could help scale these younger agents? Yeah, that's ⁓ it's a common misconception, especially for people like in your world where when people come in here, the first thing you're gonna do is make sure they're prepared to do their job, make sure you teach them. Right. And ⁓ the real estate, the entire industry is not like that. It's not built like that. ⁓ it's basically brokerages just house teams. Where hopefully the team leader can teach whoever they bring in. Okay. ⁓ it just gets too big for broker owners to do that anymore. So brokers can't do that. But ⁓ we built a brokerage where you can do that because we see the need for it. We see how much people I'll be honest, Meraki was built on a hypothesis. Okay. Because in real estate a lot of people fail. And the hypothesis was that if people just knew what to do, like at least half of them would be doing better. Like at least half. Okay. And that was our hypothes. We tested it and ⁓ Like I said, that's where I came in to help Jack and Eric to say, can we take what I've learned from Jack, what I've learned from Eric, what I've learned on my own and my own experiences going out and doing it, to say, can we start to teach people at least some of the foundational things that will help them be successful? And ⁓ now we can. That's where we're at. I've seen you built out ⁓ a lot of resources, at least that are on your website that are is available to those younger agents that are trying to find their way in the industry, which is like you said, it's hard to find a, you know, a platform or You can go, it's a one stop shop and f and figure out who I am, what I need to do, and how I need to get from where I am to what I actually see in my mind's eye or yeah. But and that's kind of your role with the organization, right? It's exactly right. Okay. Yeah, yeah. So ⁓ and I I'm glad I gave you the the TLDR version because when I started working for Target, Target's a fortune five hundred company, right? So you get into a big company like that, they've got ninety day onboarding, they've got trainers, they've got a system you got to find like. By the time you get done like training, you know exactly what you're supposed to do, you know how to do it, and you have like proven SOPs and how everything gets done. Yes. ⁓ but you know, in the 1099 world, you kind of can do whatever you want. Right. You can figure it out on your own. There's a million ways to do it, and no ways right as long as you get the results. Yeah. But ⁓ there are some things that are constant across everybody who actually has the results. And ⁓ that's what I was able to bring. I was like, I know how it worked at Target. How do we take all of those systems and ⁓ kind of make them with our knowledge? Can you give us just a quits quick snapshot of a few of those things that no matter what you're doing, whatever industry you're in, these are gonna help s help you scale quickly? Yeah, hundred percent. I'm I'll give you two things. First is skill set. Okay. In every business, there's a four skill sets you have to master. And if you don't ever get to the point of mastering these skill sets, what happens is everybody gets to a certain point and they level off. Okay. And they level off to the point where they either lose motivation and quit ⁓ or they just stay there for the rest of their life. Okay. So four skills, lead generation, finding people who want what you do. Okay. Lead conversion, getting them to work with you and not Joe down the street. Or the 200 other roofers or realtors. Or the two hundred other roofers or realtors, right? Presentations. Okay. I.e. walk somebody through what it would look like for them in a way that they are now ready to move forward. Okay. And then negotiation, putting deals together that actually close where money actually comes across a cash register, checks actually cash, deals actually close in real estate. Okay. Those four skill sets, you have to learn those no matter what business you're doing. And ⁓ now in real estate we have a systematic way we can teach you how to find the people who want to buy and sell. Because people only move every five to seven years. Your pool of clients isn't as big as McDonald's or Target or High V who where people come in and buy stuff every day. So how do you find the people who are moving now as opposed to five years from now? That's a skill set. How do you get them to work with you and not somebody else? That's a skill set. How do you walk them through so that they feel comfortable and excited about moving forward now as opposed to six months from now, ten years from now? That's a skill set. How do you put deals together that actually close? Because lots of people can sign a contract. Right. But we know every contract that signs, every client that says they're gonna move forward with you, they don't all do it. Right. But you've got to learn that skill set too, and that's So you've learned it, you own it, now you teach it and train it. Yep. Where did you get this from? Did you have a mentor, a coach, somebody that's instilled this in you and embedded it in your hard drive? I told you this athlete thing is gonna keep coming back. Okay, yeah, bring it bring it up. I was an athlete too. I played you played at Nebraska Wrestling basketball. I played at Dana College. ⁓ this was long time ago. No kidding. Yeah, I played with ⁓ Tony Collins, ⁓ Bre Terry Breckenridge, ⁓ a lot of ⁓ I'm old though. Yeah. But ⁓ I was a point guard. I'm assuming you were a point guard too. Hundred percent. Yep. So how'd you feel when Dana closed, by the way? ⁓ not good. Yeah. Beautiful campus, great, everything. I've heard about the history and they closed like just as I was getting to college. So for those of you guys doing the math know how I went starting to it too. That might help. Okay, so ⁓ I'm an athlete, so I thrive on. Can I get a coach who's gonna give me some feedback? And ⁓ this is one of the Hold on, I gotta ask. Did you win a national championship at ⁓ man, I missed it. That sore subject? I was No, no. I was I was You didn't miss the game winning shot. I was two years before they they win the national championship. ⁓ because they compete for it every year. They do now. Right. So my senior year was the year that they brought that coach in from another place. And ⁓ man, you it's just amazing to see when you have a a coach who sees the world in a different way than you do, ⁓ how quickly it can bring results. Absolutely. Right. And it goes right into what we're saying, which is how did I learn, especially the real estate stuff, was I went out and found a great coach. Okay. And ⁓ It's one of my favorite real estate stories where ⁓ most people in real estate, like the national average is real estate agents sell two houses. Two houses of what? A week? A year. A year, okay. For the for the entire year. Okay. And I I said, there's no way I would survive in this world doing that. I I have a lot more potential in me than that. So I set much higher dreams for myself than that. And I found this guy online and he said, I'll teach you my system. And ⁓ if you do my system, you'll sell four houses a month. Every month like clockwork. Okay. Okay. So little stat for you to get into the top five percent of real estate agents, you gotta sell twenty-five houses for seven million dollars worth of homes in a single year. Okay. That puts you in the top five percent nationwide. Yeah, nationwide pushing top five percent. ⁓ this guy says he'll do four a month like clockwork. I'm like, ⁓ that's double what puts you in the top. Okay. So even if I suck at it, right, I'm gonna be leaps and bounds ahead everybody. I so I gave this guy my last one thousand dollars. Jumping. ⁓ here we go. We're going there. Are we going there? Listen, my last thousand dollars. I gave it to him. I said, All right, if we're gonna if you got it, I want it. Let's go, let's do it. Show me what you mean. Like, okay. I need some tangible skills. Like, tell me what to do, I will execute. I'm an athlete. You point the direction, you tell me how high. Like you tell me jump, I'll do it. So ⁓ I gave this guy my last thousand bucks. He teaches me the system and he says, You go on 20 appointments, you get four sales this month, full stop, go do the twenty. I said, Okay. Here's what I'll do. I'll go do 40 and I'll expect at least two because I know I'm not gonna be good at this to start. And true to form, I was really bad to start. Really bad to start. Yeah. There's so there's hope out there. But what I did is I did double the effort, right? Expecting half the result. And sure enough, 40 appointments. I sold two houses. ⁓ that next month. And it put me in the game. And more importantly, it it unlocked. ⁓ there's a systematic way of going about this. Okay. And ⁓ It's not a that was one of the challenges when I first got into real estate, especially even with ⁓ two guys who are very experienced and having a lot of success is you'd see them selling houses and you say, How'd you do that? Where'd you find the people? How'd you get that? Right. And you couldn't walk me through like, here's what I did, here's what I did on Monday, here's what I did on Tuesday, here's what I did on Wednesday. And ⁓ nobody could walk you through it. Nobody had a step A to Z. How do you do it? And ⁓ this guy did. He taught it to me, it worked, and ⁓ So now I'm in the game, I've got my own clients, and I can start to now I can start to ask them, okay, give me your experience on how to negotiate, how to put these deals together, give me your experience on how I make this listing sale, how to like all the nuances. The nuance, right? Yeah. The nuance that you got to get from somebody who's experienced in the game. That is what I was able to get from my leaders at the time, but I had to get this other thing from a coach. So I had to go out and find one, I hired one, and ⁓ that's what really served me. And now that's what I do at a high level because I was that guy. I heard a quote from that coach at one time. He says, You're most qualified to help the person that you used to be. All right, say it, say it again. I want you to think about this for a second. You are most qualified to help the person that you used to be. So if you are. Yep, that makes sense. I mean, think about you ⁓ as a somebody who's competed at high level in sports. If somebody wanted to get to high level in sports, you're one of the most qualified people to be able to help that person understand. Because you've been there and what is it like? I've been there and done that. I know what it's like. Like one of the things that makes me really qualified as a coach now is I can tell people all the scripts, all the words to say. But Even if you knew the words, you can't tell somebody what it's like to get that little pit in your stomach right before you ask somebody for their phone number that you just met at Open House. Right. You can't tell them about how nerve-wracking it is to ask somebody to sign a contract, asking them to pay you tens of thousands of dollars for something. Like you don't know what that feeling is like and how you got over it. ⁓ but And you got no problem because you've been there done that asking somebody for their last thousand dollars. I've been in those kitchens. I sat at the kitchen tables, like there's no questions. I know what it's like. To know that I've got a mortgage payment next month and no, I got zero month dollars in the bank and no signal. Small breacher. Like I know what it's like. I've been there. So if if you've been there, like I'm the person who's qualified to take real estate agents who haven't been there and say, what does it really look like? What is it going to look like for me? And ⁓ there's a lot of people, obviously, especially in the world of social media, where you can see where anybody's at now. Right. You can see where the people who are making millions of dollars, what they're doing now, but if you do that as a person who's starting off, You just got no chance. You gotta pull the veil back. You just got no chance. And so that's what we we pride ourselves on. And ⁓ I'm fortunate enough, like and I'm a big believer in goals. So I remember writing down this goal at one time that ⁓ I was gonna be the top you're old enough to remember this probably. Remember cassette tapes? ⁓ yeah, where ⁓ you put in all the first songs were on side A of the tape, but there's a side B that's got all kinds of tracks that you weren't listening to, right? And so I wanted our company to be the side B. That would flip over the tape and show you all the truth, all the real stuff that you never got to see, all the stuff that you're not hearing on the radio and ⁓ on Instagram. Okay. All the stuff that you really need to know. So we're the place where you get the side B of the tape where you really get to know. So pull the curtain back and let's get this extent exposed. Yeah. So Okay, so that takes us to Maraki. Maraki. Now, what does that that's Greek for help me with that? Greek word that means to put 'cause I'm Greek. My mom's maiden name is Zapharopoulos. Holy Zaphropolis, not to be mistaken with Snuffolophicus. Does ⁓ she make traditional Greek food? ⁓ man. If she could make a Saganaki, I'm coming over to her house for Thanksgiving. Okay, so ⁓ Meraki or Meraki. Yeah. It ⁓ it means to put your heart or soul into your work, whatever that work is at the time. And ⁓ we heard it, it caught on like wildfire, and ⁓ it started to bleed into Everything that we did and all of our core values and is a perfect name to put in. Okay, Maraki. Tell me a I looked at your team. It looks like it's young and up and coming. Yeah. Real estate agents and brokers. And tell us about your team a little bit. How has it grown? And then I want to also want to get into the current. How would you describe the current real estate market? Ooh, I love it. All right, cool. You're gonna get into some of my favorite stuff here. Okay, so ⁓ How'd the team? The team started. Basketball guy. I mean, we got team. Yeah, team is my jam. So ⁓ when I got in, Meraki was seven people. It had grown to about eight or nine at one time. All seven came from Berkshire. All seven at Berkshire. Okay. And none of them moved. Here's what happened at Berkshire. I went to Jack and Eric and I said, hey, if you guys are gonna live true to your mission of talking about actually helping these people, if you actually talk about putting your heart and soul in your work, ⁓ you're gonna have to take this a lot more seriously into Making sure that the other people who are around you are also successful. You can't just be out there crushing deals and leaving everybody with the the scraps or more likely nothing left over because real estate agents. So all the all the meat off the bone, huh? So I threw the gauntlet down in a the kind of a challenge format. And ⁓ these guys, athletes in their own right, ⁓ they wanted to rise to it. So what we did was we disband the team at that time. Let everybody go and it was just down to the three of us. Okay. So our group chat to this day is called the three headed monster because at this time we took the whole thing down to nothing and said, We're gonna create first principles that we are actually all using so that when people come in here, we can actually give them something of substance and say that if they are here even for a short time, if they decide to move to Texas, they are better off because they were here. Yeah. Impact And ⁓ we decided we were really gonna take that seriously. So we did that and we decided to partner up with ⁓ we left Berkshire at about this time. Okay. Ended up partnering with KW Elite because ⁓ the leadership in that world had already done something similar. Okay. And we just wanted to know: like, is there something that we can learn from these people? And for sure, there's something you can learn from everybody. So, and ⁓ there was a ton that we could learn. And at that time, they challenged us to take it even further ⁓ as far as being able to impact these agents. So at that time, it was just the three of us who moved, and we grew it from three to about fifteen while we were at Keller. Keller Williams. Okay. And ⁓ at that time we started growing. We saw the impact we were having. We started putting on these classes and we just opened it up to the world and we said if we're gonna live true to our mission, which is to redefine the standards of the industry, it can't be just us three. That's not enough to really impact the industry. It can't even just be us fifteen. It's gotta be everybody. We've got to expose them to some of these things, maybe not everything, but expose them to some of the things that would truly improve the experience for the clients out there. Right. For even for their own brokers, if they can't provide the stuff, we're gonna give them some of this just for free. So it didn't matter who they were, they could all come and they could do it. And we started seeing the impact. Okay. And ⁓ I heard Kobe Bryant say this one time. He said, ⁓ when you're a leader trying to make your teammates better, everybody thinks you make your teammates better by just passing them the ball, right? Right. He said, That's not what makes people better. What makes people better is when they can communicate back to you in the same way that you're able to communicate to them. Okay. That's the sign of a leader. And he says, When guys start coming to me and they start talking about They saw this play happening in this way, that's when I know I've had an impact on it. Yeah, you value their place. And so now I hear real estate agents talking about all these little things that we teach about like it doesn't really matter what the market's doing, because the market is not what controls real estate. It's the people that control real estate. Because if you get a brand new job tomorrow in Chicago, does it matter what the economy's doing? Are you moving to Chicago? Hell yeah, you're moving to Chicago. Like it it is never about the ⁓ interest rates, the market, ⁓ how bad Donald Trump beat some old guy in the election. Like it doesn't matter. None of that stuff matters. What matters is if you have things going on in your life. Did you get married? Did you have a baby? Did somebody die? Did ⁓ you get a raise and get a new job? Did you get fired from a job? Like that's what makes real estate happen. And ⁓ I start hearing agents start reflecting that stuff back to me. That's how I know we're having an impact. And this is at the time we're at Keller Williams. We're at 15 and we start hearing agents even outside of our team talking like this. And I'm like, ⁓ we're on to something here. So we decided All right, to have their impact we want to have, we have to be agnostic to some of these bigger ha brokerages that already have their own brand, their own name. Right. And ⁓ we built our own brokerage, we opened it up. 2017, right? This is no, so this 2017 is when we're at Berkshire. Okay. This is 2021 where we leave Keller Williams and we now open our own brokerage. And probably closer, actually like 2020. I'm sorry, 2021, we leave to Keller Williams. ⁓ 23 24 we opened Meraki as its own standalone brokerage and now we are able to give our message to everybody. We're able to open our doors and invite people in to come and now the team's grown to about 30. And ⁓ the cool thing is what it does is it just attracts people who see the world in the way we see it. Okay. People who are willing to put their heart and soul into it. Yeah. So like it detracts people who are, I want to do a real estate part-time to see if it's gonna work, right? Because those are the two They sell two properties a year. And more likely they sell those are the people who sell zero because it is so hard to find out like how does it actually work? What does it actually take? Real estate's a lag business. You don't get paid for the business the work you're doing today. You get per for paid for the work you did 90 days ago. Right. And ⁓ if you're part time, it's just hard to stack up enough of those days to see the results show up. So ⁓ we're pretty candid about that with people, which is why our our environment attracts people who either are full time or have a deep desire to get there pretty quickly. Okay. So ⁓ you see our team is like very energetic. Yeah. And ⁓ it's young. Even people who are let's call it older, like they exude a young enthusiasm, a young energy. Passion, zeal, still right because of the values and the things that we talk about and the way that we exist in the world. So ⁓ to bring that full circle, it is now the team is ⁓ 30, we're on a mission to get the team bigger and ⁓ these events help us do it. just some of our social media, some of our messaging helps us do it. Seeing the black and white signs all over town helps us do it. Helps. And ⁓ we get a lot of referrals from our people because we're able to live out what we said we were gonna do is actually help people and make sure that they can say that they're better as real estate agents from being in our presence, from being around our environment, from being around our people. So before we talk about the event coming up on June twenty fifth. Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about the current real estate. How would you describe the current real estate market here in Omaha? Man, I'm I'm glad you defined it to Omaha. Yeah. So ⁓ the current real estate market here in Omaha is it's a product of still everything that we've seen since COVID. Okay. Where certain price ranges have very similar patterns, right? The first-time home buyer range has a lot of buyers and not a lot for sale. Okay. So ⁓ we see a lot of those things moving fast, and we see a lot of Let's call it activity in that world. And then Omaha is ⁓ being one of the most central cities in the country, like danger right in the middle of the map. We don't feel all the ebbs and flows as bad in the economy. So we see the upper price ranges, people that are doing really well in life and buying luxury houses, those are still selling really, really well. Okay. So the first-time homebuyer still selling really well, the luxury home buyer still selling unbelievably well. Okay. And then there's kind of a messy middle where Things sometimes hang around, sometimes are slow moving, and ⁓ some people still aren't ready to give up their COVID interest rates of two and three percent. That's for sure. So there's a messy middle in real estate, and ⁓ there's some people who are really crushing in the luxury world, and then the first time home buyer stuff is moving. And ⁓ as long as you've got a really good strategy, like Omaha is one of those places you can always find some success in real estate. Okay, we're seeing it's a good place to be. It's a good place to be because you're seeing investors are still winning in this world. Okay, you're seeing builders are still winning in this world. You're saying there's place where I'm sure you guys are probably seeing like there are places where there's still roofs getting put on, even in a crazy economy and insurance is through the roof. And you're probably fighting battles with insurance every week in here. And ⁓ we're just seeing that ⁓ for everything that happens in the economy and in the world, like the life events are still happening here in Omaha, which means that the real estate market's still moving. It's still going. We're we're ⁓ because we understand that our our People in our world are doing really, really well. Awesome. So lastly, let's talk about the master class event that's coming up on June 25th. Let's talk about Look at some of your socials. I know you're stoked. Yeah, man, I couldn't be more excited. This is one of my absolute favorite things because ⁓ like I said, we just get to go in and just pour into the real estate community at large. And ⁓ so we invite not just real estate agents in our brokerage. This is open to the public. The public. Okay. Real estate agents. We've had ⁓ title people, we've had mortgage people, we've had roofing people, we've had ⁓ People that have no ide like no ties to real estate, but just want to know more about the Because it translates into whatever you're doing. Because it translates, it translates so well. And what part of what we did in making it teachable is we have to communicate in a way that is easy for everybody to understand. And so ⁓ when we teach people how to communicate in that way, you now not only leave with the knowledge, but you leave with the knowledge so simply that you could go home and teach it to your mom, teach it to your dad. We had a group of high school kids come in from Omaha South earlier this year. They can go home and teach it to their parents if they've never bought a house. Okay. Half the kids in the room had parents who had never bought a house. They lived in apartments or they've been renting their entire lives and they never bought houses. We taught them in an hour exactly what it's like to buy a house so well that they could go teach it, and so well that they did teach it even in the room. And ⁓ that's part of what we're gonna be doing at the class. So it's a master class. How often do you do these or and how many have you done? And then what is the cloud? What's all involved in the class? I know there are a few. ⁓ what is it, double buyer businesses? Yeah. Present like a pro, all the average less than six showings. We've got a whole bunch. We've ⁓ tested out a bunch of different things and ⁓ we've kind of mixed it up because part of the feedback was that we wanted to mix these up. So we do them four times a year, okay. Open to the public, and we just like I said give away some of our best stuff, ⁓ some of our foundational stuff that we know is actually going to help people in their career. And you're telling me if we have sales sales guys that are selling roofs and siding and windows, it would absolutely be relevant information for them to plug in. I promise you if you are a salesperson, you will come out of this with something that you've learned that you can take away and apply in your business right away. I promise you if you are a teacher, you will take something away that you can take and apply in your classroom right away. I promise you keep prominent I promise you let them all know. If you own your own McDonald's, you will learn something that you can take with you. And apply in your life. And you can speak that with absolute certainty because you're the I can speak with absolute certainty as a person who has done 20 of these already. Like we have seen it, we have done it. And ⁓ I'm telling you, even a little nugget like understanding that people don't move because of the economy. They move because of things that are happening in their life. These are little nuggets that you can take and apply in your life right away. So when we talk about the topics four times a year, all four different topics throughout the year. Recently we just did ⁓ New construction. So teaching new construction, what's the process like? How do you walk somebody through it? How do you foreshadow an experience so that people are more excited and more ready? That's a presentation skill that, like I said, even salespeople that come to a new construction thing, doesn't matter what they sell, you're gonna walk away with something. Same principle. We do goal setting at the end of the year to get people ready for 2026. That's a big one that even like I said, even outside the real estate industry, people come to. But ⁓ anybody who comes to this. You're gonna walk away with something. You're gonna walk away with real estate knowledge, and you're gonna walk away with practical things that are gonna ⁓ improve whatever it is you're into. And on top of that, you see the energy. Like we are high energy. You're walk out of there motivated, ready to kick down doors, take names. I've seen you and then go to the gym. I've seen you in gym. I've seen you running in the neighborhoods. Yeah, see. It doesn't matter who you are, what you're doing, or where you are and what you're doing, you're doing it with a high level. Yeah, and that's and that's just living with Meraki and ⁓ living with our core values, and it just shows in everything. So lastly, let them know when the event is, where it's at, what they need to do to register, all that. I love it. So the event, June 25th at Relevant Community Center that's out in Elkhorn, ⁓ two hundred fourth in Maple area. Anyone who wants to come, 10 a.m. we're gonna start. Okay. So show up at 10 a.m. ⁓ Can you register at the event? You can register at the event. Okay. We'd prefer you register early so we make sure we have enough seats for absolutely everybody. Okay. ⁓ You can register. All you gotta do is go to MerakiAgent.com. You see it on the shirt, M-E-R-A-K-I-A-Gent.com. You'll see some of the resources that Nick was talking about. If you're curious to know more about real estate, all that stuff, it's on our website, it's free. You'll see promos for the event. You'll see videos to get to know more about our team. But if you want to register for the event, MerakiAgent.com. And I'm sure if you got social media, you're gonna see it here in the next couple of weeks. We are gonna be all in your face. So if you see the event, Click RSVP. We'd love to have you. We've got room for everybody. Come join us. Let's go. Hit them up. Hey, I appreciate you. Appreciate you having me. This is fun. Thanks again, Royalty Roofing Insighting, for this podcast, And subscribe if you haven't already.