The NAR Settlement: Winning Strategies for a New Reality

Welcome to this episode of the mortgage marketing radio podcast. Hey, before we get started, I got a question for you. Are you looking for more ways to be more valuable to real estate agents? Are you wondering what the impact of the NAR settlement is really going to be across the board, the impact of agents to commissions to your strategy around real estate agents? We'll stay tuned because my special guest and I unpack that exact scenario and more in just a few moments. But before we get into that, hey, hey, hey, if you've been listening for a while, you know what I bring you. Most often I'm bringing another win of the week, right, from our members in my agent classes. What is that? If you haven't heard by now, look, the bottom line is, right, you need to reach more agents because there's a shift going on, right? As you'll hear in a moment from my special guest, there probably is going to be a thinning of the herd. As my special guest talks about in a moment, he's going to talk about why the likelihood is you probably will be getting more referrals from less agents. And of course, there's the listing side of the equation as well. But the most important point is like, you know, I've been lately playing with this word this term 15 mile famous. And the question is, in a 15 mile radius, how many referral partners agents others would know your name? Like if the call came, the email, if you're post from social media showed up in their feed, how many of them would recognize, oh, that's right, so and so. They're the person who fill in the blank. What are you known for? And if you're not known for anything, well, if I don't know, you exist, right? If I can't find you, if you don't show up in, right, the conversation, how relevant can you be? So what's the point of all this? The point of all this is, look, I don't think you would argue moving forward that the most important thing to have in any business is a personal brand. One that has an identity, one that stands for something and is known for something, right? If you think about it in the context of you trying to get attention from real estate agents, the brand most originators have is that of solicitor or vendor. If you have the brand of partner and peer, and that's what we help you do in my age and classes. We help you build a platform like you're running for office. You need to create awareness. You need to run on a platform. You need to engage with your constituents. You need to be known for something, right? So that people can connect with you on whatever is your running on your principles. You know, what you know what I mean? And in this case, it's you lead with education and value that helps your agents solve problems. The tool of the platform by which we do that is leading with educational classes, primarily delivered in person and over zoom as a means for engaging with your constituents so they can vote for you. You can create connection, engagement, and conversation that leads to referrals. You heard the success stories on here multiple weeks after week after week. What are you waiting for? Now is the time to grab market share. Now is not the time to retreat. Now is the time to advance. Is this right for everybody? No. Could it be right for you? Maybe. I'm not sure. Right now, there's only one way to find out. And that is commit to 30 minutes with me. If you're a mortgage originator and you're hearing the sound of my voice right now and you've been in the business at least three years and you're closing a minimum of three transactions plus per month, ideally more. And you're looking to save time. You're looking to reach more agents in less time without the struggle without the chase. Well, hey, it cost you 30 minutes. Mortgage marketing.pro. Go check it out. Okay, my special guest this week. I'm a big fan of a thousand watt and who is a thousand watt. They are a marketing and branding agency that specializes in real estate and mortgage. They work with a lot of brands names, high level teams, boutique agencies and brokerages. To help them articulate their value and position their business for for the future, ultimately telling better stories. So things are happening fast, right? In this industry, as we know, with the recent NAR settlement and more, the conversation I have with Brian is really thought provoking because we really kind of unpack. First of all, some of the if you will, historic issues and challenges that most real estate agents and companies have from a brand perspective standpoint. And then we get into some really interesting data, which impacts the impact that's impacted impact in one word. Can I say that? Which kind of reveals the impact to the NAR settlement and Brian gives his take on, you know, what is the impact on the buyer agent side? What are some of the changes that are coming on a real practical level in the field? What to prepare for in the summer months as you'll hear him describe when you listen to the podcast. And that's very important for you to hear. And then lastly, most importantly, how do you as a mortgage professional show up? This is your opportunity. And so I think this conversation hopefully creates some confidence for you in that the future is bright for those who know how to articulate their value and those who take action. And I highly recommend you subscribe to ThousandWats newsletter. It's called The Dose. And there's a link in the show notes. It is full of great content and data that I use a lot for having conversations that make me look smart. Frankly, it's all their content that makes me look smart. And then they do have an upcoming event, a brand and marketing summit coming up in Dallas on June 25th through 27th. And if you are so inclined, check that out as well. The link is in the show notes. But I think you'll really find this to be a meaningful conversation. And if you do find it to be meaningful, hey, look Brian up on Instagram or on LinkedIn. We'll link them up in the show notes and just let them know what your key takeaway was from our conversation here today. So without further ado, let's get into this week's show. Brian, welcome to the show. Hey, Jeff, thank you. I'm excited to be here. This is a long time coming as I said. And it's only because I've been a fan of your content remotely for quite a while. But for those who may not be familiar with yourself, ThousandWats, consulting, what do you want to tell the listeners about who you are and what you guys do? Sure. So my company ThousandWat co-founded it about 16 years ago. And we're a strategy and creative firm that's just focused on housing. So we work with real estate brands, real estate brokerage companies, prop tech companies, do some work with mortgage companies, title companies, but housing is our thing. And what we do really is to help good companies get really clear about their value and their truth and then help them express that in the world. And that's marketing, advertising, design, all of that stuff. Yeah, and that's not an easy task either to take real estate agents and help them get religion, I guess if you will, in regards to understanding that your brand isn't, I sell houses, I open doors, I have a list of properties. To what degree, I don't know, from what I can tell from the engagements of the company brands that you feature through your newsletter and such forth, it looks like you already are working with some forward thinking savvy companies. So it makes me curious is how much of that is a chasm that you have to help agents cross, if that makes sense? Yeah, look, I think, and you probably heard this saying before, it half the thing is companies when we work with them can't really live an inside perspective, you know, as the saying goes, you can't read the label from inside the box. And you know, what we help is with is getting companies to kind of look at their unique value, their differentiators, what they bring to their customer from a fresh perspective, and then we put that out in the world because, you know, one thing, and I'm sure you've seen this, Jeff, it's whether you're on the real estate side of the mortgage side, it is a big business that is really undifferentiated, right? Mortgage companies, right? I hear this all the time, we sell a commodity product, well, that's only if you lit it be, real estate agents, there's a million and a half of you, you all say the same thing, maybe you should stop doing that. So that's kind of what we do, we work with good companies, good brands to help them create the territory and the difference that they really should be creating. You know, I think it maybe it speaks to you, the types of people who are attracted to work with you are the ones who want to be better than the norm, right? They want to be quote unquote the best. Yes, I mean, I would say the types of companies that we work with really value positioning, framing, brand development, and creating defensible difference. And you know, that's not every company, you know, just talking about real estate brands, for example, you go into any major metro and there's the red brand, the blue brand, black and white brand, the green brand, okay? We recognize those as different colors, but they don't really have any meaning to us. And a brand, if it's going to truly be a brand, needs to carry some meaning into the world to connect with the people that it wants to connect with. Do you find that that that is the more the boutique brands who embrace that than the larger franchise names that we all know? Generally speaking, yes, but not always. And I think that is a function of command and control, meaning if you're a small, let's say, 150 or less real estate shop, or for that matter, you know, a mortgage lender, right? You can create difference and are able to enforce that with your agents or your elbows in a way that escapes you once you get to scale, right? So my observation has been that boutique's kind of find it easier to create a differentiated brand because they have greater command and control over their operation. So it just becomes more difficult as you scale upward. It doesn't mean that it can or shouldn't be done. Before we get into some of the discussion around the NAR settlement and the impact alone officers, we're going to have a really cool conversation around that. You said something a moment ago that stood out for me, a defensible difference. If you wouldn't mind, I'd love to unpack that a little bit. What does that mean? What it means in a nutshell is what's your unique value proposition? That's a term we all understand. But more specifically, it means what are the things that you deliver to your ideal customer profile, the unique things, and they can be both emotional or functional. What are the things that you deliver to that ideal customer profile that you are better at than any of the other alternatives your ideal customer profile has, i.e. your competitors, right? So that can be any number of things. And really, the challenge is to dig deeply enough to find those things that are actually credible and defensible. And I'll give you an example of how that kind of sometimes just falls apart, right? So you may hear a real estate company or a mortgage company say, well we deliver high touch service. Well, what do you mean by that? Give me specifics. Why am I to believe that? Give me another construct that we use often in our work is the reasons to believe. And otherwise, in other words, proof points. So if you're going to claim that you deliver customized high touch service, you need to give me the reasons to believe that claim. Okay. And would reasons, an example of reasons. Yeah, I'm trying to think through this. I'm envisioning an agent or a loan officer sitting in front of you, the prospector referral partner. And does that mean you've got to actually perhaps have a defined process you articulate that includes like testimonials that includes I've got a unique process, all those things. Yeah, you can substantiate a claim and a reason to believe can be any one of those things. It could be quantitative, right? Here's, you know, specific statistics that justify our claim or it can be qualitative. This is just like a case study, right? Here's a story of two borrowers that we health. And in the course of telling you that story, we are going to show you how we deliver high touch service. Got it. So back to what we all know is we should be making our clients the hero, not ourselves. Well, we should be at least speaking to them very specifically and understanding them. One of the things that I've noticed both in real estate and mortgage is that there's a lot of talk about the consumer, but not a lot of systematic listing to the consumer. And I think it starts there. Who's your customer? How do you understand their psychology, their emotional and functional needs really, really well? And until you have that understanding, you cannot really create a connection with them that you hope to have. And, you know, it's, this is marketing and brand building fundamentals, but it's something that, you know, I mean, look, people are busy. They have a lot going on. The markets, the markets weird to say the least. And sometimes you ever look the basics. Yeah, exactly. Because we get so busy and kind of like force through the trees, we can't see it. But that's why it's good to have someone like your firm who comes in a fresh set of eyes that can look at it externally and identify, right, those areas of optimization, if you will. Okay, let's transition to the hot topic of which I'm sure you've been busy talking a lot about over the past several weeks. And that, of course, is the an error settlement. And I've been looking at some of your data. And as I told you before, we hit record. We've been because it's so good. You know, my main thing with what I thrive on is helping educate real estate agents going way back to a background. We don't even have time to get into, but it's just a passion project for whatever reason for me to educate real estate agents on how to be better marketers, better, you know, articulators of value and things like that. And I think your data helps, helps reveal some truths around that. And so the NAR settlement, let me ask, this is kind of the opening question I've been asking people like yourself to start off with is I know it's a little bit hard to crystal ball and see around the corner. There's a lot of noise about what ifs and all that. Do you have any hot take on what you think the actual impact will be to business as usual from the real estate agent side of things? I always hesitate to predict things because I don't really know. I do not know how this is going to put me on. But I will, since you, I will give you my long simmering tape. I have, I do suggest that we've thought a lot about this, 1000 lot. And we've done a lot of research as you cited. And we've done a lot of research in the past six months. In the midst of all this change, trying to understand buyer's mindset, how they think about developments from the lawsuit verdict in October to the settlement just a month and a half ago. And so we've done a lot of thinking about this. And I would guess my best guess was, well, my best guess is that this summer is going to be the summer of real estate chaos. I will say that. And I'm pretty sure about that. And what I mean there is that there are probably a good third of all real estate agents, a good third who could not effectively or consistently fill out the paperwork that exists today and manage the process that exists today. I'm not kidding. I love real estate agents. My wife's a real estate agent. But the sad reality is that probably a third could not effectively navigate the process for writing offers and dealing with buyers. Usually the listing agent would have to cover for them. A good listing agent. So like you're dealing with our reality and we're barreling towards this big change in August where we have to talk about compensation upfront. We have to ask for money. We have to do new paperwork. And we don't know how we're going to get paid because there's new offer of compensation inside the MLS anymore. So what I know is that that's going to hit like a ton of bricks and you're going to see chaos. You're going to see lots of agents paralyzed. And you're going to see lots of agents, frankly, doing some pretty dumb things that are going to get them in their broker suit. And sadly, that's what I'm pretty sure is going to happen over the summer. There's going to be mass chaos. So look, if you're a mortgage lender, a loan officer out there, if you have any way that you can support your real estate agent partners through this summer of chaos and confusion, do it because there's going to be a lot of need out there for help and guidance. So that's number one. What I think is going to happen over time, vis-a-vis the consumer is that we will probably see in the coming months and years moderate commission compression on the buy side. I think moderate commission compression. And I think that is going to be the product of a couple of things. First of all, I don't think a lot of agents are going to handle the value proposition conversation with buyers well. And they sit down and they have to say, listen, Mr. and Mrs. Buyer, this is how much you pay me, and I just don't think that muscle has been developed with buyer agents like it has been with listing agents who have done that forever to sit in living rooms and ask for a paycheck. Secondly, I think that this creates a window of opportunity, this moment for new entrance to come in and do real estate compensation differently, that it's a unique moment in time. We've always had alternative models. We've always had flat fee shops when you observe a shop, rebate shops and real estate. That's always existed. But what has happened in the last six months is our popular mind has become aware of the mechanics of the real estate industry in a way it never has before. So what I mean by that is the real estate industry has crossed over into popular culture. Nobody, nobody in backyard barbecues has been talking about real estate commissions and the news about a real estate cartel that they read from something in the last six months they had. And I think that will probably create an appetite for new services that will have the net effect over time of compressing commissions moderately. Okay. So what you, let me ask this first, some time ago, I forget exactly when this was in your newsletter, there was a survey you put out that asked respondents who was aware of the NAR situation, but I believe that was some time last year, correct? No, we've done a few different studies and the one we did released just a couple weeks ago, one of the questions that we asked. And we asked this of experienced real estate consumers nationwide, meaning people who have both bought and sold the home in the past five years. So these are people who have been through it, they're sort of vested in the real estate world. And the first question we asked all of them was, have you heard about last month's national settlement from the National Association of Realtors to settle legal claims? Okay. 36% said yes, which is interesting. That means 63% had not heard of it at all. Right. But when you get to, to have affluent consumers, that goes up to well over half. So affluent homeowners who have bought and sold the home, they know a lot more as do boomers. Awareness of this whole issue among boomers is significantly higher than the average. So you can look at that one of two ways and say, well, you know, more or less half of people aren't aware of it. But on the other hand, that's kind of a lot. And what people have heard is what they've seen all over the place, which is real estate social. Exactly. Unfortunately, they saw the media sound bites, which are by and large or in correct or half true. I mean, they are what they are, right? I mean, they're noise. Yeah. I mean, they have, that stuff has permeated the popular mind. Okay. So you think that to your point earlier about the backyard barbecue, this is now, we know, water cooler, whatever. Now these are talking points, whereas perhaps less so prior to the NAR settlement, which means, and I don't know if you, if you're in any of the groups and threads where, you know, there's agents posting their recent in market conversations or transactions, are you seeing some of that bubble up too? Like it's already where the sellers are putting their feet in the ground saying, oh, if I don't have to, you know, you see the flip side of that as well. And I think this all comes back to full circle. Like you said, and this might even be a quote for money or studies, which is, you know, those who know how to articulate value will win, right? But yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that's just to tell you what I mean by that, Jeff. On the by side of the transaction, for decades, the real estate industry as a whole, and down to the individual agent, in most cases, we created a vacuum of understanding around what a good buyer agent does. We've done surveys where over half of people who have bought a house recently say, my agent didn't even tell me how they were to get paid. Didn't even bring it up. And when we talk with consumers, they have only a very basic idea of like what is really important that a buyer agent does versus like what is sort of trivial, like open the door to showing? So we created this vacuum where people didn't really understand the real value of a buyer agent, because compensation is sort of baked into the cake with the MLS agents could avoid that hard conversation and asking for money upfront. We all know tons of real estate agents. So it was kind of relationship based and somebody would pick you because you're their kid's soccer coach or they know you from church or from the neighborhood, whatever. And unlike the listing side, where it always came down to that conversation in the living room where you had to give a listing presentation and talk about compensation and talk about the marketing plan, none of that happened on the by side. So this is a vacuum. And of course, we all know nature of course a vacuum, so eventually gets filled. And what we've seen over the last six months is that vacuum got filled with a lot of things that those in the real estate industry don't like, right? But we created the darn vacuum. So you can't complain too much about the media here. Yeah. So for the states that have already had buyer broker agreements in place, I'm not an expert, maybe you can comment on this better. But the one missing piece from that though was the upfront compensation, is that correct? Yeah, there are several states that required a buyer broker agreement always did, right? So they have less changing. But even in those states, there's no blanket offer compensation in the MLS. Like that was the whole sort of, you know, deer that was in our hands. It wasn't part of the agreement, therefore, right? That the buyer. And this was really the lawyer's argument and the federal government's argument with the whole system. You have the seller setting the compensation in advance for the agent representing the buyer. And that is wrong for all kinds of reasons. And you know, we won't get into that. But that was the premise of the argument. And it just kind of made it easy for practitioners. I think arguably it was probably good for consumers too. But you know, it was just all that was baked into the cake. And now it has to like, you know, like make the recipe from scratch every time you meet a buyer and talk about that. And whatever your fee is, let's say you're going to charge two and a half percent of the less price of the home your buyer buys. You're going to have to say, this is what I charge. And this is what I do to earn that fee. And maybe in the course of negotiating with a seller, we can get some sort of credit where they can help pay for that. But maybe not. And you're going to have to come out of pocket for that. That's a really wonky thorny conversation to have. And I think a lot of agents are going to struggle with that. Yeah. I'm trying to play it out as well in my head because, you know, then you know, you get into situations where you let's just face a lot of first time home buyers. They're not going to be able to pony up for some of that money. So then what do you do as an agent? Do you do make this a nonverbal or grab? I don't know. Maybe the buyer says, well, I don't want to maybe the agent advises them. Well, then we're not going to look at any properties that don't have compensation included in that. Well, the agent, the agent can't specify that, right? I mean, that's part of what got us into trouble. And the first question was that agents were steering. And I'm only going to show you the houses that offer at least two and a half or preferably three percent. So yeah, it's awkward. And look, the situation such as it is right now is pretty, pretty bad for, you know, starter home buyers, low-income home buyers. It's bad for veterans who, you know, can't deal with the commission as part of their loan. There's some folks that have been left in the cold, at least for now, with this settlement decision. And it's going to cause a lot of difficulty for people. And, you know, that's a serious thing. And who knows how this will evolve over time. But right now, there's just going to be a lot of buyers confused and stuck and challenged. And a lot of agents who are going to be confused and stuck and challenged. Okay. Let me pull up this piece of data real quick. Because I also like to provide some good news to real estate agents when I'm talking to them. And this is one of your surveys that asked if you were buying home today for half a million bucks. That was your budget. How much would you be willing to pay for the services of an agent? And what you guys articulated in there is that over 20 percent of the respondents would pay at least the equivalent of a two and a half percent commission and another 37 percent would pay at least 2 percent. So are you saying that it's not that people don't want to compensate buyers agents. It's just a matter of how. Yeah. It's interesting, Jeff. So we in a lot of our work have tried to get at in lots of different ways, people sentiment about compensation to real estate agents and what they really think. Okay. So we'll ask like the same question 10 different ways. And what we have generally found is that people do not have kind of an inherent objection to how and the amount in which real estate agents have been paid. Like there's no like native outrage about that. However, there's two caveats to that. When the sale price gets up above a million dollars, people start to question it. Right. The median home price in the United States of America now is about 400 grand. The gets up to a million. People are like, okay, 2.5 percent of a million dollars while I was kind of spending, right? And people also understand the connection between the massive run up and home values over the last four years. Most 10 years really, but really in the last four years and that commission like, my god, you're getting paid 40 percent more to help me buy this house and you did four years ago. That's where people start to waver on it. And the other thing we noticed is that even though people generally are cool with realtor compensation, if you frame things a little bit differently, you can easily change their feeling and perception. I'll give you an example. So if you say, and we literally use this language of people, we say, you don't walk into a car dealership with a buyer representative to help you buy a car. You buy the car from the person and the company selling the car. And you negotiate directly with them. There are laws that protect you, lemon was in the case of cars that give you a cooling up period, all that type of stuff. Do you think that that would be a better way to buy a house? And then we offer, you know, I agree with this. I don't agree with this. And when you frame things like that, then you're going to get a majority of people saying, yeah, you know, on second thought, why do I want to have two agents in the deal? And why do I want to pay for this representation? Well, I can just buy from in our real estate case, the listing agent. So it's this weird contradiction, Jeff, people, you know, on its face, they're like, yeah, cool. That's how real estate agents get paid, cool. But if you start to frame it differently, you can get different outcomes. And then of course, yeah, that can vary based on individual experience or whatnot. But and then there was, so the sentiment is changing somewhat because I remember I was doing some research and I found an older study from you guys from 2022. I think that was, I know, bam, next was putting that out. And that was saying that in, you know, in general, all people don't really care what agents get compensated. Perhaps that's now have evolved because of all the attention around this. Well, it's evolved. And again, if you if you ask the question differently, you start to see where people waver in that assessment. No, like you said. Yes, the sits your trial verdict at the end of our settlement and the media and social media explosion that that caused have had an impact on consumer sentiment consumers are more likely to question the value and the compensation of a realtor right now. Okay, most of them are still okay with it, but that sentiment has grown in light of recent events. And isn't part of the answer to this? Like, why are we reluctant to sign a buyer agreement? Well, because I don't understand it. I don't know what I'm getting into. And or, you know, I'm reluctant to pay for something if I don't associate a value to that, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look, for for the majority of agents who never used a buyer broker agreement and didn't talk explicitly about how they were going to pay, my question is, well, how are people supposed to value something that they proceed to be free? And in fact, and maybe you've seen this, Jeff, on online forum, you see it's all the time. You see where agents promote their services on the buy side is free. They always did that. You know, my services are free to you, the buyer. Well, how much of the value that which is free? This is where the industry really should have tried itself in the foot in my view. All right. Good point. Good point. All right, with a few minutes we've got left, I'd be curious to get your take on the intersection of mortgage professional and real estate agent on either side, buyer of the side, but what recommendations or what do you see as opportunities for the mortgage professional to be more valuable to the agent? Well, I think, look, as much support and guidance in terms of information that you can provide the better. I do think that you're going to see, I hate to be hyperbolic, but I really believe that, I think chaos this summer, and I would say going forward, Ellos and mortgage companies are going to still get referrals from realtors, but you're going to get more referrals from fewer realtors. Because what's going to happen here is it is going to drive consolidation within the business in the real estate side. There are going to be a significant number, perhaps hundreds and thousands of agents who cannot navigate the change that is unfolding right now. And so my guidance to Ellos would be to really, if you haven't already, figure out who the best most capable agents are in your marketplace and cultivate them like you've never cultivated them before. Because I suspect that you are going to get, you're still going to get referrals, but they're going to come from fewer agents. Interesting. Well, that goes back to just those that are more willing to adapt, right? Are the ones who survive? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think we're kind of in this survival of the fittest moment in the real estate business. It's like, you know, high school biology, we all learned about natural selection, right? The environment changes and some animals adapt and some don't. And those that adapt and survive become stronger. And I think that's going to happen in realtor world. And, you know, I think it's just good from mortgage professionals to understand that reality. And to make sure that they are, you know, keeping their really productive, professional, realtor friends close. And to support them in any way that is legitimate, because it's going to be a wild ride. And I wish that they would be good. Yeah. I'm just thinking about more than once. Obviously, you've referenced the word chaos. And I think about like one of the things where we're coaching our people around is to be that lighthouse in the storm, right? Where people go to get, yeah. And I'm helping or at least advising that you as a mortgage professional, this is a huge opportunity to integrate yourself into that adapted buyers agent, the person who understands they need to pivot but might need some help. And so as you know, with financing and seller buy downs and, you know, perhaps adding the buyer agent commission to the purchase price and the appraisal gaps. Yeah. I see like the lender role for me just got put on a pedestal. I think that's a valid observation, Jeff, and a good one. Because, you know, you're right. A lot of what a lender can do is going to be relevant to the complexity that is going to, you know, happen here very shortly. And yeah, I think if you're able to be that lighthouse, you stand to do well. And, you know, for example, all of these statistics that you're citing. So we do this research and I'm going basis, right? You know, we have a membership program. You can be a member of a thousand lot. And you get this research and you get marketing, actionable marketing based on the research. And if you're an L.O. that's sharing that information with your realtor partners to help them kind of get their bearings in a really weird time, then you're, you know, establishing value that's relevant for the moment. Yep. Yep. Simply being like we said, being that lighthouse helped them help guide them. Speaking of your membership and some resources you have, let's, we've only got a couple of minutes left. Let's make sure we tell people about those. You have this wonderful newsletter called The Dose. I want to make sure we're going to put links in the show notes to that. But that, for me, has been a wonderful insight into some of this data and, you know, psychology and that you guys put out there. Anything you want to say about that real quickly? Yeah, I mean, it's free. It's, you know, a mix of like our take on industry stuff. We share a little bit of our research. And then also some like marketing, branding, creative inspiration. So it's a really unique newsletter. Just go to our site thousandbot.net. It's free. And then the membership program is a subscription program. You can also access that through our website. Then you get all kinds of research, marketing concepts. You can share. It's pretty robust. Yes. It definitely is. I'll put a link to it in the show notes. And then for, by the way, some originators listening to this will probably share this episode with real estate agents. So they, if they're listening to this right now and you got this, this episode from your mortgage professional, please make sure you circle back and thank them. Make sure you go to the website to check out the dose, the free newsletter. And then one more thing. You do have a pretty cool summit coming up. I love the, it's a branding and marketing summit. I love the headline here, which is answering the wake up call, the real estate event for those who want to meet the moment with confidence. What would you like to tell the listeners about that event? Yeah. Well, you know, we're doing this event in Dallas June 25 to 27. We launched it about six months ago because we thought marketing and messaging and branding are always important, but they have never been more important in the real estate and mortgage world. I would argue that they are right now. So that's the focus of the event. Like things are changing. How do you project a new story out into this marketplace and connect when things are weird? And that's actually an opportunity. It's sort of glib to say, you know, when everything's crappy and the market's down and all this weird stuff is happening that there's opportunity, but there is. And that's what we're going to focus on during those three days in Dallas. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, it's, if your content, your data is anything right, representative of what that couple of days is going to be like, then people listening should strongly, strongly consider it. You got to get educated to be able to adapt appropriately. So we'll link that up in the show notes as well. I know we're up against the clock. Brian, thank you so much, man. This has been very, very enjoyable and I think the listeners have learned a lot. Yeah. Thank you, Jeff. I enjoyed the conversation and it's an interesting time to be in this business, isn't it? Yeah. And I guess the other takeaway is we will get through it, you know, adapt and thrive. But as you, I think might have said in one of your newsletters, right, those who can articulate value will always do well. Yes, I believe. All right, listeners, you know what to do. If you're listening to this, your mortgage loan officer, please share it with a real estate agent that you think would find this valuable. Check out the newsletter, the resources in the in the show notes. And please subscribe. I think you'll find a valuable just like I have. And thanks for tuning in. We'll see you on the next one. Bye for now. All right. Well, thanks for tuning into today's episode. Hey, I got a question for you. Are you struggling to get engagement and referrals from real estate agents and feeling like you're constantly fighting for business in a crowded market? What if I told you there's a way to attract agents to a provide unique value that helps them grow their business and generate referrals on demand, helping you become the dominant loan officer in your local market? Look, I was an originator for over 10 years. I understand the frustration of feeling like you're just another player and a sea of competitors and you're struggling to stand out and get noticed by the agents that you want to attract and engage with. 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