Becoming The $5 Billion Broker: No Lambos Just Listings with Jeff Lowe

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign. [00:00:07] Speaker B: Welcome to the Real Estate Chicago Style Podcast. I'm your host, Joe Smazel. I'm a broker at Interra Realty. I specialize in selling mid sized apartment buildings on the north side of the city and in Hyde Park. And my wife and I have a small mom and pop business where we own and operate some small apartment buildings in north side of the city as well, so. So with me today is Jeff Lowe, friend and a guy that I've been lucky to work with. Jeff, welcome to the show, man. [00:00:35] Speaker A: Thanks for having me on today. [00:00:37] Speaker B: I appreciate it. It's a couple months in the making, but we're through the busy season now for you. We're able to make some time for it. [00:00:43] Speaker A: We got in about another 30 days and then January kicks off and the. [00:00:46] Speaker B: Whole world's frenzy again. Well, it's our first away game for the podcast. We're outside of the Interra office for once. Figured anybody watching would rather see something different. So we're. Why don't you start by kind of telling us where we are? [00:01:00] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. [00:01:02] Speaker A: We were just looking for an interesting background and I think that we're in the heart of the West Loop right now on Aberdeen Street. This is a six unit loft conversion which has been really well received because these are authentic lofts. As you can see, the developer kept a lot of the original details. This was originally a barrel factory. And so these are six really luxurious 3,000 square foot homes. But it's also just a nice backdrop and we're like, you can literally see the West Loop directly behind us. And if you were looking a little further east, you'd catch a bunch of the skyline. [00:01:32] Speaker B: It is a cool space and it feels like this would be like a good, like sitcom backdrop too. Yeah, you know, like friends or something. [00:01:39] Speaker A: I was gonna say the same thing. [00:01:40] Speaker B: This like urban, you know, you got the timber, you got the exposed brick, some of the timber still exposed, but then you're in the middle of Fulton Market. It's very buzzy. So nice change of scenery for us. [00:01:54] Speaker B: Jeff's probably one of those kind of needs, no introduction guys in the Chicago real estate scene. But at the risk of a little redundancy, I'll give you a brief one. For over two decades, Jeff has been among the most active residential brokers in Chicago. He's completed over $4.7 billion in transactions. Is that a real time number, Jeff, or have we hit five? [00:02:16] Speaker A: We're not quite there, but in the next six months we'll hit five. [00:02:19] Speaker B: Boy, many years claiming the most active Broker in the city or state, which is no small feat. There's thousands and thousands of brokers in the city and state, so incredible level of consistency to have that type of output on a regular basis. Much of his business is Lincoln Park, Lakeview West Loop, Bucktown Gold Coast River North. [00:02:42] Speaker A: Absolutely. All the way up through, like, Roscoe Village, Southport Corridor. Like, all the way up through Lakeview in the south park corridor, and Ravenswood, so. So, yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:02:50] Speaker B: And soon to be a $5 billion. [00:02:54] Speaker A: Broker, knock on wood, but we should be there. [00:02:56] Speaker B: You gonna retire when that happens? Are you just gonna keep pedal the metal, man? [00:02:59] Speaker A: Got three teenagers, I don't think retiring. [00:03:02] Speaker B: No such thing. Like, you're just wired to work, too. [00:03:07] Speaker A: Man, I am wired to work, and I'm lucky enough to enjoy what I do. [00:03:11] Speaker B: Yeah, well, we. My wife Kate and I had the pleasure of working with you on the sale of our house and purchase of our current house. And so in this case, I can actually endorse you for what you do. I appreciate that it's more than just the numbers. We had a very positive experience and some of our friends have had, but. [00:03:29] Speaker A: You know, it's also a nice compliment that you are a broker yourself. So hypothetically, you could have done some part of that transaction or all of it yourself if you chose to. [00:03:38] Speaker B: Not well. [00:03:40] Speaker A: But on the buy side, I do find a lot of commercial brokers might consider using their license. On the buyer side, right now, there's an inventory problem, so there's an edge to having a residential broker on your side, which is how you found your house without really going on the market. Yeah, but on the list side, typically don't want to deal with all the minutia that we deal with on a daily basis. [00:04:01] Speaker B: It's something that I've experienced in my business. The more focused I stay on my bread and butter, the more efficient I am with it. And that compounds. So if I take some percentage of my time away to try to sell my home and, you know, list on MLS or Zillow or wherever you list it. Maybe not Zillow. Maybe. [00:04:21] Speaker B: You know, it's like there's. There's part of it is the relationships. Part of it's the opportunity cost your time. But I think, like, what I've experienced in the residential brokerage community is, you know, you guys, you know each other so well, you know, and if you endorse a buyer and say, hey, I know these folks. They're good to work with. They're straightforward. Here's their story, and then there's not another chain of communication or the other chain of communication is another solid broker. It makes for a smoother transaction. So whatever we would have, you know, in air quotes like saved by having some commission applied to the purchase price. I feel like we gained in the access to the inventory. Smooth transaction. And like, you know, we're trying to, you know, buy a house we're going to stay in for a long time. It's not about making a few bucks from it, it's about it going well and increasing your probability of getting it. [00:05:12] Speaker A: And you want to be in like a four block radius. Didn't you have all your college buddies? [00:05:16] Speaker B: That's kind of how it's going. I just remember that's kind of how it's. [00:05:19] Speaker A: Because I've helped a couple of them too. Well, we've moved smooth and like, wait, where's Smozzle? I'm like right over there and like, okay, this is close enough. And where's Bird's Nest? Okay, it's close enough too. [00:05:27] Speaker B: There's a level of being far enough away also to have your space too. But yeah, we've moved three times within like a two block radius. Yeah. So hopefully we're settled in now because I don't like to move. [00:05:42] Speaker B: We like to kick off with a few rapid fire questions. So fire away. Yeah, sometimes we rapid fire, sometimes a couple real estate people, we end up rambling about them a little bit. So either way it's fine. Works for them. What's your favorite steakhouse in the city to do a closing dinner? [00:05:59] Speaker A: I think the vets. [00:06:02] Speaker A: I think you all do more of the big closing dinners than we do just because we sell more quantity than quality. I'm sorry, more quantity in terms of this number of homes. Like, you know, I don't sell a 40 million dollar investment building, so we don't do a lot of closing dinners. But I do love Bavettes and I've taken developers of mine there a couple times over the last couple holidays. [00:06:20] Speaker B: It's awesome. It's always packed. [00:06:23] Speaker A: I love it in the winter time. In the summertime I'd rather be somewhere with a more outdoor, like maybe a better outdoor seating arrangement. [00:06:29] Speaker B: When you go in there, if it's nice out and you come outside, especially if it's still light. Yeah. Like it's like coming out of like a casino in Vegas. You're like, what fucking day is it? [00:06:38] Speaker A: For sure, for sure. [00:06:39] Speaker B: You have a few cocktails and you walk out. You're like, the sun's still out. What happened? [00:06:43] Speaker A: But nice Time of year, you know, nothing beats like, you know, just, just. I love Gibsons and, you know, Tavern. And the energy in that little pocket is pretty awesome too. [00:06:51] Speaker B: Totally. [00:06:53] Speaker B: Interesting question for you. Favorite intersection or corridor in the city. [00:07:00] Speaker A: Southport corridor has always been kind of my bread and butter. My first apartment I lived in was right next to d' Agostino's at Addison and Southport when I was three years out of college. And I kind of fell into what I do now and doing apartment rentals is on the corner of Southport in school, where I now have an office from my group in that corner. And so I've had the same dry cleaners on Southport. So I just think that the Southport corridor has just always kind of been my bread and butter. And it has grown up so much in the last 25 years. It was all Irish bars for the longest time. And now it's like. I think it's one of the. It is one of the top two or three retail strips on the north side of Chicago. Armitage is wonderful. Damon could use a little more life. It's coming back a little bit. [00:07:42] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:07:43] Speaker A: It's got to hit pretty hard in the pandemic in Bucktown. Lincoln Square is great and the Gold coast is a whole nother world. Obviously. There's Elk street and Michigan Avenue, all that stuff. [00:07:53] Speaker B: I was kind of surprised at the conviction about Southport Quarter at the beginning. I figured you were going to kind of play Switzerland on that answer a little bit. And at the end, you did what any good broker should do. You covered all the other things. I covered them all. [00:08:04] Speaker A: But I mean, I kind of grew up in that pocket. [00:08:06] Speaker B: No, you know what I mean? So that's all I'm with you. You're starving between appointments, you're running around. You don't have time to grab a salad and sit down for something healthy. What's your go to Chicago fast food place to grab a quick bite. [00:08:21] Speaker A: I'll be honest with you, I don't do any of that. I don't. I keep like these. I gotta remember the name of them. I'll think of it in a second. But I keep like these meat sticks and peanuts in the back of my car. And I mean the. That work for me are always trying. If I come to the office at lunchtime, they're like, jeff, let us get green. Let us get bluedorf for you. Let us get some lunch for you. And I just kind of hit it on the road all the time. A couple ice coffee. [00:08:42] Speaker B: Your buddy Matt larouses with like the pb and JS in his glove box. [00:08:46] Speaker A: I saw he does talk about his PB and Js. I don't like the PB and JS as much, but I'm just always on the run. [00:08:54] Speaker B: Yeah. So it's not like Million dollar listing where you sit down at like a fancy steakhouse for lunch every day and have a two hour lunch with a glass of Chardonnay. [00:09:04] Speaker A: You know, I had lunch with a client of mine about three weeks ago and we went to Summer House on Halstead. Cause there are very few places open for lunch actually in Lincoln park. And there's a couple in the Southport corridor. And I looked around and I'm like, this is what the rest of the world does for lunch. And yes, it was a big mixture of people all having, you know, glasses of wine. And I was like, oh, maybe one day, but that day's not set. [00:09:26] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't know. But then I get like stressed out too. I'm like, what am I sitting here for an hour and a half for? [00:09:30] Speaker A: You know, I think you're very much like me, like angst. Yeah. Eight o' clock at night, I can do that. But not lunchtime. That's just not my jam. [00:09:37] Speaker B: Summer House is a good buzz. I mean, in the winter too, if you need to just like feel like a little brightness. [00:09:43] Speaker A: Yeah, no, it's got a great ambiance. You know, the fact that you were able to stay open during the pandemic because the ceiling opens just to crack and so it was fresh air. [00:09:51] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:09:52] Speaker A: But no, that it's a great mainstay in Lincoln Park. [00:09:55] Speaker B: Lettuce does it all. Well, they do. All right. Give us an up and coming Chicago real estate person that you think deserves. [00:10:01] Speaker A: Some recognition on the brokerage side. [00:10:05] Speaker B: Any side you want. [00:10:06] Speaker A: That's a really good question. [00:10:10] Speaker A: I might have to come back to that. I mean, I've got two or three. They all happen to be women in my group. They're absolutely crushing it. [00:10:18] Speaker B: Plug them. [00:10:19] Speaker A: So Polina Sekula is doing wonderful. You probably know her brother. Ana Theodora just came over from another group. Katie Ayob lives at Armitage in Sheffield, really close to you. Bill Dwyer has been with me for six or seven years. I think he did $17 million of his own closings this year to date. So I really encourage the people in my group to have a really strong business of their own. I've been fortunate to keep people for much longer because I share a little bit better, I think, and I really, I want them to have a Great business of their own under my umbrella and then obviously help them, have them help me with all my business too. [00:10:54] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:10:55] Speaker A: So I always look at my business as being a really great salary. [00:10:58] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:10:59] Speaker A: And then you should springboard your own business on top of it. [00:11:01] Speaker B: Do you usually find people that are already in real estate that could benefit from your brand or do you hire generally from like another industry? You know, they have sales experience, whatever, customer service experience or something. [00:11:15] Speaker A: It's been a really long. And I don't add, I don't lose or add people very often. Maybe every 18 months or two years I'll have somebody maybe move out of town or join my group. I like consistency and the size of my group stays very similar. I mean, my main competitors, a lot of them have twice as many people in their group as I do. So I prefer quality over a quantity. In terms of agents in my group, There are like 13 agents in my group, but really eight or nine of us that really get after it work the way I do. And so new agents are not something I'm really all that interested in bringing on. I'd rather they have. I'd rather they have some experience in the residential world, whether it's doing rentals or whether it's. They just started selling a couple years ago. The learning curve is easier for me to manage than picking people that are brand new. Even though I can make a lot more money on brand new people because I can keep their splits much lower. It's just not that I like continuity and I like selling houses and walking through houses like I did with you, more than managing people. It's just I'm more of a sales. [00:12:18] Speaker B: Guy than I manage, I would imagine. It also kind of cuts down on some of like the front end attrition because if people have already been in real estate and then they come to join your team, obviously they see the benefit of your team maybe more than somebody new to real estate would. But then also they might have a higher percentage of staying in the real estate business where there's probably. There would probably be a point where if you were hiring a lot of, you know, new people that didn't have like, they didn't have any real estate experience, they just decided they pivot entirely and go into another career for sure. [00:12:49] Speaker A: And it's a, it's a big learning. [00:12:51] Speaker B: Some you just don't know until you get into it. Then you're like, this is fucking hard. And then you know. Or you just realize it's not for you. [00:12:58] Speaker A: Correct. And it's a Big learning. It's a big lift for the. For a person like me running the team to have new people come on and have them lose, learn the business. [00:13:05] Speaker B: Well, it's like, what is a common quality that every successful real estate person that you know has real estate broker there? [00:13:13] Speaker A: Well, they are. You have to be outgoing and a people person. That's obviously important. I think people have to feel like you're honest. Just an overlying sense of, like, the fact that you're just a straightforward person and you're not being sold like a car. [00:13:26] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:13:26] Speaker A: Because there's. That's a big trait in a lot of agents. It's not a good one, but I think organization is what I see as most important. [00:13:35] Speaker A: I'm a pretty organized person. I'm fortunate at this point that I have somebody that keeps me super organized. But the best agents in my group, for sure. And the agents that do the most business out there are very organized. [00:13:48] Speaker B: I like that. [00:13:48] Speaker A: And they keep things tight. They don't show up 15 minutes late for showings. They don't forget to send over executed contracts. They don't forget to meet the appraiser. They just run an organized system. And being organized, because I joke that our business is totally disorganized. Most real estate agents are very disorganized. And those who run a tight ship or have people and processes, we've got great processes of this. And that's what people that come to join my team enjoy a lot is that they have really good. [00:14:20] Speaker A: I've just got great administrative people, and I shouldn't even call them admin, because they're all team members and we're all equally important. But just having systems in place to make sure that escrow money is handled properly and just everything is organized from start to finish is critically important. And that's something. That's the number one trait I'd respect in other agents to have. [00:14:38] Speaker B: Yeah, I like that. You know, I think that you touched on honesty in the beginning of it, where, you know, we're in a profession where, you know, a lot of people would probably be, like, kind of predisposed to resist. Really. You know, it's not one of the more. What do you say? There's, like, attorneys and real estate brokers are at, like, the bottom of the list in terms of, like, right there with those. [00:15:02] Speaker A: And sell cars 100%. [00:15:05] Speaker B: Yeah. With car salesmen, real estate brokers at the bottom of the list. [00:15:11] Speaker B: But people are making one of the biggest, you know, purchases of their life. Look at it as an investment or not, but one of the biggest purchases of your life and not having an intermediary and representative in that transaction that you trust, you're just like screwed from the start. You know, it's never going to go well. [00:15:27] Speaker A: It's critically important. That's why, you see, there's a handful of people whose names stay on the top every year. And just because I think that they earn trust from their clients. [00:15:37] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:15:37] Speaker A: Especially those who. Whose main source of business, like mine. While there's some instance of like, name recognition at this point, really it's referrals. It's clients of mine that have. I just. I'm having a closing this afternoon. This is the fifth transaction I've done with this family over the course of the last 20 years. And I get a lot of that flank, thankfully. I guess I should knock on some wood somewhere. But that's just because this is staged furniture. [00:16:06] Speaker B: Is that real wood? [00:16:06] Speaker A: I think it might be. It is staged furniture. But the fact that you want somebody to have trust in you and those repeat phone calls are probably the best part of our business. [00:16:18] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:16:18] Speaker A: Way more than closings and the money. It's like getting a phone call like, Jeff, you've been amazing to us, or I want you to help my sister, or, you know, we're thinking about downsizing or upsizing. Those are the absolute best calls to get our business. [00:16:30] Speaker B: We'll go off the agenda that I had in mind or the outline I had in mind when you talk about, you know, my source of meeting you is referrals, some name recognition as well. And referred you to a couple friends and such since. But in a business where there's a lot of. It's kind of. There's a lot of bragging about your numbers and, you know, who's number one. And, you know, how do you measure that? [00:16:56] Speaker B: How do you balance? Because you have to care about it to a degree. Number one, you're a competitive person. I know being in this business and some clients that you're courting care about it. You know, they want to know that you're doing enough to. To be, you know, active and have all the relationships that come with being active. But when I look at the stats as somebody who doesn't fully understand how they're aggregated, it's like you see different size teams, you see different sizes, you know, different deal size, obviously that, you know, that we can kind of make some sense of, but like the buy side versus the list side. So how do you balance how much you care about that? [00:17:38] Speaker A: I care a Little bit less every day these days because it's kind of just a hot mess. It's like I joke about the fact that Chicago should have a specific way on how to do square footage in homes. It drives me crazy because you can do outside walls, inside walls, halfway outside walls. You don't even have to list it at all. It's similar in the way that different people quote volume. It really is. And there are individual agents that have teams of seven, but they claim they're still individual so they can be the number one individual agent in Chicago. Then there's small teams of 4 to 7, then there's medium of 7 to 10. Like there's all these categories. [00:18:16] Speaker B: Sometimes I see a billboard too on a viaduct or whatever and it's like number one broker in Lakeview. I'm like, I don't think, I don't even know who that person is. I don't think they are. [00:18:25] Speaker A: I'll tell you. Like, I mean like. Or you'll see like there's a. I saw a full page ad in the Tribune not long ago. Number one agent in Chicago at Cobalt bank in the smallest print you could possibly find. And we all know that's not true because there's very few agents left from that firm in the city right now. But the answer is when it was. And then you've got all these different publications, you've got the real deal does their numbers Cranes mrad. Historically I'd always use that. The multiple associations of MRAD or basically our MLS and what their total volume was is how I would look at the numbers. It's the only true basis to use. But now you've got teams of 40 people that are putting all their volume under one person. And. [00:19:08] Speaker B: We did a deal. We did a deal six months or I don't know when that was nine months ago. And it wasn't the MLS because it was a listing I had and you brought a developer client and I don't even know does that count in the numbers? [00:19:19] Speaker A: So that. No. And not only that, like company, like the real deal is something people look at a lot more now if it's a multi unit building between three or more units, they don't count. Yeah, they don't count it because they think it's commercial. Where really like anything sub 10 units I'd say has a residential component to it. So like I said, there's just no true way to really figure it out. It's almost better just to ask for friends and family, look at how many reviews they have and then Also, just know who's really active in your specific market. That's most important podcasting to do because the numbers get skewed quite a bit. [00:19:53] Speaker B: I could tell. [00:19:54] Speaker A: Yeah, I know. [00:19:56] Speaker B: You might plead the fifth. This is our last rapid fire. And you can tell we talked about rapid fire for 15 minutes here. You might plead the fifth on this one. But do you have any of the. Your, like, call them celebrity clients that have been your favorite to work with or they, you know, take the word favorite out of there? That's a bad podcaster question that you've really enjoyed working with. [00:20:19] Speaker B: Some. You came to NDA. I know, but I. [00:20:25] Speaker B: Know that there's some hotshot people. Just name one that was cool to work with. [00:20:28] Speaker A: I do get the NDAs going on from time to time. And, you know, you have to adhere to those. [00:20:35] Speaker A: I had a really. And this was in. This was actually. [00:20:41] Speaker A: In the news. So this. I'm not defying any. So I have had a closing yesterday with Nick Kokonis, who. Original founder of Alinea, one of the founders of Alinea and started the site, the app Talk. And. [00:20:56] Speaker A: He does not care for real estate brokers. [00:20:59] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:20:59] Speaker A: It's been well known and documented for years and years and years. His CFO is a friend. So he was, you know, so he interviewed me and hired me to sell his house. And it was a long road. [00:21:11] Speaker A: It's like when you're in person, he's amazing. The nicest guy went to. He just bought an amazing vineyard and I went to visit it about nine months ago. But sometimes he can be a little short. But think about what a line he is. Like, you know, in terms of how you're dealing with somebody that's very, very regimented and by the book. So he was challenging and fun at the same time. [00:21:32] Speaker B: It makes a better sense of accomplishment once it gets done too. That's absolutely. And well, the first Cranes article, I could say maybe you can't. The first Cranes article is he's doing it. Him. You know, I remember incredible house. So cool. I mean, which you'd kind of expect because it's like, clearly a cool guy and has a cool touch. But the article was he was selling himself. Yep. So. [00:21:52] Speaker A: And actually he tweeted he was selling his house a couple weeks ago, and it wasn't even. It wasn't even sold. It was under contract. I only know. Cause then Crain's was calling me. I'm like, if you're gonna tweet about your house, then you're gonna get publicity, whether you like it or not. And he's got a million Twitter followers, so. But I'd have to come back. I've got many, many, many more. But he's very fresh in my mind because it's the last few days. [00:22:13] Speaker B: Yeah, cool. All right, so take us back. You started in the business 1998, I believe, if your bio is sounds right, accurate. [00:22:24] Speaker A: Probably my first rental in 19. That's when I first sold my first condo. [00:22:27] Speaker B: Over 20 years. Yeah, over 20. So rewind. You could tell us how you got into real estate, but what I'm more interested in hearing you talk about is what did you do differently getting started that you feel like, allowed you to get some traction? Because it is such a competitive business. There's so many people competing, and I think nature of how social media is, and a lot of, you know, you get a lot of press, I get a little press, you know, but the point is, like, you know, you could fast forward 15 or 20 years and say, all right, what are you doing now? But I think what might be more interesting for some people listening is what did you do back then to stand out, to get started? [00:23:09] Speaker A: I. I was very fortunate. I always say, when you're starting in our business, starting in a slow market is ideal. [00:23:17] Speaker B: Yeah, I did. [00:23:17] Speaker A: And I did. It was. It was a slow market, and so I was still doing some rentals. It enabled me to pay my bills and everything while starting a career as more selling homes. So having that background and getting to the city was really helpful. But there weren't a lot of people in their 20s and early 30s. It was an older business. When I got this business, all my. The v. Majority of the. Of the bigger agents in the business back then were probably more my age now, in their 50s and their 60s. [00:23:44] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:23:45] Speaker A: So I just think so it's a different. It was just a different level of hustle. I've worked really hard since I was 10 years old, and I never thought I was gonna be a real estate broker, but it was a true occupation where I felt like the harder you work, the better, you know, the more it pay off. [00:24:00] Speaker B: What does hard work mean? Like, how many hours a day would you say you worked back then? How many hours a day do you still work today? [00:24:08] Speaker A: It's so funny. How do you define hours? Working with all the time, but do your best. I was way over 80 for 15, 20 years, and I'm probably still 70. But, you know, there's multitasking in this world too, these days. But again, I like it. I mean, I know a lot of my competitors are kind of sick of the business or they don't like the business. And I really do enjoy it. There are tough days and there are good days, but I feel like the vast majority of my days are really good. And I just, I like going to work every day, so. And then I did, you know, I did as a younger gentleman when I met this guy, Sean Conlon, who everybody knows his name around town. And it was funny, I had all these Irish developers I was working with as their rental broker. And then I went to work back then at Koenig and Stray and he was the number one broker in the city. And he pulled me aside the first day I was there. He's like, you start calling my guys to sell their stuff and you will not be here. [00:25:04] Speaker A: So I fast forward, I end up joining his team and then when he went and started his own company, I went with him and he didn't want to broker it anymore. So I basically was the guy that handled all his stuff. So getting back to your question about like, what did I do differently selling new construction, it's a little different now. There weren't a lot of brokers specializing in it back then. And the quality of what we were selling, I think is higher than some of what's going on now. But having your 4 by 8 signs 10 times around Lincoln Park, Lakeview, Bucktown, that gives you instant name recognition. And back then there was no social media. [00:25:38] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:25:38] Speaker A: So I think that that was the fact. I represent a lot of development and we still have some great stuff coming, even 2026. We've got a great pipeline, some new development coming up. But I think that that gave me some really nice name recognition that other brokers don't enjoy. [00:25:54] Speaker B: Well, I just taking a note of something I want to ask you about because bad memory. But a couple of things I want to like. [00:26:04] Speaker B: Highlight there. Number one is you said you worked 80 hours a week. You know, and I don't, I'm not calling bullshit on it because I know you well enough. And you know, if somebody defaults these days to working 40 hours a week, it's not just that you're going to ramp up twice as fast. It's what the compounding effect of that additional 48 or 40 hours a week means, you know, so it's like, it's like you're building a snowball and somebody, you know, you can't get traction working 40 hours a week. It's just your business or my business, you're not going to do it and you Have. It has to be something. If you, you know, I shouldn't say it has to be because you're at a different level than some people even aspire to be at some point. If somebody is just doing it to kind of make a living and they want to live their lifestyle, it's different. So I'm not saying you have to do it, but if you want to be the best. [00:26:56] Speaker B: You have to work that hard. [00:26:57] Speaker A: You have to work that hard. I mean, what do you do? It's Sunday at 7 o'. Clock. If you're in the middle of a. If you've got two negotiations going on. [00:27:04] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:27:04] Speaker A: You know, there are agents out there that if you listen, if you get their voicemail, it says all calls after 5pm will return the next day. And I'm like, whoa. [00:27:13] Speaker B: Yeah. So it's a lifestyle for you. It's more than a career, but you enjoy it. The other thing I thought was interesting is when you talked about your signage on some of what you were selling back then. Because people can think about service business as being a little bit intangible. Right? Like, well, we're kind of, we're not the builders, we don't own the real estate. We're the sales people, we're the marketing people. [00:27:35] Speaker B: But that adds tangibility to your business immediately because if they see your sign on something similar to what they're building, it's almost as tangible as it gets. So you have to be careful about where you hang your sign. Right. Because especially at this point in your career, you do an assignment to make a buck. And I know that's not what you're doing, but for sake of example, that is not consistent with the quality of your brand and you don't feel like would have. [00:28:04] Speaker B: Would carry the same cachet that you think you've established the low group to build. It can be a pretty expensive lesson. [00:28:11] Speaker A: It really can be. [00:28:12] Speaker B: I learned it myself. [00:28:13] Speaker A: I know you have. And it really can be. I mean, there are a number of developers actively building on the north side of the city right now that I would not represent. [00:28:20] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:28:21] Speaker A: And I have in the past and I just don't have interest in it. And right now the core three or four, I guess five developers I work with, I've worked with for a really long time. Because if you're selling a new six unit development like we're building, we were about to market something on the 1900 block of Orchard. Phenomenal location, Good real estate developer and I have done 40 projects together and I get a lot of the resales out of those buildings because they're happy with his quality. And even though they had their own broker when they bought, they're happy with the quality of what they bought. And I've always been his person. If people move into a development and the listing broker is associated with poor development, it's horrible. And back when I worked for Sean back in the days, I didn't get to choose who I worked with all the time. And most of those were really good builders too, but some of them weren't. And you just don't want people walking around feeling my volume would be much higher if I would represent any builder in town. And I won't do it. I'm picky. [00:29:16] Speaker B: In addition to the quality of the actual product, I've started to learn slower than I should have learned it. But it can be about how somebody does business too because. [00:29:29] Speaker B: You'Re delivering somebody else's message a lot of times and you can massage it and you can add some niceties to it and such. But if somebody's just an asshole and doesn't stand behind their product or is just brutal to transact with, you're associated with that. Well, that's what I don't want. [00:29:46] Speaker B: Everybody's like, it's small world. It's a really small world when you get into it. And when I looked at my business, 70 plus percent of the people that I've, 70 plus percent of the transactions that I've done have been a repeat buyer, repeat seller, both. And so it doesn't mean that everybody I work with is easy. That's how I make my living. [00:30:05] Speaker A: Right. [00:30:06] Speaker B: I'm not suggesting that I'm not being lazy where everybody needs to be super pleasant to work with and I can do my job and. [00:30:13] Speaker B: Massage as we need to. But it's like if you're going to be, you know, if you're going to lie, if you're going to deceive people, if you're, I've got no time for it. And it's a lot less efficient business too because those people take a lot more time to get through a deal for sure. [00:30:28] Speaker A: And I think it's somewhat in your business, certainly in mine, if you buy a new, buy new construction from somebody, you get a one year warranty, right. The developer and all the builders I represent today, you can call them nine months later, most of them, a year and a half or two years later. They may not pay to fix things a year and a half, two years later, but they'll give you the name of the person to Handle it. And it makes me proud to represent those developers and a lot of them we know quite a few of them in common, in fact. And that's what's important to me. Even if I don't represent the buyers, I want them to move in and have a positive experience with the person I represented. [00:31:03] Speaker B: Yeah, who's doing the one on the 1900 block of Orchard? That's an awesome piece. [00:31:07] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a company called Swan Properties. You would never have heard of them. It stands for his kids names, Scott, Wes, Adriana and Nick Cool. Southside plumbing plumber. Originally, he negotiates down to the last $500 on every condo we sell. But he builds a hell of a product. Yeah, he really does. He builds a great product. Those units range from like 1 million 700 to 2.6 million. [00:31:33] Speaker A: And he will come back in five years if you have a problem. He just is. He only does one or two buildings a year. And I've known him funny enough, he kind of drove Sean Conlon crazy. And Sean's like, you deal with this guy. Three of my guys now. Because we wouldn't stop answering his phone. When I was in a meeting like this with Sean, the three of us, and he wouldn't stop answering his phone. I think he had a hard time getting him to put his cigar out. But like all these years later, he's grown up as a developer. Every project he's built I've sold for him. And yeah, he's been an incredible client over the years. [00:32:07] Speaker B: He's got good taste in real estate. That's an awesome address. [00:32:10] Speaker A: That's one of the best addresses in Lincoln Park. [00:32:12] Speaker B: So talk about what is the. You have your finger on the pulse of buyer demand. And you know, you, you talked a little bit about 20, 25. I think one of the limiting factors in the market's been inventory. Not just for your business, for business as a whole. Right. What are you seeing is some of the most in demand product where you really have kind of outsized buyer demand for the supply that you have predominantly. [00:32:38] Speaker A: Single family homes versus condos. Well, condos also, but mostly single families. Just because the smaller infill markets. I work in Lincoln Park, Lakeview. [00:32:51] Speaker A: Bocktown, Wicker Park, Ravenswood, Roscoe Village. Every time they knock a house down, they build another one. There's one less place to develop. And these are all small communities, so they're just not making any more land. And so. And even if you've got like a 30 year old house or an older house, it's just the demand is for every single family in those neighborhoods. There's five to 10 buyers still right now because people don't want to give up their 2 1/2% interest rates or 3% interest rates. [00:33:20] Speaker A: And, you know, they're just, they're small communities. Yeah, there'll be time when that changes, of course, But I think 2026, we're hoping to see some more inventory. If we continue to get some subtle rate relief, then there are a lot of people that want to upsize or downsize right now and they just won't do it because their money's too cheap. [00:33:38] Speaker B: I thought every mortgage broker was saying marry the house, date the rate. Right. Wasn't that the. [00:33:43] Speaker A: That's right. But we're hoping, we think it'll loosen up a little bit more this year. Not gangbusters, but I think there'll be more people starting to move in 2020. [00:33:53] Speaker B: Do you think it's just people getting. People deciding they can't wait any longer, just getting kind of anxious for a lack of a better way of putting it or. [00:34:02] Speaker A: Yeah, someone's got two kids and they're in a three bedroom condominium or somebody's in a 7,000 square foot home and their kids are in college now. You know, there's reasons why people typically move and a lot of people have just delayed that. [00:34:14] Speaker B: Is there a neighborhood? I know that you named several of the prime neighborhoods and it's hard to really kind of rank those. Better. Worse. Is there one neighborhood in particular that's the hottest right now for single family buyer demand? [00:34:27] Speaker A: I'd say no. There's like eight starting in Old Town in Lincoln Park. Bucktown. I mean. [00:34:36] Speaker A: There are no houses for sale in Bucktown right now. Again, small, small neighborhood. If you look at it organically, there's nothing available in the Southport Corridor and Lincoln Park's got some more inventory just because it's a much larger area than the other two. But even if something's fresh and priced appropriately, it'll sell immediately there too. Yeah, the Gold coast and Streeterville are kind of trying to make a comeback right now, so. [00:34:59] Speaker B: Well, so answer the question. The opposite. Where? Maybe you just did, but where is there. Where do you think that there's a opportunity to buy good value? Where you see maybe outsized depreciation, Other like where you're kind of buying the dip. [00:35:11] Speaker A: The denser. The denser neighborhoods like the Gold coast down through Streeterville is that single families. [00:35:18] Speaker B: And condos or condos? [00:35:19] Speaker A: There aren't a lot of single families in Those neighborhoods, there are some single families in the Gold coast, you know, but. And the Gold coast is tricky. It's an amazing neighborhood, but so many single families in that neighborhood don't have parking or don't have any outdoor space. So if you want a house with parking and outdoor space and you want to be in the Gold coast, well, that will still sell fine, as long as you don't find a seller that's been in their house for 40 years that feels like it was updated three years ago. And that happens a lot in the Gold Coast. But it's more the high rise, the density of like, which really got beat up really hard to begin the pandemic and with all the stuff, social unrest. But I feel like we've seen the. We've kind of caught the bottom in most of those neighborhoods. Certainly all my empty nest clients on the north side or even the North Shore that are coming to the Gold coast sellers are taking real wax on what they're selling. But. But things are actually starting to sell. Even the co op markets picked up quite a bit. [00:36:12] Speaker B: Well, you see it, I mean, you see the headline. It's like, you know, selling the condo in the water tower place for less than 1995 price or whatever. But you know, there's an asterisk also because it looks like it was done in 1992. [00:36:27] Speaker A: Correct. [00:36:27] Speaker B: So it's like I always feel like that's even a little bit misleading where it's like, well that's fine, I understand it. Price should have appreciated still. And you know, it's not prime time necessarily if you're just trying to maximize pricing to sell that. Correct. But it's like, it's totally obsolete as well. So it's not really a true indication of like value then versus value now. That's what kind of annoys me about those articles. [00:36:48] Speaker A: Those are. Well, you know, there's one person that writes most of those, our friend at Cranes. Because really good news, but more really bad news is what catches people's eyes and gets the clicks. [00:36:58] Speaker B: Right. [00:36:59] Speaker A: But you know, they say you ought to put 1 or 2% of the value back into your house every year if you want to really see a strong appreciation. And my wife likes to do that. Yeah, I know she does. She's got great, she's got great taste though. And you're lucky. What if you had to do it? [00:37:14] Speaker B: Cut that. [00:37:15] Speaker A: Yeah, right. But no, if you think. And it's also like, what have those buildings done as well to themselves? Like, have they made the lobby more attractive? Have they redone the common amenities. Have they gotten real, the building engineer space and done a gym that the building should have had 20 years ago? Yeah, so there are a lot of other components to those buildings as well. But yeah, you're right. If they've been in the house for 30 years and they haven't done anything to it, maybe it should be worth less. You just have to make changes over time. [00:37:42] Speaker B: Yeah. All right, let's pivot a little bit. We talked about it a little bit when we were just chatting while Stephen was setting up. But I want to talk a little about Compass, you know, because you, as I understand, I think, were one of the founding brokers at Compass in Chicago. First one Compass, now, you know, massive, massive business and is on acquisition tear and it's huge market share here. [00:38:09] Speaker B: What did you see in Compass when you joined that. [00:38:14] Speaker B: Convinced you to make that move? I mean, you were one even at that time. You were one of the top, if not the top brokers in the city. So it's not a small thing to say. I'm going to get behind this new kind of like, you know, tech based, more like startup type brokerage versus a brokerage that was more well known. So what was it back then? [00:38:35] Speaker A: That's a good question. I'm not one to make rash decisions either. They had been contacting me for quite some time and I didn't even know who Compass was when I got the first call because they just weren't. They were. They were not in Midwest, in fact, they were barely in California because they bought Pacific Union, which exploded right after they opened in Chicago. But basically I'd been at the same firm for real. In fact, I'd been at three companies, but I never changed my chair. It went from Kennegan Street, a Prudential, to Berkshire. And so it kept changing names and just nothing else really changed. We were completely autonomous in terms of doing everything ourselves from a marketing perspective and so forth. And frankly, Robert Refkin, who's one of my favorite people in the world, and Matt Spangler was the CMO back then, flew into town a couple times, wanted me to go to New York. I'm like, I'm not coming to New York. I'm too busy. And he's a good salesperson. I remember we met the Lane. [00:39:28] Speaker B: He's clearly a good salesperson. [00:39:29] Speaker A: Yeah, we met the Lane. [00:39:30] Speaker B: You see him online. He's a good salesperson. [00:39:32] Speaker A: What I did though is I brought the three biggest agents at the, at the time in my group with me for the third meeting. And I sat down and we listened to him. I'm like, what do you guys want to do? Like it's. I mean the heavy lift of moving 52 listings at the time is what we had was going to be on me. But what do you guys want to do? Where do you see our future? And they were. They bought in like hook, line, sinker. And that's really what I needed. Ironically, we just rebranded a bunch of our low group stuff. We just instead of like those cabernet back in the day with our old firm, we had just done our own branding that's like very like, like the yetis. We talked about the white with the black and it turned out it was like. It was exactly like Compass's look. [00:40:10] Speaker B: Serendipitous. [00:40:10] Speaker A: And it was just, it was just, just pure coincidence. [00:40:14] Speaker A: And man, we've. It's been a really, really great ride. [00:40:17] Speaker B: How long was that? [00:40:18] Speaker A: It'll be eight years. It was eight years. We called it. Thanks. Thanksgiving Day. We left the Friday after Thanksgiving. It will be eight years last week. So that was our eight year anniversary. [00:40:28] Speaker B: And so what's it like now that the firm has evolved and grown to the extent that it has? I mean, is it there have been any growing pains during that or is it all good? [00:40:40] Speaker A: Oh, there were growing pains. I mean when we were in a wework space, you know, for the first year. I don't know if you remember this story, but we were in a wework space on Clark street and there were like. There were like. There were some. Also some other great brokers that came on right after I did. Yeah, but Thad Wong wasn't having it in that properties. And my old friend Peter Alesso. [00:41:04] Speaker B: I remember the billboards and stuff. [00:41:05] Speaker A: The billboard. He put a giant billboard on the side of our office. [00:41:07] Speaker B: Broken Compass or something. [00:41:09] Speaker A: It said, dude, no. It had Leonard Steinberg, who was the first agent at Compass in New York who still writes an article every single day of the year that all Compass agents get. It said don't take. It had caricature of him that said don't take directions from strangers. So it was kind of full circle when Compass bought that property. [00:41:25] Speaker B: A little funny. A little funny. [00:41:26] Speaker A: It was funny. I thought it was clever. And his CMO at the time was an old friend of mine I used to. To rent apartments with. It was clever. Clearly they saw us as a threat. There have absolutely been growing pains those first couple years especially. But now I couldn't be prouder to work where I do. I really, really like it. If I didn't work there. There's probably one other firm I'd want to work at, but like, I just, I really enjoy working there and just having that kind of energy and seeing our CFO on Squawk Box every week, I mean, and seeing Compass in the news, it's. It's exciting to work for a company that's got that much energy behind it. [00:41:59] Speaker B: Yeah. And like all the, what I've gathered and I'm not, you know, I'm not. I know a lot of the tech is, is agent forward. I mean, there's a customer forward element of it of course too. But I know a lot of it's to help you guys do more, but probably a good time to bet on a tech heavy type brokerage. Right. I mean, where you've seen AI going, all that. I don't know how to work any. [00:42:22] Speaker A: Of it, but the AI is scary as can be and we're using it a little bit. I mean, I think everybody's using it to kind of help write their descript and stuff a little bit. But it's going to be a big part of our future. But yeah, Compass is diving very. Has been diving really, really heavy into it. Has been for a long time. Which is they have so many processes in place that do make our lives easier. I'd probably have to have five or six people behind the doors as staff helping us in my group. And we've got three, you know. [00:42:53] Speaker A: Because they know how to use all the tools that Compass has provided. [00:42:56] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, kudos for seeing what you saw in it because. Seems like everything I never imagined. [00:43:00] Speaker A: I mean, Robert's got a major. [00:43:02] Speaker B: Yeah, he's. [00:43:03] Speaker A: He likes buying companies. [00:43:04] Speaker B: Yeah, he's got a motor to him too. [00:43:07] Speaker A: You could tell he's got a serious motor to him. He's younger than I am and you know, he's a, he's just, he's a really special human being and he loves, he really likes the business too. Well, his mom was a real estate agent, so he grew up. [00:43:19] Speaker B: I heard that. And you can tell that he does. One thing that I thought was cool is I saw that he goes to an open house, I think every single weekend. Yeah, every weekend in New York, of course. But yeah, I've seen him when he's traveling or whatever, he'll go to one, so he's still pretty boots on the ground. [00:43:35] Speaker A: He drives his kids to those open houses. [00:43:39] Speaker B: Yeah, I love like bringing the kids along too, to show them that, you know, give them some exposure to what you do. And like, look, if you, you know, sure, he lives a nice life. You know, you have to work for it. You know, somebody calls me in the evening, I've talked to you with the kids in the background and stuff too. Like, you know, oh, your kids are there, call me back. I'm like, no, it's okay. My kids can know. The dad has to talk on the phone. You know, this wasn't, this isn't by accident. [00:44:03] Speaker A: No. I think people understand, especially after the pandemic, that life's life a little bit. So you might be working with your kids in the background, but you're still answering your phone and getting work. [00:44:11] Speaker B: And it's not at 3 o' clock on a Tuesday or whatever. It's, you know, if you gotta talk at night or the weekend or whatever. Right, right. We're taking them to school. So. [00:44:18] Speaker A: No, he travels like a madman. I mean, he was in Chicago a couple weeks ago. I saw him in Nashville for a Compass event for four weeks ago. He's bouncing around different offices around the country all the time. [00:44:28] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:44:28] Speaker A: Just to, you know, stop into sales meetings and things like that. Because I think it just to stay. [00:44:32] Speaker B: In touch with people. [00:44:34] Speaker B: You know, I don't know if I would be doing my job as a interviewer here if I didn't, you know, bring up as it relates to Compass, the Compass Zillow stuff right now. And I'll, and I don't know how much you care to say about it, but I'll share my perspective on. Is it related to being a customer? Is like when we were selling our house, we put it on the, I think you call it the top agent network or something. [00:44:54] Speaker A: That's one of the portals for the product. [00:44:56] Speaker B: Right. So there's a, you can kind of like in concentric circles, expose it to, you know, and I'm like, yeah, I'm all for that. Because if we can have, if you can, if we can have a buy side agent who is professional and does this full time and that's additive to me as a seller, you know, because then it increases the probability of a smooth outcome. And we weren't just selling our home in a vacuum, we were selling it to buy another house. And so somebody could say, well, you didn't, you know, you didn't let everybody in the world see it. I was like, felt like it should be my choice as a customer because for me it wasn't, you know, you could say, sure, maybe we did leave some amount of money on the table. I was willing to take that risk. [00:45:42] Speaker B: At the, you know, like with the goal to be to increase the probability of closing, to be able to perform the way I wanted when we were buying our house. Right. So it just felt like, all right, this is an asset that we own. We should be able to make that decision. Like, I didn't care and still don't care that it. Was it unfair to some other broker that didn't see it? Well, like, they didn't earn the ability to get in the top agent or I don't care, or just pay, to. [00:46:09] Speaker A: Be honest, not my. [00:46:10] Speaker B: Like in what. So. So do you have any, like, any thoughts about the debate that's going on or do you. [00:46:17] Speaker A: I've got all kinds of thoughts about it. [00:46:19] Speaker B: Anything that you want to say? [00:46:21] Speaker A: Sure, sure. I mean, honestly, just the whole idea of Zillow is something I've hated for 20 years. And I mean, that's one thing Robert and I see very similarly. And it's a simple fact of this. [00:46:36] Speaker A: My sellers, this is on the seller side, but on my sellers, they spend a lot of time getting their house prepared for sale. I spend a lot of time taking photography, getting floor plans done, doing videos now and all the marketing that goes into it. And Zillow takes all the material that my sellers work to help get their house ready to put together. I've paid to put together, puts it on their site, and then if I want a lead off their site, I've got to pay them for it. And. And the worst part, and that's just a broker rub of mine, but the worst part to me is if a consumer goes onto Zillow and hits a button and says, I want to see this house, they think they're going to come see me. [00:47:16] Speaker B: Yeah, right. Because your name's on it. But. And they're just putting it into a generic query. Right. Like a form field. [00:47:21] Speaker A: And what they're getting instead is one of these agents in Chicago, and some of the biggest agents do spend fortunes on Zillow leads is they're getting paired up with an agent to come see my listing. And half the time they don't even understand it. And so they show up, and now there's this agent in between when they're really trying to get to me. And that's just. I don't think that's consumer friendly and I don't think it's straightforward and honest in terms of, like, whether you should list your house actively on the market or on a private listing. It's all. It's all. It just depends. [00:47:51] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:47:52] Speaker A: If somebody wants to be aspirational on their pricing. Probably makes sense to try it on the private market. Or somebody like you wants their life to be less convenient, more. Less inconvenienced, and wants to more certainty. Sure. But it's. I just give my clients the option. And, you know, there are times when it should go on the market because it's a $700,000 condo in Lincoln park and you're going to get a lot more offers if it does go on the market. So you just have to explain all the options to your clients and let them make a decision. That's how I did. [00:48:20] Speaker B: Well, and you did. And also from my perspective, as it related to is like, I didn't look at those two options as mutually exclusive. I could say like, all right, we'll give it a week. [00:48:29] Speaker A: Well, that's exactly. [00:48:30] Speaker B: I think we're like going out of town. Like, give it a week. Here's the keys. [00:48:33] Speaker A: It's exactly what we did. [00:48:34] Speaker B: And then. Yeah, and then it was like, if it doesn't click, we'll go out to the next ring in the concentric circle and broaden the audience. And at that point, you know, we get more eyeballs on or whatever. [00:48:43] Speaker A: Absolutely. And I mean, brokerage firms feel differently, but I never have a game plan in place where it only goes on the private market. [00:48:49] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:48:49] Speaker A: It's always like, if it doesn't sell at a price that's aspirationally happy to my sellers, then we then go on to the open market. But a lot of families like yourselves, that's what you do is you get your house ready, you get out of town for a few days, make it perfect so your kids don't make it, you know, messy again. And so you're not having to like that. [00:49:05] Speaker B: Nerf darts everywhere. [00:49:06] Speaker A: But it's hard for you, not me. Like, I can pick up the Nerf darts, but you're doing it four times a day at 10 o', clock, noon, 4 and 7 o' clock. When all these people want to see your house. [00:49:14] Speaker B: So when I don't even understand how it works. So when they, when they, when they po put in, hey, I'm interested in this house in Zillow, it goes to just. If you pay a certain amount, it's like kind of like Google AdWords or whatever. Like, you'll get, you know, they'll get a query that says, hey, this person's interested in this house. So then the agent. [00:49:35] Speaker B: Will call you to try to understand the house, because they have no. [00:49:37] Speaker A: They just call me to make an appointment. [00:49:39] Speaker B: I see. Yeah, but you Can. [00:49:41] Speaker A: First of all, you know which agents in the city, especially the bigger ones, that pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for these leads. And often it's like, oh, I want to see the house in three hours. [00:49:50] Speaker B: People pay hundreds of thousands of dollars annually for these leads. Hundreds. That's like their business. [00:49:54] Speaker A: Yes. [00:49:54] Speaker B: Oh, wow. Interesting. I didn't realize that you could take. [00:49:57] Speaker A: The top 10 agents in the city, and several of those people pay that kind of money. [00:50:01] Speaker A: Now, granted, they may not buy that. In fact, the chances of them buying that property are very low. Right. Because they don't know the broker yet. They don't even know if it's a neighbor. They haven't been qualified as buyers yet. But it is a way for that Zillow broker, if you will, that pick up a client. And that's the whole premise behind it. [00:50:17] Speaker B: I see. [00:50:17] Speaker A: But then they have to give a giant chunk of the money back to Zillow for that lead. So you can either buy the leads up front, or you can do a program with Zillow where you pay. [00:50:27] Speaker B: Either. [00:50:27] Speaker A: Per lead, or you just pay a bunch of money and just get leads. There's also part of their program is like, you get a call on a Saturday, and if you don't get back, if you don't answer that call live from Zillow, it's a live call. Then it goes to the next Zillow person. So it just goes. So you have to have a person on call at all times. [00:50:44] Speaker B: What an exhausting way to practice the business. [00:50:46] Speaker A: Shoot me. I mean, no, thank you. I would have no interest in that. I never have bought those leads. But that. It works for some people. And those are the people that have 35 or 40 people on their team. Yeah, because they chase them all down and there's money in it. I think people do it, but that's not the world I want to live in. [00:51:02] Speaker B: I didn't even know how that all worked. Yeah. [00:51:06] Speaker B: So one thing that I noticed about your business when we worked together and we talked about it a little bit right before we started filming is. And I guess you alluded to it when you talked about your organization, but you did a very good job of being plugged in and available, but without. [00:51:26] Speaker B: Micromanaging your team, like, you know, seemingly. Seemingly from my perspective, pretty efficiently. Like, I still felt like I was dealing with you, but Barbara was the team member, and then Arno on our site, and so they were both great. But, like. [00:51:46] Speaker B: How do you balance being involved and plugged in and not handing off so your customer feels like they were handed off with still being able to service as many clients as you have going on the pipeline at any given time. [00:52:00] Speaker A: Sure. Well, I'm a little bit of a crazy man because, I mean, every showing request that comes into our office, I see for any of our listings. And the vast majority of the business brought into our group is brought in by me. So to answer your question is my favorite thing in this business is to be out showing houses. So, like, I enjoy selling houses. Arno, I had help with your previous home because he had helped me last time we sold that house. And then the sellers of the home you purchased, Barbara, helped me because we had been working with them to find another home together. They ended up purchasing a home that I'd also sold a couple times in the past. So just. Yours was a incredibly weird dynamic in the best possible way. But. [00:52:41] Speaker A: I'm there when it matters. Yes, I'm there for a lot of the showings, but I handle all negotiations, all pricing. I do the walkthroughs to make sure the house is ready for photography. I not only handle negotiations of the price, I handle the negotiations. On the inspection stuff, you were, like, super easy. Both your sales were because you kept a nice house and you were very reasonable on the buy side. But I spent a lot of time dealing with inspection reports and then going to the final walkthrough. [00:53:08] Speaker B: I have an aversion. [00:53:09] Speaker A: Well, you're in the business, though. [00:53:10] Speaker B: I've got it on any apartment building we've bought. I've never asked for credit. [00:53:13] Speaker A: You just posted something. [00:53:14] Speaker B: Freaking deal with it. Because I just. [00:53:16] Speaker A: You just. You've posted about the fact that you don't. You buy buildings as is, and you don't go back on your word. But, you know, you know how many times I have, I had to worry. I've had to argue about GSCI outlets or, you know, a furnace that needs to have the filters changed or cleaned. It's just part of the business. But my point is, I keep my hands in the weeds on all that stuff, too. Sure. When the appraiser comes out, sure, I might not be there to meet the appraiser, but my team member will be armed with comps and floor plans and all this stuff to make sure the appraisals work out. So the stuff that's more directly interfaced with us is important. [00:53:50] Speaker A: And honestly, you're an easy guy to work with, too, so I enjoy it. Sometimes it has to do with the quality of the client, too. Fortunately, most of my clients to really good people. [00:53:58] Speaker B: Yeah. So when you talked about your organization, it sounded like there was somebody on your team that is like maybe mandated or that's kind of their role is keeping you organized without giving away your secret sauce. What do you do to stay so organized? Because it does feel like you have the process pretty slotted. [00:54:22] Speaker B: Your team members kind of know. So. [00:54:27] Speaker B: Is there anything about the process and the organization throughout it that you could share that you feel like you figured out at some point that really helped your business? [00:54:36] Speaker A: Well, I think the nice thing for me is our average sale last year was probably a million three or a million four. And the reason I say that is. [00:54:45] Speaker A: It would be much more difficult if I was selling the same volume of homes at 400,000 a clip because it's more chaotic. And sure, like Ashley, who's wonderful that handles all of our scheduling. She knows which listings are a priority for me to be there for that or there for that. They know second showings. I should be there for this listing. And also the key component is like if I have something going on socially or if I'm going to the gym, I block my calendar out. And they know if I'm not blocked out or if I'm not out of town, plug away. But we keep a very open dialogue about communication in terms of like what I need to be there for. From my perspective, if it's a beautiful home in Lincoln park, we're listing next spring. Yeah, I probably do want to be there for the photographs of that home. But do I need to be there for photography of a South loop two bedroom, two bath? I don't need to be there for the pictures of those. My team member will be my marketing person. Well, yeah, so I just try to find the right balance. It's every day to struggle, but it's just I do my best. [00:55:42] Speaker B: Yeah. What do you think is, is there a commonality and why, when you see the brokerage community as a whole residential space, is there a common factor that you think limits other brokers ability to scale faster than they could grow their businesses? [00:56:00] Speaker A: I think it's tricky. You can scale on the buy side. Usually it's by buying Zillow leads, but really I've been very slow to scale. I could be much bigger and my volume numbers could be much larger if I'd wanted to scale more quicker. [00:56:15] Speaker A: You have to have inventory of listings and I wouldn't, I'd say in the last three to five years. [00:56:20] Speaker B: So the Zillow brokers, that's not, they're not building listing inventory. Right. I mean they have to cut you off. But their business is kind of chasing the buy side, right? [00:56:27] Speaker A: Chasing the buy side, yeah. [00:56:28] Speaker B: Interesting. [00:56:29] Speaker A: I don't, very rarely, do I, to the best of my knowledge, do the brokers that do a lot of Zillow business get leads on listings. These are buyers clicking on my listings that want to see them and getting hooked up with a Zillow listing agent. So you really like to have a team. You need to have inventory because like a new development like this, for instance, this is a wonderful project for us. [00:56:52] Speaker A: But sure, we get calls off our sign where somebody wants to spend $950,000. And I don't have anything at this price level here, but guess what, that's a great way to pick up a buyer. And you're not giving 40% to Zillow and your name's already on the side of the building, so you already have credibility with those buyers. It's not like some opaque scheme to try to pick up clients. So having inventory of projects like this, as well as just quality inventory like your old home, it leads to more business. [00:57:19] Speaker B: It's very similar to my business. [00:57:21] Speaker A: It's very similar to yours. [00:57:22] Speaker B: It's all an inventory business. And you know, the buy side, you know, you can improve the efficiency of it over time and after, you know, you know, you know the audience better and better. But it's very much an inventory. [00:57:35] Speaker A: Well, you represent a lot of amazing landlords at this point and that, that's the key in your business. Right. I mean, in our business, the longer you're in it, the more you go towards the listing side. It's just, it's just a natural migration. Yeah. And having the listings and inventory, and there are times in our, both our businesses, you'd rather have the buyers because the market's so bad. [00:57:53] Speaker B: Well, and you can cut. I mean, if you look at a continuum of a transaction, you know, if you have a buyer that you bring to your deal, you're cutting off all the front end cording to get the listing, the prep for getting the listing ready to market, the, you know, dozens of tours of marketing it, and you're kind of fast tracking it to the step where you put under contract. Right now what you don't have is the backstop of if it doesn't work out for that buyer. Obviously there's no, like. [00:58:20] Speaker B: There'S, it's never certain, but there's certainly, there's a lot less certainty in getting the deal done if you're just bringing a buyer to a deal. But you could cut the work in half or less. So it's a business, too, just not for me. We've talked a little bit about real estate. What are we at on time, Stephen? [00:58:37] Speaker A: We are at 59. [00:58:39] Speaker B: Oh, shit. Okay. Well, we'll do one more question and then we'll kind of wrap it up. [00:58:42] Speaker A: And you can cut some stuff out. Maybe a little editing here and there. [00:58:45] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:58:48] Speaker B: We'Ve talked a little bit about real estate marketing, and. [00:58:53] Speaker B: It'S been interesting to see the evolution of real estate marketing over the course of the last five or ten years. Because, you know, social media as it is, and, you know, the listing videos are just expected at this point. And it. They're very helpful because you can see more in a video than you can. But, boy, there's a, you know, somebody who sees a lot of them. [00:59:16] Speaker B: There's some that are like a little. They're very cinematic, and they're very. [00:59:22] Speaker B: Seemingly like ego driven by the broker, you know, and then there's some where you're like, all right, I can see this cool house. Which is really what I'm wondering. [00:59:33] Speaker B: How do you think about doing them, and how are you thinking about doing them differently to kind of capture some eyeballs and keep people engaged enough to pay attention to them? [00:59:46] Speaker A: There are a lot of agents that really try to promote themselves more than the properties. We've all seen them, and. And they're really trying to promote. [00:59:57] Speaker B: My boys would call that cringe. [00:59:59] Speaker A: Cringe. [00:59:59] Speaker B: That's what they're calling it now. It's cringe. [01:00:00] Speaker A: But really, I mean. And they're very similar. And they drive up in these fancy cars that they don't even own. They get them from the dealership and they promote. It's a whole promotion thing and. Sure. And that feels very luxurious on some level. [01:00:12] Speaker A: When I do videos of properties, I try to make it interesting about the property. Like this project, for instance. We did four along the way as the construction was going on, I talked about how this used to be a barrel factory. You know, I did a. I thought it was a really cool video. About three months ago, on the 2600 block of Lakewood, I had two single families. I was selling there. I was telling the story about how they were tearing up the railroad tracks and why they were there. Going back to the early 1900s, I had this crazy block, too. It's a sweet block. And now the train tracks are officially gone. I sold this house in north center last year that used to be. They had a coach house that they used to grow and dry out asparagus in it in the early 1900s. So these. [01:00:53] Speaker B: Fuck. Did it stink? [01:00:55] Speaker A: No, because it was a coach house, but. And even the house on Eugenie I was telling you, I was talking about earlier, it told such a great story. So, I mean, real estate tells stories and neighborhoods can tell stories, and I'd rather talk about that. Of course, my face is in it because somebody has to be the one talking about it. But I really tried to do some homework ahead of time about the neighborhood. I've got a great house in the McCormick area, like, of. Of like Belden and Lincoln Park. All these. There's, like, I think, 68 old row adventure row homes that were sold off in the 70s. And we've got. We did a video of that, and we have. That'll be a spring listing. Talking about all the history of the. The seminary and stuff like that, and how it's got this, like, now private park that everybody can use. And so I just think it's more interesting, too. It's just more interesting to talk about the city, the neighborhood history, history of houses than it is just to see somebody, you know, drive up in a Lamborghini. And. Yeah, you know, it's just. That's just not my jam. [01:01:51] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, thank you, because. [01:01:52] Speaker A: But some people love it. And there's a lot. I mean, I get interviewed once in a while for listings, and they're like, the first. One of the first things they'll ask me is, how many Instagram followers do you have? I get that question once in a while, and I'm like, I don't even know. Right now it's probably 35 or 40,000, which is not bad. But they'll get a bigger number from someone else probably. So that's probably not my people, if that's really what you're doing. [01:02:14] Speaker B: Well, you know, that's what I was gonna say. It's like, you know, we sit here and we talk about how we do it, and we have a lot probably more similar than different about the way that we approach the business. But Beauty of the business is different strokes for different folks. I mean, like, there's clients that appreciate different things and appreciate different tax and want their house showcased and represented a certain way. And that's. That's beauty real estate. A friend of mine was on the podcast, a guy named Cody Hunter. Mark sells a bunch of, like, downtown office. Good dude. But he's like. He's an Iowa guy also. And, you know, he'll come in, like, he doesn't dress fancy. You know, he's selling $100 million deals. And he's himself, you know, he's. It's just about being yourself, being true to yourself, and you don't have to fake it every day. And then if you do it consistently enough, you treat people well and you show that you're productive, you can. You can click with a certain percentage of the audience. [01:03:07] Speaker A: That's what it's all about. [01:03:08] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, you've been great with your time. I'm going to ask you two questions that I ask everybody that comes on. You talked about this one a little bit earlier, but what's a piece of advice that you'd give someone starting in their career to either get traction or to kind of accelerate their business, propel their business to the next level? [01:03:28] Speaker A: Know that your smallest client could be a renter. It could be a buyer. Your smallest client could turn into your biggest client one day. And your smallest client could have a really wealthy friend that wants to buy or sell a house. So treat everybody the same. Yeah, it's really critical. It doesn't matter. You know, some people don't dress super nicely, and you find out that they've got more money than God. So you really have to take every lead. Yeah, right. I mean, and I'm the same way. So treat everybody the same. And every listing, whether or buyer, whether it's exciting or not, every piece of business leads to more business. [01:04:02] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:04:03] Speaker A: And stay in touch with all your old clients. [01:04:05] Speaker B: I think it's. You could. You could expand. The answer outside of just your clients is, like, anybody that's involved in the deal, you know, because, like, I've recognized that, you know, like, the maintenance guys that are helping me show a building, you know, if they like me, if they see that I treat them with respect, and we all have a job to do, and sometimes my job's annoying for theirs and, you know, but. But I'm still just. Just normal, straightforward. Respect them as people and as they have a job to do. Appraisers, you know, lenders, attorneys, actors, attorneys. Ever. Like, it just makes it so much easier if you go through it. There's like, something about real estate that brings out a lot of egos. And I think sometimes people, like, get their kicks from, like, being abrasive and, like, pretend, you know, like having sharp elbows and stuff like that. And, you know, I can appreciate the competitiveness in that. And I'm not somebody that's gonna be pushed over either. But, like, I'm also gonna treat everybody respectfully until, you know, I can just end it there. Like I'm. I'm not even gonna stoop to their level if they stop, you know, so it's just a super smart. [01:05:10] Speaker A: So many people wanna come onto this podcast and talk to you about it. And let me ask you one quick question back. So how many times have you had a really special property for sale and you're representing the owner, and then five years or 10 years later, the buyer wants to sell it again, they call you, oh, dude, every time, versus their broker? [01:05:25] Speaker B: You know, something that we try to teach. Like, you know, you're interviewing every. The way you carry yourself, the way you show a property, the way that you handle due diligence, the way you know everything about it you're interviewing, you know, so it's like if I'm. If I'm meeting somebody and, you know, I'm showing a cool property and I, and I'm late, or I don't know the, the facts about it, or I pretend like I know something that I don't, I'm wrong. Any that you're always auditioning for the next wave of business. [01:05:57] Speaker B: Make it easier on yourself by doing a good job, being prepared. You know, something I kind of got sloppy with is like, I go show a building and I'm pretty. You know, I can remember the facts that most people want to know and I know what people want to see. But lately I've been trying to keep a little index card. Which units I'm showing, what's the unit size, what's the rent like? You know, stuff that's just. [01:06:17] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:06:18] Speaker B: Because I can't remember it for every deal. And it's like, that's something I did really well at the beginning because I didn't know it yet. And then I got kind of lazy or complacent and figured like, oh, now I know. And I'm trying to get back to a little blocking and tackling stuff I did at the beginning. [01:06:32] Speaker A: You know, I've also taught my team, if somebody asks you a question, you don't know the answer, say, you know What? I'm not 100% sure. I'll check and I'll get back to you. And then you follow up within 24 hours, if not two hours. Because it's better to say, I'm pretty sure this is the answer, but let me confirm, than getting it wrong. Getting it wrong causes massive problems. [01:06:51] Speaker B: It can be expensive. Yes. And then also goes back to the trust. Anybody coming in the door can't expect you to know every single thing. [01:06:58] Speaker A: Right. [01:06:58] Speaker B: And if they do, you're not Going to please them anyway. So what. I'm with you on that. The rap question, why do you love Chicago as a place to run your business, to live, you know, invest your business further in your business? [01:07:12] Speaker A: You know, I'm a Midwest guy. You know, you're from Iowa, I'm from Ohio. It was a national transgression to leave a small town, Ohio, where I grew up, and move here. [01:07:24] Speaker A: I just think. I think I'll always be a Midwest guy. I think Chicago's got such diversity and such great sports teams and such great energy. I mean, you can be on the lakefront and then be in the West Loop and then be in Pilsen, and it's like you're in three different Evanston, and it's like you can get to one from the other quickly. I think we've, you know, and I think there are parts of this country that like to use Chicago as a punching bag because some of our. Some of the politicians we've had of late, but I think Chicago is a great city. Having grown up in a small town, I raised my three daughters who are now, you know, those. The oldest, older, two are in high school in the city. You're raising your kids in the city. And it's a different world and a different dynamic, but I think that they're just going to see a lot more of the world, too. So raising families in the city, I think is really cool. But. And, yeah, I mean, lots of sports teams and just a thousand thousands of great restaurants. So, I don't know. I'm. I'm a big Chicago fan. I always will be. [01:08:22] Speaker B: I love everything you said. One thing that I'll highlight and then. And then we'll shut up is. [01:08:29] Speaker B: You know, we're both. You're from Ohio, I'm from Iowa, and like, Chicago is like the, Like Mecca, the beacon for. For. For a really large area of the country, you know. And so, like, it was the. It was the closest big city where I grew up and where you grew up. And when I came here, it represented this opportunity, this, you know, this ability to have ambition and, you know, not have any governor on that, because you can do anything you want in Chicago in any industry. But, like, if you're from the coast or you're from down south, there's other competing major markets where you end up having this, like, delusion of the folks who are really ambitious and want to live in the big city. Whereas in Chicago, you can't comp it to, like, Kansas City or St. Louis or wherever else, you know, so it pulls from such a wide area of the country that then you're here and if you're, you know, if you're performing at a high level or if you work to perform at a high level, you interact with all these other people who are doing the same. [01:09:27] Speaker A: And you meet so many interesting people. [01:09:29] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:09:30] Speaker A: So many major corporations and finance centers and, you know, hospitals. [01:09:36] Speaker A: Yeah, it's really interesting. You meet so many interesting people. [01:09:38] Speaker B: Yeah, I've appreciated that more recently. And you probably. I mean, even to a greater extent, you meet so many people that are like so impressive and learn. You know, you talk about Nick from millennia and just being able to do a meaningful deal with him and being able to interact with him is pretty rare instance. Not too many people are interacting with him with the. You know, with as close as you were in doing a real estate transaction with them. [01:10:04] Speaker A: When you moved here from Iowa, did you know what a Michelin star restaurant was? Dude, I knew what the. I knew the tires. Michelin, which is the same company if you didn't know that. [01:10:13] Speaker B: Actually even like the first time I went to Aline was a few years ago and I was like, this is not gonna be my thing. Like, I'm just not. I don't fully appreciate like ultra luxury. You know, I like nice shit. [01:10:24] Speaker A: I'm not four hour entertainment. [01:10:25] Speaker B: I don't. But like I didn't think it was gonna be cool and I went there and it like blew my mind. It was like the food, the taste of food is great, but like it was like a show and then back in the back of the house, you know that you see how they're like. It's artists and like, it's just. It was wild. [01:10:42] Speaker A: It's impressive. I can enjoy it. I would never want to be the one putting on that show. But it's impressive for those of the details. [01:10:49] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:10:50] Speaker A: And the attention to do so. [01:10:51] Speaker B: It's awesome. Well, I got a lot of respect for you and the way that you run your business. Keep it up. Thanks for making the time for this, man. [01:10:57] Speaker A: Same. Same here. [01:10:58] Speaker B: Cool. [01:10:58] Speaker A: Thank you for having me on. [01:10:59] Speaker B: Yeah, of course.