Focusing On Your Real Estate Brokerage’s Agents with Erinn Nobel of Real

Brokerage Insider

TRANSCRIPT

Katie Ragusa: Welcome to Brokerage Insider, the podcast where we interview the leaders in real estate and technology. I'm your host. Katie Ragusa, the VP of product at TRIBUS, is a brokerage software vendor. Today I'm joined by Erinn Noble, the chief culture officer at Real, which, as you learn from today's podcast, is an extremely innovative brokerage company Erinn. Thanks so much for joining me today. I'm super happy to be here.

Erinn Noble: I'm super happy to be here. Katie, thank you for having me.

Katie Ragusa: So as I was thinking back, I think the last time we actually chatted, we were on stage at Inman. And looking back on that now, so much has changed since we were doing events in person.

Erinn Noble: Yes. Fond memories of that. Absolutely. We got in those days.

Katie Ragusa: Me too. So can you start by just tell me a little bit about real.

Erinn Noble: Oh, absolutely, yeah, Real is a national brokerage model founded in twenty fourteen by that time, your colleague that is in New York City in fact, and we are currently open in twenty three states and just over fourteen hundred agents. And we're looking to grow and align with other agents like really align with our business model.

Katie Ragusa: Lots of growth very quickly. So 2014 you said is when you started, right.

Erinn Noble Yeah.

Katie Ragusa: The company. So I think I might have read this from LinkedIn, but you called it and I want to get this right. So I'm looking at a quote, a simple, lean and brilliant real estate model. And I don't hear the word brilliant thrown around very often. So what was it specifically about the company that aligned with you?

Erinn Noble: First and foremost, it was the people, the leadership team at the top that that has been here, boots on ground with some amazing, brilliant visions around how to kind of reinvent the traditional business as we know it, where we're incorporating a lot more of what the consumer needs, the end user, the buyer and seller, the people that are actually conducting the transactions with the state agents. People understand exactly. Yeah. And streamlining that business and really addressing a lot of the pain points in the industry where we as agents, brokers, brokerages, kind of seem to fall short.

Katie Ragusa: What do you think is missing or in other brokerages or where are they really falling short or getting it wrong?

Erinn Noble: I think ultimately we know the consumer is a you know, that is the biggest component of what we're doing. Right. That's why we're in the business. It's we're here to serve our consumers. We're here to help people buy and sell houses and hopefully do it elegantly with some creative skill. For the most part, it's such a fractured industry. You know, we've got title escrow in some states. We've got attorney states. We've got the lender involved, we've got the inspector involved. And there's not one cohesive platform that involves everybody. So it's it's really that understanding of where am I? Where's the menu tracker? You order something and you want to see it. It's almost like a flight tracker. Are we you know, are we getting ready to land? Are we getting ready to take off in escrow?

And even the terminology can be foreign to buyers and sellers. What does that mean? What does title do? What does an inspector do? Think the most common, common things that I had working with especially new buyers, they thought an inspection and an appraisal was the same thing. So it's really getting down to the root of the basic understanding of what these systems are, what we're doing in place to create a really cohesive and elegant experience for the buying and selling process and the leading alleviating a lot of those pain points.

Katie Ragusa: I love even the words you use like an elegant process. And just so full transparency. I was on the other side of the transaction earlier this year. I bought a home and I know the business. I had a lovely Realtor, a wonderful lender, and it's still confusing because I was actually buying in a new state. So as a consumer, you're still wondering, should I be paying for this extra inspection insurance?

What's the right choice of those optional items and someone just to think through things for you that you didn't miss anything because this is a major move. So when you're providing that transparency to the consumer, you're in twenty three states. I think it was that you sent twenty three. So is it region or location dependent to on top of that, or do you have the same model that works for everybody? Practically speaking, how do you guys actually deliver?

(05:00)

Erinn Noble: Sure. No, really great question. Powerful question. Now we are a national real estate platform right now, us based. We've got visions on a lot of growth, potentially global growth. It is a platform that's designed. It is sort of one size fits all. And we can deliver that because of our technology. But we also understand hyper localism. We understand that things look right here.

And for instance, Bellingham, Washington, don't really resound with people in Manhattan.

In New York City, we've got different practices, different rules and regulations around things. And that's where having our local brokers or compliance brokers in charge of things, they're teaching local courses, they're teaching best practices, teaching about form. All of those against the hyper local best practices on how to best do business in your area. That's where things really come in to the specifics as you drill down on that specific market area that.

Katie Ragusa: you a Realtor, be that expert locally.

Erinn Noble: Absolutely. Absolutely, 100 percent.

Katie Ragusa: So let's talk about the agents a little bit more then, because they're the the other side of all of this. And I think the vision behind real I'm not sure if this is like the main tag line, but I when I was reading up on them, make agents lives better, really stand out in that statement. So what does that mean to you at real what are you doing to differentiate yourselves to to fulfill that statement?

Erinn Noble: Yes, sure. That was the statement that it's kind of a fun story. Some of it back up a little bit when we were exploring opportunities, but real. We flew out to the office for small office in New York City in the Chelsea district last February, right before the whole pandemic started. You know, exactly when we could fly and we could meet with people in the subways and all that stuff. But for us, we wanted to the sniff test and meet with the team. But that was one of the first things that my eyeballs landed on. So we're talking about a small office with about maybe eight or 10 desks and their total. And the purpose statement was written on the wall, which was making agents like that better. Gosh, this is really fantastic. This is a true purpose, value written on the wall for everybody to see, everybody to live on a daily basis.

And that had been the company's purpose for multiple years. They had been doing that through support, through leadership, through training. And they've done a really fantastic job as a very clean team of about 11 people on staff supporting right around a thousand agents.

So it's just an incredible task to take on. And that's a lot of agents, a lot of different agent counts within, you know, ranges of needs as well and different expectations. But it was remarkable. Since then, I've taken the company through a different culture workshop to really define what is our purpose and how can we embrace our clients twofold. So we understand that really we have to subsequence. We have our agents clients and we have our consumer clients.

So how do we embrace that together and how do we redefine what our purposes? And then kind of twofold. So what we came up with as a company and this is an entire company collaboration from our agents and our leadership team and all of our brokers is building your future together. And it just folds in what we want to do. We want to build a future together. We want to create success for everyone.

Katie Ragusa: You guys have had so much experience building, growing, you were obviously recruited somewhat recently to come to real on the corporate side, the staff side.

So let's talk for a minute about how you guys have approach agents for recruiting, because obviously you've grown in a tremendous way since you started. So how is your recruiting strategy different? There's a few financial things that stick out to me.

Erinn Noble: Sure, we do it a lot differently for us. First and foremost, we are a real estate brokerage. We are going to be in the real estate business. We don't have any other direction other than being in the real estate business. And we approached our agents very simply, it's through relationships and I said we want to attract agents that we know, like and trust and we want to share a better model with them, just a better, simpler, leaner, cleaner model and a better way of doing real estate. And that's that's it. It's all through relationships.

(10: 00)

Katie Ragusa: And I think you offer agents an opportunity to gain equity in the company, too, right?

Erinn Noble: We do. We did. We actually became a publicly traded company for traded on the Otis's, as are the experts. We were listed on the ATC June eight. So this is a new thing for us. We're super excited about it and really excited to be able to share some opportunities and equity sharing within the company for our agents that we do.

Katie Ragusa: I'm glad you mentioned that not not every brokerage company has that experience. So I think beyond the equity, there's also a rev share model there, too. Right. So lots of different financial strategies. So how is your model different than companies like Keller Williams are?

Erinn Noble: That sets you apart to Gary Keller, the brilliant strategist with us, and he created the profit share model, which works great, a different market sectors, brilliant system, great way to help agents build another strategy for income, especially when we're all commission based. And sometimes we have those commission gaps or a sale fails and something doesn't close in them. Oh, boy, how are you going to pay your mortgage? So I think Gary really was brilliant and forward thinking and visionary and creating that profit sharing model. Glenn came along and kind of redefined the way of how to do it, of profit, share out some of the revenue from the company and just keep it all revenue based. And we came along and it's a very similar model. We adapted the revenue share model that we streamlined it and kind of dumped it down a bit.

So it's very, very simple for agents to be rewarded for attracting agents, that they have relationships with agents that real are rewarded on their front level at the very top tier, five percent for agents that they know, like and trust and feel that would benefit from being aligned with the company. And then, of course, when we're talking about revenue, you can't forget commissions in a real estate, right? So I don't think this would be a real estate podcast without asking a market related question.

So you guys have such a wide spread coverage with those twenty three states that you're represented in. And this is a very strange year. And in prior years, I think a lot of markets had experienced really slow to to nothing going on throughout the winter months. So what are you guys experiencing right now?

Hypergrowth, in fact, with my conversations with agents across the nation. They've had their best year ever, but they've also been able to kind of take a pause, take some time, re-evaluate who they're in business with, re-evaluate what they're paying for with their overhead is especially right now. I mean, we're back in lock down in Washington state, some brokerages can only allow up to twenty five percent of their agents into the brokerage right now.

So pretty much everybody still working virtually. So it's given agents a breather to really re-evaluate their way of doing business. And this has been quite a niche market for us.

Katie Ragusa: It is such a crazy winter market, I'm seeing that everywhere to everybody that I'm talking to, it's so refreshing to hear that, you know, not everything's bad, the time to reset good, the time to see family. A lot of brokers have taken to their technology. And you mentioned that a couple times, and especially in Peter's background with the the spinal cord, I think you called it. So how has the impact of technology in a brokerage grown and evolved over the years? So not just this year of change, but you've been in this industry for since, what did you say, the late 90s, 1999? OK, so what have you seen, especially being so close to it?

Erinn Noble: It's funny that you ask because I just moved offices over the weekend and I heard some archaic relic from the old days. And we actually do rent space in the richest office because we live out in the county on 15 acres and we've got three kids at home and the class meetings every day. And we just don't quite have the bandwidth to get out of the house because there is no room for exactly. That's exactly it. So we have a little breather by renting some space and the regional office. But I found some of my old lockboxes that are the kind of look like a bike lock and my old M.O.s book from nineteen ninety nine. But it's very similar to a real estate book and a telephone book. But it's just so funny to look back things like this right here in Bellingham. We used to just drive around looking for listings, looking for new signs that went up and we would read to our MLS books that were published twice a year or twice or twice a month. And we would show these MLS books with our different clients, but we'd have to kind of break up the MLS book price range and then hand them out to our different clients. Of course, we weren't allowed to do that technically, but there was no other way to share new listings coming on the market because it wasn't such a thing. Nevertheless. Or a sort of old shogi player, sort of like nothing, I mean, we would go out and take our own pictures and we have to send the pictures to print for wait a week to pick them up and post them manually. So we hardly even use cell phones back then.

(15: 00)

And this is just 1999. So to look back and think, OK, wow. So then come the two thousand and tons of new technology and we go through the downturn, two thousand seven, eight, nine. Then I think after that is when things really picked up focus for agents because we had out of town ires clients calling in, not calling the brokerage per say, not calling for specific agent, but just calling and inquiring about listing. And we try to figure out where they are getting this information. Are they finding it online now through websites to search areas? And they didn't care who the agent was or for the brokerage. They just want information about the listing.

So that's where technology for me really turned my head and I thought, wow, I need to be part of the scam or I'm going to be quickly, quickly left behind. So I started looking at different technology systems, CRM. That was a new thing for me as well. Online lead generation. What was that? To learn all about that and educate myself. But that's when I started seeing a brokerage that offered more technology to me. And that's why I left my previous profession and joined EXP that that all of that to the agents. What we're doing now is basically streamlining that experience and making it simpler and cleaner and leaner for both the consumer and the agent to communicate, search, find listings and just have collaboration around the entire buying and selling lifecycle of real estate.

Katie Ragusa: So I think looking back, just seeing that evolution happen, and it's great to actually find those relics of when they still look books and how we used to do business, I found my old super cute cleaning out a house.

It is just a blast from the past and you realize how you used to do your business the day to day and how that changed, I think really sticks with at least me looking back. So do you think taking things that used to be a manual process and being out in the field, taking photos yourself, all of that stuff like the agents very involved to the evolution of technology and where we are today, is their job easier? Is it harder? Because now they have to learn all this new tech. What do you think? That means to an agent who maybe hasn't seen how things were in ninety nine.

Erinn Noble: Ultimately, it depends on the technology and this is where I. An agent who maybe hasn't seen how things were in ninety nine and ultimately it depends on the technology and this is where I have a very present voice with the company because I'm very passionate about how technology should feel to an agent. I don't want it to be overly cumbersome. We don't need we've got so much technology. Push this every day and I'm a total squirrel. I will definitely chase that shiny object, the hundred percent. I'm always looking for the next best thing, but sometimes the next best thing isn't the best solution. It's about empowering agents with just very clean. And again, I love saying elegant, but that's truly who we are, a clean and elegant and simple solution. It's all about kind of just. Taking a pause, stepping back, really looking at the core of what matters here, what do agents truly need? They need support.

(20:00) They need to be in compliance, and they need some tools that really empower them to do their business more efficiently.

So for us, it's being able to do that through our real app. Everything is accessed via mobile phone. You can be in your car and it can be totally Tomago up chained to a desktop. You don't need to go into an office. In fact, you don't even need a laptop to operate every single aspect of your business. And all of that can be done on your phone these days and a lot of what you mentioned that agents need, you mentioned compliance.

Katie Ragusa: That's a great one. And a lot of what they need isn't necessarily what they know to ask for. And I think that's where a lot of innovation it really stands, apart from run of the mill technology that you can tell is just checking a box of what we need a CRM and we need this. So and you're really looking at user experience, not just in a software way, but it's the peace of mind of the consumer, knowing how the transactions, transactions going, you know, are we going to close? And just that stress relief of having that in an app or a website so real has built proprietary tack. Right? Is it correct? And not many brokerages that at...