Real talk with Joe Skousen. Justin Benson. Yeah. We finally did this. What’s up? What’s up, dude? We were just saying, you’re you’re kinda living in the glorious the glorious weather of the southern US right now. Phoenix doesn’t suck right now. That’s for sure. It’s the reason why all the snowbirds are here. Our population doubles in size. Everybody from Canada is here now. And, yeah, every golf round at a mini course costs two hundred dollars around even now at this point. So Exactly. That’s the that’s the proof of it. We’ve known each other now for a while. I you know, for everyone out there, I I love Justin. I love that Justin’s kinda connected to the space, not just at the high level, but like you’re down in there, you know? Sometimes when you’re like you’re like, what’s going on in here? And you you pull it up, Justin’s there and he’s like, let me give you let me give you some insights. So I I love the insights. Especially, we’ve got like this the market. We’ve been talking about the market. I mean, we always do in real estate, but gosh, it feels like perpetually the last three plus years, there’s always been a thing even in addition to the market itself, like the the rates and the and the transaction volume and things. And kinda right now, the market indicators, the transactions and rates are kind of like, yeah, we’re in this bottom of the u still, and it’s a it’s a slow coming out of the u, but it’s they’re kinda heading in the right direction a little bit now. Yeah. It seems like it. I mean, obviously, all the core mechanics are still there, interest rates and affordability and prices or whatnot. But I was actually just chatting with a good friend of mine that’s very smart in the economic world. And he’s like, well, at least in the near term, it looks like, you know, you only have so much price elasticity as a person, but there’s forcing events that just kind of will make people move eventually. It’s like, it it is what it is, and this might not change for a little bit. So let’s just go ahead and do that. And it’s looking like twenty twenty six might be lining up to be one of those things. Right? So I’m excited to see how that all flushes out. Yeah. And we were all a little bit wrong on what were the metrics gonna be in twenty six. I think we I think or at least most of the industry kind of believed that it would we’d see a little higher transaction volume, but generally speaking, we’re kind of slowly slowly kind of hitting some of that improvement in the market. Now the consolidation and the portal games and all the like, that’s not that’s not slow. That that thing seems like it’s like that’s not slowing down. Markets anyways. It’s just the reality. Consolidation and markets ends up happening during, you know, at the bottom of that u at some point. Right? So Yeah. It makes sense that all of that is happening. But it feels interesting when I talk to, like, my team leader friends and stuff. You feel a little helpless to a degree. Right? It’s like watching the federal government do things, and you’re like, I I can’t do anything about that. Like, I just kind of have to, like, roll with the punches. Right? So yeah. That is that is one of the things that I would say is unique, especially with some of the portals and the big brand moves is consolidation is a pretty natural thing. There are some very large players that yeah. To your point, Justin, it’s kinda like it it feels it can feel in a moment if if people let it in the space. It can feel like they they don’t have control. We’re gonna talk about this. They do, but it can feel for a minute like, what what can I do to battle x, y, or z force? I mean, you saw the Google headline. Right? And our good our good buddy, Mike Delpretty was kind of, Mike, good job. Sniffed that out, saw that, but and then kinda all the headlines picked it up. But what’s the word, Justin? So Google’s gonna make its little its little search portal now? Is that what is that what’s gonna happen? Absolutely not. I’m I’m the person I’m in this little founder’s text thread, and people started kinda freaking out about that. And I was the one that hopped in. I’m, like, posting, hey. This is the size of Google. Here’s the size of certain, like, portal companies. Remember that Google is, like, hundreds of times larger kind of thing. No. Their their core business, Google’s gonna get involved with. We I actually know this personally. We just hired a a Google machine learning engineer to do some, like, some some contract work for us, and we had to get approval through legal to to get that done. And this isn’t verbatim, but the spirit of it was we don’t care about, like, the, like, the real estate sector in that regard, basically. Like, it’s it’s not a market that we care about, so, like, go have fun, engineer. Yeah. The reality is, like, Google’s core business on Google, is always been ad revenue. Right? So it totally makes sense that they would do something like this because before, the way the ad revenue would show up is in those paid ad spots. But now we’re all transitioning to this more a different kind of UI with agentic based search. Right? And Google’s, pushing that. So that old way of showing who is you know, who’s who’s paid ad spots show up at the top doesn’t work anymore with that that form factor. So now they need a new, like, a flippy thing where it goes through houses and stuff. Like, that that’s what they’re they’re doing. This is an ad revenue thing. But a Google dot com forward slash homes homes where there’s a search portal on Google to get connected to an agent and that no. Absolutely not. That doesn’t make sense. That that that’s only a business that’s scalable in the United States and basically North America. So Well, the other the other dynamic I I I tend to agree with the point of it’s not they’re not getting in the portal game as such as such. I mean, what I will say is back to this point of like where is their business and and what does make sense here is you don’t I don’t think you have to worry or we have to worry that you’re not going to be able to spend money on Google to get those spots. Don’t worry. You will be able to spend money with Google, like, to do it. Where where are Yeah. Like, you never have clarify that. That that that is not a they are not looking to get more ad money out of real estate teams and brokerages. They’re looking to get more ad money out of very large companies like said portals. Is that I I would argue, I think out of everybody. They’re squeezing that out of everybody. That’s their game. But what I will say is that chunk, there there is a chunk of ad revenue. If you think about the portal game broadly, really most of the portal game is the same kind of game. It was just around a specific kind of asset. And that’s really what portals are in any space is kind of aggregating an asset in order to kind of funnel funnel that traffic. And so, you know, I do think what you’ll see with Google, they won’t play the portal game as such. I don’t think it’s a huge threat to the individual agents and teams. I don’t think it’s a huge threat actually to the MLSs depending on how they play. I I do think the portals are actually the ones that have more to to, I guess, be at threat there or at risk because they will have to pay more to play in that game likely. Yeah. And and or others will be able to go direct to the source more easily. Yeah. And so anyway, it it’ll be interesting to see, and and it’s the big news of today. But look, you also see other things going on. You see Homes and CoStar. Word on the street is they’re sniffing around the tech world for additional acquisitions and and doing more things, maybe feeling some pressure from z. Other portals are still trying to play. Like, there there’s still a lot going on in the portal world. Right? Yeah. Oh, a thousand percent. Consolidation will continue to happen. Yeah. You know, lawsuits that are happening around also tend to happen during times like this. Yeah. There’s a business reason for those things happening, and it’s just interesting to see it all continue to play out. But one thing that I’ve always held dear is that usually the company that is competing with a superior product is the one that gets attacked the most, you know, like Apple getting attacked by Samsung and things like that. Yep. It’s kinda the only way that but at don’t forget that, like, even though you see a news headline that, like, Apple’s getting sued by Samsung today, don’t forget that the screen in your smartphone literally is bought by Apple from Samsung. It’s the reality of that. Yeah. No. It’s it’s not the same way that people think as far as the the way those the how litigious those things get. So Absolutely. Well and you also have some big moves with the brokerages out there. You got consolidation there as well. And, look, I you know, we I I today, we won’t unpack all of that, but you do have these these big plays with brands. And it’s helpful again as everyone’s seeing headlines, watch things, to kind of level set in kind of what what are those dynamics in the space and how important are they to pay attention to because sometimes there’s like this attraction of, you know, in real estate, there’s there’s folks who are the strongest producers really driving transactions, really spending all their time with clients, etcetera. And there’s also this attraction of equity and downlines and models and, like, these are these are real dynamics. And and then there are brands out there where you gotta ask the question, are they playing, you know, for the agent and the team, or are they kinda playing around with the agent and the team? Even big plays going on. And so there is a lot happening on the brands and and brand headlines out there still, Justin. You know, it’s funny about that is, like, I get accused of being a oversimplifier many times. I just kinda, like, do my best to think in the first principles. You know? It’s like, okay. At the end of all of this, I I was having a chat with my best friend about it. Back when I was more naive and not as aware of the macro and microeconomic factors that control some of this stuff, I still ran successful businesses being naive to all of that because I just did the, like, okay. I’ll do a really great job for people, do what I say I’m gonna do, and leave them better than I found them. And guess what? The company grew even doing, like, down cycles is the real reality. So I feel like this, we get emotionally charged by some of this stuff, but, like, I don’t know, first principles of real estate. And for everyone listening, I’m I’m not just like the tech guy. I built a team that spanned three states and sold thousands and thousands of houses. So I I know what it’s like to be a real estate agent. And, like, I don’t know. Like, during the two thousand eight stuff, like, we we sorted our way through it. And at the core of it, it’s people need shelter. They would like to buy a home. They’d like to build equity and net worth instead of home, and they’ll need somebody that’s really good at their job to guide them through that transaction. Right? One hundred percent. Yeah. And it’s relational. It’s conversational. It’s not a lot of sexy stuff. It’s the doing the you know, let’s buy the coffee truck to be at the school drop off line. Let’s do those things and be present in the community, and that creates, like, a absolutely indestructible moat for a company, but it’s it’s not quite easy. You know? So I love that, Justin, because I think in the end of the day, what you’re talking about is the fundamentals, right? Yeah. It’s the fundamentals for the industry are still healthy in there, and the fundamentals for an individual team, agent, brokerage even, it’s kind of like the fundamentals are actually still the the highest ROI things to focus on. Right? Like you can get distracted with all the headlines. The fundamentals are still super sexy and honestly, we’re you know, you and I, we deal with a lot of technology. We deal with AI. We’re dealing with all these things. But AI and tech, you can you can get really distracted with that stuff too. And Yeah. What’s most important, AI and tech are really best when they serve to really ramp the hell out of the non sexy but super potent fundamentals. Right? Isn’t that like the isn’t that the game in the end of the day? Yeah. It’s I mean, we can spool that up to, like, the GDP is basically predicated on productivity, essentially. So, like, when you think about AI in a service based sector, my opinion on it is that it creates a the a a scale of company that did not exist, previous to AI. Right? Because we can augment so many portions of the way that we do things. No. Should you be replaced in that? No. Absolutely not. It it should not replace nor do I hold an opinion that it will replace the last mile service person. Right? And that is the real estate agent. When you talk about the fundamentals being healthy, the amount of people that sell and transact with a real estate agent versus without a real estate agent actually favored this year further into the trajectory of the real estate agent. Right? So it’s like Yeah. Totally. Still want a real estate agent to help them purchase and sell their home is the reality. So now it’s like, okay. Well, how do we continue to augment ourselves so we can do more business or have a better quality balance of life or whatever that whatever your goal or agenda is on that? AI creates the ability to augment yourself. Right? So One of the things that did prove out true in twenty twenty five and and we start we saw a lot of this, actually. We saw we started out the year. You said this. I said this. We started twenty five out and said, look. This is gonna not be the most the most kind of, like, calm year. There’s a lot going on in twenty twenty five. And yet and for some, that’ll be challenging, and for others, it’ll be a fantastic opportunity that totally proved to be true. Justin, you’ve got to maybe to some of what you do every day and what Shiloh does, you’ve got kind of a really cool and unique perspective on the space based on, like, what you guys do every day and all the all the stuff you see. Tell tell us a little bit about that. Like, what what unique perspective do you get that, frankly, not everyone else gets? It’s, you know, again, simpleton Justin over here oversimplifying things. If we are in a relational industry, what builds relationship? Okay. You can say trust. You can say whatever. Enter the thing and okay. But, like, what is the Conversations. Like, how does that happen? It is a conversation Yeah. That happens with another human being. Yeah. Totally. That is the that’s the medium to build trust, to build rapport, to do all of the things. Right? So it is the core baseline in a service based, business. So, you know, at Shiloh, obviously, we’re we we have this awesome AI that is it’s it’s coaching all of those conversations to improve. You know, for the longest time in the real estate industry, we’ve looked at things metrics like how many calls did you make to how many appointments did you set. Okay. Cool. Hundred calls made to two appointments set, two percent of conversion rate. So the thought was, cool. Let’s just increase the amount of that top activity to output something else. Right? And the reason why we did that is because when that conversion rate is low in between, it’s a performance thing. Right? It’s it’s how well did said person perform at that activity is what dictates that conversion rate. So what’s really fun for us to see is that using something like Shiloh, we have, without a shadow of a doubt, seen all of our teams increase that conversion rate, which is awesome because if you think it’s simple math, the conversion rate is four percent now. And now you’re setting four appointments for the same amount of activity, but then you decide to double that. Now you’re at eight instead of four. There’s an exponential scale to that thing. Right? Which what I love that you’re talking about, Justin, and this is what’s been so cool as as I’ve watched you and watched Shiloh, is it’s the same amount of input. It’s the same freaking amount of input and you get you can get, like, double the output out of it. Right? Hyperfixiated on quantity opposed to quality. And don’t get me wrong. Both of those numbers need both. Yeah. You need both. There needs to be a certain amount of quantity for any output to show up on the backside. But focus on quality is a bit of the, like, work smarter, not harder philosophy. You would agree? Got Got it. And at the end the day, I’m telling people, like, Shiloh at its core is teaching people how to communicate. But if you learn how to communicate, you learn yourself, you learn your tendencies, which we’re showing to people on the back end of Shiloh kinda like their core traits and what their tendencies are, that makes you a better not just salesperson. It makes you a better husband, better, you know Yeah. Father. Everything. Yeah. I mean, communication is the core of every relationship. If you like this communication. Right? So, yeah, it’s it’s been wild, man. Fifteen years of continuous talk time we have analyzed in the past year and two months. So it is a tremendous amount of data that we’ve been able to see, and there’s there’s some pretty cool trends that exist in all of data. So awesome. Well and back to this point of, like, the fundamentals, that’s that’s like a the perfect example of this is one part of your funnel where, again, you can kinda take the same amount of input, really focus on the fundamentals. And that’s really what Shiloh is doing is helping you laser focus on the fundamentals. And you can plug this in, do it for a team, you can do it for a brokerage where you’re like, all of us, let’s get our conversations and let’s focus on the fundamentals and boom, my output goes up. I don’t need any additional input. And, you know, there’s a lot of things we talk about. I’ve had a lot of conversations where we where we say things like, you can double or triple your productivity, your production next year. Like, you you genuinely can double or triple. And I think there’s a lot of folks who are like, gosh. That sounds so big. That sounds so bee haggy. But that’s actually the point of the non sexy fundamentals is though that’s the area you have the ability to do that is to is to kinda double or triple. What kinda results do you guys see as people get in and adopt this? Like, do you see that kind of result? Yeah. We we handhold people. Each organization’s soft spots are a little bit different on the conversational aspect of things. But, like, at a base level, yeah, I know, Whistle increases appointment set rate by a hundred and forty six percent over over four months span of using Shiloh. And don’t get me wrong. They also crashed our role play server three times because they had more people role play at once on one singular call than I I thought was going to happen, actually. Yeah. So, like, they’re using the tool. They’re scaling up. They’re doing all the things that are necessary to do it. Like, even these cool AI tools, the hammers and hammer until someone picks it up and swings it. Right? So, like, that’s that’s just the true reality behind it. But if it does happen, it brings awareness. And when we talked about augmenting the human, you know, I talked to team leaders about this. Like, it’s the reason why this this this becomes clarity into the conversations that are happening in organization gets worse at scale. When you’re a smaller organization, you all sit in an office, you can hear everybody you and you’re sitting there and you’re like, hey, you should have said this on the call. Hey, you know, here I’ll tell you what I’ve been saying. And all of a sudden you’re ten, fifteen, twenty, a hundred, a thousand. It’s like, you can’t do that. Right? You can’t do it. And you also can’t hire enough people to listen through all of those calls. It it does not it it it is an unsolvable problem at scale. And the core of that is because said team leader or sales manager or sales director, they cannot clone themselves. So they have to figure out how to augment themselves. And that’s what Shiloh said. Me just I’m gonna interrupt you now. We’re just you know? Hopefully someone will edit this out or make us sound better, Justin. But no. But the and so what happens? What do we hear from teams? We hear leads suck. My close rate sucks. You hear from brokers and they my agents suck at times. They’ve never said yes, they have. Once in a while, they say that. But Yeah. You hear those kinds of things. Something sucks. Something sucks. Something sucks. But really, what kinda sucks? Their ability to scale that fundamentals the the focus on the fundamentals. And that’s really the problem that you’re solving. And frankly, Justin, that’s why I get so excited about our partnership and relationship that we’ve got because a lot of our focus at Inside Real Estate is taking the same amount of input you have, whether it’s leads, contacts, database, etcetera, and creating those conversation moments. Right? Right. And so we’re really focused on creating those conversations. And I love, Justin, that you guys are taking those conversations and creating, helping the teams and agents create a much greater outcome out of that same input. So it really is has been fun working together on this stuff. Yeah. It’s it’s there’s not really anything else to add to that. That that is the crux. Shiloh is a performance indicator where we have activity indicators on how many calls, how many emails, how many texts. When we don’t know how the performance of said activities go, Shiloh weighs in and tells you how the performance of those activities go. Tells you not just, like, what went wrong, but actually, like, how to make it better, and then prescribes really awesome role plays to you in real time to tell you, like, hey. Here’s how you could practice to skill this up, basically. So it’s, like, bespoke to each individual person. Right? Yeah. It’s not this generic role play engine that you role play with this one scenario. It really is bespoke to, like, your core things that you need to develop as a salesperson. So So as I mean, we you’ve done some awesome stuff. I think you guys are seeing fantastic results. We’re we’re seeing Yeah. A lot of really cool results as well. And as we look forward, as we talk about kinda where we’re going, you know, you’ve you’ve talked about something I wanted to kinda highlight. I think I’ve heard you kinda use this phrasing of as a founder, as a tech person, building with care. This this concept of like building with care and how you approach technology. There’s a lot of hype around AI and all of these things. How how does that translate for you? What does that what does that kinda mean to you? That I’m I despise showing up in CEO circles, and they’re like, oh, so what do you do? And I’m like, oh, I run an AI company, and you can see their eyes gloss over. They’re like, oh god. Another one of those people. Because so many people created AI solutions that were not helpful, and they were lackluster, and they left people disappointed, not wowed. And, you know, I care nothing about doing that. Like, I’d our core values, the first two at Shiloh are do what you say you’re gonna do and then leave people better than you found them. So, like, our whole our product discipline revolves around that is, like, how do we just do that for people? Let’s roll out features that actually meaningfully move the needle. Let’s not overpromise things, and let’s give people tools that actually do help and not flash, not hype, not any of that stuff. We are going to build tools that actually add back to people’s lives. Right? So Yeah. That’s from a core philosophy of me as a human, us as a company, and the way that we go about kinda building and assembling products. So Yeah. I I love it. I think it’s a fantastic it captures it captures the kinda essence of that in a fantastic way. And, you know, it what what AI shouldn’t do shouldn’t you know, I don’t think it’ll ever do is it never gets away from that so that the tech should help you with the fundamentals. It doesn’t mean you don’t have to execute fundamentals. And and that’s one of the I think that’s one of the misconceptions at times in the space. People do get a little excited about the AI flashiness. They glaze over with the AI term sometimes. They also and I I would say a lot of agents and teams at times, even when they’re trying to be careful about it, they sometimes will fall into this idea that AI is gonna be magical such that I don’t have to execute anymore. The the beauty of it is if if that were the case, it would replace you entirely. It’s not going to do that. The beauty is you still have to execute. You still have to be great and make a decision to execute. And so building with care and building great solutions doesn’t get rid of that need to execute, does it? Yeah. No. No. Not at all. My analogy for our clients at Shiloh are, okay. It’ll listen to your calls, give really incredible feedback. That feedback is based on best practices out of more calls than one person will ever make in seventy five billion lifetimes, basically. It is giving you expert feedback. But what that is is like I come from the sports world. What that is is sitting in the film room watching the replay of the previous game. And then what do we do? We see in plain sight, we thought we did a good job, and, nope, actually, I looked like an idiot on the field just there, and I need to fix that. What do we do next? We know what our weaknesses are, and we go to a practice field, and we practice to those weaknesses. That’s what the role play engine is. But guess what is still on the real estate agent at the end of the day? You gotta go show up to Sunday, and you gotta go play the game. That’s right. And then the feedback loop continues. Then you sit down, watch the game film, and that is the feedback loop of ever improvement. Right? But I can’t go Shiloh cannot go into the field and and play the game for you. You have to be the one that plays the game. I I love it. You know, I was spending some time with my with my friend Brian Buffini. Many many know him. You know, Brian, shout out to you. I was spending some time with him the other day in in one of his events, and and I think the thing that hit me, Justin, you and I had been talking a bit, and the thing that hit me is how those worlds of human coaching and AI coaching do not they don’t like displace each other. They live so well together. They live so well together and so you actually take the benefit of both of those. But it is an execution game still, and thank heavens it is because what it means is the best of the best, the best agents, the best teams can take some of this tech and really go see those kinds of of effects. They can they really can’t see a two x and a three x multiplier because it’s about how well they take something like Shiloh coaching, their other coaching, their tech, and they go execute tomorrow. Right? Yep. Execution is the name of the game. That is the name, but ideas do not get paid. Execution is what gets paid. You know? So the best people on the planet are very good executors. Even if they get it wrong and fail, they go back, and they try again. They they retool, they learn, and then they try again, and they just keep executing over and over and over again until it works. So I love it. Well, what what else would you leave with everybody for twenty six? We’re December. You know, we’re heading we’re heading quickly toward twenty twenty six. What what else what other kinda nuggets of of wisdom would you leave, Justin? Alright. So I’m on a bit of a, like, crusade about this. We fifteen years of continuous talk time. Interesting data behind that. Like, eighty three percent of those calls ended without a clear next step. For the love of God, we try to set clear next steps. When you backwards compute that to the call volume to GCI numbers, you end up at, like, eight hundred million dollars of GCI missing. It is a not even nontrivial amount. It’s a crazy this is like it is not a, like, leak in the bucket. This is like a a flood that’s happening. Right? And what we have realized is that there are three kinda core ingredients that have yielded the highest conversion rates across all the different lead sources that we get to see roll through. I love it. And the first one is setting a clear defined next step. And defined means not next week, not sometime in the future, but how does this weekend look like to go see your top two or three homes? Is that possible on every call? Of course not. But it should be our goal. So that’s that’s step number one. Right. The second one is asking two discovery questions that get one objection to show up. And when I say objection, I was I spoke at Zillow’s unlock conference, and I said, like, what what’s your emotional reaction to objection? Everybody’s like, angry, pissed off, whatever. That is such a small percentage of the calls that you have. That does but what an objection is is I go, hey, Joe. You looking to move in the next three to six months? And Joe goes, yeah. Interest rates are a little high. Like, I don’t know how to you know? That’s an objection right there. It’s our job to solve that. So I go, hey, Joe. I actually just sold somebody a new build where the buyer bought bought down the rate, and it was, a four and a half percent rate. Like, it it’s actually possible if you’re open to that area, and they go, oh my gosh. That’s amazing. One, you just you built you are the subject matter expert now. That’s what objections do for us as real estate agents, and you do that by asking discovery questions. Right? Yep. Two discovery questions that get one objection to show up. And then final third ingredient is stay on the phone for three minutes. Love it. Love it. Minutes or more. If you can complete those three things, you six x your conversion rate. And, again, I want I want people to hear this. Is it possible to do that on every call? Absolutely not. That is overly idealistic. But it should be our goal and our thought going into every single call. And if you just do that with or without Shiloh, you’ll see those conversion rates increase. Right? So, like, just do those three things. What Shiloh does is it allows you the ability to yeah. The very clear call to action. We’re just gonna hit those one more time. Very clear call to action on every call. Two probing questions, uncover uncover the the objections, the concerns, and stay on the phone for three minutes. Don’t don’t let don’t let them off. Keep on the phone. Build the conversation. Build the momentum. Those are the three things. You do those, you six x your conversion rate from conversations. Correct. Love it. Love it. Thousand percent. I’ll tell you what, what’s beautiful is that you have I I love what Justin has to say. I love what he’s doing. I love I love their solution. I love the fact that we’re able to bring these kinds of solutions together, and we can drive more conversations to it and, frankly, take a lot of those action items out of it, roll it right into the mobile apps. There’s sweet new mobile app and experiences that Justin or and I are excited to bring to you guys. So happy happy holidays to all of you out there. Very excited about what twenty six is gonna bring. Justin, appreciate you, man. Love this stuff. Dude, you as well. Thanks for having me. An honor to get the invite in the first place, man, with the the infamous Joe Skousin over here. This is Oh my gosh. You kidding me? Are you kidding me? I’m honored. Thanks, Justin. Appreciate it, dude.