The Real Random Podcast: Where Real Estate Meets Real Life
Welcome to "The Real Random Podcast," where we're more than just Realtors. We're explorers of life's rich tapestry. Hosted by a trio of seasoned real estate pros, each episode surprises you with a mystery guest that only one host knows about in advance.
Our mission? To dig deeper. We go beyond the property listings and the coaching sessions to get to know our guests as mothers, fathers, and individuals with unique stories to tell.
Expect spontaneous conversations, heartfelt connections, and a ton of fun along the way. Whether you're in the real estate industry or just love a good, genuine conversation, "The Real Random Podcast" offers something for everyone.
Join us as we delve into the intriguing world of real estate and the fascinating people that make it all happen.
The Real Random Podcast: Where Real Estate Meets Real Life
Bill Risser | Exploring the Intersection of Tech and Real Estate
Have you ever wondered how audience-driven sessions can foster active participation and community learning in real estate? Meet Bill Risser, Executive Vice President of Strategic Partnerships for Rate My Agent USA, and host of an award-winning podcast, as he shares his incredible journey in the real estate industry. From his passion for golf and fantasy sports to his love for Barbara Streisand, Bill's unique blend of interests adds a rich flavor to our conversation. Discover the innovative concept of Bar Camps in real estate, where traditional presentations are replaced with vibrant, audience-driven sessions that create engaging environments for realtors to exchange ideas.
Journey with us as we explore the dynamics of Bar Camp events across Florida and beyond. Compare these unconference-style gatherings to traditional masterminds, and learn about the value of peer-driven discussions. We'll reminisce about past encounters and delve into the different formats and locations of Bar Camps in places like St. Augustine, Orlando, and Fort Walton Beach-Destin. In a lighter segment, hear the backstory of our podcast, the intriguing personal backgrounds of our extensive guest list, and the occasional inclusion of keynote speakers that bring a unique twist to these events.
Our conversation doesn't end with just real estate! We delve into podcasting and networking strategies, featuring notable episodes with Mark Davison from Thousand Watt and Stefan Swanepoel of T360. Uncover insights on learning new platforms like Pinterest and Threads, and the host's natural curiosity that fuels engaging conversations. Enjoy a virtual trip through Australia’s diverse wildlife and its parallels with Florida’s fauna, and understand the nuances of forming MLS partnerships. From health transformations and golf's networking benefits to the use of tech tools like Rate My Agent, this episode offers a rich blend of insights, humor, and camaraderie.
On this Real Random Real Estate session. We check in from a distance with a true Inman Innovator. Hey there, welcome to Real Random, where the world of real estate gets a whole lot more exciting. I'm Rick, joined by Ray and Rebecca, and here's the deal. Every episode, one of us surprises the other with a special guest from the real estate universe. Think top professionals, industry rebels and the unsung heroes of real estate. We're talking unscripted, unpredictable and undeniably real. So are you ready to dive into the random my guest today? We'll tell you a little bit about the person. They're very passionate about golf, fantasy sports and all things Barbara Streisand.
Speaker 2:It's Tiger Woods.
Speaker 1:No, again.
Speaker 2:Again yeah.
Speaker 1:We're going to keep guessing Tiger Woods until we get Tiger Woods. So, after 20 years working with the Fidelity National Financial Family, they joined an Australian-based company, rate my Agent, in September of 2020, where they currently serve as the Executive Vice President of Strategic Partnerships for the USA. They also have their own podcast, where they have had over 350 episodes, and the podcast was awarded the 2019 Inman Innovator Award for Podcasting.
Speaker 2:So, without further ado, welcome to the show Mr Bill Risser, bill Yay Bill.
Speaker 3:Wow, that first of all Zillow Showing Time and Ember Coffee Mugs are we can talk about.
Speaker 4:That's right. Yes, okay, good, they're all sponsors of the show. Yeah, we are not afraid of.
Speaker 1:I want to make sure I'm okay on those topics. Yeah, we're good, I'm not afraid. I want to make sure I'm okay on those topics. Yeah, we're good, 100%.
Speaker 2:They can't talk about Tiger Woods. You guys are doing something super cool here.
Speaker 3:I just want to say that, first off, I'm insanely jealous.
Speaker 1:I didn't think of it first, because now I can't do it, I'm glad that nobody listened to the Smart List podcast when it first came out.
Speaker 3:I saw the show a few weeks ago and I was like this is awesome and we started it pretty soon after so yeah, I'm just glad that nobody else was on the ball yeah, I highly recommend checking out smart list as well as this podcast, but, but also some of the stuff they've done on max, where they film behind the scenes yeah, that's very cool, really cool.
Speaker 4:The show is awesome. Our behind the scenes is a little less cool.
Speaker 2:I mean, we're not on tour yet. I was about to say yeah, we haven't gone on tour. Sometime, once we go on tour.
Speaker 1:We get footage on the tour bus, it'll be great, oh sweet oh that'll be fun. I love it. So, uh, bill, we met uh three years ago four years ago, I think, sounds about right so kind of alluded to this earlier in our conversation when we were chatting about possibly getting syndicated. Me and bill both had a podcast with the industry syndicate which I don't think is around anymore. Was that gobbled up by broke agent?
Speaker 3:I think so, yeah, I think, so, yeah, I think I think BAM is now got some of that stuff there.
Speaker 1:So we had, we had a podcast with Industry Syndicate and I was down in Orlando at Florida Realtors Convention for the bar, yeah, for Bar Camp, and Bill does a live episode of his podcast at Bar Camp, or at least he has for the last few years I don't know if it's going to be an ongoing thing and so that's where we officially met in person and since then it seems like he's at all the bar camps, I'm at all the bar camps, so kind of a bar camp groupie with Bill and Sean and some of the other guys.
Speaker 3:What is Bar Camp? There you go, bill, I'd be happy to and having sessions that were kind of sourced by the crowd, right. So at the real estate version of a bar camp, there are no presenters, there's no keynote. It's a day-long event where there are rooms that are available at certain time slots and then we poll the audience. As they arrive, they take Post-it notes and write down what they would love to talk about in the industry, and so we create these rooms.
Speaker 3:One's always going to be something about social media, short form video, it's always going to be property management. It's going to be how do I recruit better, it's podcasting, and so we have anywhere from eight to 15 facilitators who go into the room not to teach but to get everybody else to start talking, which a room full of realtors is really difficult to do. They're kind of conditioned to come in, sit face the screen and wait for a presentation, but with this we make the chairs face each other, which freaks them out from the get-go when they're new to a bar camp and they walk in and see the chairs facing each other, they freak out a little bit which is awesome, and so it's.
Speaker 3:Florida does a really nice one. Every. It's the first um the day before the two day expo starts, so this year it's August 15th. I'm not sure that might be gone by now, but uh, this year it was great. Now there you go.
Speaker 1:Best bar camp. Ever so good seeing you there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's a good seeing you there. Yeah, it was good seeing you too. I enjoyed our dinner. It was great. Thanks.
Speaker 4:Rick Pate, I'm sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm sure, rick Pate.
Speaker 1:From the last episode. I'm the first one to disappear and leave. Remember, that's right, that sounds really interesting.
Speaker 2:Oh, sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt, but I love that concept of actually forcing that conversation because, like you said, so often people go into the room and then they just sit there and then whoever's speaking or presenting a lot of times they're trying to get some audience feedback to really have that engagement. And it is so hard. It's like painfully awkward most of the time and I'm just like can someone please talk? Can we please have some sort of dialogue? But it sounds like you're able to have a little bit more of a mastermind aspect to these bar camps, versus just come in and receive information that you may or may not do anything with.
Speaker 3:Well, true, I think what you find in a typical bar camp is people that see a topic they know a lot about, just gravitate towards that. They want to see what's going on, something maybe they don't know or they're ready to share. People don't want to learn are there and we found over the years with Cole Slate, I think, rick, you know Cole from up in Jacksonville, just south of Jacksonville. He has a great model where he has a whiteboard and he just says, okay, who's got questions? And he writes down eight or 10 or 12 questions. He goes great, let's start with the first one, who knows the answer to this one? And you just stop. So yeah, it works out really well. You get people that want to dominate the room. You have to kind of shut them down a little bit, but it's a lot of fun. You should check it out.
Speaker 2:That's very cool, and you guys do those in other places other than Florida, or is it just?
Speaker 3:Oh, there might be one that Rick knows about in the peninsula of Florida.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so there's three that I frequent. There's one in St Augustine, close to Jacksonville, that's early in the year February, march timeframe and then there's obviously the one in Orlando. That's the day before convention, so that's in mid August, and then we have one here in the Fort Walton Beach Destin area in late September, and I think there used to be one in Tennessee, but I don't see too much about that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, nashville, that's Brian, he's still doing that. So the big one in Nashville, and they're scattered throughout the country. Still, there was a time when the bar camp movement was huge. I mean, you could travel to 30 different events in the course of a year.
Speaker 1:Wow, it's not unlike all of the lobby con that we do when we go to convention. It's very similar, just without an open bar. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4:And yet called rebar For marketing towards real estate agents. You got two things they love real estate and a bar.
Speaker 3:So you just throw a buffet in there.
Speaker 4:One of the best masterminds ever went to was like that and it did. It was off-putting for everyone at first because everyone kind of thought that we were going there to mastermind. But in our version of mastermind it was listening to a master talk and then we ask questions. And that's not what actual masterminding is. And one of the most beneficial times I got we're a couple of times where we got together with some of the top people in the video platform, I guess, circuit or whatever for real estate, and we all got into a room and we committed to stay there for a day and a half and then the facilitator just said, okay, what do you guys want to talk about? And then he wrote everything down, everything that we want to talk about. There were a couple of big questions that they had. The facilitator had that he wanted to throw out and get. You know, hear everyone answer, and so then we just took one of those topics and went with it and it was so.
Speaker 4:It was interesting because not only did you hear someone say, okay, we've tried this thing and we tried to implement it, here's, here's the problems that happen, and then someone else would say, yes, we're, we are at the same problem point. And then the person that had broken through was like, well, why don't you guys just do this? And the look on their face and like, oh yeah, okay, I didn't realize it was that simple, but all right, let's just do that then. And then you just kind of move from topic to it was really, really cool. So I've never been to a rebar camp, but that's something I definitely want to try because that sounds like a lot of fun. I love that kind of thinking environment. That's what I try to do with our book club. Rebecca knows I'll ask questions and just love the silence and everyone on there just is like someone else answer.
Speaker 1:please Love the silence. We were trying to get you down here to be a facilitator for our bar, camp ray I don't know if they ever reached out to you.
Speaker 4:I don't. Well, I don't know. I haven't been. I haven't been contacted yet. Tell them to text me first, though, because the numbers?
Speaker 3:yeah, I just say numbers.
Speaker 4:You know your iphone will say spam warning when it's not really so.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so ours is a little different because bill said there's no keynote the one up up here in Destin. They've actually started adding a keynote, so we had Phil Jones last year. And this year we have Giselle this year.
Speaker 3:Oh, that's great. Yeah, there's a lot of. I think the one in Jacksonville that's a pretty big one too. One Coast.
Speaker 4:I think they call it now they do the same thing.
Speaker 3:They'll have an opening speaker and then it's off to the breakout rooms and yeah, nothing wrong with that at all.
Speaker 4:I guess everyone warmed up a little bit yeah exactly a cold start, right?
Speaker 1:so about your podcast bill, we're gonna just breeze right over the fact that you've never had me on as a guest oh, that's, that's gonna change quickly, for all three of you is going to change quickly. We're just going to pretend that we're not even going to talk about that. 350 plus episodes I mean that's a lot of episodes, I mean how many years are we talking? Someone do the math.
Speaker 3:Three and a half July 1st Three and a half August 1st Actually July 30th I recorded with Jay Thompson, who used to be with Zillow, and a half august, for actually july 30th I recorded with jay thompson, who used to be with zillow, and a friend of mine from gilbert arizona, uh and uh, published on august 1st 2015, was the first episode. Wow, and because I'm an old guy, by the way, thanks for making fun of old people not knowing tech now we're even.
Speaker 4:You obviously know tech, you obviously know tech.
Speaker 3:So the you know it was. My thought process, you know was I'm going to just do this for like 10 episodes. I want to see what podcasting is all about and you know I'll just stop after that and it just kept going. So I you know, for me it was a way to connect with people that I knew, but for me it was a way to connect with people that I knew. And my podcast is a little bit different because I spend way too much time. I'm going to just flat out, admit it. I spend way too much time on the person's background. Like if I find out that somebody like has honeybees, like in their backyard, it's going to be 12 minutes of oh my God, You're a beekeeper, like how do you, I mean, where do you, what do you put the honey in?
Speaker 3:And they go well like bottles. I go like are they bear shaped? They're like well, if you want, I go what.
Speaker 2:They sell bear shaped bottles. Where do they sell?
Speaker 3:those and they said at the beekeeper store there's a beekeeper store, so you can see where these?
Speaker 2:These are the hard-hitting questions that we need to know. I do a lot of that up front.
Speaker 3:But then we get into the meat and bones of their journey to real estate and then we talk the last third of it's about what they're doing today, what they're excited about, that sort of thing. So it started with a whole bunch of people. I was an inmate ambassador for a number of years in the teens, I guess we'll call them and so I met a lot of people and they've all been on the show because it was easy. I knew them from the different conferences and things. We'd be at episodes.
Speaker 3:As I did in the past, I was relentless to make sure that every and, by the way, every Tuesday it had to drop, because I'm old right, rick, and you dropped a new album on Tuesdays when I was a kid the album was coming out on Tuesday, not Friday, so I went ahead and kept that cadence. Every Tuesday it's either a new episode or what I call a real estate sessions rewind, because you find when you do a couple hundred you can just snag one from the catalog you know, because you always have fresh people listen I noticed, now you started to go back and do kind of like a almost like a short catch-up type of a I did.
Speaker 3:I call it um, so it's called the real estate sessions. The whole thing was there like a jam session, just we're gonna sit down and chat and have a good time, kind of a thing. And so the rewind makes sense, because I'm old and we use tape, we use tape and you rewind stuff. And then there's the. The shortcuts was me going back to past guests and just asking them four questions what's changed since the last time we chatted something funny about them that I know that's always important. What's next for them and their family and what are they worried about right now in real estate? And it just is a 10 minute, supposed to be a 10 minute episode, just a real quick hit to kind of catch them back up. You know, for the audience and mostly to be really honest, for me, I think, when people say, why do you podcast? I go cause I love talking to people and I love finding out stuff I didn't know.
Speaker 4:And it happens every time. So, like strizan, thanks for bringing that up too. That's great.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's great that is awesome.
Speaker 1:Actually we've had this ongoing music theme, so I thought I'd mention it up front, in case anyone else was a strizan fan yeah, I didn't, no one was are you really a strizan fan?
Speaker 3:yeah, it's a problem.
Speaker 2:He says reluctantly.
Speaker 3:I was 17 years old, staying at my aunt's condo. She was on a vacation, so me and a buddy stayed there in Pacific Beach, california, san Diego area, and way before anything else was there, she had a bunch of albums and I grabbed this album. It was a white album, but not that one, not the Beatles. It was live at the Forum, barbra Streisand. So I popped it in the record player and it was just awesome. She was funny, she was cracking jokes and it really just kind of got me down this crazy path. And then, three years later, I met my now wife, at the age of 20. And she was also a Streisand fan, introduced to a movie called what's up, doc. If you haven't seen it, it's one of the top screwball comedies of all time and, uh, with a very sexy Ryan, uh, uh, ryan O'Neill, um, because he was. This is before he got you know, old and from 1973 and it, just, it, just, it just went from there.
Speaker 3:I've seen her in concert four times.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think she's the greatest female singer of all time. I'll stand by that. Oh, look at you.
Speaker 4:Wait a minute.
Speaker 3:He's got it. Oh yeah, I have a special version of it that came with a nice. I found this at a garage sale.
Speaker 2:I love it.
Speaker 3:That's awesome. Thanks for pulling that up, right that's cool.
Speaker 2:I have no idea who ryan o'neill is, but I am super curious to know what a sexy ryan o'neill.
Speaker 3:Ryan o'neill from I was, I was like ryan reynolds, I think that's probably in the chippendales outfit, because I think that was was just right, right.
Speaker 4:It is a movie from 1972.
Speaker 3:1972, yeah, peter Bogdanovich directed it. Fantastic, he's looking quickly for Ryan. O'neill His daughter is Tatum O'Neill. You might know Tatum. There's Ryan.
Speaker 2:There you go.
Speaker 3:He's shirtless in a couple scenes. I just wanted to let you know oh yeah, he's got those classic good looks. Yeah, yeah, square jaw guy, I don't know how this is going to help you with your next transaction. It's not, I'm telling you.
Speaker 1:At no point with this podcast did we promise anyone we were going to be of any real help to transactions or real estate. This is not.
Speaker 2:We may be more detrimental, in fact, in fact.
Speaker 1:If you have attention problems, this is definitely going to cause you to lose business.
Speaker 4:This is something to listen to on the go for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah absolutely Um. So in all those 350 episodes you have a favorite guest you ever had, or a favorite um maybe something you learned about someone that was kind of funny or surprising.
Speaker 3:Yeah, um, there was Um for my funny surprising guest, uh, julie, uh down in, uh, fort Myers, uh, and she's about almost six feet tall and I'm 6'4", so I always notice that and we're chatting and getting her background about school and for nine years she was a member, she was a ballerina, she was in the ballet and I said, oh my gosh, do they have like a ballet for tall people? And she goes, as a matter of fact, they do. It's in San Francisco. I was like what? Wow? I thought that was fascinating to learn that about her.
Speaker 4:You know, probably one of my.
Speaker 2:I can't have a favorite guest because it'll really upset.
Speaker 3:Sean Carpenter, but Mark Davison from Thousand Watt, this guy is brilliant. Mark Davison from Thousand Watt, this guy is brilliant and he spent the first part of his life in the music industry as a manager and doing all kinds of great stuff, Knows a ton of people in the business and then, around 2000, started working for Inman doing some writing and this sort of thing. And now Thousand Watt, I think, is kind of the gold standard of consultancies out there that helps agents with branding and uh messaging, and they're just, you know, you got Brian, uh, Boero and and uh, um, I'm going to mess up some names, but Mark Davison, there's just some great people there doing some wonderful stuff. So his episode was really good. And then I have to mention Stefan Swanepoel, T360.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Cause he's, he's a very, very smart guy and I thought it was going to be quick cause he was in kind of a hurry, but it went over 60 minutes and I'm more of a 30, 35 minute podcast I'd hoped for and it was fascinating. So, and you know it's, I'm always, you know, trying to find people like that, but I've also interviewed people like, you know, Nick Bailey and, um, uh, Glenn Sanford, who I knew before EXP actually, Um, and so some of those, some of the leaders in the industry I like having on there, but I just like having people on that have cool stories.
Speaker 4:Yeah, what. What is your? What's your? Where's that come from for you? Where's that come from for you? Where's that? Because you know a lot of people go through life without being interested in others. What's? Yeah, that's what. What, for you, makes you dive in?
Speaker 3:I'm uh, I'm just extremely curious, like I. It's it's frustrating for my wife because if I, if I meet somebody like the beekeeper story, I will not. I'm relentless in, you know, going down that path, that you get taken down when you start asking questions. You know and and I think it's like it's, it's a skill that in our business you know I'm not a realtor, I never have been, but you know I ran a title operation for 10 years and close 7,000 transactions. You know was around agents all the time but that ability to ask questions of people and get the answers and then kind of keep going down that path is really important and I think that, for whatever reason, it's just part of who I am. I I will ask people questions until they tell me to stop.
Speaker 1:It's perfect for a podcast.
Speaker 2:It's very.
Speaker 1:Ted Lasso of you.
Speaker 4:I like that.
Speaker 2:Would you say that you're an extroverted person. Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 3:I don't think it's weird, when I'm around people that I know I'm the guy, that they just go all right, shut up, bill, that's enough.
Speaker 3:You know, that kind of guy. Maybe I'm trying to crack too many jokes, whatever. But when I'm in a room full of people, uh, that doesn't come out right away. I guess, just wait, it's a. It's a different kind of a different kind of a process for me. When you're in a room full of people, that you're uh, um, in the, in the industry and you're you're all mingling at an event, uh, that is not as comfortable for me as a one-on-one, I guess How's that? So I've got to get into those one-on-ones quickly to get comfortable.
Speaker 2:Okay, so maybe you're more of an ambivert.
Speaker 3:Wow, I'll look that up afterwards. Is that A-M-B-I?
Speaker 4:She made the best episode. I did not. She just went out. I don't know, I haven't heard it anywhere else.
Speaker 1:It's just something that Becca made up it is A-M-B-I-V-E-R-T. All right.
Speaker 2:We were talking about this on the last one, about how Rick and Ray are both introverts and I was like, well, I'm an ambivert where I'm not fully extroverted, but depending on the situation, I can be more extroverted and gain energy from it. And then, if it's like in a larger space where there's more people that I'm maybe not as familiar with or I don't know like what the dynamic is just yet, I'm definitely more on the introverted side. So that's why it's an ambivert.
Speaker 3:I'm ambivert, that's official.
Speaker 1:He converted him already in like two minutes, he's converted.
Speaker 2:I'm very persuasive, well done.
Speaker 1:Lordy, lordy, lordy.
Speaker 2:That's so funny.
Speaker 4:So you're still doing your podcast, or no?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. So this week it was a Shortcuts with a real agent, Katie.
Speaker 4:Day.
Speaker 2:Oh, we love Katie Houston.
Speaker 3:Texas. Yeah, katie's amazing. It's great to catch up about her and her daughter, and because that was not a thing when we, when I interviewed her the first time, there were no children. Yeah, and you know, like Danny Vanderbaugh from Inman, she's. She's an amazing woman doing some cool stuff. She's scheduled on the show. Rick hasn't sent back the calendar link yet, but he's scheduled to be on the show.
Speaker 4:Come on, Rick.
Speaker 3:You just must not pay attention to his email. It might be that burner email you get, he gives you his junk email and then chastises you for not getting there.
Speaker 3:But it's yeah, it's still. It's something I love to do. You know, and I think you'll find the same thing for your podcast. It just kind of opens some doors too. When you have a conversation with somebody and then they have knowledge that you might need or you have something you might need to share to them. It's so much easier to do because they'll always reply to the email or return your text because you made a little connection, not a big giant connection, because you've kind of had you made a little connection, not a big giant connection. They're not all lifelong friends, but they know who I am and it's it's a, it's a great opportunity, especially in the business I'm in, to kind of um have these pathways kind of laid out for me if I need them.
Speaker 4:It's kind of selfish. Why did you, why did you start looking at podcasting as a as an opportunity? What made you look at that and say, oh, this is something I need to do?
Speaker 3:So, um, back in the day I don't listen to this gentleman anymore, but I was a Howard Stern guy and, and you know, Howard had those long form interviews when he, when he, when he got done with the stupid stuff and sat down and interviewed somebody, where they would not have a commercial break and they'd go 45 minutes or 60 minutes on an interview, it, it I thought, you know, podcasting was just getting rolling. Uh, it had been around since 2004 or five, but it was being talked about in the industry. So I thought, wow, what if I could do both things? What if I could try to do, you know, be like Howard, have those interviews that go on, you know, a much longer than an eight minute on a talk show, and at the same time, I'll just explore this podcasting thing and see if I can figure it out. So it was.
Speaker 3:It was Libsyn was my first host, you know, and they've been around since the beginning. It was earbuds and a microphone from Apple that I recorded onto a Mac book with and I'll get I it's. It's embarrassing to go back and listen to something in the first 30 episodes because it's not good, but you got to start somewhere.
Speaker 3:And uh and you know, maybe someday it'll be funny, even funnier than it is now, but that it was just a part of the thing that I did with fidelity and Chicago. Title is I did a lot of vetting of tech and because there's so much stuff that comes the agent's way, I would look at stuff Like I was like a huge fan of RPR from day one. It got better and better and some people hated it and other people thought it was never going to work. But that RPR app is incredibly powerful. I'll just promote it again right here. If you're not using it, you should check it out. It should be one of your top three apps as a realtor, and so I would always want to play with stuff before I talked about it.
Speaker 3:Like, you get a lot of people to teach classes in this industry and you know, and so I would. You know, I remember doing like 12 hours with this woman who knew Pinterest inside and out. I took her to lunch three times. Then we did some other stuff just so I could figure out, because someone was insisting they wanted a Pinterest class. I'm like, oh fine, but I got to learn it first, and so same thing with podcasting. I didn't, you know people were asking about it a little bit and I thought, well, let's just see what, how hard it is, let's do it first and then, once I've, you know, kind of had some experience with it, then it's going to be, I'll feel much better about talking to people about it it. You know, I still remember my first Facebook session I did in 2008 or nine, and I just had to know this much more, just a tiny bit more than the people in the room, right, but it didn't feel good. I feel really bad for those people. It was not a good session.
Speaker 4:I'm just looking for Bill Reiser's Pinterest pinterest board to see how many barbara streisand pins are there right?
Speaker 3:there's a bunch of streisand pins on there. Actually.
Speaker 4:There really is there is did you find it? Go ahead, you can have. You have you? Have you even looked at pinterest lately, or has it been? Uh, you?
Speaker 3:know, no, not, not else I can honestly say this, not for years I, so we can see your live research and analysis of what you did on barbara's truck. Oh I gotta remember ray barbara nascar, nascar. Yeah, I was, you know um what else is in there?
Speaker 4:you're testing out outdoor spaces like you see the real estate stuff that you're yeah, I was trying to make sure I understood that my podcast.
Speaker 3:I was putting all the episodes on there because that's where their people are going to find them.
Speaker 4:Sure, there was a short time where it was more than just like home ideas and garden ideas, where people were thinking like, okay, how can I use this for this or that marketing? And I don't know if it ever took off. I think for most people they just like gather some ideas and then put it away until they want to reference those ideas again.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think you're right. I mean, if you want to reference those ideas again, yeah, I think you're right. You know, look, I mean, if you want to bake an apple pie, there's no better place on earth than Pinterest. I mean, do not go to Google, go to Pinterest, because there's thousands of people sharing their recipes. It's amazing.
Speaker 4:So, yeah, have you played at all with speaking of playing with technology? It's one of my pastimes is just to dive into something check it out. And then I make my own determination if I'm going to use it. But my determination doesn't necessarily it's not for everyone, right? I understand that somebody may take pinterest and make a lifelong real estate career out of it, but it wouldn't for me. So have you? Have you tried threads yet?
Speaker 3:uh, I look, I have a profile. I'm definitely always grabbing a profile, right um you, you got to get your name.
Speaker 3:And they sure made it super easy. Meta made it really easy to get an account with a bunch of followers right away Smart guys over there and girls and so I just said, no, I'll grab it. Have I done much with it? Not really. I'm like a fan of Twitter, right, I use Twitter. There's a core group of people that Twitters our channel and it's never going to go away In a room full of people when I'm talking about a product or something and I go hey, it also integrates with Twitter. And who uses Twitter? Nobody raises their hand, is usually the response. So Threads to me has just got to be there to understand how it works. It's Twitter-l light at the moment and maybe, maybe that's where it'll stay, and, and who knows what's going to happen with Twitter? I mean, there's lots of issues going on there, so, uh, maybe it will one day come in.
Speaker 4:It seems to be in a lot of ways that those issues is the draw to Twitter A lot. You know people like, oh, it's such a dumpster fire. I'm like, yeah, but I like watching it burn.
Speaker 3:You go straight to the search button and see what's trending, or you type in something and you're like wow, see what Elon has responded to lately.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's so fun.
Speaker 4:I used to only be a Twitter guy for live events and my friend, justin Con conoco recently was like no, no, you gotta, you gotta get more into twitter. So I've been using it more for real estate. Hasn't really done anything because it's like starting a brand new thing with no following for that. But I still use my main account for like politics and sports is pretty much it like live watching sports. There's no better place to. If you're like if you happen to be alone somewhere watching the game, open up Twitter, look for your team and have a conversation with all the guys oh, maybe girls watching Twitter at the same or watching the game at the same time. You're talking about plays. That just happened. That's fun for me.
Speaker 3:Awesome for the Oscars, Emmys and Grammys too. Just throwing it out there, it's my wife's sports, so we I tend to be in the background on Twitter and she's going. What are they saying?
Speaker 2:That's great Live events. She lives vicariously.
Speaker 4:I just don't see threads having the same live event appeal. I think it's very right now and I don't know if it's just the people. So when I activated my threads account, I intentionally did not follow anyone because I wanted to see what happens and turns out, instagram doesn't care, it still puts all those same people in front of me. Like all the same people that I follow. I'm seeing them as like suggestions. I'm like well, okay, I said I don't want to follow anyone, I want to see what happens. And they're like okay, but you like these people, so we're just going to put them in front of you. And so I've slowly started to follow some of the, some of the thought leaders and stuff like that.
Speaker 4:But I don't know if it's because those are the people that I have on there, but it seems like a place where everyone's loving to put their thought leadership, but not a lot of conversation. They're like putting I'm putting I'm going to put out my great wisdom of this thing, and then they just leave it there and that I have of this thing, and then they just leave it there and that I. That feels like early clubhouse days where everyone hosted a guru room and I just that turned me off so bad from that platform that I'm wondering if that's happening to the regular consumer. Are they seeing their friend who's like a jerk on the weekends? Try to be a thought leader on Monday or you know what I'm saying?
Speaker 4:like is the is the regular consumer with no connection to that type of. Are they seeing that too, or are they seeing like jim talk about mowing the lawn?
Speaker 3:yeah, that's, that's a great way of looking at it. I will. It'll be fun to watch, it'll be fun to kind of, you know, stay connected to it, kind of see where it plays out. Um, you're right, you've mentioned clubhouse and there's been some, some other networks along the way that just never really, you know, connected Periscope or you know, whatever they were trying to do just didn't work. Periscope.
Speaker 4:Periscope Meerkat, if you're really early to it.
Speaker 3:Now you're going deep.
Speaker 4:I like it. Rebecca was just born a couple years ago. Those were the days, oh my gosh, rebecca was just born a couple of years ago.
Speaker 3:Oh my God, those were the days.
Speaker 1:So, speaking of tech Bill, yeah, what are you up to now with rate?
Speaker 4:wage Do you want?
Speaker 1:to talk a little bit about that, how that happened. How did you get from Arizona to Australia?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I was in an Inman event right before the pandemic, the February, before the March, right, yeah, early February, late January, and I ran into the CEO and co-founder of Rate, my Agent and I'm always in my role in the Fidelity world it was always to bring technology that works to the sales executive so they could go to agents and say, oh look, I've got this great tool, you should try this out and and get them beholden to us. So they brought us escrow. It's nothing fancy, it's a pretty straightforward way of developing business, right.
Speaker 3:So I went to dinner with these guys and I fell in love with the product because, um, I've never, I'd never seen reviews that were connected to the data of the transaction and that was such a massive step in the review space because reviews were always a wall of words on Zillow or Realtor or wherever. It was just a paragraph with some stars, it was about it. There was nothing else, and you didn't see very many people doing any sort of review marketing, taking those reviews and turning them into assets, which could obviously third-party validations way more important than the people on threads talking about how smart they are. Right.
Speaker 3:So, how do we? And so I just kind of liked it. I started promoting the product a lot through the pandemic. I did a ton of webinars and that summer they reached out and said, hey, you know, thanks for all the help and stuff, and are you super happy at Fidelity? And I said, well, I've been here 20 years. It's been a nice run. I've always wanted to try something and so, september of 2020, I joined them, obviously as remote as you can get, because they're based in Melbourne, australia, been around since 2014,. About 85% market share in Australia for reviews, however. About 85% market share in Australia for reviews, however, there's 35,000 agents in all of Australia.
Speaker 1:There's only 24 million people. Florida and Australia have about the same population and we've got way more agents and fewer animals that will kill you, not by much.
Speaker 3:I got bit by a water moccasin at the golf course I play a couple of weeks ago, so yeah, that's not good. The gators are cool. You see them, they're big.
Speaker 1:But yeah, snakes, no, they can sneak up on you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so that's what. That's what got me started with them. I, you know it was a lot of fun. My, it's my.
Speaker 3:My connections to a lot of the different people in the industry is what my role primarily is is how do we get connected to these different franchises?
Speaker 3:Mls connections are critical for us and not the easiest thing to get, to be brutally honest. But we're connected now via MLSs to about 1.2 million agents' data, so their profiles already have all their listings and their solds in there, and as a listing turns into a sold, we prompt them to request the review. They can do it manually, it can be automated, and once the review comes back, we're able to then convert that to social assets for all the different social networks not Threadjet, it's coming and we also integrate nicely with Google, as nice as Google will let us. They're very strict about their review policies, rick, you know that and so we're able to make it as simple as possible. So the goal for us is to really we're a digital marketing platform designed to help great agents harness the power of verified reviews, and I just love that process, and so that's what we're doing now and continuing to grow and get bigger in the U? S and excited about it.
Speaker 4:Are you? You're I assume you're staying here full time. You're not going, you don't plan on moving to Australia?
Speaker 3:No, but I did spend two weeks down there last July a year ago. I could live there. It was very cool, yeah, we, although it was winter and it was cold, melbourne. Think about Melbourne as being like New York or new England, ish, you know, as far as winters go, uh, not snow but cold, uh and but. But it was fantastic. I went to three AFL games, australian football, australian football league and you know I, my wife and I are going back down there in January for the Australian open.
Speaker 3:She's a she's a huge tennis fan, so it's, that's the last major we haven't been to. We're going to strike that off the list. It's the farthest one to get to. So yeah, and it's, it's a, it's, it's, it's an interesting place. They, yeah, and it's an interesting place. They are very proud of their coffee. There's no Starbucks in Australia because it's crap, according to Australians. Yeah, they will not drink it. Do you like Australian coffee? How'd that go for you, I don't drink coffee. I couldn't experience it. Yeah.
Speaker 4:As Rick takes a sip.
Speaker 3:I've never had a sip of hot coffee in my life. Ever my Ember mug.
Speaker 2:I started drinking coffee when I went to Australia.
Speaker 3:So it was delicious.
Speaker 2:It was good. But there's also it's the coffee culture aspect of it, where every day, you stop and get a cup, Whether it's a cup of tea or it's a cup of coffee. This is just something that you do every afternoon.
Speaker 1:And now you're living in like Starbucks HQ.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but we don something that you do every afternoon and now you're living in like Starbucks, like HQ, yeah, but we don't like Starbucks here. Oh, you don't. Are you more people? What's up there?
Speaker 2:So there's just so many different. So I'm in the Seattle Tacoma area and there's just so many like coffee shops and coffee huts that are so much better than Starbucks that you're not a real Washingtonian if you go to Starbucks or if you prefer Starbucks over a local place.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it is. They're all over here. I know that I'm in St Pete, Florida, and you can't turn a corner without running into one.
Speaker 1:Is that why you have that terrible hat on, as opposed to an Arizona Devil's hat? Diamondbacks, diamondbacks, right.
Speaker 3:You're making a comment about the Tampa Bay Rays' best record in the American League 13-0 start of the season. Four straight years in the playoffs way more than the Yankees or Red Sox in the last four years.
Speaker 1:I'm just, oh, in the last four years. Yeah, I'm just, I can't go farther. Let's make the numbers work for you. 27 World Series titles.
Speaker 3:There's no competing with that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're not going to talk baseball on this episode, not this time, maybe next year, all right.
Speaker 4:Cool, I had no idea. Rebecca went to Australia. I didn't either.
Speaker 2:I've been there twice. Where did you go?
Speaker 3:What cities were you in?
Speaker 2:So the first time I went, we went to Sydney and then we went up to Cairns and so that was kind of like a school trip. So we kind of went up that end and then the second time I went into melbourne and then we went up through the outback up to darwin wow so I've done most of the country, I guess who cares about the west coast perth, nobody, nobody goes next time, next time I'll get the school are
Speaker 1:you going to that. You took a school trip to Australia. Very nice it was okay.
Speaker 2:So it wasn't like through the school, but it was in high school. It was one of those EF tours where they do these educational tours for high schoolers and they take you over Educational, educational, educational. I mean we learned about the country, but that was the extent of the education. It was a summer trip for like two weeks.
Speaker 3:So it was your summer trip, so it was winter there, so that meant the weather was nice up north, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, the weather was nice. It was a bit chilly, but got to scuba dive on the Great Barrier Reef and learn how to surf.
Speaker 3:Look at that they have jellyfish in Australia that are about yay big, maybe a half dollar sized. That will kill you.
Speaker 4:This is what I'm saying. There's a spider that'll kill you. There's a snake that'll kill you.
Speaker 2:They have spider season.
Speaker 1:The spiders are terrifying. Have you seen those?
Speaker 3:They're called huntsmen. They'll hide in the visor of your car and when you drop the visor, a spider the size of your hand drops in your lap.
Speaker 2:fortunately that's not poisonous, but it's massive no but florida has the same thing we have giant spiders there uh, we don't the banana spider, I mean not that what the banana spider? It's. Yeah, they don't hang out. I'm just learning about this.
Speaker 3:I'm gonna have to leave florida because I didn't know about that. Oh yeah, yeah, there's all kinds of spiders and snakes and everything.
Speaker 2:in Florida there's a bunch.
Speaker 1:I was showing vacant land property and and I'm walking through this is not something I do, you know, when I rolled up in my car, not my four-wheeler it looked at me like I was weird.
Speaker 1:I was the city guy, you know. So I'm walking around and as we're walking down towards this little river which I thought was going to be really cool, I'm going to take a picture or video of that the listing agent reached out and grabbed me in front and stopped me and I was was like what's up? And I was so focused on the, the river, I didn't see the big web and I was about to walk into. So there was this big banana spider like right here and it was about to be all uh yeah. So I was like I don't think this is right for my client, so I think we can go ahead and go back right now.
Speaker 2:So I don't do vacant lands anymore. I don't do it anymore rick, you just said that we didn't have banana spiders in florida. Now you just shared a story about a banana spider.
Speaker 1:Okay, but banana spiders are different than that giant huntsman thing that they have down there. Yeah, I've seen that on youtube videos and that thing is huge. It looks like you would carry my picture of the huntsman uh eating a possum online.
Speaker 4:I'm not going to display it. It's carrying a possum. Becca thought big spider was the size of your head.
Speaker 1:No, this thing's the size of a hubcap.
Speaker 4:It's huge. You went there twice, Becca.
Speaker 2:I actually did not see that many spiders when I was there. I was shocked.
Speaker 3:Our CEO tried to convince me that the worst animal to watch out for was called a drop bear, like you're walking along and just drops out of a tree and eats you Drop bears.
Speaker 4:Wait it's an.
Speaker 3:Australian joke yeah.
Speaker 4:Okay, it definitely makes you think that's hilarious.
Speaker 2:I was like wait a second.
Speaker 1:I was like huh, drop, bear, what? No, I mean I've seen videos on TikTok and stuff of snakes jumping out of trees. I'm like what?
Speaker 2:Snakes jump out of trees.
Speaker 4:Stay in the city Duck and cover. It's pretty good.
Speaker 2:They also have the magpies.
Speaker 3:Oh, the magpies are mean. Yeah, that's true, they were on the golf course and they weren't friendly.
Speaker 4:So yeah, I don't even know what that is. That's a made-up animal A so yeah, I don't even know what that is. That's a made-up animal.
Speaker 2:A dangerous magpie is a bird. A magpie is a bird that will attack you A mean bird.
Speaker 1:Aren't they like the ones that steal everything?
Speaker 3:I think they do that too.
Speaker 2:But if you get to know them they will like you. So my brother's father-in-law. They were living in Australia for a little while and he had befriended a magpie and it and he had befriended a magpie and it almost ate out my hand.
Speaker 1:So useless information that we we learn on this pretty much there.
Speaker 3:That's what we do.
Speaker 1:That's what we're doing this is what we're doing, but yeah so so that's your full-time gig.
Speaker 4:Now speak, not going to australia, but we're doing. No, I know it's my full-time gig, it's uh, quite unique, you know.
Speaker 3:I, uh, it's, it's say it's 5 pm here, that means it's 7 am in australia tomorrow, which is a unique schedule you can imagine. I, I probably start my day between 10 and 11 in the morning, so it gives me time to get my walk in, do some stuff. But then, you know, we work with the U S team and then I start my meetings with the Aussies in the in our summertime probably at six o'clock, seven, eight o'clock meetings at night, because it's they're just rolling out of bed and getting started. It's, uh, you know, like as an empty nester. It's perfect.
Speaker 4:I, if you were, you had children, forget it, you're not going to pull a gig like this and stay, stay married, yeah, so, um, it works out really well, you should be a real estate agent that works all hours of the day. There you go, there you go.
Speaker 1:I was going to say the schedule seems to work for you, Bill, because all I see, is you and Sean golfing and uh, can we strike that?
Speaker 3:I think they might be listening to this in Australia.
Speaker 2:You don't want to share that. No, it's, it's. It's like I think it's.
Speaker 3:It's, it's like I think it's uh, it's been a lot of fun. It's been fun to bring a product that you believe in, that you like, that works. It's been. It's been a lot of fun, yeah well, I love it.
Speaker 2:I'm glad you introduced me to it a few years ago cool, very good yeah, I I feel like I've heard of the company, but haven't like ever looked too much into it, so it definitely sounds like something I need to do a little more research on.
Speaker 3:We have a bit of an issue in the Pacific Northwest. Your MLSs up there are just a little different than the rest of the country.
Speaker 3:Portland and Seattle. We're still working to form a partnership with them and let them understand that what we do is help the agents and help the members and subscribers of the MLS, but they just have a different thought process on some things, so we're not quite there yet. You can always use the product, but it requires a little about 45 seconds of adding a property to get the review, as opposed to it being there magically from your MLS. So if you know anybody at the MLS, I'd be happy to talk to you afterwards.
Speaker 1:In Arkansas.
Speaker 4:You just got to take them take them play shooting or deer hunting, and you're good that's that's. I'm not that far from there, Pretty much, pretty much what you got to do here. That's awesome. I can get there quick.
Speaker 1:So, bill, I was told before he came on the podcast here, that I should ask you about two things which is something to do with a maybe an unhealthy relationship with your, your truck and soft serve ice cream. Oh no, did you?
Speaker 2:elaborate on that. I know who did this. I'll see him tomorrow, by the way.
Speaker 3:Look, look, I, I might. I might add stuff to my truck. I love my truck and I might wash it three times a week. Cause why would you have a monthly pass if you just can't run it through the car wash whenever you want?
Speaker 2:So I can see, I can see a storm coming over.
Speaker 3:You know, from from the East coast I go. I got two hours of non-rain, let's go wash it. I've done that before and that's thanks, anthony. Uh, the other thing is this um, yeah, you know I, ice cream is is, um, is the devil. I'm just going to say that right now, anthony's so funny. I've lost 40 pounds in the last seven months. Wow, congratulations. Thank you. By stopping sugary treats, literally that's it.
Speaker 2:How's the joy level in your life? Where's the joy barometer on there?
Speaker 1:he's added more to his truck. That's what caused all the truck. I added the.
Speaker 3:I added the, the uh, the fender guards inside the rear fenders. You know that's a great question. It was saved by a protein bar. Oh, this is not a paid advertisement, benny Stretch. Um, and it's one that Jason on Smart List talks about. It's called Think, and the Think bars and their multitude of flavors with very, very little sugar most have none are fantastic and they were got me over the hump. I might have eaten two or three of those a day when I was just getting started and now I have a couple of week, but you finally just kind of figure out, I can eat whatever I want on my three meals.
Speaker 3:Whatever I want, just don't eat stuff in the middle between the meals and don't eat late at night. And it was amazing, and I do. I've been a fanatical walker for a decade. I walk anywhere from five to 10 miles a day, depending on five miles so and that. But I was walking five miles a day and still weighed two 50 because it's what you eat. It's much more, much, much more what you eat, not not how fast Most of that mileage on the golf course.
Speaker 3:There's, you know around a golf is about 13,000 steps. It's about six and a half miles.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely so every day, you know. I mean, you can write it off as a health expense, right? Yeah, that's a health expense.
Speaker 4:Well, I think you might be able to write it off only if you're carrying your bag. But it doesn't look like Bill and looking at his Instagram.
Speaker 3:Well, I did purchase an Australian piece of equipment.
Speaker 4:Oh, look at that, he's carrying his bag. I think his bag is following him around.
Speaker 3:Actually, yeah, it's got a remote control. By the way, ignore the Diet Coke on the left. There it's Diet. That looks like one of those ones, the fancy ones from Caddyshack back in the day. Yeah, that's an MGI golf cart from Australia. When I went down and played down there, I would say 50% of the players use those. Interesting Instead of using a golf cart that you ride around in, I walk. When I play I don't ride. Even in this horrible heat, with the humidity, I walk.
Speaker 4:It's just not as fun to ride, it's got to get the steps in.
Speaker 2:That's half the fun for me.
Speaker 4:Because you're driving and drinking.
Speaker 2:One place you can do it. It's the only place you should if you're going to never mind the water hazards in the sand too.
Speaker 4:I recently got into golf so I played golf like 20 years ago it was terrible. And uh, and I guess a year and a half, two years ago, I started picking it back up again because my my buddies, I would go to these conferences and they would golf and the whole time they were out there golfing. I was just hitting balls around while they were following me most of the time and then, uh, they were talking about you know the networking and what, the opportunities that opened for them and all this stuff. And then a guy on my team started golfing. I was like, okay, we'll jump into it. So I jumped. I've jumped into it so much that instagram thinks that's all I like to see. Is golf, just like golf, everything. And yesterday I saw a golf bag which is a actually like a motorcycle and you ride it, but it's a wow yes, you just like slide the golf bag down the middle and you ride like.
Speaker 3:So, instead of a golf cart it's like a motorcycle, that's very cool wouldn't that be cool yeah, and I pray you hit the nail on the head with golf around a golf. You can learn so much about somebody right, how they handle adversity, because it's there every round. Um, honesty is a big one, you know are they, and now they want to play the game.
Speaker 3:If everybody agrees we can do the foot wedge. It's good, but it's sometimes you don't agree and yeah, I think in that and just kind of getting to know somebody having that solid time four and a half, five hours, is it's a great, that's a great networking tool. Yeah, says a guy who's obsessed. I says a guy who's obsessed. I say obsession. My wife says you know. I said my wife says obsession.
Speaker 1:I say passion you know, I think there's multi-passion maybe we need to uh schedule some tea times for for next month. Are you going to be down there? In august there might be a tea time scheduled, rick, so bring your clubs I do not have clubs, I'll just have to use clothes, get the rentals hopefully they have. Oh, you're gonna have rentals.
Speaker 3:Oh, you know what? They canceled the time I just showed up, so I'm I'm the guy like.
Speaker 1:If there's like a charity like scramble, I'm good for like maybe two shots okay around.
Speaker 2:All right, I'll contribute. That's about it I'll take. You're drinking two shots around what I'm only good for about two, but that's about it. You're drinking two shots around. I'm only good for about two shots.
Speaker 3:And that's sober. A couple putts out of your wrist.
Speaker 1:I've never put enough time in to really transition from baseball to golf and somebody's swing is garbage. Well, it's different. It's just different, it's supposed to be down, not up here.
Speaker 2:Thanks, Rebecca, now I know what I'm doing wrong. It's just different.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's supposed to be down, not up here, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4:Thanks.
Speaker 1:Rebecca, listen, now I know what I'm doing wrong. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 3:The tees are not three feet long. In golf they're just about three inches, so you need to change that Just tee it up at chest level.
Speaker 4:I'll be fine.
Speaker 1:It's a tee ball. It's an important thing to note. Okay, it's important thing to note. Okay, some people don't know that. So, bill, I know we're getting close to an hour and I don't want to take up all of your day, but before we leave I'm put you on the spot. Between you, sean, and anthony, who's the best player?
Speaker 3:oh well, I'll go the easy route. Um, anth is definitely. Of the three of us playing in Florida where we all play together because Sean lives part-time here, anthony's the best. Yeah, he's got a better index. He hits it farther than both Sean and I. There might be different parts of the game that I'm better than him and he's better than me and Sean's better at better other things. But if I had to pick the best golfer, that threesome, damn it, I have to say Anthony Malafronte of my Tampa agent. Can I say?
Speaker 4:that. Can I say that, yeah, yeah, I like that. He's a good guy, he's one of ours, you can promote him.
Speaker 1:Now that Sean guy, I don't know.
Speaker 3:Yeah, he's, you know, good guy, real good guy.
Speaker 1:So yeah, well, is there anything else you've got going on that you want to mention before we we wrap this up, any other new projects coming down the chute or anything?
Speaker 3:Oh, not at all. Just just looking forward to a few conferences we're going to. You know, we're going to be a Tom Perry. Uh, that's going to be interesting for us. First time it's in August, yeah, so the summit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've never been there. You'll see me right there. I don't know about Becca, she's holding out. Yeah, we're trying to get it.
Speaker 3:Definitely find us guys, and we'll, uh, we'll, we'll plan a meal. I'd love to chat with you a little bit more. I could even bring some microphones that we can knock out a couple episodes of the real estate sessions, if you don't mind there you go, it'd be fun. All right, cool Done. That's it for me, yeah.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Well, Bill, thanks so much and we'll hopefully we'll look forward to hearing from you for our invite to the real estate sessions and we'll try to get this one edited and released I don't know, Sometime in 2023.
Speaker 4:It'll be soon, this year at least released, I don't know, sometime in 2023.
Speaker 2:We'll get it soon. It'll be soon, sometime in 2023.
Speaker 1:Sometime this year. Thank you all for having me in.
Speaker 4:Thanks for dropping by.
Speaker 3:Jump in my first Aussie meeting. See you later.
Speaker 4:Bye, bye, that's good.
Speaker 1:Bill's a good dude.
Speaker 4:Yes, that was a good one. I had no idea. So I had heard of rate my agent before but I never met anybody from them because australian based company, you know, yeah.
Speaker 1:So he kind of alluded to it when we were down at bar camp in orlando and like the month before, no, two weeks before Google deleted my business account.
Speaker 1:So I lost all of my reviews. I mean, I'm talking about like nine years of reviews. Everything was gone. So I had been, you know, talking to Google and trying to get it restored and they said you know, there's nothing we can do, it's gone. I'm like how can that be? Like they always tell you like everything lives on the internet forever. It doesn't go away. How can Google go away? And so I was at bar camp and somebody was asking about Google, my business, and I was like I'm not doing that shit anymore because I just lost everything. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Did you ever get it back.
Speaker 1:No. So in in this room at bar camp, bill was like was like hey, I just started working with these people you might want to check out rate my agent, and so I started using it and the nice thing was is it made it so easy to get reviews that I was able to kind of build my reviews back and it gives them the link where they can quickly leave your review but then also add it to google pretty seamlessly, so without me having to go back and try to backlog everything it was.
Speaker 1:I mean, I still don't have that many, but it's definitely made it easier to start doing that. So, yeah, no, I credit a couple of different pieces of tech for helping me get where I am and rate my agents, one of them, the other one being client giant Cause. I I do very little myself, like I'm. I seriously like what matt was talking about, like the, I really do love that stuff and so those two pieces of tech have really helped me out a lot huh, well, I may have to look into it.
Speaker 4:Then we have like 130 reviews, which is the highest or second highest in our area. Yeah, but I uh, I mean, I've worked, we're tooth and nail to get those, just asking for them all the time.
Speaker 1:So that would be terrible if we lost it well, and it's nice because you know, like, like he was saying, once it's connected, like I just get a notification that says hey, you had a closing um, and you can go in and say whether you want to get the review from the buyer or the seller. If it's's a couple, you can send each one a request. They can both do a review. And then, if I think for I don't know what I spent I think I spent 300 bucks a month on like an ongoing campaign where they advertise all of my views all over social and I get tens of thousands of views on those. It's crazy.
Speaker 4:Interesting. Are you getting direct?
Speaker 1:leads from it. Yeah, 100%.
Speaker 2:Nice.
Speaker 1:Because it just drives people down. They'll see it, they'll get to Instagram and then they're DMing me.
Speaker 2:Nice.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, it's crazy.
Speaker 2:I am low-key, mortified that it wasn't just you guys seeing me eat my little Pop-Tart thing.
Speaker 4:That's the free show. You never know when the guest is there when the mystery guests they pop in they don't say anything.
Speaker 2:I didn't even think about it.
Speaker 1:I didn't know he was there. I was going to ask.
Speaker 4:Riles was the guest here, yet he's there watching her eat and take the photos. It's so funny. I'm trying to get a behind-the and he's there watching her eat and take the photos.
Speaker 2:It's so funny. I was trying to get a behind-the-scenes moment. You got one.
Speaker 4:That's going to be a great one.
Speaker 2:And then I just got a message from someone on Instagram who's like did you just take a picture of yourself and then say caught in the act?
Speaker 1:You're like no, it was our podcast guest. Did you know? It was our, it was our podcast guest.
Speaker 4:Take a picture of yourself being instantly caught in the act that was awesome.
Speaker 1:That's so fun. See, we're gonna learn lots doing this. Right now. We know that just because we don't see anybody doesn't mean that there are not multiple people watching this, Guys.
Speaker 2:it could only go up from here.
Speaker 4:It's got to be true.
Speaker 2:I didn't think I would hit rock bottom this soon, but here we are.
Speaker 1:I will say it's nice hearing from people who have podcasts like their opinion or feelings of what we're doing. It seems like it's all very positive. So, yay, I'm hopeful.
Speaker 2:Yay, we'll see where it goes, I do like that he opened with you guys are doing something cool and I'm like, oh, from such an innovative podcaster, that is a great thing. It is good to hear. You should see when he does his live episodes.
Speaker 1:People are so freaked out Like how do you do that? Like what magic is this that you're doing a podcast live in this room and to some people like podcasts still are just so intimidating yeah, they really are, which I think podcasts are like the easiest thing because you're not on camera, at least most Well that way, you can eat on camera.
Speaker 2:Well, except, and here we are, and yet we develop the difficulty.
Speaker 4:That way you can eat on camera and never know.
Speaker 2:No one would know I only wish that was recorded.
Speaker 4:I would have inserted that here. Well, we definitely need to insert the photo.
Speaker 2:Wait, were you not recording all of this? I thought you were recording. No, oh no, he wasn't recording the pre-show part where I was eating.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, yeah, I wish it was recorded. I was going to say you were recording the last part where we talked about it. Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you didn't stop recording because I said the live thing. Yeah, okay, I was making sure, I was like when he did this.
Speaker 4:I was like you didn't really stop recording, did you?
Speaker 2:No, that we should do, for that is just to raise mute button as our little clicker. Did you hear that, guys?
Speaker 4:No, that was Rick. That was Rick's mute button, that was me, did I not say? No, you said it. My mute button is very quiet, I hear it.
Speaker 2:It's so loud Rick.
Speaker 1:But you don't hear when it goes on. Do you Like watch when I put it on?
Speaker 4:No, we don't hear when it goes on. Do you Like watch when I put it on?
Speaker 2:No, we don't hear when it goes on, it's so loud.
Speaker 4:We know when he's ready to say something, it's like okay, Rick's gonna say something.
Speaker 2:Excuse me Tapping in. Is this thing on?
Speaker 1:Alright, good stuff guys. So, we're not doing next week right.
Speaker 4:Wait, we should do this one first.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, we should probably end the show.
Speaker 3:Before we start talking.
Speaker 4:Thanks everybody for listening yes. See you next time.
Speaker 2:Best time ever. Bye.
