The evolving role of real estate websites with Brian Boero

About this podcast

Brian Boero, the CEO of 1000watt, joins York Baur on the podcast for a candid conversation about the evolving role of real estate websites. Brian has spent 23 years in this industry and knows a thing or two about branding. Especially when it comes to websites. York and Brian discuss the importance of the brokerage website, how it has evolved over the years, and how to cultivate a sense of meaning behind your brand and website. For weekly insights from the talented minds of 1000watt subscribe to their newsletter by visiting 1000watt.net.

Transcript

York Baur: Well, hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of The Real, our podcast here at MoxiWorks, and it’s my great pleasure to welcome Brian Boero of 1000watt here to our latest episode. Hey, Brian!

Brian Boero: Hey, York. How are you?

YB: Doing well, thank you. And hopefully you’re staying safe and sane down there. You’re in Oakland, I believe. Is that right?

BB: I’m in Oakland, California, and we’ve had our share of strangeness this year, but today is –

YB: Yeah, boy, haven’t we all, I saw a meme that I think you might appreciate. I don’t know if you’ve seen it. It’s a, it’s a graphic of a dumpster fire and it says 2020 on the dumpster.

BB: Yeah, it’s been a, it’s been a doozy. We’ve been blanketed in smoke for a good portion of the last six weeks, but it is a glorious crystal clear blue California day today. So I’m enjoying and appreciating that.

YB: That’s awesome. Well, and for the record, I’m in the Seattle area, and that’s where Moxi’s based and we unfortunately have been the recipients of your smoke as well. We’ve actually had like serious smoke up here from those fires. It just shows you the scale of what’s going on. So I’m sorry. I know it’s been rough on a lot of you and your compadres in California. So my sympathies there. But we’re here to talk industry and we’re here to talk your perspectives. And so I thought I’d start out by, well, first saying that I have always personally appreciated the perspectives you and others at 1000watt offer, but yours in particular. I’m a religious reader of the 1000watt newsletter, for instance, and I’ve done that since I came to Moxi 8 years ago. So perhaps you can just talk a little bit about your background, which is pretty eclectic in this industry. You’ve done a lot of different things and things that most haven’t so, maybe you start by just talking a little bit about that?

BB: Sure. Well, thank you for reading what we write. We never take that for granted and writing is hard. It really is. And if you do it regularly, it’s still tough. So I’m glad you enjoy that. Yeah, I’ve never sold real estate, but I’ve been around real estate and media and marketing and tech and just an observer of the industry 23 years now. I started in this business really because of Brad Inman. Brad Inman hired me at Inman News when I was super young and gave me tons of responsibility at a young age and tons of opportunity. And he really, were it not for him, I wouldn’t be in this industry that I love. But today, you know, we’ve been doing 1000watt now for 13 years? You know, that’s given us an opportunity to work with all kinds of companies, right? Proptech companies, brokerages, big and small, brands, mortgage companies, title companies, builders, and there’s never a dull day in my working life because we get to work with so many different participants in this business. And as you know, it’s a complex, complicated business, but it’s also wonderful. So, I’m a lifer. I’ve been in it 23 years and I’m here for good.

YB: Good man. Yeah, no, it’s that is a very interesting background. I will pay credit to my various mentors through my career too. I think we all stand on the shoulders of the help we were given. And like you, I’ve had people take a, take a chance on me. So it’s nice to hear that acknowledged, Brian. I appreciate that. So, let’s talk a little bit about what you guys do at 1000watt and the perspectives you bring. You do a myriad of things, ultimately, you have a broad palette of services you provide. But one of the things that seems the most visible, and I know you have a lot of engagements around is websites. And we at Moxi, while we have a website product offering for brokerage, agent, teams, etc. The brokerage piece of that in specific is the market that we serve, the enterprise broker. So, I’m very curious to kind of get your thoughts on, what is the importance of brokerage websites these days? What is the role they serve? And I get that it’s individually specific and that’s one of the things I think you do so well, is to make it specific to a given brokerage. But for a listener out there in brokerage leadership, what would you tell them about how they should think about the role of their websites these days?

BB: Yeah, that’s a super big question and we do lots of stuff and thinking strategically about web presence for brokerage companies is one of them. And I think we are at a bit of a, I guess, inflection point or transitionary phase where the real estate website as it has been thought of by a brokerage company for years and years and years now is starting to change, right? For going on 20 years a website was really a home search utility, and every broker website had IDX home search, you had an agent roster, and you had a couple other pages hanging off of that. And people would go to your website, they would search, and you know, we kind of dialed that in. And, and that was it. And some brokers generated leads off that and had e-lead teams and all of that, and some brokers didn’t really focus on that. But that was really what a website was and they really even started structurally to look the same, right? We all know what a real estate website looks like for the most part, and it’s a picture of a nice house with a search box in the middle, maybe some featured properties, you know, find an agent and, and you’re done, right? And I think now the opportunity is, for lots of reasons, is to think about, okay, now that we’ve settled in this place where everybody kind of has the basic search dialed in, what really is the job that my website should be doing for my company? And really thinking strategically through that question. And I think that’s the opportunity that big brokers have right now is to sort of reconsider a lot of the assumptions they had about their website. And I think that, you know, a platform such as yours is a fine foundation upon which to do that, right? Because your technology is good. It’s contemporary, it’s flexible. You’re able to roll with a broker who’s willing to sort of rethink what it is that their website is supposed to be doing for them.

YB: Yeah, that’s a great perspective. And thanks for, you know, acknowledging our platform and for the viewers, and we’ve collaborated together as companies for this very reason you’re bringing up, right? Cause what we think at Moxi is that the effort to do what you just stated, the sort of default expectation of, you know, a nice image in the search box and some of these things, you shouldn’t have to invest a ton of money in that. That should just be what the platform provides, which ours does, so that the effort and frankly, the money spend can be better spent in my opinion, working with a company like yours to figure out what the greater mission of the website should be for that brokerage? Because there’s not one answer. It’s in fact, there’s probably a different answer for every single brokerage out there, particularly at the enterprise level. So let’s actually shift to that because you were awesome in the midst of the pandemic freak out in Q2 to lend your mighty pen because I love how you write, to a book that we published, which was thoughts from industry leaders, which we consider you to be one, the book we called “Grit Unlocked”, and it was the idea of recovery, let’s look beyond the pandemic. And you were actually the first thing in there, for good reason. And one of the things you said in that was “a brand at its core is what your company means to people”. So, you know, at a higher level, how do you help guide – cause again, that’s going to be a different answer for every broker – but how do you guide, how do you expect, how does a broker show up to that conversation with you as 1000watt to really get the most out of that process?

BB: Yeah, so I would say that brokerage companies and even large franchise brands, real estate in general, has done a pretty good job at recognition. Meaning, consumers have awareness generally of the companies that do real estate in their market, right? Because you’ve had yard signs out for years and years, you’re getting postcards, they kind of are aware that, “okay, there’s this company over here that’s blue, there’s here that this company over here is green, and I’m aware of this company”, much in the same way that I, you know, can, I’m looking across my room, I see a chair, I recognize that as a chair, the chair doesn’t have a tremendous amount of meaning to me. And that’s where the opportunity I think lies is how do you cultivate meaning, right? And go beyond just awareness and to tie it back to the website. That’s part of that opportunity. Because if you go to a website or let me put it this way – you’re a brokerage and you have a thousand agents and you have a website, you’ve invested a lot of money in  it and you are lucky enough to have somebody come to that site. You know, a buyer, a seller, an owner, and they come with their own questions, their own anxieties, their own sort of psychic make-up that brings them to your website. And for the most part, most brokerage companies don’t say anything to that person. They sort of look back at them with a blank stare. Right? There’s no greeting. There’s no hello. There’s no explanation of we are company X, and thank you for coming here. And here are the reasons one, two, three, why we are the best partner in the market for you to trust with this really important thing that you’re considering.  So it’s sort of a vacuum because we’ve been sort of focused on the mechanics of a brokerage website as being a search utility, but really missing the mark in terms of going beyond recognition to cultivate a sense of meaning, right? What are the emotional needs of that visitor that my brand and my brokerage is uniquely prepared to provide? What rational benefits is my company, my brand, uniquely prepared to provide to that person who has come to my website, wanting something, needing something.

YB: Yeah, no, I couldn’t agree more. And it’s, you know, it’s so interesting as a technologist, because my career, I think you know this, Brian, but for the audience, my career is not in real estate or real estate tech. It’s in technology, period. And now for the last eight years, I’ve been part of real estate since I’ve been running Moxi as a CEO. But what is vexing to me in this industry more than others, it happens in every industry, but this one more so than most, is this assumption and use the term of the mechanics, this assumption that it’s somehow websites, oh, it’s a, it’s a technology thing. It’s, it’s all about the technology! No! No, the technology is a tool. It’s a means to an end. And it’s, it’s to achieve the things that you just articulate, which is why we put such a premium at Moxi on automating and integrating that whole thing so that literally you can flip a switch and have a website. And then all the effort on top of that – which isn’t, you know, hiring custom developers, by the way, it’s configuration, not customization – that then allows you to tell the kind of stories that you’re talking about. And it’s the only thing I find curious is it’s a lot more than just about the homepage. You don’t have to vomit everything onto your homepage. I mean, for God’s sake, you’ve got all these entry points and things you can guide a visitor with. And I guess the thing that resonates for me in this too, is we describe ourselves as a relationship based industry, and we certainly believe in that. We have a very sphere relationship based marketing philosophy and the products we provide and the kind of customer relationships we build,  but yet when it comes to websites and technology, the industry somehow forgets that, it seems, almost. So, you know, how would you encourage someone to think about differentiation around that? Because the first step is to get into the space you described. That’s, that’s necessary precursor. But if I’m in that space, if my mind is open to the ideas you laid out, how do I then think about, how do I make myself different in whatever I say? Versus the myriad other brokers that are out there, or at least that are in my area, perhaps.

BB: You’re absolutely right about not just the homepage, but the homepage is like, let’s start there. Okay.

YB: Sure.

BB: The way that I frequently think about it is your homepage is an argument for you and your company and your brand, right? It’s an argument. So, what is your case? For hiring one of my agents. What is your case for your brand? What is your case for your accumulated experience? Make that argument and an argument as in any form needs to be structured, right? So you’re hitting the right notes and leading people to a conclusion. So you’re leading people to take a certain action, right? What is that action you want people to take? Well, we want, we want to throw off some buyer leads. Or, you know, what is it? You have maybe some vague notion of it or you haven’t really refined that or thought about it with that level of focus. So your web, your homepage is an argument. You’re making a case for yourself. In fact, and not that I’m suggesting this be done literally, but why wouldn’t a big brokerage website in effect be a seriously edited and streamlined version of your company’s listing presentation. Why shouldn’t it be that, right? If you want listings more than anything else, your homepage really should be effectively your listing presentation. But yet the default is always, okay, search homes, do your search. Okay. Okay, that’s great, but everybody else has that. And by the way, these things aren’t mutually exclusive. I’m not saying don’t have home search on your website. I’m saying you have this whole other green field of opportunity where you can be making an argument for your company.

YB: Yeah. Yeah. The thing that has vexed me at times in this industry is we try to guide customers around what you’re saying is the lack of well defined objectives. You know, when you try to make anything, a website in this instance, be all things to all people, it ends up being nothing to, to anyone in my opinion. So, but it goes back to mentorship that you spoke about earlier, Brian. And, you know, that’s one of the values, in my opinion, and we work with agencies, and by the way, you’ve done work for us as Moxi, the value of having a mentor, a guide, that sees you from the outside and has a lot of experience and how to tease those things out and frankly, impose the kind of structure you’re talking about to the conversation is I think very, very valuable because it’s very hard for organizations to see themselves from the outside. That’s one of the key values I think that you provide.

BB: Yeah, we really do see that we tend to work with. strong companies. In some cases, they have lost their voice for some reason. They have sort of forgotten what made them amazing in the first place. They have maybe been put back on their heels by new competitive dynamics. And our job is really as we sometimes say, to help companies fall in love with themselves all over again, right? Reclaim their voice. And we call that, that process – discovery. You know, it’s not as if we’re, you know, making something up. We’re helping companies sort of revisit what they already knew to be true about themselves, but maybe add lost sharpness around over the years for whatever reason. You had sort of talked about sort of this notion of the mechanics and the utility and why is that how do we end up here, and I think one thing that I’ve noticed and I’m sure you all have to over the years is that the large brokerage website is sometimes viewed as a tech responsibility, right?

YB: Exactly.

BB: ETO is involved and marketing maybe is kind of a stakeholder that isn’t really, you know, fully integrated in that process where you have tech and marketing and they’re sort of siloed. You know, if you have a solid technical foundation, for example, what Moxi does, right? Your platform is a solid technical foundation, then you don’t have to worry about the basics of that. That should just perform.  Then, the website really should be a marketing function.

YB: Yes!

BB: It belongs, it should be owned by marketing. No offense to the many CTOs in this business who I know and respect. You’ve got a seat at the table, but I really believe it belongs with marketing.

YB: You know, I couldn’t agree more. I mean, it’s a violent agreement on this point for a couple reasons. One, I believe, and think about the technologies we use all day in our lives, right? We drive a car, we use our phone. The goal of those technologies, I believe, should be to be invisible. There’s, you shouldn’t have to be worried about, or even frankly, sort of cognizant of, that there’s technology at play. You’re just using the thing. And I feel like websites, in this particular example, should be the same thing for the marketer. It should be a, weapon to wield, if you will. And it shouldn’t, I mean, the utopian state would be, you don’t even need to involve any technical people in anything now that – we’re not quite at that stage yet. But we’re, at Moxi, we’re darn close. And the other thing that I think is interesting about your comment, Brian, and maybe you see this too, in our industry because I see it, but I also see it globally, and it was well outside of real estate, there’s a convergence of the CMO and the CTO job. They’re either teaming or there’s literally a single person with like director levels underneath them because of the recognition of what you said, that, that the technology really is to support the marketing function, not the other way around.

BB: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if you think about it, I mean, in real estate, we’re always thinking about the next platform. For the next medium. So while for the last 20 years, we’ve been bouncing around, we have to do social, we have to do video, we have to get on Instagram, then we have to get on Facebook, then nobody’s on Facebook. Oh, now we really got to get back on Facebook. Now we got to do ads on LinkedIn from medium to medium, never really thinking about the message. We’re so focused on the, the medium or the latest tactic that we never stop back and think of the message. And then all the while the platform where if you’re a strong, large, independent brokerage, you have awareness in the marketplace. People are going to your website. We see lots of large broker websites. Some of them have a lot of traffic, right?

YB: Oh yeah.

BB: Right? But there’s been more effort placed on media and touchpoints outside of that website  that it’s just a missed opportunity.  You have a billboard on the internet that people are going to every minute of every day and you’re not making an argument to them. You’re not connecting with them emotionally and rationally in a way that makes them want to take a step towards you.

YB: Yeah, no, I couldn’t agree more. Well, I’m, I’m watching the clock here, Brian, and I’ve enjoyed this as I always do. And we’re kind of getting, getting wrapped up here. So, you know, at the beginning, I mentioned my appreciation for the work you guys do particularly with your newsletter, which is free. And I think gives, you know, it’s, it’s an amplification over time of everything we’ve talked about here. It’s a tremendous source of perspective and value. For free. So if I recall, it’s, it’s not just free to me, right? It’s free to anybody. How does somebody go about, you know, connecting with that stream of goodness?

BB: Yeah, so yeah, we write maybe once a week, once every week and a half or so, and get on the list it’s just 1000Watt.net, 1 0 0 0, 1000, the numerals, W A T T dot net, and you’ll see a, you know, subscribe box. We’re not gonna hit you with spam, but we share a point of view, which actually is kind of the point about much of what I’ve been saying here is your brand needs to have a point of view. To give that voice consistently, it’s hard, but it pays off for sure.

YB: Yeah, no, that’s, that’s the other thing I would say that I take away. And I think your newsletter and the way you’ve built your brand is a great example is I’m an eight year subscriber now. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. You know, you’re trying to build with a brand. You’re trying to build a relationship. Relationship takes time. You can’t just manufacture it overnight. And so I think if people out there in our audience want to see how that’s done subscribing to newsletters is a great sort of a real life example of you guys practicing what you preach.

BB: Yeah. Well, thank you for reading York and look, I think you, you guys, the Moxi team does a great job. You have a great platform, and you know, you’re right. It should be not something that your tech team has to stress out over every single day. It’s really something that should just run. We see lots of brokerage companies, and for a lot of them, tech is a struggle and they feel that they’re painted into a corner with their technology partner. It’s sort of a digital straitjacket, if you will, in many ways. You know, I appreciate you guys working hard to do something better.

YB: Excellent. Well, thanks for that. And by the way, duly noted on digital straitjacket. In fact, that may, with attribution, that may find its way into the Moxi vernacular.

BB: Yeah, not a good look.

YB: No, no, it’s not. Well, as always, Brian, I’ve truly enjoyed this and thank you for your willingness to come on and just all you do to make our industry better. So thanks so much for your time today.

BB: Wow. Great. Thank you, York. It’s been a pleasure.

YB: Awesome. And thanks to all you listeners out there and hope to join you soon on another episode of The Real. Thanks.

York Baur: Well, hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of The Real, our podcast here at MoxiWorks, and it’s my great pleasure to welcome Brian Boero of 1000watt here to our latest episode. Hey, Brian!

Brian Boero: Hey, York. How are you?

YB: Doing well, thank you. And hopefully you’re staying safe and sane down there. You’re in Oakland, I believe. Is that right?

BB: I’m in Oakland, California, and we’ve had our share of strangeness this year, but today is –

YB: Yeah, boy, haven’t we all, I saw a meme that I think you might appreciate. I don’t know if you’ve seen it. It’s a, it’s a graphic of a dumpster fire and it says 2020 on the dumpster.

BB: Yeah, it’s been a, it’s been a doozy. We’ve been blanketed in smoke for a good portion of the last six weeks, but it is a glorious crystal clear blue California day today. So I’m enjoying and appreciating that.

YB: That’s awesome. Well, and for the record, I’m in the Seattle area, and that’s where Moxi’s based and we unfortunately have been the recipients of your smoke as well. We’ve actually had like serious smoke up here from those fires. It just shows you the scale of what’s going on. So I’m sorry. I know it’s been rough on a lot of you and your compadres in California. So my sympathies there. But we’re here to talk industry and we’re here to talk your perspectives. And so I thought I’d start out by, well, first saying that I have always personally appreciated the perspectives you and others at 1000watt offer, but yours in particular. I’m a religious reader of the 1000watt newsletter, for instance, and I’ve done that since I came to Moxi 8 years ago. So perhaps you can just talk a little bit about your background, which is pretty eclectic in this industry. You’ve done a lot of different things and things that most haven’t so, maybe you start by just talking a little bit about that?

BB: Sure. Well, thank you for reading what we write. We never take that for granted and writing is hard. It really is. And if you do it regularly, it’s still tough. So I’m glad you enjoy that. Yeah, I’ve never sold real estate, but I’ve been around real estate and media and marketing and tech and just an observer of the industry 23 years now. I started in this business really because of Brad Inman. Brad Inman hired me at Inman News when I was super young and gave me tons of responsibility at a young age and tons of opportunity. And he really, were it not for him, I wouldn’t be in this industry that I love. But today, you know, we’ve been doing 1000watt now for 13 years? You know, that’s given us an opportunity to work with all kinds of companies, right? Proptech companies, brokerages, big and small, brands, mortgage companies, title companies, builders, and there’s never a dull day in my working life because we get to work with so many different participants in this business. And as you know, it’s a complex, complicated business, but it’s also wonderful. So, I’m a lifer. I’ve been in it 23 years and I’m here for good.

YB: Good man. Yeah, no, it’s that is a very interesting background. I will pay credit to my various mentors through my career too. I think we all stand on the shoulders of the help we were given. And like you, I’ve had people take a, take a chance on me. So it’s nice to hear that acknowledged, Brian. I appreciate that. So, let’s talk a little bit about what you guys do at 1000watt and the perspectives you bring. You do a myriad of things, ultimately, you have a broad palette of services you provide. But one of the things that seems the most visible, and I know you have a lot of engagements around is websites. And we at Moxi, while we have a website product offering for brokerage, agent, teams, etc. The brokerage piece of that in specific is the market that we serve, the enterprise broker. So, I’m very curious to kind of get your thoughts on, what is the importance of brokerage websites these days? What is the role they serve? And I get that it’s individually specific and that’s one of the things I think you do so well, is to make it specific to a given brokerage. But for a listener out there in brokerage leadership, what would you tell them about how they should think about the role of their websites these days?

BB: Yeah, that’s a super big question and we do lots of stuff and thinking strategically about web presence for brokerage companies is one of them. And I think we are at a bit of a, I guess, inflection point or transitionary phase where the real estate website as it has been thought of by a brokerage company for years and years and years now is starting to change, right? For going on 20 years a website was really a home search utility, and every broker website had IDX home search, you had an agent roster, and you had a couple other pages hanging off of that. And people would go to your website, they would search, and you know, we kind of dialed that in. And, and that was it. And some brokers generated leads off that and had e-lead teams and all of that, and some brokers didn’t really focus on that. But that was really what a website was and they really even started structurally to look the same, right? We all know what a real estate website looks like for the most part, and it’s a picture of a nice house with a search box in the middle, maybe some featured properties, you know, find an agent and, and you’re done, right? And I think now the opportunity is, for lots of reasons, is to think about, okay, now that we’ve settled in this place where everybody kind of has the basic search dialed in, what really is the job that my website should be doing for my company? And really thinking strategically through that question. And I think that’s the opportunity that big brokers have right now is to sort of reconsider a lot of the assumptions they had about their website. And I think that, you know, a platform such as yours is a fine foundation upon which to do that, right? Because your technology is good. It’s contemporary, it’s flexible. You’re able to roll with a broker who’s willing to sort of rethink what it is that their website is supposed to be doing for them.

YB: Yeah, that’s a great perspective. And thanks for, you know, acknowledging our platform and for the viewers, and we’ve collaborated together as companies for this very reason you’re bringing up, right? Cause what we think at Moxi is that the effort to do what you just stated, the sort of default expectation of, you know, a nice image in the search box and some of these things, you shouldn’t have to invest a ton of money in that. That should just be what the platform provides, which ours does, so that the effort and frankly, the money spend can be better spent in my opinion, working with a company like yours to figure out what the greater mission of the website should be for that brokerage? Because there’s not one answer. It’s in fact, there’s probably a different answer for every single brokerage out there, particularly at the enterprise level. So let’s actually shift to that because you were awesome in the midst of the pandemic freak out in Q2 to lend your mighty pen because I love how you write, to a book that we published, which was thoughts from industry leaders, which we consider you to be one, the book we called “Grit Unlocked”, and it was the idea of recovery, let’s look beyond the pandemic. And you were actually the first thing in there, for good reason. And one of the things you said in that was “a brand at its core is what your company means to people”. So, you know, at a higher level, how do you help guide – cause again, that’s going to be a different answer for every broker – but how do you guide, how do you expect, how does a broker show up to that conversation with you as 1000watt to really get the most out of that process?

BB: Yeah, so I would say that brokerage companies and even large franchise brands, real estate in general, has done a pretty good job at recognition. Meaning, consumers have awareness generally of the companies that do real estate in their market, right? Because you’ve had yard signs out for years and years, you’re getting postcards, they kind of are aware that, “okay, there’s this company over here that’s blue, there’s here that this company over here is green, and I’m aware of this company”, much in the same way that I, you know, can, I’m looking across my room, I see a chair, I recognize that as a chair, the chair doesn’t have a tremendous amount of meaning to me. And that’s where the opportunity I think lies is how do you cultivate meaning, right? And go beyond just awareness and to tie it back to the website. That’s part of that opportunity. Because if you go to a website or let me put it this way – you’re a brokerage and you have a thousand agents and you have a website, you’ve invested a lot of money in  it and you are lucky enough to have somebody come to that site. You know, a buyer, a seller, an owner, and they come with their own questions, their own anxieties, their own sort of psychic make-up that brings them to your website. And for the most part, most brokerage companies don’t say anything to that person. They sort of look back at them with a blank stare. Right? There’s no greeting. There’s no hello. There’s no explanation of we are company X, and thank you for coming here. And here are the reasons one, two, three, why we are the best partner in the market for you to trust with this really important thing that you’re considering.  So it’s sort of a vacuum because we’ve been sort of focused on the mechanics of a brokerage website as being a search utility, but really missing the mark in terms of going beyond recognition to cultivate a sense of meaning, right? What are the emotional needs of that visitor that my brand and my brokerage is uniquely prepared to provide? What rational benefits is my company, my brand, uniquely prepared to provide to that person who has come to my website, wanting something, needing something.

YB: Yeah, no, I couldn’t agree more. And it’s, you know, it’s so interesting as a technologist, because my career, I think you know this, Brian, but for the audience, my career is not in real estate or real estate tech. It’s in technology, period. And now for the last eight years, I’ve been part of real estate since I’ve been running Moxi as a CEO. But what is vexing to me in this industry more than others, it happens in every industry, but this one more so than most, is this assumption and use the term of the mechanics, this assumption that it’s somehow websites, oh, it’s a, it’s a technology thing. It’s, it’s all about the technology! No! No, the technology is a tool. It’s a means to an end. And it’s, it’s to achieve the things that you just articulate, which is why we put such a premium at Moxi on automating and integrating that whole thing so that literally you can flip a switch and have a website. And then all the effort on top of that – which isn’t, you know, hiring custom developers, by the way, it’s configuration, not customization – that then allows you to tell the kind of stories that you’re talking about. And it’s the only thing I find curious is it’s a lot more than just about the homepage. You don’t have to vomit everything onto your homepage. I mean, for God’s sake, you’ve got all these entry points and things you can guide a visitor with. And I guess the thing that resonates for me in this too, is we describe ourselves as a relationship based industry, and we certainly believe in that. We have a very sphere relationship based marketing philosophy and the products we provide and the kind of customer relationships we build,  but yet when it comes to websites and technology, the industry somehow forgets that, it seems, almost. So, you know, how would you encourage someone to think about differentiation around that? Because the first step is to get into the space you described. That’s, that’s necessary precursor. But if I’m in that space, if my mind is open to the ideas you laid out, how do I then think about, how do I make myself different in whatever I say? Versus the myriad other brokers that are out there, or at least that are in my area, perhaps.

BB: You’re absolutely right about not just the homepage, but the homepage is like, let’s start there. Okay.

YB: Sure.

BB: The way that I frequently think about it is your homepage is an argument for you and your company and your brand, right? It’s an argument. So, what is your case? For hiring one of my agents. What is your case for your brand? What is your case for your accumulated experience? Make that argument and an argument as in any form needs to be structured, right? So you’re hitting the right notes and leading people to a conclusion. So you’re leading people to take a certain action, right? What is that action you want people to take? Well, we want, we want to throw off some buyer leads. Or, you know, what is it? You have maybe some vague notion of it or you haven’t really refined that or thought about it with that level of focus. So your web, your homepage is an argument. You’re making a case for yourself. In fact, and not that I’m suggesting this be done literally, but why wouldn’t a big brokerage website in effect be a seriously edited and streamlined version of your company’s listing presentation. Why shouldn’t it be that, right? If you want listings more than anything else, your homepage really should be effectively your listing presentation. But yet the default is always, okay, search homes, do your search. Okay. Okay, that’s great, but everybody else has that. And by the way, these things aren’t mutually exclusive. I’m not saying don’t have home search on your website. I’m saying you have this whole other green field of opportunity where you can be making an argument for your company.

YB: Yeah. Yeah. The thing that has vexed me at times in this industry is we try to guide customers around what you’re saying is the lack of well defined objectives. You know, when you try to make anything, a website in this instance, be all things to all people, it ends up being nothing to, to anyone in my opinion. So, but it goes back to mentorship that you spoke about earlier, Brian. And, you know, that’s one of the values, in my opinion, and we work with agencies, and by the way, you’ve done work for us as Moxi, the value of having a mentor, a guide, that sees you from the outside and has a lot of experience and how to tease those things out and frankly, impose the kind of structure you’re talking about to the conversation is I think very, very valuable because it’s very hard for organizations to see themselves from the outside. That’s one of the key values I think that you provide.

BB: Yeah, we really do see that we tend to work with. strong companies. In some cases, they have lost their voice for some reason. They have sort of forgotten what made them amazing in the first place. They have maybe been put back on their heels by new competitive dynamics. And our job is really as we sometimes say, to help companies fall in love with themselves all over again, right? Reclaim their voice. And we call that, that process – discovery. You know, it’s not as if we’re, you know, making something up. We’re helping companies sort of revisit what they already knew to be true about themselves, but maybe add lost sharpness around over the years for whatever reason. You had sort of talked about sort of this notion of the mechanics and the utility and why is that how do we end up here, and I think one thing that I’ve noticed and I’m sure you all have to over the years is that the large brokerage website is sometimes viewed as a tech responsibility, right?

YB: Exactly.

BB: ETO is involved and marketing maybe is kind of a stakeholder that isn’t really, you know, fully integrated in that process where you have tech and marketing and they’re sort of siloed. You know, if you have a solid technical foundation, for example, what Moxi does, right? Your platform is a solid technical foundation, then you don’t have to worry about the basics of that. That should just perform.  Then, the website really should be a marketing function.

YB: Yes!

BB: It belongs, it should be owned by marketing. No offense to the many CTOs in this business who I know and respect. You’ve got a seat at the table, but I really believe it belongs with marketing.

YB: You know, I couldn’t agree more. I mean, it’s a violent agreement on this point for a couple reasons. One, I believe, and think about the technologies we use all day in our lives, right? We drive a car, we use our phone. The goal of those technologies, I believe, should be to be invisible. There’s, you shouldn’t have to be worried about, or even frankly, sort of cognizant of, that there’s technology at play. You’re just using the thing. And I feel like websites, in this particular example, should be the same thing for the marketer. It should be a, weapon to wield, if you will. And it shouldn’t, I mean, the utopian state would be, you don’t even need to involve any technical people in anything now that – we’re not quite at that stage yet. But we’re, at Moxi, we’re darn close. And the other thing that I think is interesting about your comment, Brian, and maybe you see this too, in our industry because I see it, but I also see it globally, and it was well outside of real estate, there’s a convergence of the CMO and the CTO job. They’re either teaming or there’s literally a single person with like director levels underneath them because of the recognition of what you said, that, that the technology really is to support the marketing function, not the other way around.

BB: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if you think about it, I mean, in real estate, we’re always thinking about the next platform. For the next medium. So while for the last 20 years, we’ve been bouncing around, we have to do social, we have to do video, we have to get on Instagram, then we have to get on Facebook, then nobody’s on Facebook. Oh, now we really got to get back on Facebook. Now we got to do ads on LinkedIn from medium to medium, never really thinking about the message. We’re so focused on the, the medium or the latest tactic that we never stop back and think of the message. And then all the while the platform where if you’re a strong, large, independent brokerage, you have awareness in the marketplace. People are going to your website. We see lots of large broker websites. Some of them have a lot of traffic, right?

YB: Oh yeah.

BB: Right? But there’s been more effort placed on media and touchpoints outside of that website  that it’s just a missed opportunity.  You have a billboard on the internet that people are going to every minute of every day and you’re not making an argument to them. You’re not connecting with them emotionally and rationally in a way that makes them want to take a step towards you.

YB: Yeah, no, I couldn’t agree more. Well, I’m, I’m watching the clock here, Brian, and I’ve enjoyed this as I always do. And we’re kind of getting, getting wrapped up here. So, you know, at the beginning, I mentioned my appreciation for the work you guys do particularly with your newsletter, which is free. And I think gives, you know, it’s, it’s an amplification over time of everything we’ve talked about here. It’s a tremendous source of perspective and value. For free. So if I recall, it’s, it’s not just free to me, right? It’s free to anybody. How does somebody go about, you know, connecting with that stream of goodness?

BB: Yeah, so yeah, we write maybe once a week, once every week and a half or so, and get on the list it’s just 1000Watt.net, 1 0 0 0, 1000, the numerals, W A T T dot net, and you’ll see a, you know, subscribe box. We’re not gonna hit you with spam, but we share a point of view, which actually is kind of the point about much of what I’ve been saying here is your brand needs to have a point of view. To give that voice consistently, it’s hard, but it pays off for sure.

YB: Yeah, no, that’s, that’s the other thing I would say that I take away. And I think your newsletter and the way you’ve built your brand is a great example is I’m an eight year subscriber now. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. You know, you’re trying to build with a brand. You’re trying to build a relationship. Relationship takes time. You can’t just manufacture it overnight. And so I think if people out there in our audience want to see how that’s done subscribing to newsletters is a great sort of a real life example of you guys practicing what you preach.

BB: Yeah. Well, thank you for reading York and look, I think you, you guys, the Moxi team does a great job. You have a great platform, and you know, you’re right. It should be not something that your tech team has to stress out over every single day. It’s really something that should just run. We see lots of brokerage companies, and for a lot of them, tech is a struggle and they feel that they’re painted into a corner with their technology partner. It’s sort of a digital straitjacket, if you will, in many ways. You know, I appreciate you guys working hard to do something better.

YB: Excellent. Well, thanks for that. And by the way, duly noted on digital straitjacket. In fact, that may, with attribution, that may find its way into the Moxi vernacular.

BB: Yeah, not a good look.

YB: No, no, it’s not. Well, as always, Brian, I’ve truly enjoyed this and thank you for your willingness to come on and just all you do to make our industry better. So thanks so much for your time today.

BB: Wow. Great. Thank you, York. It’s been a pleasure.

YB: Awesome. And thanks to all you listeners out there and hope to join you soon on another episode of The Real. Thanks.

York Baur: Well, hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of The Real, our podcast here at MoxiWorks, and it’s my great pleasure to welcome Brian Boero of 1000watt here to our latest episode. Hey, Brian!

Brian Boero: Hey, York. How are you?

YB: Doing well, thank you. And hopefully you’re staying safe and sane down there. You’re in Oakland, I believe. Is that right?

BB: I’m in Oakland, California, and we’ve had our share of strangeness this year, but today is –

YB: Yeah, boy, haven’t we all, I saw a meme that I think you might appreciate. I don’t know if you’ve seen it. It’s a, it’s a graphic of a dumpster fire and it says 2020 on the dumpster.

BB: Yeah, it’s been a, it’s been a doozy. We’ve been blanketed in smoke for a good portion of the last six weeks, but it is a glorious crystal clear blue California day today. So I’m enjoying and appreciating that.

YB: That’s awesome. Well, and for the record, I’m in the Seattle area, and that’s where Moxi’s based and we unfortunately have been the recipients of your smoke as well. We’ve actually had like serious smoke up here from those fires. It just shows you the scale of what’s going on. So I’m sorry. I know it’s been rough on a lot of you and your compadres in California. So my sympathies there. But we’re here to talk industry and we’re here to talk your perspectives. And so I thought I’d start out by, well, first saying that I have always personally appreciated the perspectives you and others at 1000watt offer, but yours in particular. I’m a religious reader of the 1000watt newsletter, for instance, and I’ve done that since I came to Moxi 8 years ago. So perhaps you can just talk a little bit about your background, which is pretty eclectic in this industry. You’ve done a lot of different things and things that most haven’t so, maybe you start by just talking a little bit about that?

BB: Sure. Well, thank you for reading what we write. We never take that for granted and writing is hard. It really is. And if you do it regularly, it’s still tough. So I’m glad you enjoy that. Yeah, I’ve never sold real estate, but I’ve been around real estate and media and marketing and tech and just an observer of the industry 23 years now. I started in this business really because of Brad Inman. Brad Inman hired me at Inman News when I was super young and gave me tons of responsibility at a young age and tons of opportunity. And he really, were it not for him, I wouldn’t be in this industry that I love. But today, you know, we’ve been doing 1000watt now for 13 years? You know, that’s given us an opportunity to work with all kinds of companies, right? Proptech companies, brokerages, big and small, brands, mortgage companies, title companies, builders, and there’s never a dull day in my working life because we get to work with so many different participants in this business. And as you know, it’s a complex, complicated business, but it’s also wonderful. So, I’m a lifer. I’ve been in it 23 years and I’m here for good.

YB: Good man. Yeah, no, it’s that is a very interesting background. I will pay credit to my various mentors through my career too. I think we all stand on the shoulders of the help we were given. And like you, I’ve had people take a, take a chance on me. So it’s nice to hear that acknowledged, Brian. I appreciate that. So, let’s talk a little bit about what you guys do at 1000watt and the perspectives you bring. You do a myriad of things, ultimately, you have a broad palette of services you provide. But one of the things that seems the most visible, and I know you have a lot of engagements around is websites. And we at Moxi, while we have a website product offering for brokerage, agent, teams, etc. The brokerage piece of that in specific is the market that we serve, the enterprise broker. So, I’m very curious to kind of get your thoughts on, what is the importance of brokerage websites these days? What is the role they serve? And I get that it’s individually specific and that’s one of the things I think you do so well, is to make it specific to a given brokerage. But for a listener out there in brokerage leadership, what would you tell them about how they should think about the role of their websites these days?

BB: Yeah, that’s a super big question and we do lots of stuff and thinking strategically about web presence for brokerage companies is one of them. And I think we are at a bit of a, I guess, inflection point or transitionary phase where the real estate website as it has been thought of by a brokerage company for years and years and years now is starting to change, right? For going on 20 years a website was really a home search utility, and every broker website had IDX home search, you had an agent roster, and you had a couple other pages hanging off of that. And people would go to your website, they would search, and you know, we kind of dialed that in. And, and that was it. And some brokers generated leads off that and had e-lead teams and all of that, and some brokers didn’t really focus on that. But that was really what a website was and they really even started structurally to look the same, right? We all know what a real estate website looks like for the most part, and it’s a picture of a nice house with a search box in the middle, maybe some featured properties, you know, find an agent and, and you’re done, right? And I think now the opportunity is, for lots of reasons, is to think about, okay, now that we’ve settled in this place where everybody kind of has the basic search dialed in, what really is the job that my website should be doing for my company? And really thinking strategically through that question. And I think that’s the opportunity that big brokers have right now is to sort of reconsider a lot of the assumptions they had about their website. And I think that, you know, a platform such as yours is a fine foundation upon which to do that, right? Because your technology is good. It’s contemporary, it’s flexible. You’re able to roll with a broker who’s willing to sort of rethink what it is that their website is supposed to be doing for them.

YB: Yeah, that’s a great perspective. And thanks for, you know, acknowledging our platform and for the viewers, and we’ve collaborated together as companies for this very reason you’re bringing up, right? Cause what we think at Moxi is that the effort to do what you just stated, the sort of default expectation of, you know, a nice image in the search box and some of these things, you shouldn’t have to invest a ton of money in that. That should just be what the platform provides, which ours does, so that the effort and frankly, the money spend can be better spent in my opinion, working with a company like yours to figure out what the greater mission of the website should be for that brokerage? Because there’s not one answer. It’s in fact, there’s probably a different answer for every single brokerage out there, particularly at the enterprise level. So let’s actually shift to that because you were awesome in the midst of the pandemic freak out in Q2 to lend your mighty pen because I love how you write, to a book that we published, which was thoughts from industry leaders, which we consider you to be one, the book we called “Grit Unlocked”, and it was the idea of recovery, let’s look beyond the pandemic. And you were actually the first thing in there, for good reason. And one of the things you said in that was “a brand at its core is what your company means to people”. So, you know, at a higher level, how do you help guide – cause again, that’s going to be a different answer for every broker – but how do you guide, how do you expect, how does a broker show up to that conversation with you as 1000watt to really get the most out of that process?

BB: Yeah, so I would say that brokerage companies and even large franchise brands, real estate in general, has done a pretty good job at recognition. Meaning, consumers have awareness generally of the companies that do real estate in their market, right? Because you’ve had yard signs out for years and years, you’re getting postcards, they kind of are aware that, “okay, there’s this company over here that’s blue, there’s here that this company over here is green, and I’m aware of this company”, much in the same way that I, you know, can, I’m looking across my room, I see a chair, I recognize that as a chair, the chair doesn’t have a tremendous amount of meaning to me. And that’s where the opportunity I think lies is how do you cultivate meaning, right? And go beyond just awareness and to tie it back to the website. That’s part of that opportunity. Because if you go to a website or let me put it this way – you’re a brokerage and you have a thousand agents and you have a website, you’ve invested a lot of money in  it and you are lucky enough to have somebody come to that site. You know, a buyer, a seller, an owner, and they come with their own questions, their own anxieties, their own sort of psychic make-up that brings them to your website. And for the most part, most brokerage companies don’t say anything to that person. They sort of look back at them with a blank stare. Right? There’s no greeting. There’s no hello. There’s no explanation of we are company X, and thank you for coming here. And here are the reasons one, two, three, why we are the best partner in the market for you to trust with this really important thing that you’re considering.  So it’s sort of a vacuum because we’ve been sort of focused on the mechanics of a brokerage website as being a search utility, but really missing the mark in terms of going beyond recognition to cultivate a sense of meaning, right? What are the emotional needs of that visitor that my brand and my brokerage is uniquely prepared to provide? What rational benefits is my company, my brand, uniquely prepared to provide to that person who has come to my website, wanting something, needing something.

YB: Yeah, no, I couldn’t agree more. And it’s, you know, it’s so interesting as a technologist, because my career, I think you know this, Brian, but for the audience, my career is not in real estate or real estate tech. It’s in technology, period. And now for the last eight years, I’ve been part of real estate since I’ve been running Moxi as a CEO. But what is vexing to me in this industry more than others, it happens in every industry, but this one more so than most, is this assumption and use the term of the mechanics, this assumption that it’s somehow websites, oh, it’s a, it’s a technology thing. It’s, it’s all about the technology! No! No, the technology is a tool. It’s a means to an end. And it’s, it’s to achieve the things that you just articulate, which is why we put such a premium at Moxi on automating and integrating that whole thing so that literally you can flip a switch and have a website. And then all the effort on top of that – which isn’t, you know, hiring custom developers, by the way, it’s configuration, not customization – that then allows you to tell the kind of stories that you’re talking about. And it’s the only thing I find curious is it’s a lot more than just about the homepage. You don’t have to vomit everything onto your homepage. I mean, for God’s sake, you’ve got all these entry points and things you can guide a visitor with. And I guess the thing that resonates for me in this too, is we describe ourselves as a relationship based industry, and we certainly believe in that. We have a very sphere relationship based marketing philosophy and the products we provide and the kind of customer relationships we build,  but yet when it comes to websites and technology, the industry somehow forgets that, it seems, almost. So, you know, how would you encourage someone to think about differentiation around that? Because the first step is to get into the space you described. That’s, that’s necessary precursor. But if I’m in that space, if my mind is open to the ideas you laid out, how do I then think about, how do I make myself different in whatever I say? Versus the myriad other brokers that are out there, or at least that are in my area, perhaps.

BB: You’re absolutely right about not just the homepage, but the homepage is like, let’s start there. Okay.

YB: Sure.

BB: The way that I frequently think about it is your homepage is an argument for you and your company and your brand, right? It’s an argument. So, what is your case? For hiring one of my agents. What is your case for your brand? What is your case for your accumulated experience? Make that argument and an argument as in any form needs to be structured, right? So you’re hitting the right notes and leading people to a conclusion. So you’re leading people to take a certain action, right? What is that action you want people to take? Well, we want, we want to throw off some buyer leads. Or, you know, what is it? You have maybe some vague notion of it or you haven’t really refined that or thought about it with that level of focus. So your web, your homepage is an argument. You’re making a case for yourself. In fact, and not that I’m suggesting this be done literally, but why wouldn’t a big brokerage website in effect be a seriously edited and streamlined version of your company’s listing presentation. Why shouldn’t it be that, right? If you want listings more than anything else, your homepage really should be effectively your listing presentation. But yet the default is always, okay, search homes, do your search. Okay. Okay, that’s great, but everybody else has that. And by the way, these things aren’t mutually exclusive. I’m not saying don’t have home search on your website. I’m saying you have this whole other green field of opportunity where you can be making an argument for your company.

YB: Yeah. Yeah. The thing that has vexed me at times in this industry is we try to guide customers around what you’re saying is the lack of well defined objectives. You know, when you try to make anything, a website in this instance, be all things to all people, it ends up being nothing to, to anyone in my opinion. So, but it goes back to mentorship that you spoke about earlier, Brian. And, you know, that’s one of the values, in my opinion, and we work with agencies, and by the way, you’ve done work for us as Moxi, the value of having a mentor, a guide, that sees you from the outside and has a lot of experience and how to tease those things out and frankly, impose the kind of structure you’re talking about to the conversation is I think very, very valuable because it’s very hard for organizations to see themselves from the outside. That’s one of the key values I think that you provide.

BB: Yeah, we really do see that we tend to work with. strong companies. In some cases, they have lost their voice for some reason. They have sort of forgotten what made them amazing in the first place. They have maybe been put back on their heels by new competitive dynamics. And our job is really as we sometimes say, to help companies fall in love with themselves all over again, right? Reclaim their voice. And we call that, that process – discovery. You know, it’s not as if we’re, you know, making something up. We’re helping companies sort of revisit what they already knew to be true about themselves, but maybe add lost sharpness around over the years for whatever reason. You had sort of talked about sort of this notion of the mechanics and the utility and why is that how do we end up here, and I think one thing that I’ve noticed and I’m sure you all have to over the years is that the large brokerage website is sometimes viewed as a tech responsibility, right?

YB: Exactly.

BB: ETO is involved and marketing maybe is kind of a stakeholder that isn’t really, you know, fully integrated in that process where you have tech and marketing and they’re sort of siloed. You know, if you have a solid technical foundation, for example, what Moxi does, right? Your platform is a solid technical foundation, then you don’t have to worry about the basics of that. That should just perform.  Then, the website really should be a marketing function.

YB: Yes!

BB: It belongs, it should be owned by marketing. No offense to the many CTOs in this business who I know and respect. You’ve got a seat at the table, but I really believe it belongs with marketing.

YB: You know, I couldn’t agree more. I mean, it’s a violent agreement on this point for a couple reasons. One, I believe, and think about the technologies we use all day in our lives, right? We drive a car, we use our phone. The goal of those technologies, I believe, should be to be invisible. There’s, you shouldn’t have to be worried about, or even frankly, sort of cognizant of, that there’s technology at play. You’re just using the thing. And I feel like websites, in this particular example, should be the same thing for the marketer. It should be a, weapon to wield, if you will. And it shouldn’t, I mean, the utopian state would be, you don’t even need to involve any technical people in anything now that – we’re not quite at that stage yet. But we’re, at Moxi, we’re darn close. And the other thing that I think is interesting about your comment, Brian, and maybe you see this too, in our industry because I see it, but I also see it globally, and it was well outside of real estate, there’s a convergence of the CMO and the CTO job. They’re either teaming or there’s literally a single person with like director levels underneath them because of the recognition of what you said, that, that the technology really is to support the marketing function, not the other way around.

BB: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if you think about it, I mean, in real estate, we’re always thinking about the next platform. For the next medium. So while for the last 20 years, we’ve been bouncing around, we have to do social, we have to do video, we have to get on Instagram, then we have to get on Facebook, then nobody’s on Facebook. Oh, now we really got to get back on Facebook. Now we got to do ads on LinkedIn from medium to medium, never really thinking about the message. We’re so focused on the, the medium or the latest tactic that we never stop back and think of the message. And then all the while the platform where if you’re a strong, large, independent brokerage, you have awareness in the marketplace. People are going to your website. We see lots of large broker websites. Some of them have a lot of traffic, right?

YB: Oh yeah.

BB: Right? But there’s been more effort placed on media and touchpoints outside of that website  that it’s just a missed opportunity.  You have a billboard on the internet that people are going to every minute of every day and you’re not making an argument to them. You’re not connecting with them emotionally and rationally in a way that makes them want to take a step towards you.

YB: Yeah, no, I couldn’t agree more. Well, I’m, I’m watching the clock here, Brian, and I’ve enjoyed this as I always do. And we’re kind of getting, getting wrapped up here. So, you know, at the beginning, I mentioned my appreciation for the work you guys do particularly with your newsletter, which is free. And I think gives, you know, it’s, it’s an amplification over time of everything we’ve talked about here. It’s a tremendous source of perspective and value. For free. So if I recall, it’s, it’s not just free to me, right? It’s free to anybody. How does somebody go about, you know, connecting with that stream of goodness?

BB: Yeah, so yeah, we write maybe once a week, once every week and a half or so, and get on the list it’s just 1000Watt.net, 1 0 0 0, 1000, the numerals, W A T T dot net, and you’ll see a, you know, subscribe box. We’re not gonna hit you with spam, but we share a point of view, which actually is kind of the point about much of what I’ve been saying here is your brand needs to have a point of view. To give that voice consistently, it’s hard, but it pays off for sure.

YB: Yeah, no, that’s, that’s the other thing I would say that I take away. And I think your newsletter and the way you’ve built your brand is a great example is I’m an eight year subscriber now. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. You know, you’re trying to build with a brand. You’re trying to build a relationship. Relationship takes time. You can’t just manufacture it overnight. And so I think if people out there in our audience want to see how that’s done subscribing to newsletters is a great sort of a real life example of you guys practicing what you preach.

BB: Yeah. Well, thank you for reading York and look, I think you, you guys, the Moxi team does a great job. You have a great platform, and you know, you’re right. It should be not something that your tech team has to stress out over every single day. It’s really something that should just run. We see lots of brokerage companies, and for a lot of them, tech is a struggle and they feel that they’re painted into a corner with their technology partner. It’s sort of a digital straitjacket, if you will, in many ways. You know, I appreciate you guys working hard to do something better.

YB: Excellent. Well, thanks for that. And by the way, duly noted on digital straitjacket. In fact, that may, with attribution, that may find its way into the Moxi vernacular.

BB: Yeah, not a good look.

YB: No, no, it’s not. Well, as always, Brian, I’ve truly enjoyed this and thank you for your willingness to come on and just all you do to make our industry better. So thanks so much for your time today.

BB: Wow. Great. Thank you, York. It’s been a pleasure.

YB: Awesome. And thanks to all you listeners out there and hope to join you soon on another episode of The Real. Thanks.