John Sterling Joins EXP Part 2

Dec 10, 2018

Part 2.

Joining us today is John Sterling. John's been in a number of markets and was previously with Keller Williams and most recently was in San Francisco California and is currently in Colorado. John's background is fairly extensive in real estate. John is known for his work in Europe and London as well as working with multiple team leaders and market centers and helping them attract agents. John talks at length about his challenges in real estate and really not really getting EXP at first. John I'll give you his insight in terms of why he ultimately moved from Keller Williams to EXP and he hasn't regretted it and never looked back.

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Remember our disclaimer: The materials and content discussed within this podcast are the opinions of Kevin Cottrell and/or the guests interviewed.  This information is intended as general information only for listeners of the podcast. Listeners should conduct their own due diligence and research before making any business decisions. This podcast is produced completely independently of eXp Realty and is not endorsed, funded or otherwise supported by eXp Realty directly or indirectly.

 

• EXP innovating and game changing technology made simple
• EXP Stock valuation explained
• Revenue share versus profit share
• Expansion Teams Simplified
• Fears and worries of competitors
• Other big companies reactions to EXP growth
• Non bricks and mortar game changing
• EXP eliminating layers of expenses through with new virtual technology

 

 

Want to Learn More about eXp Realty?

If you are interested in learning more about eXp, reach out to the person who introduced you to eXp or contact Jon to inquire or ask questions.

Contact Jon Sterling

Phone call or text at 720 605 1063.

Email: [e-mail]

 

Transcription

Jon. So that was the answer to the technology. So the money the technology. We talked a little bit about you know privately held versus publicly held. Another note on that one place where I've seen some pushback and one of those half truths or just like something that wasn't fully explained or isn't still isn't fully explained as when we get attacked for not being profitable. Right. Because a publicly traded company would have to release your finances so anyone could go check on your health anytime they want. That's a funny attack to me. It demonstrates that people who are saying it just are lacking some basic sort of fundamental knowledge about stock valuations. Somebody who's a really great example there's been in the news over the past couple days. Amazon. You guys heard on Amazon right. Well they hit one trillion dollars in market cap yesterday and they had huge revenue and free cash flow which they reinvest in their business. Instead of declaring profits for many many years they didn't declare profit at all. They found a way to essentially get their tax bill down to zero because they're putting everything back into the research and development. All right. So it's like are you going to bash a trillion dollar company, the world's second trillion dollar company because they're not declaring profit. It's like give me a break. Watch everything else grow. There's like a problem take care of itself. Right? And the reason that the stock valuation continues to improve is because the stock analysts understand this. The company doesn't have debt like we're not taking on huge loans. We're not doing crazy stuff with her money like it'll naturally work itself out. Another great example everyone else is uber profitable Uber is? it isn't. They lose money every quarter. How many billions of dollars there worth? I don't know the exact number but you can look it up by the time we look it up I'm sure it'll change. But anyway so that's the whole point. It's like it's what's wrong with copying those strategies. Some of the fastest growing and most valuable companies in the world aren't declining profits. Why would we? Go reinvest. Make this the place that's going to sustain the next shift in the markets. And any other change or the show up because we have the right people the right attitude you know the right sort of base to weather that storm.

Kevin. It's one of those things... I'll touch on it and I am not the CFO of EXP I have no relationship to the board. And this is not a representation on behalf of EXP. This is just me understanding profit loss. You and I went through many many many many classes of market centered financials and understand PNL in the real estate world. I also know it from my nine startups I did down in Silicon Valley I understand how to look at a growth company PNL. So one of the things and if this is where you're hung up as a listener you reach out to me and I'll be happy to walk you through it off line. But the general gist of it is if you look at Generally Accepted Accounting Principles or Gap principles a company like Expedia or any other growth company is going to end up taking charges that are non-cash against the hard cash items in a PNL. Right? And this is not an accrual versus cash basis. This is just when you get to the bottom line. If you look at the financials and drill through you'll see these gap adjustments what are those things right? You look at you know the logical ones that if somebody took accounting they heard over things like depreciation. The big ones for our growth company are equity stock options non-cash awards and things like that. Obviously as John talked about there is a lot of that going on at the EXP. It does not affect cash flow in the business. It is something that is taken against income and is an offset. So in a recent Financial I looked at... Let's just say the number was hypothetical to say the number was something in the order of magnitude of 20 million as a loss after the gap adjustments. 16 million of the 20 million were the gap adjustments. So somebody on Facebook comes out and says Oh my God I lost 20 million dollars. So if a growth company post that in 16 million of those paper you should be looking at the four million number and you're looking for things like are they adding to cash flow or are they making improvements. What was the number like a year ago. Based on the pre gap adjustments. And this is a big part of what the industry doesn't understand about a growth company. Is when you're hitting a hockey stick, the growth year over year is so big that you know you'll hear others in the industry talk about residential brokerage specifically. While we do this many transactions, our set of agents that are in this space. Did this many and that's more than a company like EXP. What they're not realizing is the week over week growth let alone the quarter over quarter growth is basically vertical. And so as a result there is a lag. Right. When John moves over or a team moves over and by the time they close out the business with the old brokerage and they get new business on the books and that business goes through marketing its listings and then gets closed and then gets booked. You have a lag. So when they're looking at these numbers what they're doing and I call it playing with the timing they're looking at the old numbers not projecting what the new numbers are. You know I was at the EXP shareholder meeting and they put up a slide at the shareholder me it was public information and the room went... collectively a big gasp because many people in the EXP didn't realize it was growing this fast. They knew we're adding agents but the general gist of it was they talked about transactions that were either closed or pending as of the date of the shareholder meeting in April and it exceeded the entire number for the whole year, previous year. So in other words this was in the spring of 2018. That number as of April was higher than the entire number for the entire year in 2017. Brokerage companies do not do that. Growth for the number one franchise system is like 2 or 3 %. You're not talking about them saying in April that they have more booked pending and closed than they did in the entire previous year. If you're wanting to understand a little bit more about what this looks like happy to have a conversation with you. Gene Frederick would be happy to have a conversation with you. Do what John did which is dig into the material and get the real facts. I mean I saw a post on social media about this which is your sort of very honest and candid post which said I was basically skeptical and I was listening to all the rumors and innuendo and misdirection and when I got in here it was a whole different picture and I'm sure you'll get getting calls about that from people because you're very well respected not only within Keller Williams but within the industry. And I think it raised a lot of eyebrows when John Sterling decided to move.

Jon. Oh yeah. It's finally the number of private messages I got versus public reaction to that post which I guess it's predictable. But you know it's like people that are in transition. They were you know in the process of joining us like they don't want to put their you know it's like they're pending deals at risk or they just don't want things to get weird in their local markets. But you're right. I mean it was just kind of... it was just one of those things it was like. I thought I knew it all. I thought I understood it. I thought that what I was being told by the previous company was true. I was like Of course it's not all the way to you. It feels like those days when we were the pioneers at Keller Williams and then you know there were these very coordinated efforts and outside consultants that would be hired anytime we came to town and they had all of these pretty prepared sort of you know objection handlers. Well you see how well that worked out right. It seems that they have slowed down Keller Williams growth. It's like give me a break. It's like one hundred eighty thousand I'm a runner. So again it's like people are going to come at their own pace. I get it. It's not for everyone which I don't think it will be but it's gonna be for a lot of people. I've never seen growth like this. I just kind of digging into the financials doing my own research as you mentioned. It was more than just looking at what was publicly listed. You know it's like I'm going to talk to these agents that I know it's like. Tell me about their business. What's changed to see if the growth that I think is true has you know anecdotal evidence at the local level as if I know somebody these people and I've been around forever they're straight shooters. You know they don't have any problems with their license and everyone respects them feels like those are the folks I'm talking to the ones who were going to give it to me straight up there's something unfavorable or unflattering they would tell me. And there were only a few things that were just minor annoyances. There were no big red flags no matter who I talked to or in the country they were. So I kind of made that part easy.

Kevin. Absolutely so I want to get your take on something John obviously the big announcement out of Keller Williams at the mega camp right. You know you're familiar because not only did you work with team leaders and others within the system you know a lot of OPs you know a lot of regional directors. They announced and most of the industry I think really understood the implications of this. Essentially what I call a gift to the expansion teams right. We'll see how they actually execute on this. But you know there's a lot of... and I think this is kind of like in the high tech world from Silicon Valley where a company that's big will preannounce something and then you see whether they can actually deliver on it because they want to kind of get ahead of the market and say well we're going to do something virtual or non bricks and mortar too. What are you hearing about that. Because I'll tell you first what I'm hearing which is you know the expansion teams are beyond excited and we can talk about that a minute why they are but the number of agents that I know that are not either wanting to play on that field meaning they're not going to be an expansion business organization or that's not their desire right. They're great mega agent they have a team they're in a market center they're concerned if they have to do execute on this about creating an unequal playing field what are you hearing.

Jon. So just got a big picture I could first. I mean my first reaction to that was is it it's something that the 12000 agents.. that 13000 owners or whatever ever we have now compared to 180000 that Keller Williams is not reacting to what seemed to me to be bigger threats to them like better funding like compass right. Some of these places that are taking market share and gobbling up the world right. It's like you have these players out there and Keller Williams isn't really talking about them not publicly bashing them anything like that. I've never heard the company like publicly bash or publicly oppose an organization especially one that seems so small and insignificant. Right. So it's like that's very telling by itself is the fact that they're reacting to something that is so small compared to them. I mean it's less than 1/10 the size you know. Is there any other... like is Amazon reacting to you know it's like little little startup online e-commerce store. Well you know not as a big deal but they probably have it seems like it about it but they're not out there publicly bashing this little thing that doesn't seem like much of a threat. So unless we're we're a real threat or a real reason why would there be public bashing and why would there be so much copycat stuff going on. So that was just an interesting sort of twists right. As you said it's like the expansion teams they're thrilled because it's essentially removing a lot of the politics that you get in a franchise you know it's just a lot of headaches if you're trying to expand your team to new market because you have to get approval from all these different levels and you have to get buy in from all these levels. You have to get because otherwise these these owners and these managers that are either short sighted or they want to remain the kings and queens of their franchise territories or whatever stand in the way or they just don't understand it. They don't take the time to go to their expansion classes and all this other stuff. And I was one of the few dozen people in the company who was certified to teach that team expansion haptic course. I got to interact with a lot of these folks and I got to talk to a lot of OPs and team letters about it's like just getting there understanding what's going on. And I've heard a lot of opposition people will like this expansion stuff is kind of a headache. We got a lot of people run around or supervise big risk to our license. So the expansion teams are great because it kind of clears the runway for them. They're happy that they don't have to interact with the problematic franchise owners and managers anymore like they can just go around the system. So where that all falls apart is because you have these layers of ownership you have the local franchise owners you have the regional franchise owners which the are last time I counted 33 of them. So basically they cut up the US the 33 territories. So all these people are getting a little piece of the action whether it's the local company dollar or franchise royalties or some combination right. So those folks are the ones that I've heard the most from because they're terrified. I mean they're locked in these either five year tenure agreements with their franchise and they can watch the whole thing unfold. You know if they've had a monopoly in their area.. you want to work in that city you're going to work with Keller Williams and you're going to be working with that markets that are like no options. Well now people have an option and that's scary to them. And what's even more scary is they might not be able to get out of their franchise as well as the housing value. So it was like they might have four years before they're up for the next renewal before they could feasibly sell it or dissolve it or whatever they need to do.A lot of people they'd planned on there franchise ownership being a retirement plan. So they wanted to build it to a certain point and sell it and hire someone to run it or whatever. But if all of that value has a risk of going away like who's going to write a check for that now. Like you know like I was around during the last boom that looked like this when we were buying up market centers like crazy we paid top value for a lot of these things where we could see the opportunity it wasn't necessarily there was like There's no way we'd be writing those checks today. It's like considering what's going on if there's no real value to the franchise territory if you're going to be stuck with these huge leases that's all your risk. I mean the way the franchises work is you give the franchise or person who's selling you the franchise give you permission to use their name. You give em a bunch of money for the privilege of taking all the risk for signing all the leases with personal guarantees for hiring all the people who are signing up all the insurance all that stuff and then after you paid for that privilege you got to pay the franchise or a percentage of your revenue before you even get paid. They're getting money off the top. So they take no risk. They get paid before you get paid. Which I think suddenly has caused a huge bump and interest in EXP because we don't have any of that. We have no franchise fees. We have no franchise territories. We have no regional territories none of it. So you've cut out all that nonsense. So it's not just the politics. You don't have to navigate anymore you know the money makes sense and the technology is good. There's no limit to it. You don't have any problems sort of convincing the local ownership that you're a valid person and you need to be in that market. So the virtual thing was a real interesting one and kind of lit up my inbox for a few days so people be like OK you know if I needed to walk away from my Keller Williams franchise How do I join you. Like what's the cleanest way to do it. Like know I'll talk to your lawyer but just like the fact that people are asking those questions is certainly eye opening for me.

Kevin. Well I have a little bit of a different take on it. You know I've talked about this before and I think you know the story is the average Agent Market Center. It could be a rainmaker for a small team that's not going to go expansion or a agent that just knocks out of the park with lead generation those people even within a market center have the ability to disrupt things they end up doing so much mass lead generation that they could disrupt things we did this in St.. LEWIS Right. I moved in from out of the market I got ramped up and I had five buyer agents we were launched the real geeks Web site I mentioned in St. Lewis we were getting 500, 600 leads a month on that organically. This is before you know Zillow, Iconic etc took those No 1 slots with some changes in the organic world so you could imagine that if you walked around the market center and queried agents of their biggest frustration the answer was that control team has all of our leads and we're not very happy about it. And this is where my concern would be for an agent. If you're listening to this let me tell you what happened and then let Jon tell you what will happen in the New World. I was talked to by the OP and the team leader and I was told We love you. You're doing fantastic things but this is so disruptive to our market center. You need to leave. I was kicked out of Keller Williams for knocking it out of the park with lead generation. So now if the franchise system sets up a statewide brokerage operation the model for expansion is you know that whether they call it a grid or a big MSA. Each team brings in.. And the model is bring 10 to 20 people in right. You hear Adam talk about it that's certainly his model and you know Tim and everybody else and Ben all do the same thing. So now what Kevin did in St. Lewis is on steroids with multiple teams now the difference is as you know and I'll ask you this Jon because you actually taught expansion if the brokerage is state wide and it's not the franchise, Who are they going to complain to if I'm the agent the market center that is actually gonna be doing do anything.

Jon. Well that is the question I can only guess what the rollout will look like but if it's anything like what I'm thinking it's like so you have certain legal and compliance things to just think about right. So you know each state is going to have a broker kind of like how we're set up at EXP then that broker it's really that brokers licenses the one at risk if somebody misbehaves. So I have a feeling that that person is going to get a lot of this pushback or whatever where I think it's going to be real telling is what is going to happen to these franchise owners like they were sold one set of circumstances and one set of things right. I can't speak to what is inside the franchise documents because it's been a while since I looked at one last time I looked at it. You know it's very clear that you know they're like phonebooks incredibly thick things. So it's like there you know you have these big application and then whatever whatever. There are certain representations that are made by the franchise or that if there's a virtual thing takes off and they executed the way people think they're going to execute it. That's I mean that sounds like class action territory to me. I don't know there's that has been a term that has been used by several existing OPs at Keller Williams Amazon and they're just friends of mine who are like What do you know about this. My dad's not a lawyer I can't give you any advice but sounds like you should get together with your friends to see what you can do because it just doesn't make any sense that a dramatic shift from.. OK... You have a franchise territory and it's totally under your control and we're not going to let anyone open up anywhere close to you to protect that territory to now they've just erased all of that with one announcement.

Kevin. The point that I'll add on top of what John said is where the agents could have political power collectively within the office in a franchise model if they're complaining about somebody they might as well work for another brokerage which they will technically. And so the mount of influence that OP or a team leader would have over a statewide virtual brokerage operation. I'll just go out and say it. My expectation is it'll be zero. And so the agents that I'm hearing from and you and I both knew a lot of them. This is what they're terrified about. They're terrified about the fact that hey I've been in this market for 10 years. I'm 15. I built up a great reputation and I don't want to have unequal playing field that I'm competing on where they've got better economic terms better caps better structure and then I have zero say over it. And here's the number one thing I'm saying is like I'm hoping that this is something that they announce that they'll have such a difficult time executing on that it'll never come. But I don't know that I can stick around here and support this if they basically bring in a competitor under the same flag in a different brokerage that's going to try and crush me in my operation.

Jon. Sure. And that's the part that was unclear or like just objectively not bashing their plans by any means but objectively I don't know how it made any sense to only be opening up that virtual brokerage option to the chosen ones. I mean that's the kind of political stuff that is again filled by inboxes since I moved people out like I'm just so tired of the regional stuff and the Nationals that all this stuff being pushed down on us is like we just want to sell real estate like we don't want to talk about you know it's like how many bodies can we cram at the door etc. etc.. So it's like I just don't get how you can continue to be such a massive player when you're still ordaining people as worthy or not worthy to be part of the new generation. All right. And agents aren't stupid they're gonna figure that out and it's like they feel like they're being shunned we're being insulted twice like first when they weren't invited and secondly now that they're you know all of the advantages that they had from being the local expert are starting to evaporate. What's that going to look like. Like I have a pretty good guess and I moved my license accordingly but I don't know.

Kevin. Yeah it'll be interesting. My expectation is we're at least 12 to 18 months out before you see any significant traction if even that early.

Jon. Yep another big question it's you know put fear in a lot of people is what happens the profit share right. If you keep whittling away at these caps and everything goes cheap or free it's like oh there's no company dollar. That means there's no local profit. That means there's no local profit to share. So all these people that a you know bet on their property are continuing to grow... Again maybe there's some sort of elegant solution they thought of that I didn't think of but it's a real concern with a whole lot of people so I know I'm not the only one asking that question. They're smart people they run a good operation they built something pretty amazing. I have a feeling they'll figure out something. But I just don't know if it'll be in time or sufficient enough because they're working with a fundamentally obsolete model in the first place.

Kevin. And I would echo what you said which is they have some of the best and the brightest both at international and in leadership that if there is a team that's going to figure out how to execute on that they'll figure it out. And I have the utmost respect for them. So I think that we'll figure something out. My bigger concern is the better they figure out the more chaotic it is to the actual franchise system right.

Jon. Yep. Again I like to take the long view on these things because I'm still fairly young. Hopefully I have a lot of working years left. So I'm looking at 10 15 20 years in the future. If the result of all of this is that fees are lower for agents and service is improved for agents which allows us all to do a better job at servicing our customers than I think that's a net win for everybody. Right. There's always going to be competition. It's never going to be everybody works for one company. Right. It's never gonna be anything like that. So if there are five big players and a bunch of independents kind of like what we see now that would be OK.. if it raises the bar for everyone in the industry that we're going through this process and figuring out the virtual model and figuring out compensation packages that are more favorable for agents like I think that's great. I think it's healthy competition is healthy. I mean it's just part of how capitalism works. You know if we had no competitors that's what we get lazy that's when he get sloppy. So you know that your next competitors are always right on your heels should you take a rest and stop innovating when you're in trouble. So overall this whole thing is going to work out well for the industry and you know time will tell. Who were the big winners are.

Kevin. Well absolutely and you know you can look at it on a broader basis and obviously there are announcements coming out that big franchise system may try and create a consumer facing portal that'll take on Redfin and certainly they may get better fruit their overall long term because they've got a better agent base. I mean if you look at specifically Redfin and you dissect their financials one of the things they have to struggle with is finding enough people internally to work as an employee. You know if you look at a system like EXP where we're adding 1500 and growing agents per month the growth rate the exponential growth that we've talked about who basically overtakes all of these entities in a very short a time and you know as we start to get better traction. Talked about earlier on the independent side that just doesn't stop. So when you look at what the overall industry should be worried about is you know if bricks and mortar is going away and I believe that is I'll get your take on it the second there's going to be a number of big huge shifts in the marketplace in this model where you're a non bricks and mortar better service better tools better platform is a great hedge against somebody trying to force the industry into an employee dumbed down comp pie on limited earnings model and because we're growing so much faster they can't get enough people to take them up on the offer to go sit in their model and make a lot less money than the top people in the industry make sure.

Jon. Well no particular example you know or I think is going to would help them actually find some people would be a major shift in the market. So I remember talking with a team owner. She's had a team for a very long time. I won't mention her name. I have permission. But anyway clearly prolific you know we'll call her real estate famous lady. So she's got a team heard decades like before teams were fashionable and she figured it out and she said when the market was hot all of our agents wanted to be on a commission structure so they could make more money. And then when the market cooled off and it took more effort and more time to sell the house everybody wanted to be on salary. So she sort of goes through waves right. But I can see you know if you're running a salary model which you know the people drawn to it are generally not high producers that you would benefit if the market were to soften. And it takes more effort and skill to get deals done because people are going to sit on that salary. They'll be OK. Like having a salary and a small bonus versus keeping most of the money. So I think that would be interesting to see. I mean we're not seeing signs of the market really slowing down. Besides the regular seasonal stuff right now it still looks like we have money is still cheap cash still way more buyers than houses of most metro areas in the U.S. there seems to be no clear immediate solution to that. So yeah so is it getting away from bricks and mortar. I mean that's inevitable. It's happening in every industry. Like I don't know why you wouldn't expect that in real estate just because you have so many people who have built their lives and their brand around a physical location or they're just owners who aren't tough enough to stand up to their agents and say No you don't get a big cushy corner office anymore because you don't need it. It might say they think they need it or they think they deserve it but it's really it becomes a retention tool for some of these these brokers to just absolutely spoil their top producers because they know they have all kinds of better options out there and they're willing to pay to keep them engaged.

Kevin. Yeah absolutely. Absolutely. I mean it's definitely something where I don't let those going to be 5 years from now or 10 but I think you can easily project out that bricks and mortar virtually nonexistent. If you're an agent thinking that this is all about your awesome office that you rarely go into. It's a great convenience now that you pop in there every once in a while. But between that and staffing and duplication across multiple offices it's the reason the brokers don't make any money.

Jon. And it's eliminating all of those layers of expenses so we are able to keep the things we charged or even so low. You know it's like we don't have a lot of over to cover. We don't have managers and owners and regional people or offices and everything else. And we just did all of that has been eliminated so we can return those savings to the agents. Makes perfect sense to me.

Kevin. Absolutely so John I ask this of every guest that comes on here and I know you know this I'm going to have you give me some final thoughts and then I want to get your contact information in the best way to reach you. If somebody is listening to this and wants to have a chat with you directly what are your final thoughts. What have we not covered the one to hope that we talked about today.

Jon. Let's see. I think we had a pretty good chat. The whole revenue share versus share stuff. It's been interesting to hear people onstage and once they do talking about how well we tried revenue share and it didn't work for us Back in the 80s and 90s therefore it's never gonna work for anyone like we've already figured out that that's not an option. It's like OK that's fine. Like if you want to defend the property system because revenue shared and work for you. That's fine except there's a hole in that argument and that's not the whole story. So when this particular company went overseas a few years ago they rolled out a new program that wasn't profit sharing. It was a revenue sharing program. So if it didn't work in the 80s and 90s and you're saying that anyone who tries it today is going to fail because it doesn't work then why in the world would you have rolled it out five or six years ago. It's like that's way past the 80s and 90s and it was championed as an improvement on the current property system. So again that's not a story that's told in any of the groups that are fiercely defending their way of life but it's just one that I want people to hear.

Kevin. And that's a great point. I mean the other fact when you and I were around I think I was around a little bit longer than you and certainly Gene Frederick's been around even longer is the detail that's left out which is that was based on bricks and mortar and a fully staffed operation and it was done when you have a couple of hundred agents at most. And you know I think most people would agree and I know you would and I would because we've talked about this that somebody tried to do a revenue share model with physical location of bricks and mortar staffing and all of the overhead. It's not going to work.

Jon. No. The simple way to think of it is like the math doesn't work because you have too many expenses you'll never be able to keep it afloat unless you're a massive organization right. And even then I'd like to be massive with a traditional model you can have a massive space and more staff people so it breaks every time you try and make the argument for it. So but with a virtual setup it's wonderful. Like I've seen the number. I know we're not allowed to share it. I'm hoping they're significantly bigger than the ones that I was seeing with the previous system that I was part of.

Kevin. Absolutely so John you know and this is for anybody here that's been looking at EXP. They're excited about potentially talking to you. We're all agent shareholders we're all pointing in the same direction. I'm going to have you give your contact information and for anybody out here, Here's essentially what you don't see behind the curtain which is we're all here to give you the best available information. If you want to reach out to John he's going to give your contact information and he's going to send you right back to whoever you've been talking to and whoever introduced you to EXP. So don't feel like you're doing anything you shouldn't be doing there's plenty of people out there to talk to you feel and reach out to me and get a hold of Gene or anybody else. We're all here to help you finish your due diligence. So John how would somebody reach you and connect.

Jon. The fastest way is to text me by phone number is area code 720 605 1063. If you prefer to write a novel. Via Email that's fine too. It's Jon JON so no H. [e-mail]. And just as a side note. As like. I talked to people all the time. Who are probably not ever going to join the EXP. Can't say never but it's like they have no intention of joining they just want to do some research and get my take on it. I'm always happy to have those conversations The way I look at it is look like you may be completely happy your company have no reason to leave or contractually bound to them for the next 5 7 years whatever. All I want to do is be sure that you're getting correct information so you can make the right decision. Like don't make your don't make your decision based on propaganda or what a competitor saying. It's like I'll get the facts. Right. So. If we're not your number one choice I just want energy for the number two spot.

Kevin. And that's perfect because I can tell you that you know both Gene and I and everybody else that has a lot of conversations has had an interesting dynamic occur. You know sometimes it's not them but all of a sudden you get a call from somebody or a text and said Hey I talked to John Smith and I know you were speaking with him and he said hey you know what. I should follow up with you because I think this is a good fit for me because if it's not a fit for them it's potentially a fit for plenty of others.

Jon. So that's a small industry. We can all use more friends in it regardless of company affiliation. So I will carry that attitude with me forever.

Kevin. Absolutely John. Thanks for coming on and I appreciate your time today. Thank you. .

Jon. Thank you.