Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brett Jennings is making a big bet on pure accountability pods, a billion dollar bet. The owner and founder of Real Estate Experts, Brett breaks down for you the details behind the nearly 10X growth of his hybrid Team Ridge from 165 million in sales to 1.2 billion and his strategy to grow through acquisitions to four billion. How to implement the pure accountability pod structure that created more than a dozen. First time million dollar GCI producers in one year, how to increase participation in that optional accountability program, how to find right fit companies to acquire and a right fit partner to help facilitate it, how he unlocked growth in his business by implementing some of what he learned working with Tony Robbins and Deepak Chopra. How to balance opportunities, resources, and expectations across team agents and solo agents. Get all that and much more right now with Brett Jennings on Real Estate Team OS. 

Speaker 1 (00:58):
No 

Speaker 2 (00:59):
Matter where your business is today or where you want to take it, you'll get there faster and more profitably with an operating system. Welcome to Team OS, your guide to starting, growing, and optimizing real estate team. Here's your host, Ethan Butte. 

Speaker 1 (01:13):
Brett, I have so enjoyed connecting with you at various events over the past couple of years, including Unlock. I'm really excited to go deeper into a few specific aspects of your business, including your hybrid team brokerage model, your plans for growth through acquisition, and something I'm just personally super motivated by. Your unique human-centered operating system and the success that you found with it. So with that setup, welcome to Real Estate Team OS. 

Speaker 3 (01:38):
Awesome. Super great to be here. Thanks for inviting me, Ethan. 

Speaker 1 (01:41):
Yeah. We always start with the same question, which is what is a must-have characteristic of a high-performing team? 

Speaker 3 (01:47):
I was going to say resilience, but really I think clarity with the leadership. Clarity and the leadership, resilience and the team members. 

Speaker 1 (01:56):
Talk about that clarity with the core leadership or the ... How do you develop that? Functionally, what does that look like inside your company? 

Speaker 3 (02:05):
Yeah, great question. And as I answer it, it kind of takes me back on the journey of being a solo agent into running a small team and then growing into a bigger team. I remember my first early climb, if you will, as an agent was chasing a lot of tactics, like going to Tom Ferry or this or that, and coming home with literally yellow pads full of a hundred ideas. And I'd go in and talk to my assistant. And I could tell after every time I came back from a conference, she was always kind of like, "Uh-oh, here he comes." Because the long list of stuff, the forever ending list of what we couldn't get implemented was going to continue. So probably it was one of my first masterminds I joined with Jay Kinder and Michael Reese. They started a company called NAEA. And the conversation was deeply ... And the mastermind level was deeply around strategy. 

Speaker 3 (03:01):
And this idea of having a one-page strategic plan that we would really prioritize, we live in a 90-day world. It's the EOS for the listeners who are familiar with it or not, entrepreneurial operating system, which is a framework really on how to get clarity on who you are as a company and your vision, your values, a long-term plan, and then working in a 90-day world. That really helped me understand the basic principle of success isn't doing about just doing the right things. It's about doing the right things in the right order. 

Speaker 2 (03:34):
And 

Speaker 3 (03:35):
That was a massive game changer, and that started the first kind of wave of our major growth. So that's why I say clarity and leadership is so important. We can't just be chasing what everyone else is doing, although we do draw upon leaning upon insights from the marketplace and other teams and masterminds of what's working well. But yeah, I think that's the first part of it. 

Speaker 1 (03:59):
Love it. I was part of a leadership team for about a dozen years that operated via the scaling up system, which is just a variant of EOS. And it was the OPSP, the one-page strategic plan, the old OPSP. A lot of acronyms. 

Speaker 3 (04:11):
Yeah. No, no, no. That was the one we started with was actually Vern Harnish's version of scaling up and then we moved to EOS, but they're similar frameworks. 

Speaker 1 (04:19):
Yeah. Flip to the other side a little bit. I mean, I think for most of the types of people who watch and listen to this show, it's pretty obvious that an agent needs resilience, but any tips to coach it, train it, maybe identify it upfront before you even welcome them into the organization so you don't have to exit them in a less than desirable way. 

Speaker 3 (04:41):
Yeah, it's grit and the willingness to be able to get back up when you fall down. A growth mindset, reframing, there's no such thing as failure, right? There's not winning and losing, it's winning or learning. Those are the two frames. But really, the litmus test that we give new people, when they come into the team, not necessarily the brokerage, because we'll get into this, we run two business units, kind of a hybrid, a team and a brokerage. And the team level, we have something called Hello Week, and it's kind of taken from the name Hell Week that the Navy SEALs do. And this is just making a thousand calls in 10 days. And two things that will come about of it. One is we determine if they have the grit to just do that dirty work, if you will, which is the necessary work of real estate, reaching out and connecting with people. 

Speaker 3 (05:33):
And the second thing is facing that rejection and still pressing forward and trying to create results. So we can determine competency and attitude from those things as a filter. And you do your best, obviously, with interview questions that we ask them, what kind of books outside of fiction have you read? Have you attended any classes, workshops to see if they're learning based? But that grit test is a really great one for resilience. 

Speaker 1 (05:58):
Cool. I loved asking people what books they're reading, especially outside of fiction. I almost exclusively read nonfiction. So I would just like that just to build my own list from interesting people, but I also like it as a little bit of a screen. In addition, I mean, are they taking things from it in a way that they can communicate it back to you also demonstrates not just that you're reading something and you can tell me off the top of your head, but if you can tell me three things about a book, I know that you're also reading, paying attention, absorbing the ability to teach it back as a thing. That's not necessarily resilience. I've pushed beyond that now. So you mentioned the model. Let's take one step forward toward that specific conversation. I would love for you to characterize real estate experts however you'd like, market, size, structure, culture, anything you want to share about the company. 

Speaker 3 (06:44):
Sure, sure, sure. Yeah. So the organization I run is called Real Estate. Actually, I have two business units. Real Estate Experts is our brokerage. We run on Side, which is a platform, a tech-based platform out of San Francisco. Many people aren't aware of them because they're diffused through all these brands like ourselves, real estate experts. They have 600 large teams really that are small independent brokerages. So we run on side at Real Estate Experts. That is what I would call a team ridge. We're a hybrid between a team and a brokerage. I do still retain a personal team called Brett Jennings Group. I have nine sales agents on there. We'll do 150 million or so in business. I like that business because it can be both kind of the role model for other teams at the company as well as other agents because they get to see and creates visibility for both the behaviors and the systems that when people lean in, adopt and adapt to the systems that we have, they succeed. 

Speaker 3 (07:48):
So they model ... Some of the agents at the brokerage will model or emulate the agents and the team, and then they create more success. And we spotlight those inside team meetings and company meetings. And that's the way we drive adoption, I guess you will, across the brokerage. But the brokerage side is it offers a lot of the same resources the team. We run on follow-up boss, for example. They do have access to Zillow Preferred for some of those agents, not all of them. So they have access to opportunities and resources like the team, just typically not at the same level or density of opportunity. And the hardest thing probably, Ethan, in running this kind of organization is we're obviously trying to drive for performance and higher production for everyone. But the difference is inside the team, we can have standards and standards are their prescriptive formulas for how we show up and what we do. 

Speaker 3 (08:45):
And if you don't show up that way, you don't play. You're not part of the team. Whereas in the brokerage, the standards are merely suggestions because people are going to participate or not. And so hopefully we can inspire the people on the independent side of the business and we do. It's just not as many because it's an opt-in accountability framework, but we have other ways to address that. 

Speaker 1 (09:10):
When and why and how did retaining the team and/or pushing in the brokerage direction and accommodating both types of partnerships with agents, why and how did that come together for you? 

Speaker 3 (09:23):
It was about 20 ... We joined Side in 2018, the end of 2018, and I had been just a real estate team with 10 agents up to that point. I did know I wanted to grow. Part of it, there's two parts to it. There's growing revenue and profit, and then there was the other piece of that was growing impact. Coming out of college, I had the privilege and opportunity to work for Tony Robbins for a couple years and traveled the world with him, walked on fire more times than I could count, but I got immense satisfaction out of that job in the coaching and developing people and helping them set and get goals. And then after his working with him, I went on, I spent a year working with another kind of icon in personal development, Deepak Chopra, who is no well known for health and meditation specifically. 

Speaker 3 (10:11):
I learned to teach his form of meditation. And those were really formative experiences before I got into real estate. And I feel like those helped contribute. They did. It was interesting. I was ... Let's see, I got my license in 2008. So it was about 2015, seven years in before I really started bringing the coaching skills of developing the human within people to the team. I had a million in GCI and I kind of flatlined. And one of my mentors really challenged me. He's like, " Brett, you have this aspiration to ... You say if you retired, you'd want to go do business and life coaching. Why aren't you doing that with your team members now? "And honestly, I didn't have people that were really passionate about that kind of growth. And as soon as I got really clear on the purpose, which comes back to what we opened this conversation with about clarity and the vision of the leadership, everything changed in my business. 

Speaker 3 (11:05):
People spontaneously left, new people within a week of me having this clarity about what we were going to be about, new and better team members started showing up. So I started bringing in all the coaching into the business with the agents, having them set kind of a life vision and a life plan using the kind of Tony Robbins goal setting formula. And when I started doing that, our business doubled. And so to answer the question, where it came from that we decided to launch this TeamRidge model, if you will, it came out of two things, growing the business, but also growing impact. I knew I wanted to reach more agents, and I hadn't seen that many teams scale beyond 10 or 15 agents. And I also knew that the talent equation in our local market, I could get a lot of agents if I could offer them some of the benefits of a team, but allow them to have a higher split on their own self-generated business that I can bring in a lot more people. 

Speaker 3 (12:07):
So in 2018, we partnered with Side. It took me about a year really to figure out the model, how we were going to make the economics work. And I had a lot of coaches and tell me, "You're stupid. You're crazy. That'll never work." And we launched in 2019. And we went 2018, I think we were at 165 million. 2019, we went to 432 million, 2020, we went to 1.2 billion. So we've scaled really fast. Obviously, we had the momentum in the market of COVID helping us, but that really got me passionate about this formula of, let's not just focus on the production, let's not just focus on teaching agents about scripts, dialogues, how to convert leads and service a client, but let's help them level up personally as well. And that's kind of what was the genesis for real estate experts as this TeamRidge model. 

Speaker 1 (12:59):
You just opened up two big doors for me to go through. So I guess I'll keep them in the order I originally planned, which is 

Speaker 1 (13:06):
Further growth from here. And then we'll get into some of the observations you made when you started bringing in more of that, I'll just call it holistic coaching or human development beyond scripts, dialogues becoming super proficient and becoming very effective as a real estate salesperson. So you ramped really, really quickly. It's early 2020s. You land on this model that people said wasn't going to work. It seems to be working. And now here we are today, just kicking off 2026, and you've got very ambitious plans to go well beyond that 1.2 in 2020. Talk about your decision to grow further, your current vision as it is, and this idea of starting to open up the door of acquisition as a means to growing besides finding, as you already alluded to, some really effective folks in the market, some really successful folks in the market by opening up this hybrid model, attracted some of them in, but now you can go further, faster maybe with a new lever. 

Speaker 3 (14:11):
Yeah. So let's just start by saying it's no secret that post 2021, the market's been really tough. We went through three years of a market contraction with rising rates and all of these things and that challenged both teams and brokerages more so on the brokerage because when we hit that kind of a growth in 2021, we staffed up preparing for an even bigger 2022. And like everyone, we had to cut, cut, cut and figure out how do we right size the organization? And the nice thing about a real estate team for anyone listening versus a brokerage is a team, if you run it right and you have your economic model right, you have margin, which makes you more durable through the ups and downs. And brokerage is challenging because those margins are thinner and a good well-run team takes home about 60 cents on the dollar gross or a brokerage is lucky to get 20. 

Speaker 3 (15:04):
And so as we navigated through the downturn, we really were faced as a small to midsize boutique brokerage, we were faced with the same challenges everyone I think is right now. If you're an independent broker and you're small to mid-size, you're in this messy middle, you either have to go back down, scale down to really small and just do personal production or run a team, or you got to get really big. And 2025 was a year of really answering that question and we did a lot of soul searching. And for me, it was less about making money and it was more about expanding impact and knowing at least in all my 25 years of business experience, if we create value and that impact, we will get profitable if we run the business right eventually. And so that was the decision is, okay, how do we grow? 

Speaker 3 (16:02):
And we were approached by a group, one of the anywhere affiliates from anywhere. And one of the brands, anywhere owns Coldwell Banker, Sotheby, Century 21, they're the Procter and Gamble of real estate, if you will. And they said, "We have this little known brand that we want to expand footprint in California and we're looking for a growth partner. We will partner with you and provide capital for you to purchase these companies and a mergers and acquisitions team." And after some due diligence and things, that was the path we chose. So we're excited about it and yeah, we're about to close on our first acquisition, which would effectively more than double the size of our company today. And so our ambitions going forward is we'd like to take the company to, through eight to 12 acquisitions in the next two years to four billion in sales and about 600 agents. 

Speaker 3 (16:57):
And we feel there's plenty of opportunity in California for that in the current climate. So we're excited. 

Speaker 1 (17:03):
You positioned something that I think most people who are basically thoughtful would recognize as intuitively true, which is if you do the right things in the right way, in the right order for the right reasons, you can trust that you will be rewarded. So this idea of seeking impact and knowing that you'll be financially rewarded, I think some people like the idea on the surface, but they don't necessarily have the willingness or ability to make that leap of faith and then start acting that way and start speaking that way and start truly behaving that way and then starting to put some risk into your own life and business on that leap of faith. So I know I said a lot of words there and I didn't really formulate a question there, but is there any observation in that or anything you want to pick up on and carry forward? 

Speaker 1 (17:53):
What was going on for you when you recognized that if you did seek to make impact, the rest of it would take care of itself? 

Speaker 3 (18:00):
Well, yeah, it's interesting. Yeah, you offer a whole lot there that I can comment on. One is this idea, fundamentally the conversation we're kind of pointing to is this idea that we can do good and do well in business. And that idea always inspired me. Tony Shea wrote a book called Delivering Happiness about his journey of building Zappos and selling it. And there's this whole kind of theme, what's called conscious business. And it's not Pollyanna, which is cool. It's now the science has proven it out that conscious purpose-driven companies grow three to 10 times faster than their counterparts. On the short term, it's interesting, you have to be willing to play the long game because on the short term, one to three years, you might not be as successful as companies that just don't give a hoot about anybody else but themselves and hack their way through the market. 

Speaker 3 (18:58):
But on the five to 15 year horizon, these thoughtful enterprises are more successful. And looking back on my own experience in the last five years, I was reading the book by Benjamin Hardy, 10X is easier than 2X, really brilliant book. And he invites you as the reader to look at your own life and business experience like where in your life did you have an inflection point or 10X moment and what was going on there? What was your thougt process? And I look back, Ethan, and this was the thing that gives me the courage and confidence to move in this direction was when I look back, where we had that hockey stick growth was the moment I told you about, I had a coach or mentor that put it to me that said like, "Hey, what are you really doing?" And I got super focused on, I got clear on my own personal purpose, live, love, learn, grow, help other people do the same. 

Speaker 3 (19:49):
And the second question he asked me is, "What's your business look like if you really brought all of that to everything that you do? " And that's when I decided, "Hey, I'm going to go heavy on coaching our agents." A few years later when we started the TeamRidge model, I set a goal to help five agents have their first million dollar year in real estate. And we ended up having 13 break their first million dollar GCI year. In addition, we had another 15 that earned 500 and another 20 that earned 250 because everybody was reaching for that brass ring. And that's when I kind of realized there's the old adage of one of the personal development gurus, Zig Ziglar said, "If you help enough people get what you want, you'll automatically get what they want, you'll automatically get what you want. " And I went, "Man, that really is true." That was key. 

Speaker 3 (20:41):
So there's empirical data, you can read books, business books about this. And then now that I had some personal experience with it, that's what really anchors it in and gives us the courage. But I think what you're saying is it does, it's got to be embodied. You got to live it. You can't just think it. 

Speaker 1 (20:58):
So I want to double back really quickly into growth through acquisition. As you're looking to make this impact with more people and this kind of approach of seeing whole people and developing whole people and having their businesses grow as a consequence, who are you targeting? For folks that are interested in growing in this way, obviously having a great partner with Capital and an M&A and some guidance and really taking on some of the legwork, not just the ... I mean, because anyone can kind of learn how to do it, but it's nice to be able to jump start it. How has that partnership gone for you in terms of figuring out what the right types of businesses are that would work with what you want to do? 

Speaker 3 (21:35):
Yeah, great question. And it ties back to both the philosophy around next level of success for a professional, like an agent going to the next level, as well as us making the decisions on these mergers and acquisitions. And that is the higher levels of success don't come from more grinding, it comes from more alignment. And so when we look for alignment with a company, the two things that for sure got to align is we got to have a similar thougt process in leadership that the leadership is one growth-minded that therefore have attracted other people into their world that are growth-minded, not just people who are punching clocks or status quo. And then secondly, there has to be alignment and economic model. And brokerage, used to be margins were 23, 24%. They're probably closer to 14 or 15 now. So ideally, we got somebody that's got a company dollar, 15 to 20% retained company dollar, and that we know that when we look at their business, there's some redundancy there. 

Speaker 3 (22:38):
We know if we acquire a company, we don't need two directors of marketing, we don't need two COOs. And so through some of that pruning of the organization and then through elevating performance of the people by the ... This is where I think this is our bet really, is that not just helping people become great agents, but helping them become great humans and inspiring them to live a whole filled, complete life through kind of this life visioning, goal setting process and accountability that we do, that our bet is companies that we acquire that are sound operationally, that are inspired, are going to outperform their peers in the market. But to answer that question, just bring it back. We're looking for alignment in both the company culture and the leadership, and then an economic model that matches ours and has margin in it. 

Speaker 1 (23:36):
Cool. So one of them is really just a process of getting into the books and having some conversations about it. But the other one I feel like is probably discovered through a little bit of time together. How do you determine ... In general, I think most of the types of folks who watch and listen to this show have gone into interviews with agents, recruiting conversations, seeking some form of cultural alignment, and they're going to recognize it or something. This is a different level. So how do you approach discovering cultural alignment in these types of conversations? 

Speaker 3 (24:12):
Really, I mean, it does start with the leadership and understanding what makes them tick and why did they build the business they did and how did they build the business they built. I mean, if I go to one ... It's interesting. If I look at the ones that we're pursuing, interestingly, many of the brokers also hold a law degree, and that aligns with us on our company philosophy as real estate experts. We wanted both leadership and the agents to not just perform at a higher standard, but to hold a higher standard of fiduciary care. And so that was one. And yeah, seeing their personal philosophy on how they treat their agents, how they develop their agents and in that process ... And it's interesting because you don't really get the opportunity to get belly to belly with their agents until you probably purchase the company, because it's usually things are under non-disclosure agreements. 

Speaker 1 (25:09):
They're not 

Speaker 3 (25:11):
Announcing it out on the floor. So you can sleuth their website and look at their people and see what their bios look like, but most of it's going to come from the leadership and the principle that they're going to attract people who are like themselves if it's a well-run org. 

Speaker 1 (25:26):
I maybe would've intended to ask earlier, I love the name real estate experts. What I'm picking up on is the way someone with a law degree maybe approaches the business and maybe a level of professionalism and some of these other things that you're looking for. I love how authoritative real estate experts is as a name. And I love that the concept of a certified expert advisor, I like what that communicates and I like what it connotes, like what it sends to people maybe subconsciously as well. 

Speaker 3 (25:52):
That is exactly why we created the name the way we did. We wanted a way to relay to consumers that we were committed to a higher standard of care, a higher level of education for this largest transaction that they'll undertake in their life. And that was through the brand, that was our ambition. And so it's good that that comes through. 

Speaker 1 (26:14):
Yeah. Good. Well done. Okay. I would love to spend the rest of our time together on the way that you have systematized this approach that we've been kind of talking around a little bit. We've talked about purpose, we've talked about individual and company purpose. We've talked about your own purpose of seeking impact and in improving the lives of other people. You've already mentioned that it is quantified, that there is some science here and that it is shown to be more effective to invest in people as people, not just as human resources inside the machinations that we might call a business or an organization. And so you've put a lot of really good practices around this. I'm thinking about the way that you've done pod structures with agents. I would love to get into the details on that because everyone I think can and should be thinking ... I think when people hear pods, they think, oh yeah, we do pods or I've heard of pods or whatever, but the way that you're doing it is different. 

Speaker 1 (27:10):
The idea of the life happiness index and some of these other concepts you've put together in a really structured and thoughtful way that's driven the success that you mentioned maybe 10 or 15 minutes ago with X number of agents. I think it was 13 agents hitting a million in GCI and a number of others hitting a half a million where they were maybe doing a quarter before, et cetera. So I'll just open it up to say, when did it occur to you to systemize some of these steps? So you took some of what you learned with Tony Robbins and some other folks that you worked with. You started treating people differently and coaching and guiding people differently. Talk about covering the gap between, I'm talking to my agents differently and they seem to be responding to, I have a systematic approach that I can replicate in other markets and create similar success. 

Speaker 3 (27:56):
Great. And I'll do that. And it's going to take me back to where we had our kind of first wave of exponential growth, and that was really when we got centered on purpose that concurrently right around that same time, I had an insight. I was coaching an agent that he'd been in the business one year, not with us, and sold like two houses. Joined the team, pouring into him, and this is before we really start focusing on life vision and goals and things, he's just got a production goal, makes so much money. So Jeff saw hill in his third month, he joins in January, January, February, March. March closes nine deals, takes home $90,000 in income, and I'm coaching him continually on the weekly basis. And in the month April, he does nothing. In the month, first half of May, he's doing nothing and he's just not connecting, not setting appointments and showing up for coaching. 

Speaker 3 (28:53):
And we have a conversation. I'm like, Jeff, what's happening? You did so great and now you're just kind of can't get any traction. And he said, Brad, I've thought a lot about this and the best I can gather is the most of the money I've ever made in a year. I worked for my dad's chiropractic practice the last four years. The most money I've ever made in a year was $80,000. I made $90,000 in a single month. And then I realized, okay, and this wasn't the first time that something like this had happened where I had coached and ramped an agent up into production and then they just lose their focus. And that's when it became super clear people need a reason bigger than money. They need a why bigger than money, but most agents come to the business because out of economic necessity, it's a fallback career, right? 

Speaker 3 (29:39):
95% of people, they try their hand and many other things and real estate's where they land and it's out of economic necessity. But until they get clarity on their life, vision and a bigger picture, they will hit that as soon as they reach that income level where their needs are met, they kind of just spin out. So that's when I brought the coaching and the framework of the Tony Robbins goal setting process Process and this idea of helping someone get ... We distill it down to four goals, one of which is an income goal, and then four goals in the rest of the areas of their life, relationships, health, whatever, they can choose the areas. And that was a great starting point. Then through some of these masterminds that I participated in, including John Sheplaks, I was looking for the right accountability structure because one-on-ones are not scalable. 

Speaker 3 (30:24):
There's only so many sales managers and leaders. And the peer accountability framework with a new definition of accountability really changed the game. And the idea of a new frame of accountability is that most people's reference point for accountability is when they were growing up at some point, somebody pokes them in the chest and says, "Why didn't you do it? " And the reality is, why is a word of judgment and it shuts people down. But real accountability can open people up. And taking that concept of accountability even higher is this idea that accountability is the highest form of love you can show another human being. And people go, "Well, is that really true?" Well, if you think about it, think about your best friend, for example. Your best friend loves you unconditionally. And if you start going off the rails and you're getting drunk at 12 noon every day or having affairs and stuff, your best friend's probably going to grab you by the shirt or tug you aside and go, "Dude, Ethan, what are you doing?" And that's accountability. 

Speaker 3 (31:22):
They're holding you to who you really are. And in this framework and holding that concept as a frame, this really simple, elegant, peer accountability framework we installed in the company, and it's groups of five people. They run for six weeks at a time and they take two weeks off and they can change people in the pods. But groups of five, they share for five minutes. It's a very clean structured framework. They pick three commitments a week, two professional, one personal, or two personal, one professional. And they show up for each other and asks a series of six questions. "Did you have a commitment? Did you keep it? If you didn't keep it, what got in the way? If something got in the way, there's a filtering question for honesty is in the realm of all that's possible, could you have kept this commitment? "And then the goal is really in the sixth question, which is, what did you notice about yourself in not following through? 

Speaker 3 (32:23):
And it's this idea that accountability is noticing or observing without judgment. We're not commenting, we're letting people arrive to their own conclusion. And it's pretty brilliant because really, in essence, all growth comes from awareness of your unconscious thoughts and behavior. And so we just watched these groups unfold and people were accomplishing amazing things. My lead assistant wanted to get in shape and she ended up running two marathons, lost 25 pounds. We had people buying investment property and they never thought they could, people getting married, people getting divorced because they wanted to. So it was cool to see the ripple effect in what was happening in people's lives. And also concurrently, this is also when we started to watch more and more of this growth. And because it was based around a vision for your life and being positive and holding yourself accountable, the group started calling themselves the Good Vibe Tribe and it stuck. 

Speaker 3 (33:18):
And so we're like, " That's actually pretty cool. "So since then, that's my kind of secret sauce, if you will, or X factor that I intend to bring to the organizations we acquire and help install this, I'll call it a cultural operating system, if you will, into these companies. And I'm making a big bet that we'll do better than most with this kind of approach to business and life. 

Speaker 1 (33:47):
When I hear accountability is the highest form of love, it sounds and feels true to me. And I think it's because honesty and truth is inherently good. It's the best thing. And so this ability to get other people to reflect with you and to kind of help drive you to self-discovery, to be honest with yourself and honest with other people, to then have integrity between what you're saying and what you're doing and what you know is true, the integrity in all of that is what feels like human thriving. And especially in this time, disconnection for a variety of different reasons, the idea that we're paying more attention and putting whole natural foods into our body, but we're spending so much time with synthetic and artificial thought in product, in media, social media, AI, et cetera, this idea of human thriving through connection with other people all focused on integrity in word deed, thought, feeling, et cetera. 

Speaker 1 (34:56):
And self-awareness, I think was a key element that you introduced in describing that too. It just seems naturally attractive to me, which then leads me to a question, which is, how did you generate participation initially and how do you anticipate generating participation going forward? 

Speaker 3 (35:15):
Really, we let the evidence of success speak for itself. And so we first launched it, we introduced the idea, said," Hey, here is ... We've all gone through and done our goals, and actually there's just some pretty brilliant science of success around accountability, and I need to find the reference points for it, because I drew this from someone else. "But it says basically, if you simply just have the idea of a goal, you have about 10% chance of attaining it. If you then write it down, it goes to 25%. If you create a plan around it, it goes to 50%. If you tell somebody else about it, it goes to 65%. But if you have a structured meaning with a group of people that hold you accountable, it goes to 90%. And so that is the auspices or the data that we use to back up the first round of groups that we did, but then people just started seeing the success they were having and other people truly were inspired. 

Speaker 3 (36:17):
For me, one of the things mine was to spend more time with my son. My son at the time was 13 years old. He's always into gaming. And a lot of times I was on a case about gaming and it was like, " I'm just going to spend time with my son and I'm going to enter his world and game with him. "And you got to better bet. If Thursday morning I'm going to meet with my accountability group, I hadn't done it on Tuesday, I'm hanging out with my son and doing things that I just hadn't done before. Things that were maybe important to me at one level, but not through my actions. And it really created that alignment where people are showing up and doing the things that they want to do to create the life they want to have. And so that I think is the game-changing formula because when you get people inspired about life, then they have more energy to bring to everything that they do. 

Speaker 3 (37:05):
And that's the bet that we've ... Well, that's what we've seen and that's the bet we're making is we want to take this and cascade it into other companies as well because here's the reality and whether it's real estate or any business, to create success, you have to take actions to move in the direction of your goals. Invariably, if you're going to try to accomplish something you haven't done before, you're going to have limiting beliefs around it, limiting ideas, and that's going to create resistance. And you need willpower to move through that resistance and make ... The two things that happen here, we see it in the formula, is making small commitments. Every time you make a commitment and keep it, it builds self-confidence and self-discipline. And we started the conversation by saying accountability is the highest form of love you can show another human being. 

Speaker 3 (37:56):
Self-discipline is the highest form of self-love. And so just by setting a context, a container, a framework, if you will, where people can just show up, be themselves, and they can make a small commitment and then achieve it, they start building their self-worth, their self-image. And with that, their confidence increases and their capacity to make bigger decisions and bigger commitments. And it's really creating a space and a place for people to step into and be witnessed in becoming a better version of themselves. And I mean, I know that those sound like flowery words, but literally that's what it is. And that's kind of, I think, the new frontier of this whole domain of what we call conscious business that we talked a little bit about, this idea that you can do good and do well. The first generation of that was like, hey, let's just be accountable to more than just our shareholders. 

Speaker 3 (38:46):
We can treat our company well and we can serve our communities and do these things. And I think this next level is really about how do we create the workplace as a space for Maslow's hierarchy of needs, if you will, for self-actualization. And because the people don't get it at home, they might get it if they hire a life coach, but if people want to come together as peers and their work community and support each other in that, we're seeing magic happen. 

Speaker 1 (39:17):
Yeah. I love this. You and I had a really nice conversation, a handful of them outside of this recording where we talked about your vision of that shift from essentially stakeholder accountability, where we're now taking account of all the people that are impacted by our business besides our shareholders alone. And I really like this going to the individual as another iteration of it, specifically, of course, around self-actualization, because it unlocks so many things. And to your point, unless we're driving this for ourselves, we're not getting it anywhere else. And as much as we all say you're the composite of the 10 people you spend most of your time with, in my personal life, I mean, I talk with a lot of real estate folks where it's more present than I think in other professional pockets, but I don't know how many people are specifically cultivating a group, an accountability group. 

Speaker 1 (40:14):
And the thing that I love about doing it inside the organization, not only does the organization itself get that halo effect and it becomes like a cultural norm and it starts to create ripples within the organization that maybe wouldn't have been created otherwise, but it's a mixed group of people. I'm assuming that these people didn't just raise their hands and say," Who are my five buddies inside the organization to do this? "You're making these commitments and learning about other people and creating this accountability with people that you maybe wouldn't have sought that from. 

Speaker 3 (40:46):
100% and it's called business intimacy. It creates an emotional network in the company for relationationships to deepen and the culture to become stronger, for sure. Because yeah, you're hanging out with Mary who maybe you talked to her at the company Christmas party before once or something and you guys had a five-minute chat, but now you're learning a lot about her life. And obviously these are opt-in, right? It's completely opt-in because you can't impose this kind of thing on people if they're going to be vulnerable and authentic about what their goals are and what they're going to do, but it creates an opportunity for that intimacy that you just wouldn't probably get any other way in the company. 

Speaker 1 (41:35):
Just pulling back a little bit, what does the year ahead look like for you? I mean, obviously you're focused on acquisitions. I think you said something like eight to 10 over the next few years. So obviously getting a couple of those underway and creating some momentum in that direction, taking action and taking some of your expectations and concepts about how this will go and doing some learning so that the next three go even better than the first three or whatever. But with the nuances and complexities in your hybrid model, as well as your aspirations over the next year, what are you looking at in this year ahead if you wanted to simplify it for someone? 

Speaker 3 (42:12):
Yeah. I mean, I really have three priorities. One is to drive the growth of our organization through the acquisitions. Number two is to launch this Good Vibe Tribe theme outside our company because I'm really passionate about this concept. In fact, you were kind enough to review the first draft of the book that we've written called Good Vibe Tribe: How Conscious Companies Win. And this year I'm going to have 10 partner companies that are going to install this cultural framework, the Good Vibe Tribe OS, we're calling it, into their company so they can create these peer pods and set goals with their team and staff and measure the impact of that over the course of a year. And so that's the second one. And the third is to really, if I got two personal commitments and one personal or two professional, one personal, it's to deepen the connection and relationship with my wife and my two kids, spend more quality time with them. 

Speaker 3 (43:24):
The numbers on that, our goal is to get to two billion in sales volume, probably around 300 agents in the organization by the end of 26. 

Speaker 1 (43:35):
Awesome. Really excited for you. I normally do this after my three pairs of closing questions, but I'll pull it forward in case people are really motivated and curious about this Good Vibe tribe. If someone is super interested in this idea, where would you send them if they wanted to learn more or- 

Speaker 3 (43:53):
Yeah, go visit our website at GoodvibeTribe Worldwide. So it's spelled just like it sound, Goodbye Tribe Worldwide. There you can download a copy of our book, The Good Vibe Tribe, How Conscious Companies Win, as well as the toolkit on how to run the accountability groups and frameworks, as well as the life happiness index and all the tools that we can use, you can use in your company to bring this to life with them. 

Speaker 1 (44:18):
Awesome. Just full transparency for you, Brad, as well as everyone watching and listening. I did not know that that was all so put together and that there was something so actionable. I just thought I know someone listening is like, "This is very interesting to me and it speaks to me in a way that some of the other structural things that I've learned about doesn't." So I love that that's all put together. Okay. So with that, I ask three pairs of closing questions. You can answer one or the other. Some people can answer both. The first one is, what is your very favorite team to root for besides real estate experts or what's the best team you've ever been a member of besides real estate experts? 

Speaker 3 (44:57):
It's interesting. I was a member of the Zillow Advisory Board for five years, and that was a pretty awesome team. This other group that I was a mastermind I was a part of that inspired me to start real estate experts was the Nationational Association of Expert Advisors. That was run by Jay Kinder and Michael Reese at the time, specifically because they really helped me shift the focus from tactical to strategic and shift the focus from agent to expert. So those two things have had the biggest impact in my business for sure. 

Speaker 1 (45:32):
Now, what is one of your most frivolous purchases or what's a cheapskate habit you hold onto even though you probably don't need to? 

Speaker 3 (45:44):
I guess I'm too much of a cheapskate to make big frivolous purchases. Probably luxury watches are my frivolous purchases. I own a Breitling and a Panoray, but the frivolous things I hold onto, it's probably recycling some of the ... We have a reverse osmosis water filter at the house, so I'll buy bottled water, like these one liter bottles, and I'll refill them and it drives my wife crazy because she's like, "Why are you refilling these? These are one-time use." I'm like, "Well, I don't like disposing of that much plastic and it's why do I want to go spend another 50 cents?" 

Speaker 1 (46:20):
Yeah, really good. Last one, what does it look like for you, Brett? What are you doing when you're investing time in learning, growing, and developing? Or what does it look like? What are you doing when you're investing time in resting, relaxing, and recharging? 

Speaker 3 (46:32):
Interesting. Learning, growing, and developing, resting, relaxing, and recharging are synonymous for me. So in my downtime, resting and relaxing, I'm learning stuff. I'm going to maybe a meditation retreat, or host a retreat at my place in Tahoe for some other entrepreneurs. But the practices per se, for recovery and rejuvenation, as I mentioned, I had an opportunity to work with Deepak Chopra and become a meditation teacher. So I taught meditation for 20 years. I still practice. I don't meditate every day, but I meditate more days than I don't. And breathwork is something that I really came upon in the last couple years as a powerful compliment to meditation. Beautiful thing about meditation, it helps your OS run better. Your mind is your OS, and when you learn to have a relationship with it when you're not constantly getting tangled up in it, everything runs smoother. Breathwork for me has been a path to really create deep stillness and quiet in a way that usually would only come about from a meditation retreat or long periods of silence. 

Speaker 3 (47:44):
And so it's a powerful way to do that. And it also helps just clear a lot of stuff out of your system, if you want. 

Speaker 1 (47:54):
Yeah. Really good. Thank you so much for sharing that. And thank you for spending all this time with me with all the folks who are watching and listening. You already mentioned goodvibetribeworldwide.com. Any other place you would send people who want to connect with you or learn more about what you're doing? 

Speaker 3 (48:10):
Yeah. We do have on the professional side for real estate experts, we have a blog called bearealexpert.com. There we host panels, trainings and content for going and growing to the next level in your real estate business. So feel free to check out bearealexpert.com. 

Speaker 1 (48:27):
Cool. Those are linked up down below, whether you're watching or listening on Spotify, whether you're listening on Apple Podcasts, whether you're watching on YouTube, or you're watching or listening at realestateteamos.com. We write all these up. There are jump links down below, especially in YouTube, and we always link up things that the guests have mentioned. So both of those links, Brett, that you shared are linked up down below. Hope people enjoy those. I hope they enjoyed this conversation as much as I did. I wish you continued success in 2026, and I look forward to seeing you out and about. 

Speaker 3 (48:55):
Awesome. Thanks for the opportunity, Ethan. Have a great one. 

Speaker 2 (48:58):
Thanks for checking out this episode of Team OS. For email exclusive insights every week, sign up at realestateteamos.com.