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AJ Hazzi goes unfiltered with the plays that built a #1 independent brokerage, a $1B+ PM portfolio, and the highest-performing agents. Expect battle-tested tactics, tales from the trenches, and raw convos with top operators. No gurus. Just the truth that grows your pipeline, team, and net worth.
A.J Hazzi (00:01.287)
Okay, I got a real treat for you, everybody. I am on with my good friend Eric Hatch. Eric's someone that I have known for about a dozen years now through through a network of top producing team leaders and brokerage owners. And I have had the privilege of spending a lot of time with Eric and getting to know his story over the years has been really inspiring to me. And I know that a lot of our Canadian Canadian audience maybe doesn't have a ton of exposure to Mr. Eric Hatch, but he's a big deal in the United States of America and he's been a big inspiration to me.
I've been plugged into his coaching program for a number of years as well and have learned a lot from from this man and I know you will too. So without further ado, everybody, welcome, Mr. Eric Hatch. How you doing, buddy?
@RealErikHatch (00:43.052)
Well, I live in North Dakota, which is almost Canada, so I think that makes us brothers. yeah. We we are as Canadian as the US gets, we are polite, we are well mannered, we love hockey, we are plenty cold and so I I mean consider me one of you. One of us.
A.J Hazzi (00:49.653)
You're looking very Canadian, yeah, I agree.
A.J Hazzi (01:03.047)
I do. And you're rocking the Fargo hat. I think a lot of people only know Fargo through the movie.
@RealErikHatch (01:06.166)
I am, yeah, I live in I live in Fargo, North Dakota. our our entire community is about two hundred and fifty thousand people for the counties that we serve and represent. So we're not a large place by any means. but we've we've had a wild ride of it. I mean, I've been doing this team game now since 2011. We've sold over eight thousand houses in this little community of ours. And I have broken pretty much every
Fiber of my consciousness and peace along the way. It has been glory and terror, like any good roller coaster should be.
A.J Hazzi (01:39.731)
Yeah, absolutely. And you know, our markets are similar size, our stories are similar with the ups and the downs, and I think this will be a great conversation today. I'd love to kind of just start with like where were you in 2011 that led you to the business? How did things start off for you? How did you then gain some traction? you know, give us a little bit of a sense of where the market was at that time too in North Dakota, what was sort of happening, and then let's kind of talk a little bit through your journey.
@RealErikHatch (02:04.526)
Two thousand and six I got licensed in real estate and I was a part-time agent for five years. Now, the reason why I got licensed was because I wanted to make a bunch of money, but I wasn't motivated by money. I I had another full time job, which was great. I was actually in the ministry, doing youth ministry and worship leading at my church. but I was a professional gambler.
I was a professional poker player and minister at the same time, right? Not it wasn't wasn't an illegal thing, but it certainly isn't necessarily smiled upon, was more frowned upon. And and turns out that my addiction to gambling was pretty intense. And so I got my real estate license because I went from making fifty thousand dollars a year as a professional poker player to losing tens of thousands of dollars a year. And my job making I I I was making twenty-eight thousand dollars a year as a professional. And
And I had more bills than I did anything else. I had $70,000 in credit card debt at like a 20% interest rate. And it was just, it was a really rough time. And so I got into real estate because I wanted to take that cash and that opportunity and I wanted to use it to fix what I had broken. So I got into real estate as a part-timer because I was flat broke. And then it's like, hey, my first year I sold zero houses. This is really a great investment of my time and my money. and then I I got a little more serious about it and I got trained better and I
I figured out how to start working my sphere and open houses and so started to sell ten or fifteen or twenty houses a year as I went on. Eliminated that debt from my life. I've been clean from gambling since 2008. Now
AJ, you and I are entrepreneurs, so we're still professional gamblers. It's still the same job, right? We we read and analyze situations. we we're making sure that we know the angles to play and when to go all in, and that's that's been my story. And so I went all in as a full time realtor in 2011. Left the ministry full time, was still doing it part-time, but went all in on real estate and I sold 52 houses that year.
A.J Hazzi (03:45.365)
You gamble out dollars, man.
A.J Hazzi (04:04.671)
Home.
@RealErikHatch (04:04.91)
and so it was a fun first go of it. All my sphere and referral and past clients and open houses. This was all business earned, never business bought. And then I did I I did what everybody is supposed to do, and that's start a real estate team. And my gosh, is that a giant crock of crap for how it's going to enhance your life.
most people follow MREA, the Millionaire Real Estate Agent book, and you follow it like a blueprint. At least if you're if you're doing it right, you should be like, I'm gonna follow this model exactly. Well, that model says, AJ, that you should pay an agent that works with listings 20%, and an agent that works with buyers 40% for a cumulative average of 30%. Then you, as the team leader, will spend 30% on expenses and you're gonna have a profit margin of 40%.
A.J Hazzi (04:52.533)
Mm-hmm.
@RealErikHatch (04:59.864)
my gosh, you mean to tell me I can make 40% on every transaction. That's not even counting what I sell. I'm gonna make 40% net profit on every transaction. All I need to do is hire 10 great agents and I'm gonna make a million bucks. Right? Like AJ, you're dumb like me. You used to think that it was that easy, right?
A.J Hazzi (05:13.029)
Yeah.
Read the same book, you bet.
@RealErikHatch (05:18.634)
and here's the truth of it. AJ, if if let's take an average commission of $10,000, right? And by the way, in North Dakota in 2011, 2012, our average commission was like five or six thousand dollars. If I took that average commission of, let's say, $10,000 just to use easy math, I knew I could close all five of those deals. I was a seasoned salesperson at this point. I was savvy, I was gritty, I was tenacious.
I'm gonna I'm gonna close all five of those and I know that any agent I hire because they're gonna be trained by me, they're gonna close all five of those as well. So I'll put them on fifty-fifty splits. That agent's gonna make twenty-five grand, and I'm gonna make twenty-five grand, and we're just gonna do that every month, and I'm gonna make so much money I don't know what to do with it. But those agents can't close all five, and they can't can't close four, and they can't close three. They're probably gonna close two, and if they close just one, guess which finger I'm gonna leave up for it, right? Like
A.J Hazzi (06:12.06)
Mm-hmm.
@RealErikHatch (06:13.43)
We fail to recognize that when we start real estate teams, like we're overestimating what they know and we underestimate what we know. We think that other people are us. We think that other people have the same kind of experience and tenacity and work ethic and skill set and ex like we we think that they can do what we do, but they first have to do what we do in order to do what we did. And so the team
At the end of that year in 2012, we were in a a a healthy, good market in North Dakota. We sold 192 houses our first year, AJ. Unbelievable. But I was 113 of those 192. I made zero money off of my team.
A.J Hazzi (06:54.54)
Great region.
@RealErikHatch (06:56.846)
And I spent all my t I was working a hundred hours a week. Thank goodness I didn't have kids yet. And thank goodness my wife understood that I was not gonna not gonna settle for mediocrity. And so we finished the year. I worked three times as hard as I did as a solo agent and I made half as much as I could have or would have or should have.
Yeah.
A.J Hazzi (07:17.939)
Yeah, that's the way it goes, right? It's it's it's twice the work for half the money in the beginning, for sure. It it is kind of almost like a not a messy middle, but it's like a it's a tuition that almost every team leader that has has to pay. And most people don't forge through it. Most people get in there, realize this is a terrible value proposition and then go back to being an individual agent. You know, I coach
agents on the t all the time on becoming team leaders. And inevitably they will be confronted by this sad reality of that in the beginning this does not make sense. But you can push through it, which you did. So keep going.
@RealErikHatch (07:54.051)
Well well, I th I think the only way to push through is to blow it up. I mean, I I didn't blow it up intentionally, but twenty twelve was our first year as a team. Twenty thirteen, within four months, I was kicked out of my brokerage. I was with Keller Williams. Yeah. And
A.J Hazzi (08:08.949)
What brokerage were you at at the time? Yeah. So that's where all the team leader stuff was happening. That was the epicenter of teams at the time.
@RealErikHatch (08:13.814)
No
Yeah. And and and we were loud, we were sloppy, we were cocky and egotistical. I didn't think that my shit stank at all. and I heard Gary Keller from the main stage say, like, hey, just put your foot on the gas pedal and clean it up afterwards. I'm like, Okay, that's what I'm gonna do. This so and I was moving really fast and I had an agent on my team that was licensed in one of the states we represent, where North Dakota, Minnesota. He was licensed in Minnesota but couldn't get his license in North Dakota because of a bankruptcy on his record. And
And ended up illegally representing himself in the wrong state. and it was a reflection on me. And so they used that as the catalyst to kick me out. So I had this Jerry Maguire moment to my team thinking, like, Keller Williams, you're so dumb. How do you get rid of me? I'm awesome. And so I went to my whole team and like, all right, who's coming with me? And two people said yes. One agent and one admin. I was like, I'm the problem. And I realized, like,
A.J Hazzi (09:05.781)
That is a Jerry McGuire moment.
@RealErikHatch (09:13.676)
This all isn't working. I have to do this different. Now I had months where I'm licking my wounds and I'm in triage, but I realize there are two things that have to exist in order for me to be successful as a real estate team. The first is the model. I need to have a model that's not like Gary Keller says, which is 20% for listings, 40% for buyers, average cumulative of 30% and then 30% to expenses, so I'm gonna profit 40%. I that just doesn't exist.
So I'm like, I gotta, I gotta profit, I wanna profit 20 to 30 percent. That's my number. So if I pay my agents 50%, and if I have twenty to thirty percent for expenses, then I should have twenty to thirty percent for profit. So I had to have the right model. That was the first thing. I I needed to know, and and the model AJ, you only have to do once. Like, what do you pay your agents? Well, figure it out once and go from there.
A.J Hazzi (10:01.013)
That's right.
@RealErikHatch (10:06.41)
If if you have the wrong model right now, and so many teams have the wrong model, you could blow it up and just like force everybody to change, but you're gonna have huge flight risks on your hands. You can hire to the new model, and that's a slow way to write the ship. Or you can just completely reinvent it. And man, I I don't think that I ever would have chosen blowing it up, but I'm so thankful that I that it happened to me and for me. and so the right model is the first thing. But the second thing, AJ, and this is where almost everybody gets it wrong, is the environment.
That we're in. I remember talking at some of the conferences that we were at, or in some of the conversations that we were privy to have, of how, like, I was this hiring genius. I could outhire anybody because my per agent productivity on my team in my top year was 35 deals per agent. That's insane. That's unparalleled. There's maybe a handful of teams in North America that can tout that kind of statistic.
A.J Hazzi (11:04.479)
We we did hit those numbers as well. And I can tell you the tailwind you have from a recruiting standpoint when you're doubting mid thirties or even we got up to forty two at one point. That's what we were advertising, and it was
@RealErikHatch (11:13.218)
Gosh.
A.J Hazzi (11:16.285)
Yeah, it was you had your pick of talent at that point, because there's way more demand than there is supply of spots on the team, and that's where you want to be. But that comes from having stats. I actually was just on a coaching call before this with a team act team leader down in Mexico, and he's got, you know, he's got fifteen people that he's feeding leads to, and he's got five of them that are really actually working the leads. And I said the the challenge that you have is the five working the leads aren't getting enough of them, and the other ten or fifteen people that are not are essentially proof that your system
@RealErikHatch (11:19.447)
Yeah.
A.J Hazzi (11:46.241)
doesn't work. We need to blow this thing up around just the people who want to work the leads and then you'll have success stories to point to and you can say that they're that everybody here is successful. And at that point recruiting becomes almost automatic. Like it people come to you. You don't have to push anymore. It's fully pull. So continue.
@RealErikHatch (12:03.66)
Yeah, the the the thing you've done and the thing that I've done is that we created an environment. We we weren't geniuses at hiring. We just weren't the lucky ones that because i if if we're gonna hire 10 agents, AJ, a typical team would hire 10 agents, and within six months, four of them are gone. And one of them's a star, four of them are mediocre, and two are trash. Right? One out of ten is about the likelihood of finding an A player, but you and I
We would find A players fifty percent of the time, seventy percent of the time. But the reason why was not because we're great at hiring, it's because our environment demands greatness.
That there is no mediocrity that's allowed or tolerated. The conversations, the expectations, the standards, and the recipe that everybody follows, they're all a part of the same rhythm and they're all a part of the same cadence. And when I blew up my team, or it blew up on me, I had a chance to start over and I recognized early on that the environment matters more than anything else.
A.J Hazzi (12:42.435)
Mm-hmm.
@RealErikHatch (13:08.806)
You can have a stable filled with racehorses. And you put a couple of donkeys in there and those donkeys will run faster than they ever have before. But if you have a stable filled with donkeys, if you put a couple of racehorses in there, those racehorses will quickly resemble the asses they're surrounding themselves with. And and and so to your to your person that you're coaching down in Mexico, if they have five racehorses and ten donkeys, those donkeys are winning.
A.J Hazzi (13:28.159)
So true.
@RealErikHatch (13:39.961)
Period. And so until you have a higher put higher propensity and a higher density of top talent, and top talent, by the way, are not a players. I want to be really clear on this. This is where I think so many people get it wrong, including myself, is we overvalue A players and we undervalue B players. Now, I think a B player.
in the right environment looks like an A player. But an A player
Is like world class challenge the system every day, make you crazy. They're gonna be massively successful with or without you. They're a frustration and a catalyst all at the same time. A players, man, that's that's not one in ten, that's like one in a hundred. And those are hard to come by. But I know you can think right now of your roster over the last decade, AJ, of those two or three or four A players that disrupted everything. And looking back, it's like
A.J Hazzi (14:39.838)
Hundred percent.
@RealErikHatch (14:41.996)
Man, there was so much ego tied to it and so much heavy. And like the B players in the A environment are gonna play like A players, they're gonna produce like A players, but they're not gonna give you the freaking headaches like A players will.
A.J Hazzi (14:53.523)
Yeah, one of the things that we've same exact concept, but I have found like the team leader, I'm the the high D with a secondary I, right? And when I'm looking to bring people on, if someone has that same profile, I already know that at some point there's gonna be a friction, right? Because someone with a high D naturally is kind of contrarian and is naturally, you know, not looking to, you know, conform or to submit to a system, but rather they want to, you know, redefine it. They're looking to buy
The system, which is what I was looking to do. But in terms of people who fit well within that, they're intrapreneurial, and intrapreneurial is the perfect word for a high eye because it starts with I. That's who you want. You want the I with a secondary D, but it's just a little bit inverse. It's like my brother and I. I'm very high D, he's very high I. He's very good at collaboration. He makes a great team leader, he makes a great agent, but he has zero desire to try to reinvent the wheel and zero desire to spin off and do this on his own. He likes what we're building.
and he likes the fact that we're doing it and creating this environment together and it's collaborative. High Ds don't tend to value collaboration the same way a high I does. So that's what we've found is that I don't necessarily think that it's a B, although you know the A player that's I think the way you define it is somebody who could be successful on their own with or without it in spite of it almost. That's usually someone with an insane amount of D in their personality profile if you follow the disc. Would you agree?
@RealErikHatch (16:19.49)
Yeah. Yeah, this is the first time I've ever said this out loud, but it seems to fit like on a team, if you're a D I you're probably a followed with a C K right there, right? But if you're an I D, it's followed by an E A L.
A.J Hazzi (16:30.227)
Yeah.
A.J Hazzi (16:36.041)
Yeah. I like that. Might have just coined something there, buddy.
@RealErikHatch (16:38.092)
either a dick or your ideal. Like, yeah. And and I don't I don't give I I give like twenty five percent of all of like hiring decisions to the disc, but I give I give fifty percent to the heartbeat, to the cadence, to the culture, to the rhythm that the person if if you can f if you can row the boat with us, yeah, you got a spot on my team. But if you I I think that teams overestimate
A.J Hazzi (16:46.473)
Sure. If not.
@RealErikHatch (17:03.534)
Excuse me, they underestimate the importance of following the same rhythm and everybody dancing to the same song. Now, AJ, I c I overcomplicated a lot of things and and since I started my team, again, we sold over a thousand houses in our best year. We've had ten plus years that we've sold six hundred plus houses. Like it's it's just been a wild ride the last fifteen years. And somebody asked me the other day, they're like, Hey, what's the recipe?
And I'm stealing some of this from my buddy Matt Mealy. Matt Mealli runs a team out of Connecticut, and the very first thing that he said is that everybody shows up. And it's so simple.
But we always are like, well, they're independent contractors, and so we can't require them. No, no, no. The recipe is everybody shows up. And the commitment that we all make on the team and the promise that we make is that we're going to show up. We're going to show up for the team meetings. We're going to show up for the trainings. We're going to show up for the events. And we're going to put it on your schedule long in advance. So nothing will fall in that place. Everybody shows up. Like, I think that if I were given a keynote five years ago on the recipe of how to be successful as a team, I'd try to say 45 things that make me sound really smart.
And I think today, if I can dumb it down, because I think I'm a little dumber the older that I get, the first thing is we have to have people show up. I stole that from my buddy Matt. Now, number two is I think it's about conversations. I think that great teams have a recipe of number of conversations and where they blur the line and mess up is that they're taking lead follow-up conversations, but calling them lead generation conversations.
A lead generation conversation is somebody you're currently not having any real estate conversations with. That's lead generation. Lead follow-up is somebody who you are conversing with. You just don't have them under contract yet. And so I think that a great team says everybody has at least 10 new lead generation conversations a day. So show up, 10 conversations a day.
A.J Hazzi (18:54.805)
Mm-hmm.
@RealErikHatch (19:06.518)
Each one of those agents should be posting on social media once a day. And you don't have to post about your listings. You just need to post about who you are. You need to be reminding people that you exist. Sharon Srivatsa says that if you haven't achieved your goals, you either suck at what you do or nobody knows that you exist.
And for the agents in our world, they're relying oftentimes on the team to remind people that they exist. But I think that that responsibility is is there for that was something, that the the that the responsibility is there for our agents to be their own marketers as well. So post at least once on social media. And then this one's my favorite, you gotta add at least two new friends to the database a day.
A.J Hazzi (19:36.341)
You're hand talking your way through the camera.
A.J Hazzi (19:51.795)
That's huge.
@RealErikHatch (19:52.609)
And it that's it. So we we we said that there's four responsibilities for any team. You gotta show up so everybody's in rhythm and cadence together. Ten conversations a day with people you're currently not having conversations with. And that can be text messages, that can be social media interactions, that can be phone calls, that can be visits in person. You need to make at least one social media post a day.
And it doesn't have to be you creating the super highly produced reel or anything else. It's just asking a question, facilitating conversation and reminding people that you exist. And then it's adding at least two new friends to your database daily. Five times a week.
A.J Hazzi (20:29.705)
That's that last piece of the new additions to the database, I think, is where most people fall down. I think a lot of people know that they've got a you know post content, a lot of people know they have to make the contacts, but it's the cumulative effect of being consistent with the two new additions a day. When you think about that, even just over 200 working days, you're adding 400 people a year to your database. You do that for three years in a row, you have 1200 people in the database, you stay in constant contact with those people primarily through automation and obviously.
Top grade the list and you've got maybe three
@RealErikHatch (20:58.99)
I mean th that's where you have your ten conversations a day is to those people that you're adding. Like it it compounds so easily.
A.J Hazzi (21:03.421)
What's that?
Yeah, no, it's it's that's huge. Then that that database of people that you're adding is your book of business. And that's how you become less reliant upon the inside sales agent or the or the or the lead pawn because you be really are now truly in business for yourself. And I I believe it, I don't know if you do or not. I mean, you mentioned a 50-50 split, but on our team, I very much believe that the origin of the lead needs to be respected in terms of comp. And so ours will probably find its way towards the middle at 50-50 because we have three different ways.
@RealErikHatch (21:32.834)
I I I use that just as a general example of just trying to keep math easy. I I don't I don't publicly talk about what I even pay for commissions. I'm just clear and I'm being like, Hey, let's just draw the line in the sand so we can keep it easy. But certainly the the origin matters a lot. and whoever's hands are are on that as well, they're deserving of compensation.
A.J Hazzi (21:35.379)
Yeah.
A.J Hazzi (21:41.055)
Yeah.
A.J Hazzi (21:53.631)
So I wanna kinda go back to sort of the original timeline. So you you start having this wild success, then you started your own brokerage, right? You started Hatch Realty. That was your own thing. Similar to mine. Yeah. So I went out of Remax in a blaze of flire as well and started my own thing. And so we had similar, very similar starts. And then you did Hatch Realty, had tons of success. I remember you on the cover of magazines and
@RealErikHatch (22:01.398)
I did. I started my own brokerage in in twenty fourteen. Yep.
A.J Hazzi (22:18.117)
you know, f Inc. five thousand and all that. You were really the man about town there with your and I loved your brand. I loved everything you had going on. And then one day you made a pretty big decision. You switched to brokered by real. I'd love to just kinda I think there's a lot of people who are thinking through that s conversation. I think some of the big players have already made that jump. Some people I'd love to kinda maybe you and I can kind of debate why you would even stay as an independent when some when a model like that exists.
@RealErikHatch (22:29.827)
Good.
Mm. Yeah, it w it's been almost five years now.
@RealErikHatch (22:46.296)
Yeah, yeah, I appreciate the ask, AJ.
@RealErikHatch (22:51.662)
I opened up my own brokerage out of necessity. I I never intended on doing so, but it was also in the mid twenty tens, it was like the thing that said, I am him. I'm the guy. Like I I I didn't need all these other resources that were there because we weren't having to spend our weight. Well of all the deals that we did of the eight thousand plus deals that we've done, sixty percent of those have been sphere referral and past client.
It's just been business that we've always earned and business that we've always continued to serve. And then there's there's the Zillows and the Realtor dot coms and the really expensive lead sources and all these other things that are putting pressure on us. And I saw that there are a number of changes coming in the industry. consolidation was gonna be really, really necessary in order for me to win. And I looked around and I was like, I
I went out on my own because it was the greatest chance I had to help my agents win. And it was the greatest chance I had to win. Everything started to get more expensive. everything started to you think about Costco and Sam's Club, those places buy in bulk. And they buy in bulk so they can give the discount off to the consumer. Costco's my favorite store on earth. Like, where where do I want to go? Do I want to go to a Lululemon store? No, I want to go to Costco.
like it's it's the greatest store because you can get so many things at a discount and I just love things at a discount and what I failed to recognize up until twenty twenty is man, I don't have the discount on my world anymore.
In fact, it's more expensive because I'm having to piece these things together. And in order to have my agents with the greatest Swiss Army knife of things, I couldn't get there on my own. I also saw the industry changing. I saw lots of new pressures coming in, technology and speed and increase in EO and all these things that were putting undue pressure on my business. But AJ, do you know what I hated more than anything else? So I hated the responsibility of being a broker.
@RealErikHatch (24:53.777)
I hated the responsibility of I I wanted to have freedom to choose, but I didn't want the burden to always carry the load. And the brokerage game, hear me very clearly, the brokerage game sucks for somebody like me. I am not designed to play that game of having to give my high dollar per hour time to lower.
like low cost, low reward, like just energy sucking, litigation dealing, like, ugh. I don't want any of that. And then I also saw a bunch of people that had half the talent that I have making three times the money because they jumped into models that afforded them the chance. And I also knew that my A players weren't gonna always stay with me. And I wanted to give them a soft landing and I still wanted a piece of the pie for all the work that I put into it. And and
A.J Hazzi (25:43.197)
That makes sense. Yep.
@RealErikHatch (25:43.979)
So all the all the things I wanted I wanted national resources and bro, on top of it all, I was so lonely. If it wasn't for our rate group that connected me with top agents, I would have been completely isolated, I on on an island alone, with nobody to rely on and talk to. And now I got a network of thirty five thousand people that are like at my back and call and I'm at their back and call. It's unbelievable.
A.J Hazzi (26:05.417)
Yeah, I get that. that makes sense. The soft landing thing probably of everything you shared, seems to make the most sense because you can remain connected and you create a the other thing too is that also creates a bit of a easier pathway for that too. So it all it it also probably promotes that to a certain extent a little bit more. Yeah.
@RealErikHatch (26:23.498)
It it wasn't ex it was an accelerator for some people to leave. Yeah. When when I made the move to real, it was August of twenty twenty one. I didn't have anybody leave my team for another twelve months probably, which was really wild. and of all the agents that have left, which has been at the the average person stays on a team about three years. And I was I was really boastful of like, man, I got people that are six, seven, eight years into this. Well the w
We were keeping them around for a long period of time because we had something special. And when they saw another option, a lot of them left. So I've seen 70% of my team turn over now. and all but two people are still with Reel. And so I'm still financially connected to them. I'm still winning. Some of them have attracted pretty large networks that I'm making high dollars on. and I don't have them as a headache on my team anywhere. So that's a positive too.
A.J Hazzi (27:02.611)
Yeah.
A.J Hazzi (27:13.887)
Yeah.
I think for yeah, for anybody listening that's you know trying to figure out like why does someone start a brokerage in this day and age where these cloud models exist, it's a it's a fair question to ask because the actual economics of it don't make sense. It costs way more to do the you know the audited accounting financials and have you know way higher level scrutiny with the trust accounts, all of that. You need conveyance department, you need a managing broker, you need a contracts manager, like you need all this additional infrastructure that is gonna cost you
Anywhere from 3 to 4x what it would cost you to be brokered by a cloud brokerage, whether it be real EXP or any others. So the financial component doesn't make sense. The ass pain, as you say, isn't for me, I've hired or created installation from that. I have the broker's license so that I'm always safe, but there's there's certainly a lot of additional ass pain with being the broker. There's constant, as you say, like threats and people, you know, litigations and problems that you're trying to solve. No question. That doesn't make sense. The reasons why I've remained
a brokerage and why it made sense for me is number one the property management division being able to build that out I from what I understand can't do that within the confines of the of the cloud-based model. Okay. And then well I would love to learn more about that.
@RealErikHatch (28:25.91)
It's incorrect, but continue.
A.J Hazzi (28:31.881)
Then we have the other reason is I have a fairly large vision for what I want to do with the brand. And so I want to create what I believe is a compliance moat that has value, like enterprise value, by having, you know, the hard part, as you say, the part no one wants, the brokering part in multiple jurisdictions, having that built out is a value add to the enterprise of what I eventually want to create a liquidity event from. And so I think there's some value in that. And then ultimately for me, because I run so many programs.
Whether it's our cash and sell program, our instant offer program, our guaranteed sale, the fix and list programs. I don't want anyone to have any say in what I can or can't do from a marketplace. I will be the only people I want to listen to are the ones at the real estate board or BCFSA or you know the the regulators. I don't want a an overlord saying, that's not on brand for us. If I can think it, I want to be able to do it. And so for me it's a expression of freedom on that end. That's really the only reason it makes any sense to stay a broker. Everything else.
points to an obvious change to the cloud model.
@RealErikHatch (29:35.491)
Yeah, your your entrepreneurial spirit is craving
constantly craving change and sometimes when you're a part of a larger system that can put some pressure on it. I'll I'll I'll tell you this is I got a guy who has twenty five hundred doors plus and is adding five hundred plus doors a year right now with property management and he's with real. he runs his property management with another company, right? So y you you right, like you can't get covered with your E no and you can't use the the real branding on it but it's just it's just another another thing and so he capitalizes on revenue share and stock and that sort and and
A.J Hazzi (29:59.487)
He's duly brokered.
@RealErikHatch (30:11.184)
t has taken off all those other responsibilities. But I remember, and this is important for anybody, no matter what you're looking to do, when I was exploring real, I asked questions like, Hey, can I do this? And they said, Well, what does the state of North Dakota say? And I said, Well they say I can do it. They're yeah, then you can do it. And and I think that any good company that you're looking at
should respond not with saying this is the box you need to live in, but like this is the platform you can build upon. And this is this is your chance for you like for a guy like you, AJ, you gotta land at a place that allows the entrepreneurial spirit to thrive and to be creative. And we should we should have a conversation because there there may be something there. But what what has you curious to say like
Is it the responsibility that has you turned off of being indie? Is it the the risk? Is it I know why you're turned onto it, like why you need it as as what you think you need as a necessity, but what has you turned on to leaving that?
A.J Hazzi (31:17.917)
Nothing at the mo moment is pointing towards leaving. I'm I'm kind of more speaking in general for for the audience that, you know, I think I I mean I watched someone that used to work within our brokerage and he's just gone out on his own and started his own brokerage and my first thought was, why? Like, to what end, right? Like and I and I think based on what I know about him, I think it's just for him, just he wants purely artistic freedom to do as he wishes. But
It still doesn't make sense because you say there is probably a lot of lead that they'll give you with real, especially. I don't think that's enough. For me, I have a pretty big vision for what I want, and I feel like a real estate team has a sort of a cap to its enterprise value in terms of the multiple it could sell for and that because there's so much key man risk and that. Whereas a brokerage and a compliance moat, that has potentially a lot more enterprise value and would be sold at a higher multiple.
So for me, I'm looking at it purely from the economics perspective. The vision that I have for it lends itself to staying with being my own brokerage. but no, there's a huge great argument for why 99.9% of people should absolutely be brokered by someone else and take all of that off their plate and focus on what they enjoy doing, which is certainly not going to be brokering. Now, you've also made the shift. I just want to I notice I'm looking in the background, you've got the place sign hanging there. So you've taken hatch and you've
effectively now kind of done two moves. So you've aligned yourself with with Ben and the boys over at Place, which I think is is a great move. I think Ben and those guys are doing amazing things and I think Place is fantastic. And then you've also got Real, which if I were gonna do a cloud brokerage, Real would be the one that I would do for sure. So I mean I think you've made some really strong alignments along the way. I am curious though, how does it all kind of work together now? Like how do and how do you sort of see it? So you do you find that there's at all
c confusion in the marketplace as far as from a brand's perspective, your you know, your I don't know how forward place is in any of the branding or marketing you're doing, but is it challenging for anybody to kind of wrap their head around what the brand is when they're dealing with these three sort of entities at the same time?
@RealErikHatch (33:27.596)
Because we were established as Hatch Realty and I mean we grew to a a nine and a half percent market share in that brand, right? Like that's that that that's a that's a powerhouse where we were a common name in our community. When we joined Reel almost five years ago, we became Hatch Broker by Real. People just knew us still as Hatch or Hatch Realty. in fact our domain still is hatchrealty.com.
A.J Hazzi (33:36.853)
Yeah.
@RealErikHatch (33:52.403)
we joined place just over three years ago. So really we're hatch broker by real power by place. We're still just kinda hatch realty. or we're still peop people just say, I work at hatch.
Like it it's it's I'm fortunate to have a really great easy last name that's digestible and palpable for people. And so we've we've built upon that. I'll I'll tell you this, because you didn't ask the question, but you maybe alluded to it a little bit. And I appreciate the the applause for Place and for Real because both have been transformational for me. I first met Ben Kinney, who's the CEO and co-founder of Place. it was 2012 at a Kellerwall.
Conference and I of course knew who he was. He was on every stage and he was kind of the the poster boy for real estate teams. And I befriended him and I started asking a bunch of questions. And I'm like, I'm just two years behind this guy. That's it. Just two years behind this guy. If I just keep doing what Ben does, I'm gonna keep building. And I look back and I'm like, man, I've built this really cool coaching company and I've had a really successful real estate team. I'm like, I'm the guy. And then
I sit next to Ben, I'm like, Ben's grown a multi billion with a B, multi billion dollar organization. And he's partnered with Goldman Sachs and he's buying all these things and he's doing all these things. It's like, man, I've I felt really small in that moment. And it's never to complain the comparison game, but I have to ask myself, I'm like, why did I not get to where Ben got? And it was because of environment. When I had my own team and my own brokerage, AJ, I was the guy.
I was the guy. I had everybody that looked up to me and nobody that looked out for me. And now I'm at a place where at real I'm not the biggest team. And at place, I'm not the biggest fish. And I got all these people that are looking out for me and looking ahead with me. And like
@RealErikHatch (35:55.415)
If you they they say if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. But I actually think you can go fast and far when you have kindred spirits. I stole that from Sharon Srivatsa, but it's it's a hundred percent the truth is if you have kindred spirits, like minded people, partnerships are the most beautiful, powerful thing. And I had to set my ego aside, AJ, because building my own brokerage was about my ego.
A.J Hazzi (36:17.429)
Mm-hmm.
@RealErikHatch (36:17.996)
It wasn't about my my best move in hindsight. It was about my ego. And my ego's at a place now where I recognize like I'd rather go further and farther.
A.J Hazzi (36:28.275)
It's it's so true that, you know, the the proximity to people. I mean, I even think back to when I was boxing. When I first started and I came to the boxing gym, there was all these guys, there was a world champion in there, there was a bunch of provincial champions and these guys and these were who I was sparring with and I had these guys with an up I had an up review to them and they'd beat the shit out of me in the gym and I as a consequence got pretty good pretty fast. And then eventually they all kind of took on jobs and left town and and and
it got to the point where I became coach. I was not only was I competing, but I was sort of the top of the food chain in the boxing club at the time and I was also coaching and I was kind of reaching down and bringing a hand up and I liked from an ego perspective being the top guy.
at the gym was great and and coaching people was always fun, except for what happened to me. I didn't get any better. I plateaued as a as a boxer and inevitably after, you know, long enough at that, I took my first loss and then from there sort of fell out of love with competitive boxing because I plateaued. Had I been around, had I taken the next step and been around people at an order of magnitude beyond where I was at that point, I would have continued to progress. And I think that's a kind of really
good little microcosm for what you were sharing. I agree. I mean watching what Ben has done has was a huge inspiration for me going down to Bellingham and actually touring the facility and seeing what he's done. When he raised, you know, against that one billion dollar valuation, I thought, well, whoa, first of all, he's the first of you know, first of our group to ever get into that billion dollar conversation. And then
In my mind though, I thought, well, you know, it was a pretty frothy time in prop tech, and you know, I'm pretty sure valuations now would be different. Lo and behold, I come to find out about a year ago that he's in multiple B territory now, so it's continued and he's sustained the trajectory.
@RealErikHatch (38:10.594)
When they they think they think in twenty twenty eight they're gonna go IPO and he's expecting between six and ten billion dollars as the valuation.
A.J Hazzi (38:19.637)
I mean that's that's amazing. And and I'll tell ya that's a big inspiration to me in terms of like how I'm trying to position my next five to ten years. I wanna get into something exciting to that degree. And so you know, I look at what Ben's done over the years as a you know, as a huge indicator as to what's possible in this business. And, you know, not everybody wants to, you know, to kind of put themselves take that much risk and, you know, put themselves in the limelight like that, but I think for the
And I understand you, sir, are working on something. You kind of alluded to it. You got can you tease us a bit? I know you're working on something great. I bet it's pretty interesting knowing you.
@RealErikHatch (38:56.802)
Well, I go back to what Sharon says when he says if you don't have what you want, you either suck at what you do or nobody knows that you exist. And I don't think I suck at what I do. I like
I can talk about the real estate team leader side of things and after being on this road for twenty years I've figured out some stuff. But the real perspective I've gotten is moving as a coach and I've spent a decade now coaching people all across the industry and helping them to figure out and like I have it pretty dialed in.
And I've been enamored with Dave Ramsey lately, not because of the philosophies that he adheres to, but the way in which he gets there. And what Dave Ramsey does is he coaches in public. His entire show is revolving around him coaching in public. People call in with their problems, with their issues, with their things, and he fixes it in real time. And it obviously turns into all these different types of
A.J Hazzi (39:42.367)
Mm-hmm.
@RealErikHatch (39:56.791)
consumable pieces that you and I have watched on repeat through reels and TikToks and YouTube shorts and everything else. And our industry AJ is void of anybody doing that.
A.J Hazzi (40:10.293)
There's opportunity there for sure. I mean you're the perfect guy to do it, I think.
@RealErikHatch (40:11.702)
Yeah, a I Well thank you. I I appreciate that. You know, Dave Ramsey made three hundred million dollars last year. And I'm not Dave Ramsey, but I am Eric Hatch. And I'm willing to bet there's gonna be some people that'll get pretty hyped about being able to get some coaching for free and some insights and eventually here's what happens. Somebody watches or consumes enough of my content or enough of my stuff. If they're local, they'll maybe work with us to buy or sell.
A.J Hazzi (40:20.767)
No, no,
@RealErikHatch (40:41.482)
if they are looking for a brokerage, they may partner with me at real. If they're looking for a place for teams to land, they may they may land at place. If they're looking to hire a coach, they know where to find me. If they're looking for somebody to invest with, well, they feel trusted with me. Like all I see are opportunities on the other side of me delivering value in a crazy straight away with never a sales pitch, but always an opportunity.
A.J Hazzi (41:03.263)
Love it. Yeah, that that's really kind of the way of the future anyway. I mean, when you and I came through the era of mastering ads and figuring out how to do all that, but the reality is it's it's a content and visibility and and audience game now. And I think what you're on to there, the idea has a ton of legs. Like there's gonna be people who want to tune in just to hear how you're gonna you know who's doing it actually to a certain extent now, but he's also getting paid is hormozy, right? If you watch how he's doing it.
@RealErikHatch (41:28.014)
Yep. I mean hor hormones is the other one. Yep.
A.J Hazzi (41:30.387)
Yeah, he's doing a good job of that because he posts just him in action and he's basically smart the way he's built out his workflow because he's obviously doing these workshops. He's got people paying thousands of dollars to be there, and then he pops down from the clouds, comes in there for a couple of hours, and spot coaches some people, and then that's his content. But people get to watch him do that and dissecting their HVAC business or whatever it might be. And I get so much value from watching that, and I will never miss an episode of of his podcast because of that, because I just think it's phenomenal value. And so if you're thinking of anything that
even approximates that that I I think that's that's the way of the future. You're right on right on with that.
@RealErikHatch (42:06.198)
Thank you. I I I feel like I'm in the right direction. I'm taking two months off. I'm taking a sabbatical and spending some time recharging and refocusing my life and my team will be working on that in the background and it should in the fall of twenty twenty six come out with a fury.
A.J Hazzi (42:23.465)
And I think sabbaticals like that are so important. I mean, if you show me somebody that never slows down, I'll show you someone who never goes fast. So, I mean, you gotta you gotta t stop and smell the roses. You gotta take time with the family and your kids are at an age where you know this you wanna take advantage of this little window of time in your life, right? It's it's so important. I w I wanna kinda just touch on one thing though, because I noticed a little bit of a shift in
@RealErikHatch (42:29.464)
Mm. That's good.
A.J Hazzi (42:47.219)
The model with you from with respect to inside sales agents. I mean, you were one of the OGs on the ISA game back in the day. You were coaching on it. You had Robbie, you had him all dialed in. from what I understand, one of the most productive ISA departments. You know, in my experience, a great ISA department is kind of a moat around your team or your brokerage. If you could get that going, I really think that that creates a lot of stickiness and creates a really nice value exchange. I think that's a really great way of you know, of getting people into production.
quickly my belief is that inside sales agents are gonna follow up better and are gonna convert better than even a talent agents who are busy and fracturing their time doing different things. But with all that said, you know, and you being one of the pioneers of it, I've noticed that you've kind of gone away from it. Why what was the the impetus of that? What was the decision?
@RealErikHatch (43:36.259)
Gone from being the guy that says that the ISA way is the only way to the ISA way is a dying if not dead way. And it's a major pivot, AJ. I've had I've had people come out of the woodwork as I've publicly talked about this, saying, Well, here's my ISA numbers and here's why we're crushing. I'm like, Yeah, you are crushing, but you're about to have so many unnecessary expenses and you won't be able to keep up as much. So let me give a couple of examples.
I think that an ISA has three primary jobs. Number one is to respond with speed to lead, right? As fast as possible for them when the with the when the person raises their hand to respond.
Number two is to engage. That means ask all the right questions, make all the right notes, set the right plans and campaigns up for automation to deliver consistently until that person is ready to turn themselves into an appointment. And the third is to monitor and act, right? So
A.J Hazzi (44:40.159)
Mm-hmm.
@RealErikHatch (44:41.218)
Monitoring acting means that when they see the person has heightened interest, then it it's getting engaged and and connected with them to set the appointment for an agent. That's what an ISA's job is.
There's no reason on God's green earth that automation can't do all three of those things, that AI can't come in and and to respond with speed to lead, to engage, and they're gonna ask better questions and take better notes, and they're gonna equip it in such a way in which it's an unparalleled thing. our our boy Ryan Young with with fellow, he's launched Felix and Felix is their AI. His real estate team has set forty-five additional listing appointments in the last sixty days with this.
With what they thought were dead leads that nobody was engaging with. Like this thing doesn't stop. And I know that systems have been kind of built in the process in the past, but I think that an ISA, although good and heartfelt, can't compete with the regularity and consistency of AI. I think that a person can have the heart connection, which is so hard to beat, but
We've changed the game in the last 10 years. The game used to be all heart and eventual appointment. But the consumer has shown us that they want the appointment and then the heart. They want the speed before they want the connection. It used to be, and this is where we were kings of kings, is that we said you need to connect at the heart first and learn all about the person before you ever set the appointment.
But consumer behavior has changed because immediacy is the demand now and the person can't provide the immediacy like the AI can. So I believe, AJ, that the ISA model is dying if not dead today.
A.J Hazzi (46:28.959)
Yeah, I I think that th a lot of what you said I would agree with. where I'll challenge you is that I think that AI enabled ISAs are the probably what I believe are the future. I think that I can take I think I can take my four licensed ISAs
@RealErikHatch (46:38.412)
Yeah. there there's still there still is a who tied to it, for sure.
A.J Hazzi (46:45.905)
and have them leveraged by AI and automation to have them do three to four X what they would do. And then they will make three to four X of the money and we as a company will make three to four X the total revenue. It will be, I think, the perfect marriage, but I don't think you're gonna be able to go purely AI first within I ISA department in real estate because I believe it's still very much a relational game. It's still very much
@RealErikHatch (47:10.37)
Yep, there's there's still a who attached to it. Yeah, there there still has to be an ISA manager. There has to be a leads person. Agreed. Yep.
A.J Hazzi (47:15.655)
I'm not talking about offshore ISAs. I think local licensed is the way because they're a real estate agent and they get to stay connected to the to the conversation. I think the ISA role is a is a great role because especially if they're local to the area, they have a network of people. They can be licensed and they can monetize that network and have an agent on the team basically run that. But the way they explain that to their network is, you know, I'm in if say the home is being sold. I'm in here answering inquiries in real time on your home, their boots on the ground showing the price.
property, we make a great team. That's the value proposition to someone who might be selling their home that they know. On the buy side, I'm talking to home sellers every single day, finding off market opportunities. My partner Jill, she's gonna be the boots on the ground and show you property. So they can monetize their network that way. That's one leg of the stool. They've got all of this inbound that's coming in through realtor.ca, all that stuff, which I believe inbound should still go through the ISA because they have the highest likelihood of conversion. And then they have the IS the AI doing outbound lead
speed scrubbing and monitoring is all all the things and speed to lead everything you said and then essentially passing them the hand raisers and they're still first point of contact. That's how I see the future. Whether I'm right or wrong will remain to be seen but I think there's a I think there's a bright future for IC.
@RealErikHatch (48:29.762)
Yeah, well what what we both agree on is that AI is going to enhance and completely change the way in which we interact with most of our have not met.
A.J Hazzi (48:41.662)
I would agree.
@RealErikHatch (48:42.606)
And it's just a matter of figuring out what that recipe is and where the human involvement is and how much savings we can have. You know you know what's true, AJ, is I think that the size of our database for so many years, probably the last five, became almost irrelevant because we would just go after the new stuff.
A.J Hazzi (49:01.077)
Yeah.
@RealErikHatch (49:04.136)
And and and COVID has certainly accelerated it because we only had to like somebody would call us and was like, Well, here's a ten thousand dollar commission and all I did was answer the phone. and now those of us that have databases of fifty thousand, a hundred thousand people, like we are in charge again. And it like I we're like Ryan's example is is the greatest, right? Forty five listing appointments in sixty days and his database is like thirty or forty thousand people.
A.J Hazzi (49:28.979)
Yeah, I love that. I'm gonna have Ryan on the show. We're gonna deep deeply unpack Felix 'cause when I was in Palm Palm Beach a couple of months ago, he was sharing some of that stuff and some of the early numbers were amazing on that. So I know that's the future for sure.
@RealErikHatch (49:42.86)
Yep, it's it's the it's the thing and and here's here's the wild thing. Here's my here's my little sales pitch. Real has that built into their system too and every agent gets it. Yeah. Pretty wild.
A.J Hazzi (49:53.021)
That's fantastic. where do you see I want to kind of wrap it up with a kind of a little bit of a future cast here? In terms of the market, AI obviously disrupting, probably some consolidation that's already ha starting to happen, that trend continues. What do you think the real estate landscape looks like five years from now?
@RealErikHatch (50:11.622)
it is I mean we we see that real is acquiring Remax. We see that there's so many shifts that are there. There's gonna be three or four major companies in North America, and then a whole lot of small mom and pops. I think that we're going to see that agents are gonna have to find different ways to monetize outside of just the transaction as a commission. They're gonna have to figure out how to get dollars with mortgage and title and and other things placed.
A.J Hazzi (50:39.599)
And why do you s why do you say that? Do you see commission compression? 'Cause I mean, certainly that hasn't been the case. In fact, the bigger teams have seen commission expansion over the last few years. Do you see that with AI there's gonna be massive compressions on commissions, or what are you what are you seeing? Why do we need the ancillary business to to the average?
@RealErikHatch (50:54.69)
Yeah, the the
The reason why commissions expanded, at least in the United States, was because they they went ahead and changed the rules and said, Well, hey, you gotta disclose these commissions and the wise ones like, you mean we can actually charge more? Like that's that's a great win. but the the value of a real estate agent is what they know and how they operate and what we know is gonna be carried by so much of the AI. and I think that how we operate is dependent on the teams that we're support that are supporting us and our heartfelt communication.
But I I think that so much of our life starts to scale. I think the average agent is probably selling two or three times as many houses as they are right now. as the transaction count goes up, the the the game the game is changing and and I would probably say this, I wish I would have led with this answer. It's like, bro, I don't know what it's gonna be like in five years. I just need to put myself in the most permeable spot in order to go wherever the puck is being passed. Yeah, no doubt. 'Ca 'cause 'cause I don't know.
A.J Hazzi (51:51.573)
Skate where the puck is going for sure. I agree.
@RealErikHatch (51:55.956)
you and I can can pontificate all we want and we can try to guess, but ultimately I don't know how to spell pontificate, so I so I shouldn't use that word, you know?
A.J Hazzi (52:03.125)
So you agree can more more what do we call it consolidation, more big companies swallowing up other big companies and less players. You think market share among agents consolidates too? Do you think that the team rid do you believe the teamerage model is the model of the future still or do you think there's a different model that that emerges?
@RealErikHatch (52:28.45)
think teams are kind of the way. I I really do. If if you're a new agent in your first twenty four months, if you try to make it on your own against AJ or Eric, we're gonna crush you. if if you join a team you get that kind of growth by alignment and
A.J Hazzi (52:31.22)
Yep.
@RealErikHatch (52:47.596)
you can start off a really great career like that and then I think teams are are evolving and they're gonna be a spot not just for the new agents but for the people that are really seasoned 'cause everything is gonna be d not everything is a growth growth generalization, but so many things are going to be done for those agents behind the scenes and their job is to be that point of contact and and to deliver a great experience for that client.
A.J Hazzi (53:07.881)
I agree with you on that. And I I just want to caution, like I don't believe teams to be a stepping stone. I really think that when done yeah, I think when done well, and that's one thing that we've done really well with Vantage West, is we've created this thing called leverage track. And so as your team or sorry, excuse me, as your career progresses, more and more brokerage level or team level services are essentially revealed to you. So when you're doing two deals a month, you get administrative support. At four deals a month, you get license support. At six deals a month, we start building a complete team around you.
@RealErikHatch (53:13.806)
That's what they used to be labeled.
A.J Hazzi (53:37.847)
Like there's this constant unlock and you really never run out of runway. And based on the way we've set up our comp structure, it doesn't make sense. There would be no greener grass, there'd be no way to go and take more to the bottom line. And then of course you've got the environment, the people who want to see you win, the ability to take vacations, all these things. I really believe that the team model that makes sense is where you're not, you know, it's not the main agent and you're just their buyer's agent. I think that model's dead. I think it these need people need to be taking listings, buyers, they need to be able to do their
Their own branding, create their own authority, build their own little brand, little entrepreneurial deal within your team, and so that your vision has to be big enough to obviously encapsulate theirs, but they just don't run out of runway. You constantly add more, leverage them more and more leverage as they go, and so that their caseload can increase, but their workload can decrease. Because in my belief, that's all anybody really wants. They want an unlimited ceiling to what they can make, and they want to have a business that doesn't cannibalize their personal life. They still want to be able to get their evenings and weekends back. But hiring a
bunch of people is you have to go through a five years of that making zero sense where you're working more and so you're gonna get the exact opposite of what you want if you step out on your own and try to build a team. You and I have experienced that. So if there's a model where a team gets built around you but the hiring, the management, the training, the onboarding, all that stuff is done by the brokerage and these people are getting plugged in to leverage you, to give you back evenings and weekends, sign me up. Like I would take that deal all day long if such a thing existed when I was coming up.
@RealErikHatch (55:06.382)
Teams teams have evolved quite a bit from the early spot of this is where the new person goes to now this is where the smart people stay. i b so long as they're not needing to chase the ego stroke of having their own name on the on the sign.
A.J Hazzi (55:25.065)
And I even think that that
@RealErikHatch (55:25.068)
And I'm not I'm not talking about the writer. I'm talking I'm talking about like the like you and I had our own ego. We opened up our own thing, sometimes out of necessity, but there there's something to that, those high Ds of the world bringing this full circle, those high Ds of the world feeling like they need to be the guy or the gal, when ultimately, man, I've gotten so much farther when I've chosen to partner and I've chosen to just like I'm gonna be this guy and live exceptionally well.
A.J Hazzi (55:49.449)
Partnerships make the world go around. I've gotten where I've gotten in this life due to partnerships, without a doubt. I agree. Eric, brother, we went over time. I thought that was a killer. Very productive conversation though. I enjoyed hanging with you and jamming with you, buddy. I love your perspective. I think we agree on most things. But I look forward to seeing the what you got coming up next. I really I think that you're you're coaching in public, that's sort of I'm imagining sort of a video radio show type of a format with what you're doing.
Or some sort of a broadcast format. I think it'll be great. I'm excited to see what you do. So thanks for spending some time with us, man. Really really enjoy you and yeah, check out what Eric's got going on. Follow him at at real Eric Hatch is your IG handle. Is there anywhere else you want people to follow you?
@RealErikHatch (56:30.926)
Okay. Easiest place to find me.
A.J Hazzi (56:34.037)
Beautiful buddy. Thanks so much. We'll let you get back to her.
Thanks, buddy.