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Joe Oz and Friends – Laid-Back, Fun & 100% Real Talk for Business Owners Who Started Small
Every big business starts as a small idea. Joe Oz and Friends is a podcast for the hustlers, risk-takers, and underdogs who built something from the ground up. Join Joe Oz as he sits down with entrepreneurs, real estate pros, and business owners who started small and scaled big—sharing their crazy stories, biggest failures, and the lessons that got them to the top.
Expect real talk, plenty of laughs, and zero corporate vibes. This is business unfiltered, unscripted, and not too serious—because success is messy, and that’s what makes it great.
No fluff. No gurus. Just real conversations with real people who built it from scratch.
Joe Oz (00:03)
Jose, what's up dude, how are you?
Jose Smanao (00:04)
I'm doing great man, how are you bro?
Joe Oz (00:07)
First of all, I love your energy, I know, by the way, I'm gonna ask you to introduce yourself, whoever's watching or listening. Jose has just been invited to the Zillow Agent Advisory Board, and that's how we met. we have our first, we meet in person twice a year. Once is usually at Unlock, wherever that is, and then our next one, they send us somewhere throughout the year.
And our next one's actually in your California guys in Newport Beach. So it's not too far away from where you're at. And so I reached out and wanted to get to know you a little bit better before we hang out for a few days and make massive decisions on the consumer Zillow and the real estate industry or help Zillow make some, some decisions. But yeah, can you introduce yourself, tell everyone who you are?
Jose Smanao (00:59)
Sure, yeah. Again, thank you so much, Joe. I like everyone whose name starts with a J. So you get a little bit an advantage there. My partner, his name is Jeffrey McGonigal. So that's one of the reasons. I've been in the industry for over 20 years. My first 10 years of the industry, I was on the lending side. I did pretty well on that end. And then in 2013 was my first contract with Zillow.
Joe Oz (01:05)
Hahaha
Uh-huh.
Jose Smanao (01:28)
It was in August of 2013. I was buying impressions before they were leads, before they were even consumers, right? And so I've been, you know, doing online lead generation for about 11 years now from, you know, Google PPC to YouTube, to Instagram, Facebook, you know, you name it. And there's a lot of, you know, learning there to happen. And then so, you know, I've been with Berkshire Hathaway.
Joe Oz (01:33)
Wow.
Jose Smanao (01:57)
Recently, know six years ago we were at rematch we were there for two years hit top ten then came to exp Hit top five in one year and then came to real and they hit top five at real in one year So I like to say there's something in the sauce And so we're super proud of our accomplishments, you know We do it as a team and and we've been able to close over 2,500 transactions in the last four years Which is a testament to our team and our effort and everything that we put in place
Joe Oz (02:10)
Mark.
Dude, that's wild, man. If you could, thanks for sharing that. what's your job title, your role on the team?
Jose Smanao (02:34)
You know, I guess because I don't do anything anymore, it's founder. So whatever the hell that means. And then they're just like, hey, kick the old man to the curb. Nah, I'm just kidding. It's more of like, you know, just working on different projects. I like to, like, I have a pretty good blend of like being in the industry long enough, but being young enough to understand tech, right? And I've been the tech space enough to have jumped all the hurdles right from.
Joe Oz (02:54)
Yeah, yeah.
Jose Smanao (03:00)
I tell people, I dude, I was searching for properties on magazines and a Thomas guide. And I remember when we introduced kind of the internet and the MLS and having clients come to the office and look at our screen so they could see where the properties were and then coming, evolving from that to utilizing Zillow and different spaces like that to social media and now implementing AI.
into my day to day basis. I typically work with nine AIs on a day to day basis. And I tell that to people and people are like, what the hell? How much AI do you have? And I'm like, dude, I use AI for everything.
Joe Oz (03:39)
Wow, that's awesome, man. What I don't believe you that you don't do anything, right? So sounds like you're doing a lot. What when we first hopped on this call, I was like, Hey, what's up, man? And you started to talk about like industry changes. And I think, you know, I kind of was like, stop, let me hit record, right? Because I think you're about to talk, you know, you're an industry leader, you're about to talk about some really juicy stuff. So so one of my questions I always ask is like, what are some like, all right, there's a lot of craziness going on in the industry right now. And really, it's
the industry's been crazy kind of since COVID. feel like like there's just been every 90 days, it's just something that we have to figure out or, or whatever, you know, like we got to pivot. Maybe that's the world. But like, yeah, what are what's going on in the industry right now that has your attention?
Jose Smanao (04:25)
To me it's like the whole like Zillow right now. I mean for me it was it's a few things right? It's the number one thing is These companies merging so like Redfin and rocket mortgage merging was a big thing You know, I think there was You know conversations of like, you know Just like other companies kind of just putting putting themselves together because one of the things I tell people is like You guys are not competing against other agents
You know, I tell the agents this all the time. You're competing against corporations. You know, the only reason why I'm at this appointment is because they'll give me the deal. So you, you as an agent who doesn't have that partnership, you're not competing against me. Like I just got to show up at this appointment. You're competing against online companies, right? So do you have a better service than they do? Are you able to lead generate better than they do? Are you able to do all of these things at a way higher level than you've ever done them before? And if the answer is no, then you probably need to partner up with a team that does.
or that understand some of these dynamics because it's going to get a little difficult, right? You're just not going to be able to outperform a multimillion dollar company in regards to marketing efforts, staying in front of the clients, because that's usually what it is, right? It's all about timing. It's just about staying in front of the client long enough to when they decide to make a decision, you're the person that they go to, right? Obviously, there's how you take care of them, how you make them feel.
All of those things also matter, but being at the right place at the right time is one of the key components to being successful in real estate. And so I'm looking at that, right? You know, there was talks about Compass and there's talks about just like all these other companies, right? That are thinking about, you know, Redfin. I think it was Keller was the one, one of the started with, you know, with these things, right? And then, so I'm just seeing how they're essentially looking at how do I become another Zillow, right?
Joe Oz (06:05)
Thank you.
you
Jose Smanao (06:20)
and then get in the marketplace on that end, right? And so I'm looking at that and recently with the news of like, you what's fair for the consumer is the next thing, which is talking about like, should all of these things be available to everyone, right? And, you know, obviously my immediate answer and my selfish answer is no, right? We should have private networks where I only have access to them, but...
Joe Oz (06:43)
you
Jose Smanao (06:49)
You know, when I put on my work hard, be kind hat, right, which is something that we do at real, it's, okay, well, what's best for the seller at all times, right? So I think almost 100 % of the time, what's best for the seller is maximum exposure for the home, right? That's what's gonna get them top dollars, right? We can control still the amount of foot traffic that the seller is getting by, you know, adding maybe time slots or.
or maybe over qualifying the client before they come in. Maybe you can add a few obstacles so they don't get that brunt of foot traffic, which is what some people don't want. at the end of the day, feel like making it easier for consumers to locate properties and having higher viewership for sellers ultimately trumps everything else.
Joe Oz (07:36)
you
Well, that's a lot. You said a lot there, man. Yeah, the clear cooperation thing is a little tricky. think, listen, if you've got one seller who's like a hoarder person and kind of embarrassed, we've had them, right? Like I've done two or three of these my career. You know, maybe we, if they absolutely want that as an office exclusive, then you could do it. But I think what Compass is trying to do is their, that's their business model. Like they want to hold it privately at Compass for 30, 60, 90 days. And if it doesn't sell, if they don't sell it on their own,
they want to offer it out to everybody else, I don't know. I don't know if that's the best business. No, I don't think that's the best business model. I can make a decision on that, right? Like you said, it's what's best for the seller, right?
Jose Smanao (08:20)
Yeah, to me it's all about what's best for the consumer at the end of the day and if you think consumer first, I mean who doesn't want to get the most for their home? Like, what you're get them a better deal off market really? Like you're telling me that marketing doesn't work? You know marketing is all about eyeballs, right? How many people can I get to see this home and then from there, how many of them can I get them to submit an offer and then from there and I mean that's my entire listing strategy.
You know, one of the things I tell people is like, every listing has a range and I tend to be on the bottom of the range when I put the property on the market with a great advertising price. And then from there we drive the price, you know, to whatever is going to land, you know, consumers are willing to pay for that home. So usually it's way above the number that the seller's requesting.
Joe Oz (09:12)
Absolutely, man. Let me ask you this. You said something before that I really liked about, you said a lot, man. I love your energy. No, no, no, it's good, man. think, no, I loved how you talked about competing with, what did you say you said? We're not competing with each other. We're competing with corporations, right? We're competing with like tech platforms, really, right? And like you said, Zillow's a $23 billion company. do we want to go? And one thing that someone said to me recently was,
Jose Smanao (09:21)
Sorry man.
Joe Oz (09:42)
You don't people don't Google. They don't Google world's best realtor and they Google like houses for sale in my town, right? And then who's capturing that traffic? So speaking of like a like, what advice would you give to a new way? Okay, either a new agent brand new to the business, right? Like wants to get into business fast, or maybe an agent that's like been in the business for a little bit. And they're actually like, maybe they're not pivoting, right? Maybe their business is kind of like going down a little bit or on the decline.
What advice would you give to those two people, either together or separately?
Jose Smanao (10:16)
So as far as what I would give a new agent as far as advice goes, it's number one, create a schedule. What's your schedule? This business is going from a non-professional business into a really professional business. And so if you don't understand that real estate is more than 40 hours a week, you're behind the eight ball already. This is not a part-time thing anymore. It used to be. And if you're going to perform at a high level, you've got to earn that part-time job.
It's not going to be given to you. At least from what I've learned in this industry in 20 years, it's the people who get to work sometimes at the office is the guy that already put in 10 to 20 years in the business. It's not like the guy that just came in. He's having to come in here early. So I always start off with any new agent, let's work on your schedule. How many hours are you going to commit to yourself? You're the first hire, congratulations to your own business. From there,
is going to be working on their skill set and typically what we tell them to do is to do a lot of open houses. So the open house play and calling leads from our pawn are the biggest thing. So if you don't have leads or you're not on a team that has leads, go to open houses. That's going to be the key thing that's really going to be able to help you in such a part. As far as a seasoned agent goes, it depends on where they're at. If they're little bit stuck in their business,
Joe Oz (11:29)
Thank
you
Jose Smanao (11:44)
I would tell them, back to basics and I would tell them, yeah, host open houses. You got to get momentum. You know, this is, we believe that this is a sport and we call each other real estate sales athletes. And so what we mean by that, it's like, you got to stay in the game to stay relevant. If you're not shooting shots, if you're not going to listing presentations, buyer presentations, if you're not in escrow, we need to get that momentum back started again and kickstart again. then, you know, you're, you're, you're probably like your curve of getting productive again. It's going to be a lot.
Joe Oz (11:47)
Yeah, god, yeah, yeah.
Jose Smanao (12:13)
more of a like a check rather than this like gradual thing that happens for newer agents. But you just have to commit and be coachable. And real estate hasn't changed much. It's just there's technology added to it. Right. So what I mean by this is, you know, Zillow calls are sort of like what I used to experience with what we used to have what's called floor time. So I don't know if you remember that, but floor time was
We used to do radio ads and TV ads and we would have people call in at a certain time. And so you had to be by the phone and then you had to be in person at the office. Zillow is kind of that, but now we have mobile phones, so call time is all the time. Or floor time is all the time. So it's just, I do door knocking, but I do digital door knocking. I don't do the traditional door knocking that you're doing. I hand out flyers, but they're digital flyers.
Joe Oz (12:56)
Thanks
Jose Smanao (13:11)
They're not regular flyers that you would, you know, that's kind of what we do.
Joe Oz (13:15)
What
is digital door knocking? I love that term.
Jose Smanao (13:19)
So digital door knocking is doing value preservation, like value, you know, ads. So, hey, get a CMA, get a cash off for your home. Hey, does anybody in your neighborhood interested in selling? Do you need to upgrade your home? So like all the things that you would say at door knocking, but digitizing that and creating Facebook ads, Instagram ads, YouTube ads, that basically are door knocking on people's screens.
then people are becoming hand raisers. like on a daily basis, I'll get 30 people that open their digital door and say, hey, I want to know more about the value of my home. And I'm like, you will never do that door knocking. I'm like, at best you could get two people.
Joe Oz (13:56)
Right.
Yeah, wow,
that's awesome. I love that term. I'm getting a lot out of this, man. Selfishly, I know you said you started a podcast too. By doing it, I learned so much by doing this, right? Selfishly. my God, that's so funny. Dude, what is something that you have been number one at in your life?
Jose Smanao (14:14)
Yeah, yeah.
Well, I've always been like usually the number one agent at any office I've ever been at and usually pretty quickly and it was just you know a lot of a lot of hard so much so that I would look for other offices and be like, okay, they they produced more maybe I should go over there like, you know, and then eventually I was like try go luxury but you know, my my my my destiny kind of led me into having a Zillow account and running teams and I mean, that's just kind of where I'm at.
You know, like wasn't, it was kind of by choice. But I guess the number one thing I've been good at is giving. Number one, I started giving away all of my transactions around 2017, 2016 to my teammates and I was letting them take the credit for the deal, which was very different at that time because all the team leader claiming the leads under their name. And to me, it was more about making my teammates stronger.
Joe Oz (14:53)
Yeah.
Right.
Yes.
Jose Smanao (15:19)
Like I had the accolades already, I already had sold a lot of homes. So that wasn't something that was enticing for me. wasn't being the number one agent wasn't necessarily the thing that was like I was super gung-ho about. I was just trying to figure out how could I affect more lives. I know it sounds cheesy, but honestly, helping other agents really kind of was what really kind of helped me go in this direction. It really helped me, you know, just grow our team really fast because when we started our team at eXp four years ago, I had zero agents.
And that was four years ago. And in four years, we recruited over a thousand agents. Currently we're sitting on our network of around 500 and something people. And we closed 2,500 transactions. I don't think there's too many teams that have been able to do that sort of numbers in such a short period amount of time. Then obviously I've had teams, I've had practice, I had all of that prior. I also had a Zillow Flex account, but growing a team from zero to that, I think it just talks about the volume. Like talks about like, know, Ruben.
Joe Oz (16:11)
Peace.
Jose Smanao (16:19)
Ozzy, Diego, are all of our people. Manse, Maria, these are all of our internal people that manage our entire team. Arturo and then our main man, Jeff, he leads the pack and learning to follow is also really important.
Joe Oz (16:36)
Wow. That's great, man. So what was, how many agents are on the team?
Jose Smanao (16:42)
There's currently 150 agents on the team. In the network, there's like 500 and something.
Joe Oz (16:49)
Network, that like your downline?
Jose Smanao (16:52)
Correct. Yeah. We call it network downline. It's, you know, I like to network with people, not put them in my downline.
Joe Oz (16:56)
knives.
That's so funny. You call it network. Okay,
cool. Well, some people aren't at like a cloud-based brokerage. They might not understand the terminology. That's great, man. So 150 agents on the team. What was the team's volume like last year? Or what are you on track to do this year? What does that look like? The units and volume, that's...
Jose Smanao (17:19)
Last year, think we hit like 480 million, something like that. This year, we're trying to crush that. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, I mean, honestly, we're really excited about everything that's to come. We've been focused on generating our own leads. That's our main focus, figuring out different ways to do that. We've been focused on getting agents in front of as many clients as possible.
Joe Oz (17:26)
Heck yeah. Congratulations. That's exciting, man.
Yes.
Jose Smanao (17:47)
I think that's key. I think a lot of brokers out there blame the agents for not doing enough. And I've never met a leader who blames others. And then so for me, if you're a leader, if you're the leader of your brokerage, and I'm saying this, I'm not trying to cast a stone. I've been a part of that too, but I've never heard Tom Brady say, my God, he dropped the ball. It was always like, I could have placed it in a better slot.
Joe Oz (18:14)
Yeah!
Jose Smanao (18:15)
So to me, it's like, the leads are not good enough, it's like, how do we get better leads? If the agents are not producing enough, how do you coach them better? If all of these things, and then so when our team said, hey Jose, like, you know, we're kind of getting tired of making all these calls, man. We don't have enough time. And it was a ever kind of going fight that we're having with, you know, this, becomes this adversarial thing, like of like, you're not making enough dials, right? And then I was like, well, do I want them making dials or don't want them closing deals?
I want them closing deals, so why don't we just hire people to make dials and so we hit about a million dials on Follow-Up Boss a year at this particular point, which is a pretty impressive deal. Yeah.
Joe Oz (18:52)
Wow.
Wow. And who makes those calls?
Jose Smanao (18:57)
It's a combination of virtual assistants, agents, and loan officers. Everyone can get it. I like to say it. Yeah.
Joe Oz (18:58)
The agent.
Wow. That's awesome.
That's a great man. Wow. That's wild. Well, geez Louise, man. It sounds like you have a really great operation. You're growing. You have tons of opportunity. How do you find your rate? Like, okay, I'm sure you have standards and values. You don't just take everybody. Can you talk to me about like how you find the agents or how agents find you and what the standards are to be on your team and like what you look for? Can you talk to me about that?
Jose Smanao (19:29)
Yeah, so I mean, in the beginning standards were pretty, there weren't any, you know, was just, we're trying to grow the team. And I think every team kind of starts off like that, right? So there aren't any, it's just, whoever can come in, could come in. Then you start seeing like the people flow to the top, right? Like the people that are actually doing really well. We start looking at the patterns, you start seeing kind of what really is resonating. And, you know, again, I have the pleasure of having, you know, a really good team behind me.
Joe Oz (19:35)
Yes.
Yes.
Jose Smanao (19:59)
And so, know, Jeff was really big on, you know, making sure like accountability is his thing. And so making sure that the numbers are there, that, you know, people are making the calls that they need to make and, you know, just checking in with them, making sure that they're doing the work. And so all of these things we started kind of implementing and we started, we started with, you know, creating small little benchmarks. So it was, Hey, you got to do 250 calls a week. You have to do 500 calls a week.
Joe Oz (20:26)
Right. Yeah.
Jose Smanao (20:29)
Right? then so now, fast forward to now, it's we're focused on talk time, right? And conversations. And then we're focused on, you know, the initial interview, right? So are you a full-time agent? Part-time agent. If you're part-time, you don't get live connections. If you're full-time, you get live connections. All of our leads are live connections now. So even the past leads that we have, through Follow-Up Boss, you can create an inbox.
and do live connection transfers to agents on your team. So that's something that we do. We really try to mimic what works well with Zillow and other platforms. A live connection is always going to be a better handoff than just a text or, hey, call this person at this time type of thing. we've kind of been going in that direction. And so now we ask, have you ever been in sales? How do you solve difficult problems?
Joe Oz (21:11)
Yeah.
Jose Smanao (21:26)
So it's a little bit more about now is like we have two teams is what we call it. We call it our marketing team. So that's a non, how do you say this? That's a now non accountability team. So they are not having any sort of accountability besides like do your thing. If you want to have coaching with me, you know, book a one-on-one and then we could do some sort of coaching or come to the classes. Anybody who's on a performance team, which is we call it our power performance team.
Joe Oz (21:50)
Right.
Jose Smanao (21:54)
They are going to be held accountable to a very, very high level. They're also going to be on track to make over $150,000 in their first year of real estate. And as long as they can follow the play, they'll be catching touchdowns all day.
Joe Oz (22:11)
Dude, that's awesome.
Who gets a lot of agents, okay? So a lot of our teams have like sales managers, people that oversee the agents, like the got a minute. It's the, mean, really kind of like the, like a lot of teams have like the coaches, right? That kind of like, like you only need the football analogy, like the red zone, right? Like, how do we get this thing into the end zone? What does that structure look like in your organizational chart? You know, who, like one person can't oversee a hundred with the agents, like who.
who helps the agents with that stuff, who coaches them, does pipeline reviews, things like that. Or is there like a structure like that or is there not? You know, can you help me understand like maybe that structure in an organizational chart, who the agents go to, stuff like that.
Jose Smanao (22:55)
So first of all, we practice every day. So there's Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday practice, right? So to me, it's like Stephen Curry, Michael Jordan, any professional athlete I've ever met practices every day. Fundamentals, things like that, right? So that's one aspect of it. The second thing is we did the team lead model where we grabbed our best player and put him as a team lead. But the one thing that nobody tells you is that the players get paid more than the coaches.
And so if you're placing your best player as a coach, they really don't like it because they're like, I'm not making enough money anymore. Right. Like you're kind of, you're kind of not getting them there. Right. So, so that wasn't really a good place. So now we have a one sales manager model at this point. It's Jeff, Jeff from a carnival. He's our, he's the one that meets with the entire team. And again, not everyone, we don't meet with 150 people on the team every single week. There's some people that just don't want the accountability.
They just kind of want to do their own thing. Typically, it's a seasoned agent, unfortunately. They feel like they could do it on their own until they see a kid that's been three years in the business with 15 listings running around the office. And they're like, fuck, OK. Sorry. I don't know if you can cuss on here, but there you go. I mean, I already went like 20 minutes without saying a bad word, so I'm good. And then so so yeah, I mean, it just it just comes down to that.
Joe Oz (23:55)
Right.
Yeah, you can.
Jose Smanao (24:22)
And then we have a lot of help. we utilize a lot of virtual assistants. We work with a company called Sidekick, myvasidekick.com. We find them to be really great because they use follow-up ops, they use all the systems that we do. And so this is how we're able to do this. So not only do we have VAs making phone calls, we have VAs doing pipeline management. Because when you start doing the pipeline management, you think it's a one-person job. And then...
As your pipeline grows, you quickly find out, fuck, it's actually multiple people. then so we have a lever. We have pipeline people for individual lead sources. We have a specific person that just does Zillow and they only do Zillow and they only do ZHL. So it's like every single lead that comes in gets, where's this lead at? Where's it going? And this is a CHL lead. Who's talking to it? You know, all of that kind of stuff, right?
Joe Oz (24:56)
Yeah.
Wow.
Jose Smanao (25:20)
You know, is there a problem for this lead? Can we take it somewhere? You know, can I, you know, take it up the pipe? So, Jeff is getting a lot of help on that end, but he is meeting with people and he's, you know, it's a massive job. It's not something that's easy, but if anyone can do it, that's the guy that can do it. You know, he manages a pretty big, big, big, big pipeline. And what we're trying to, you know, do next is,
find somebody that can assist them, but that's always a difficult part, especially if it's an agent that's in the space. It's very difficult to find somebody in the space. I think it's easier to find somebody that's a sales manager outside of the space and plug them in.
Joe Oz (26:04)
Dude, that's so much good stuff. And Jeff, that's your partner. Is he, you guys both own the real estate team? Is that correct?
Jose Smanao (26:09)
Yeah.
Yeah, correct. So I started it for six months and he was working at another office and I was like, hey bro, you might want to come to the office. I kind of grew this thing a little bit too fast. And he was like, what? And then he came and it was like 285 agents at the office. And he's like, Jesus Christ, bro. Like, what did you do? What did you give people? And I was like, I mean, we gave him a home. That's kind of what it was. And so we grew it really fast.
Joe Oz (26:14)
Wow.
Yeah, wow, that's great.
How did you meet your partner? What was that relationship like?
Jose Smanao (26:42)
So I had met him at a remax prior to he had come from Florida. So he came from Florida, didn't really know anybody and came to a remax office and he kind of says that it was kind of like the Wolf of Wall Street, man. I saw everybody on the phone making dials. And so I had been at that office for a few months and that was just my gig. I've always showed up to the office 738 o'clock in the morning unless I was hung over for all the realtors out there.
Joe Oz (27:10)
Hahaha!
Jose Smanao (27:11)
Let's
keep it real, let's keep it real, right? And then so that would happen, but you know, started kind of, everyone at that office just got after it and it was, first we had 40 people and we dwindled it down to about 15, the sharks, people that were on the phone every day making dials, doing four or five plus, six, seven, every single day, oh, every single month, I'm sorry.
Joe Oz (27:15)
Yeah, dude.
Jose Smanao (27:41)
And so it really kind of rubbed off on all the newer agents. like, I tell people, start with a small group. You're better off doing that. Don't let others and people's negative energy affect your group. Cause that's like the biggest thing. And just start introducing people to the team slowly. The fastest way to get anywhere slowly. And once you start bringing in people to, it's kind of like, have you ever seen that guy dancing at a rave and he's dancing by himself. And then all of a sudden another person comes in.
And then, if you come into a room full of people dancing, you gotta dance, bro. there's really no... So... Yeah. Yeah. So you just gotta make that... You gotta start small. Sometimes it's just, you know, just rubbing sticks together. It's just you and one other person. And then you get one more person in and they see what you're doing and then they fall in line and then your energy just gets bigger.
Joe Oz (28:15)
Dude, I love that. Yeah. It's from a Ted talk, right? Yeah. It's yeah, it's great.
Dude, that's awesome, man. I'm gonna switch gears from real estate, man. Tell me what you do for fun.
Jose Smanao (28:41)
Let's go.
I play golf. So that's my number one thing right now. I started, I picked it up about two years ago. And so I've been, you know, I mean, as much time as I can, about a year and a half ago, I had my first kid, my daughter, Isla. Yes. And then so she's been, you know, just amazing to watch and to see grow. But honestly, I love what I do, dude. Like I really like being on the tech side. Like I, I,
Joe Oz (28:49)
Yeah.
Congrats.
Jose Smanao (29:10)
I'm always messing around with different gadgets and I love watching the agents grow and just trying to give my knowledge to people in different ways. now I'm creating a lead platform for seller leads in Spanish and so that's doing really well right now. I'm working on that, yeah. But it's just, know, doing a lot of video.
Joe Oz (29:31)
Dude, how do you find the
time,
Jose Smanao (29:35)
Honestly, it's, I get bored really easy. And so I, I'm really good at creating the thing. I'm not good at necessarily maintaining the thing and knowing what you're good at is important. And so, yeah. And then, so like I tell, I told my guys, I'm like, look guys, I'm good at getting the fire started, but keeping it afloat. I I need you motherfuckers to go, go, go get the logs. You know, like I'm, I'm, I'm, I, did as far as I got us, you know.
Joe Oz (29:48)
Yeah, god, it's so smart.
my God,
Jose Smanao (30:05)
Hahaha
Joe Oz (30:06)
100%. You, what, this was a question on the intake forms. What's your go-to karaoke song?
Jose Smanao (30:07)
Yeah.
my go-to karaoke song. I would like to say...
I mean, my go-to song that I love is John Lennon, Imagine. Imagine All the People. Honestly, it's my favorite song of all time. I really love the message behind it. And we believe at Powerful State Group that if you want to go fast, go alone. But if you want to go far, go together. And I think togetherness is something that's missing sometimes. And people don't understand how much we affect each other. And the decisions of others are really, really, really important.
Joe Oz (30:34)
wow.
Jose Smanao (30:58)
Today it may not be you, but tomorrow maybe it will be. So it's important to pay attention to injustices.
Joe Oz (31:07)
Dude, that's awesome, man. Shit. What you answered is this, what did you answer on the intake form? was a Bob Marley song, do you remember?
Jose Smanao (31:14)
I think it was called, I think I did One Love because I was with my wife next to her. So I had to answer a certain way.
Joe Oz (31:18)
But that was it.
They're both good. Both great answers, man.
Jose Smanao (31:23)
Yeah, No, no,
no, I mean, if you're talking about my wife, that's probably the song that I like to sing with her at She's great at karaoke. I am not. And so, yeah, she could sing like Selena, you know, so. Yeah.
Joe Oz (31:31)
Yeah.
Dude, dude.
whoever's listening to this, we have like a pod case, we have an intake form. So we get to know the guest a little bit more. One of questions is what do you like to do for fun? wrote, can I say you wrote carne asada and fight with my wife, lol. And then I read that and I was like, this dude is awesome. like, that's super, well, you know what, man, it's really cool to have.
Jose Smanao (31:53)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Joe Oz (32:05)
A lot of people just take life so seriously, man, and just to have like a sense of humor and just like kind of goof around. was like also that intake form is to kind of to get the vibe, you know what I mean? And I was like, this is going to be a, this is going to be a like kind of fun one. And that's kind of, that's kind of what we're doing.
Jose Smanao (32:14)
Yeah.
I mean, yeah, mean,
yeah, yeah. mean, it's like, it's not worked for me. So like, it's the thing is, how do you become great at something? I was watching this guy, think he was an Indian guy and he was talking about, just find the thing that gives you the most joy to do. And then you're not working, everyone else is working while you're playing. So you're always going to beat them because you're playing, but they're working. And so like, that's just the way I look at it.
I'm just having fun with what I'm doing. The number one rule I have for anybody that joins my team is to have fun, first and foremost. I'm like, look guys, if this is not fun for you, this is going to suck. And so if it's not fun, mounting people down, if it's not fun getting that great deal, if it's not fun depositing checks, then this is not the job for you, you know? And so you need to have a lot of fun with what you're doing. And so this is something that we take from the Brazilian soccer team.
Joe Oz (32:55)
Yeah.
Yes.
Jose Smanao (33:15)
They have a saying called yoga bonito, which means play beautifully, play playfully, play with joy. Right? And so we take that to heart.
Joe Oz (33:24)
Dude, that's awesome,
What's a hidden talent besides speaking other languages that you have that most people don't know about?
Jose Smanao (33:37)
I think my hidden talent is probably, I don't know what I said on the form, but I would say one of them is probably pattern recognition. I think I'm really good at that. I read this book a while ago as far as it's called, think, Superhuman or Superpowers, something like that. And it talks about how human beings have the superpower of pattern recognition, right? And how we're able to look at patterns and visualize them very quickly. So that's how we were able to see
the tiger or the lion in the savannahs and run away, right? Or see the snake. Like, wait, that doesn't make sense, right? And then like, and then so that's also the reason why we see Jesus in a piece of toast, right? Or on a cloud. We're like, my God, there's a man, there's this, there's that, right? And then so I also started utilizing pattern recognition in my scripting. I started using pattern recognition in a lot of these different
Joe Oz (34:13)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jose Smanao (34:36)
things that I see in life and just having awareness for like, how does this puzzle go together? Right? And then so I feel like my scripting is really, really strong when I'm talking to people, like I'm able to basically script out objections out of my scripting. So it really kind of helps. Like one of the ones, I'll give you an example of one. So one of the things that you have to be aware with your digital door knocking, right? Or when you're getting inbound leads, whether it's Z buyers or whatever, right?
Joe Oz (34:58)
Yeah, please.
Jose Smanao (35:05)
It's like you're getting sellers and a lot of the times they go, well, I'm just curious. Right. Right. And then so to get rid of the I'm just curious, it's you say something like besides, I mean, this is super simple. Besides the curiosity, tell me a little bit more about your future plans and goals. And then so that eliminated 80 % or 90 % of the I'm just curious. And now moving them forward and they were telling me about.
Joe Oz (35:22)
Yeah.
Jose Smanao (35:30)
Well, you know, I wanted to know the value because I want to sell six months down the line. And then so then I covering that piece of it.
Joe Oz (35:36)
Yeah.
What a good answer, man, pattern recognition.
Alright, what, what was your, do you remember your first concert that you ever went to?
Jose Smanao (35:54)
Ooh, I think I'm gonna put Kanye West. Maybe. I'm not sure.
Joe Oz (35:58)
Ha ha ha!
I'm
kind of freestyling right now. Did you wait so wait, wait, on, hold on. No. So if you saw Connie West as one of your earlier concerts, what year would that have been? Was that like college dropout? Or was that like how far how long? Wow. That's funny, man. Yeah.
Jose Smanao (36:04)
Well, you're first out of
It was Yeezus. It was Yeezus. Yeah. Yeah,
I love that album. That album was one of the best. When he came out with a mask and it was like all in jewels and stuff, I was like, whoa, that's super dope. Like, what the hell is this? Right? I saw him here in LA and I was on the floor. So I literally saw him like literally right next to me. And just the amount of detail that he put into his console was just really, really impressive.
Joe Oz (36:46)
You know, this is like controversial shit, right? Those first couple albums are legendary as far as I'm concerned. obviously all the political stuff and I mean, did you see the documentary? It's called Yeenus, like it's genius by yeenus or whatever, like it's on Netflix. Did you happen to catch that?
Jose Smanao (36:54)
Yeah.
I have not seen it yet. I kind of was disappointed in certain things. And so I kind of just started tuning out certain things and it's okay. Yeah. Yeah.
Joe Oz (37:20)
Yeah, totally. Same, yeah, same. Well, the documentary
kinda, it's like his life, buddy, like his lifelong friend he grew up with like documented him like throughout his whole life.
Jose Smanao (37:30)
Yeah, yeah,
we document the whole thing
Joe Oz (37:33)
Yeah, and it shows like just the decline, like it's like mental health stuff. You know what I mean? Right. It's kind of sad, you know, and he kind of that's a really good way to put it. I can't agree more. Like, yeah, I kind of just started to tune out because there some stuff that was just a little too wild. Any other memorable early concerts that you can remember?
Jose Smanao (37:50)
Well, I went to the Watch the Throne one. Honestly, I'm a big hip hop guy. Like I'm a huge hip hop guy. I'm an East Coast guy. I love Southern rap. But I also like, you know, I'm from Mexico. And so I love like, really like, you know, lyrical music, passionate music. There was music in the 1950s and 1920s in Mexico called the Jodanero in Mexico. And then so there's a lot of like,
Joe Oz (37:56)
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Jose Smanao (38:18)
Even there's some jazz influences, stuff like that I like to listen to. I listen to like Beethoven. I mean, honestly, if you listen to my playlist, you're like, what the hell is this? Like it's just, yeah, it's all over the place. I could probably say that I listen to every genre and the only genre I haven't been able to discover yet is probably country music. And it's just because I don't have any friends that can introduce me in a good way. But you know, I love...
Joe Oz (38:27)
Really?
Jose Smanao (38:45)
every genre of music from rock and roll to know, Beethoven to Spanish music, English music. I mean, I have a pretty, I like to say eclectic here. love concerts. I love going to concerts. That's one of my favorite things to do. And for my wife, so it's kind of like a good thing. Yeah. A cheap concert. I don't care if it's 20 bucks, dude. There's a place down the street from here that's called, this is where I used to go quite a bit. It's called the
What is it called? The Observatory. It's called the Observatory. We have a bunch of underground artists. I saw Gucci Mane there. I saw Future there. I saw the Migos. I mean, I don't know, know, like all these artists, like up close. I was like, dude, this is so crazy. Like they're right in front of me. I saw in 2013, Kendrick Lamar. I was backstage with him. Yeah. Yeah.
Joe Oz (39:18)
Yeah.
Wow.
wow. Wow. That's
okay. Cool. That's why I'm asking the fun questions, dude. That's so rad. Yeah, the observatory, dude, that the pride holds like what 800 people 1000 people at the most right? Like that's tiny. Damn. That's really cool. Yeah, if you Yeah, that's rad, man. What? got a couple more for you. Is that cool? You get on time? What? What? What famous people? Okay, you said Kendrick Lamar? What? What famous people have you met?
or if it's the one that like sticks out.
Jose Smanao (40:08)
I saw, I mean, to have like a full on conversation, probably my most, like not like I didn't have a full on conversation with him, but probably my most memorable was Kobe Bryant when I was, he was walking out of a place called Bandera's in Newport Beach, it's off of PCH. It's actually went to a pretty good restaurant, if you've never been there, check it out. They have like grocery shopping on the outside window. And he was walking out and I was coming in and I was just like, hey.
Joe Oz (40:20)
wow.
Yeah, yeah.
Okay.
Jose Smanao (40:39)
and I shook his hand and that was about it. I've never wanted to be like the fucking groupie guy, you know? So I just always kind of met people. And so like I met Future at the observatory twice because I was in the back. You know, my friend was the guy that would organize the artist for the observatory. He still does that. And so, you know.
we were able to kind of get backstage stuff and just say hi to people and stuff like that. These were my younger days, you know?
Joe Oz (41:17)
Yeah, for sure. That's why the that's why that question is so fun because like People is you don't like we're not like what are you gonna do today? I'm gonna go meet a celebrity usually you like run into them somewhere
Dude, I was just talking to Jeremy Wilson from he's on the you'll meet him. He's on the advisory board. He was like, he said he met Ric Flair at a hotel room. was he said he was he was like the room service guy when he was a kid. And Ric Flair was like in a towel and he like delivered the room service to Ric Flair. And those conversations are just are just super fun. All right, cool, man. Well, dude, listen, what I want to thank you for your time today. I want to ask you like what what didn't I ask that I should have asked?
Jose Smanao (41:47)
Bye now.
I mean, I think you asked pretty much everything that I would probably want to know. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. mean, yeah, we touch base on the how the market is moving, digital tech, you know, how to how grow your team slowly is always better. Yeah, I mean, I don't really.
Joe Oz (42:25)
Yeah.
Jose Smanao (42:28)
think of anything else, think you got a pretty good idea of what we're doing. One of the things that we're doing is we're doing a show called Hot Deals, where we talk about hot real estate deals and even hotter real estate topics. And so I want to bring you on and we eat some wings. Yeah. My friend is like, you're fucking evil, dude. Like you bring, you're bringing me on to like literally burn my mouth. And I'm like, it's part of the show, bro. I convinced my team to letting me eat all day, which is, was, was just a cherry on top.
Joe Oz (42:36)
Yes.
Yeah, totally.
Jose Smanao (42:58)
Hahaha
Joe Oz (42:58)
Dude,
that's awesome, man. By the way, I usually work out of my house. I had an electric panel. I have a new electric panel being installed today. What I forgot. They're like, I'm at like lifetime right now. They're like, that's 7 a.m. They're like, we're ready. And then dude, they're like, we're gonna install the electric panel. And I'm like, all right, cool. And I have an office in my garage, right? dude, they started with like.
Jose Smanao (43:10)
Yeah.
Joe Oz (43:24)
the machine gun power tools like, shit, I gotta get out of here. But dude, I do thanks for dude, I loved getting to know you. I learned a lot today. And I think anyone that hears this or sees this is going to learn a lot. And I look forward to meeting you in person in like two weeks in Newport, we spent two days together. And I yeah, like I said, everything from like your virtual assistants to the database. And like I said, man, selfish, I learned a lot. And thanks for taking the time, man, the industry needs you. So thanks for being a part of it.
Jose Smanao (43:27)
Yeah.
No worries, man. Thank you so much for having me on here, Oz. And I look forward to meeting you at our retreat. even networking outside of that, man, I really do appreciate you taking the time. And we'd just love to network with you. I always like to be around like-minded individuals. And so just appreciate the time.
Joe Oz (44:14)
Hell yeah, brother. All right, well enjoy your day. I'll see you soon. Bye.
Jose Smanao (44:17)
See you soon, brother. Bye.
Bye.