Speaker 1 (00:00):
No matter what stage of business maturity your real estate team or brokerage has achieved, you face growth constraints and many of those constraints are structural to your organization and to the industry. For example, affordability issues, disconnected tools, siloed data, or even lead abundance. Learn to circle back and harden your foundation, identify and relieve stress points and prepare for tomorrow's market with Work's Real Estate's founder and CEO, Winston Murray, and Chief Strategy Officer, John Bowler. We're talking data transparency, operational efficiency and supply side affordability solutions with two leaders of a 250 agent 10 market operation. Get insights to prepare for and even help build a better, more consumer focused industry with Winston and John right now on Real Estate Team OS. 

Speaker 2 (00:53):
No matter where your business is today or where you want to take it, you'll get there faster and more profitably with an operating system. Welcome to Team OS, your guide to starting, growing, and optimizing real estate team. Here's your host, Ethan Butte. 

Speaker 1 (01:07):
Winston, thank you again so much for guesting with me way back when the show is just getting going back on episode 12, a couple of years ago. Welcome back to the show. And John, great to connect a couple of months ago. Welcome to Real Estate Team OS. 

Speaker 3 (01:19):
Thanks for having us back. Appreciate it, Ethan. Yeah. Thanks, Ethan. 

Speaker 1 (01:22):
Yeah, love what you guys are doing. Love that you partnered up. We're going to get into what that looks like, what you all have done together, what the vision for the future looks like. I'm really excited to get into supply side affordability issues, which Winston, I know is a deep personal passion of yours that you all are working on together. But before we get into that, I will start with my standard opener on the show and I'll direct it to you first, John. What is a must-have characteristic of a high-performing team? 

Speaker 4 (01:47):
It needs to be data-driven, operational excellence, great communication, and highly accountable to being a world-class professional. 

Speaker 1 (01:55):
That's tight. Winston, anything to add there? Does that sound about right? 

Speaker 3 (02:00):
That sounds about right to me. Yeah. I think for me right now, it's just continuing to show up every day. 

Speaker 1 (02:08):
Communication is definitely a thing. Showing up the right way. I mean, world-class professionalism I think is what you said, John. Where does that come from? Is that intuitive? Is that cultural? Do you get it from mentorship? When you think about your own personal level of professionalism, and I'll start with you, Winston, when you think about your own personal level of professionalism, what are some of the foundations of that? 

Speaker 3 (02:31):
For me personally, I have such a clear vision and big picture goal of what I'm trying to do. So showing up on a day-to-day and working through the minutia that just happens to team leaders every day is less of a challenge because I'm so focused on the big picture and the vision and what we're building towards. 

Speaker 1 (02:59):
Cool. How about you, John? Where did your sense of duty, professionalism, self-investment, self-development, where did that come from for you? 

Speaker 4 (03:08):
Yeah, I grew up in the Midwest and I just remember working my whole life. So I delivered newspapers. I think I was doing that in fourth grade, so that was five days a week, waking up on Sundays and delivering newspapers before hockey practice. And then just growing up in a family where the expectation was you show up, you show up on time, you work hard, and you really kind of focus on your attitude and eliminating excuses. It really carried over when I ended up working at Zillow for nine years and I got to see what great leadership was and a culture of excellence. There weren't excuses. It was, let's go out and perform. Let's do a great job. Let's help consumers. Let's help agents. And if those two things are solid, then Zillow ultimately we will do perfectly fine. 

Speaker 1 (03:51):
Yeah, really good. I'm also a Midwesterner and my work ethic was developed out of babysitting and lawn mowing. Accountability to parents and homeowners was like a high degree of accountability for a whatever, 11, 12, 13 year old. And then of course, being on the high school swim team and practicing twice a day, like being in the pool for like five hours a day, starting at like six in the morning as a high school sophomore, that was like, you got to be there. So yeah, working hard's never been a thing for me. Works. I would love Winston for you to characterize works however you like. Markets that you're in, size, structure, culture, whatever you want to share. And then I want to get into perspective on teams and brokerages as we kick off 2026, but characterize works as it is today. 

Speaker 3 (04:39):
Yeah. I mean, we got onto what was Zillow Flex and is Zillow preferred today five years ago. This actually is this month marks five years for works and we were a three person team and today we're sitting at about 250 agents and about 10 different markets all throughout the state of Oregon and Washington in the Pacific Northwest. And six months ago, we were able to expand our presence into Idaho as well in the Boise market. I think that our focus has always been centered on education and a large majority of our success to that kind of fast paced growth was our ability to simplify the process of speaking to buyers and sellers and simplifying the client and the agent experience is the challenge and the opportunity at hand. And that's where we've really excelled at massive growth over the last five years and really are focused on operational efficiencies. 

Speaker 3 (05:51):
I think that there's this really interesting transition happening in the industry where historically leads were not abundant. And so you had this kind of ego driven like, "Hey, this is mine. These are my leads. This is my market. This is my territory. It's my name on the sign." Every time when you look at a traditional team structure, it was very ego driven and all of a sudden with Zillow and all these other programs coming out that make leads abundant, the challenge is more in kind of operational capacity. And so it's exciting. We're thinking about AI allowing us the ability to convert leads three times more. That's great, but no one's really talking about the operational constraint that's coming and this like tsunami change of AI coming. It's really going to come down to leveraging the agents time so they can keep up with this new client demand and this different way of working and this kind of ubification that's happening in the industry where I think the future looks like if an agent wants to make money, open follow up us and make money. 

Speaker 3 (07:06):
But managing 30 deals a year isn't normal for our industry. So we're really focused on raising the standard in the industry, the production standard. So we're hyper focused on the average production per agent in our brokerage. 

Speaker 1 (07:24):
Cool. We're going to get into some of the logistics behind that. I would love to hear from you at least briefly, and then I'll give it to you, John, on a similar topic, but I'll maybe broaden it out beyond works just on the context of your career to date in real estate and around real estate. But Winston, I'd love for you to share with folks, because I know a lot of people who watch and listen wonder this, and you wondered it for some period yourself. Why independent brokerage versus team in another brokerage? 

Speaker 3 (07:49):
I would like to think that we're creating kind of a new standard for brokerages across the board where agents are getting really solid education upfront, they're getting access to leads, and then continued support in transaction management and listing coordination. And really we're focused as a brokerage on leveraging their time to the fullest so they can focus on high income earning conversations with clients, generating new leads. I think the highest, best use of an agent's time is generating new business, making sure that they get their offer accepted and that they're protected within their inspection period. And a lot of the other stuff can be leveraged out so that agents can really focus on the client care. 

Speaker 1 (08:42):
John, from your perspective, again, you can remind folks how long you've been in the industry, but I just know you've seen it from a variety of angles and then we'll get into partnering how you two partnered up. But talk about any observations you've got about the rise of real estate teams over say the past dozen years or so, and any thoughts on team within another brokerage versus independent brokerage? Yeah, 

Speaker 4 (09:07):
There's not really a right answer to this. I got into real estate in 2008 when Zillow was only a hundred employees and was doing like five and a half million unique users. So really watching how the product shifted and really when Zillow started to generate leads from the buyer's agent list, which then became Premier Agent, that's where I started to really learn about capacity and service levels and what's the appropriate number of leads per agent new and actually worked with the former head of business intelligence at Zillow and we were looking at like, is it 20 leads a month or is it there needs to be tailored off? And I think what we landed on was more like 15 leads a month, but because the average time to close was closer to 57 days, you could do 15 leads in a month, then you could do 15 in the next, but then you needed to drop it down because you need to actually work your pipeline effectively. 

Speaker 4 (09:57):
And so I think that what happened there was we were selling mostly to direct individual agents and all of a sudden they saw the kind of gold rush, which was, "I can convert these. Why don't I bring on additional agents to work underneath me? I'll take a split from them and coach them and educate them, and all of a sudden I can build what became teams." And so we went from a world where we were really focused with Wall Street on number of net new advertisers or number of advertisers and then churn rate and shifted to let's go after and work with more teams because the overhead and the infrastructure is now a shared responsibility model between both Zillow and the team leader. And then teams kind of became TeamRages and then you started to see shifts where some people were like, "I'm going to just build my own independent." Then it was, "I'm going to go build a team underneath it. 

Speaker 4 (10:45):
" And you kind of see this ping pong match going back and forth for a number of reasons. But at the end of the day, the whole world, whether it's real estate or whether it's business in general, the first thing starts with showing up. You have to show up as an independent contractor, it's far more difficult to get somebody that's going to commit to five days a week in the office or five days a week going to pick up the phone and work their database for the first 30 minutes of the day. But it starts with showing up. I think it secondly is really about understanding your data and having clear transparency around your data. But then third is this kind of understanding that when you break down that the average number of transactions in real estate historically was like five and a half million a year. 

Speaker 4 (11:23):
The last three to four years has been closer to four million. And if you look at somebody and say, "Hey, I want to sell two homes a month," we have far too many agents that are kind of dipping their toes in and getting a couple deals here and there versus somebody that shows up every day, like my dad who worked at John Deere and shows up eight to five, goes out and grinds. Obviously the hours are very different in real estate, but starts to showing up, data transparency and then understanding you at the end of the day in real estate, the beauty is that you control your own destiny and your own success. 

Speaker 1 (11:55):
Yeah. Okay. So how you guys got together and what you're working on, that's what we're going to do for a few minutes here. And I'll stay with you, John, I guess. What was going on for you? How do you remember getting introduced to Winston and what was interesting about what he was doing or where did you see a window to be of service and value at works? 

Speaker 4 (12:15):
I was at Zillow nine years and my last role was really entrepreneur and residence. And so I think there's this bug that you, or this itch team you need to scratch. If you're looked at as an entrepreneur, you need to go out and try to do it yourself. So we built a consulting company where we were working with teams and independent brokers like Winston, and then we started to build financial models specifically around data and operational effectiveness to help the agent make more money and spend less money. And I was introduced to Winston by one of my managers, my former team leads that worked underneath me at Zillow and he's like, "You need to talk to Winston. He sells 60 to 70 homes a year by himself and you know how to scale, so you two should talk." And what impressed me the most about Winston, which is part of, or one of the things that we get along really well about right now is around always constantly be willing to learn and learn and be forward looking. 

Speaker 4 (13:10):
And I would talk to Winston and ask him to do certain projects like write everything down, get it out of your head and put it into an SOP so that you can distribute it and you can scale. And Winston was a student and he was willing to learn and there was no ego and it was exciting to basically partner with him on just the consulting side. And then we stayed in touch all the time. And then I got a call from him when I was in Argentina and then that kind of kicked off today. You should take it from here. 

Speaker 3 (13:41):
And that's 10 years later. So this has been a long journey. John's always been a mentor and business coach to some extent. And it's a dream to be able to then get to a point where we're able to work together to build, to continue to expand on works. One thing that really stood out as John was like, scale thyself, scale thyself, write everything down. And that year I wrote like a 150 page manual of my process of buying and selling. And I stayed up till four in the morning because I was selling 70 houses a year. So I didn't really have a lot of time during the day, but I remember it took me about like six to seven months staying up to like three, four in the morning by the fire writing everything down. And that now with AI is really exciting. We're launching a new learning management system called Cipher, and that's really going to help take that manual that I wrote on paper now to the next level with quizzes and chapters and videos and really ensure that our agents are getting like a lot of really good education upfront before receiving any company generated leads. 

Speaker 3 (15:01):
And we know that that manual has really set us apart way in advance with a five year running headstart working with Zillow Preferred and now we're able to really expand on that and take it to the next level for staff trainings and continued agent education as well. 

Speaker 1 (15:20):
Kind of what was going on for you in the brokerage when you said, "I'm going to initiate a conversation with John and see if this is like a full proper bring him in full time versus be people who respect each other and have good conversation and consult and mentor business coach kind of thing." It's different having, I think your title, John, is chief strategy officer, but what was going on for you, Winston, at that moment where you had that vision or that conversation came up? 

Speaker 3 (15:51):
I think as I've just gotten deeper into the Zillow preferred network, I've gained a lot more insight in that like no one's got this figured out yet and there's a lot of opportunity here to simplify the brokerage process and the team process and the agent process and the client, therefore the client experience as well. And so I really just see a massive opportunity to help simplify this for other teams who are struggling to figure this out. And with an abundance of leads, we know that if an agent is doing really well on platforms like Zillow, they're going to ultimately have a reduced capacity to service the same amount of connections like John said. And so we've always been hyper focused on helping our agents scale their referral based business through Zillow, but our stance is you should never graduate off of any lead platform as long as you're growing your business. 

Speaker 3 (16:58):
And I think in our industry, there's this huge misconception that like Zillow leads are different than referral leads. Half of our business comes from company generated leads like Zillow and other platforms and half of our business comes from SOI referrals. But if you really look at and double click on where the SOI business is coming from, a large majority of it is coming from Zillow. And so we're at a point now where we have 10 year vets who have been doing hundreds of millions of dollars of business and they're still at a point in their career where they see the value of supplementing their lead flow and continuing to grow their business through platforms like Zillow. So yeah, you might not need 15 connections a month, you might only need five, but at the same point, at the same time, your conversion goes up. And so our focus is really retaining top talent. 

Speaker 3 (17:57):
And historically, the best agents were very resistant to any kind of online lead platform. And we want to change that and really like get rid of any delineation that like Zillow leads are different than referrals. We treat all clients, all price points, all markets, the same and with really good care. 

Speaker 1 (18:18):
If anyone wants to go deeper into that philosophy and where Winston was earlier in his career when he was selling 60, 70 houses for himself, and a key insight about online leads and how that affected the way he built his business, that's episode 12 and it's linked up right down below. John, what was going on for you? What was exciting? I mean, because you have like a unique purview over what's going on in the industry. You've obviously engaged with a variety of different businesses and you could be of value to a lot of different people. What was interesting to you about going inside the organization and what were a handful of your initial projects when you committed to join Works directly? 

Speaker 4 (18:58):
What's funny is like that the parallels between the brokerage space or independent brokerage or a team, individual agent, or even just working at Zillow, that there's a lot of the same patterns. And so to me, almost every place that I start at, I'm really curious about what the data shows and building models that basically say this is going to allow us to, almost like an x-ray of a business, this is going to allow us to identify the pressure points. And that becomes problematic or challenging because now you're increasing transparency in the same way that Zillow turned on the lights way back in 2004 or five or whatever it was. All of a sudden you're introducing this new thing that actually you can't really run from. And so whether it's ... I've worked at now three different brokerages. I worked at Zillow. I started as an individual contributor. 

Speaker 4 (19:47):
I've been a builder at most of these places. I've always kind of said that the first year is just about stabilization. So you're building the data transparency, you're starting to identify new processes, you're starting to build more kind of business reviews and continuity. And if you do that right in the first year, the second year gets far, far more enjoyable. The first year is really, really, really hard. And it's regardless of any place that I've worked with in PropTech. It all starts with the solidification of the data and the processes and really understanding, "Hey, I'm going to learn about it. Then I'm going to build systems in place." Year two becomes interesting because you start to see the fruits of your labor. You start to see the culture start to transform and take off. You start to develop muscle memory around, this is how we're going to operate. 

Speaker 4 (20:36):
And then really after the 24th or 24 months mark, the things should start scaling and really aggressively. The challenge then becomes is now you're introducing a whole different part of business maturation in that third year. You're now having to do far more what I call the circle back. The circle back is going back to the house, re-solidifying the foundation. And as you continue to grow, you have to keep circling back. You can't just neglect the basement or the foundational level. And honestly, that isn't ... I worked at AWS. It was the same thing at AWS, which is super profitable and a massive company. It's the same stuff everywhere. It's just a matter of building and making sure that the team is willing to learn and willing to adapt and change because change is inevitable. And if you do it right, it's a really fun journey. 

Speaker 1 (21:27):
In that year one, year, two, year three that you broke down there, where are you exactly right now? I mean, I'm sure it's not direct calendar year, but 2026 is year two-ish. 

Speaker 4 (21:37):
For me, I'm in still year one. So Winston, you're in a far longer space. Yeah. 

Speaker 3 (21:43):
Yeah. I mean, today's like the first day, right? So we're looking at 26 as a really good clean start to a lot of the work that John and I have been working on and just improving operational efficiencies, identifying department leaders, clear KPIs, meeting agendas and frequencies, performance reviews, all of that. And in the last like six, seven months that John's been working with us, it's been a really kind of enlightening six, seven months of like all the work that we need to do to really make sure that this thing can continue to grow. And every level of growth we've kind of broken and have had to kind of restructure. And we know that brokerage model isn't very profitable. And 10 years ago, as I sat on this path, I was like, okay, this really doesn't pencil out unless technology develops at the rate we need it to when we get to that size. 

Speaker 3 (22:48):
And luckily, AI is here. And so we are hyper focused on building lateral integrations. We're a tech enabled company where we're building a lot of lateral integrations to bring the industry together, which is fairly disjointed and disconnected, especially as it relates to the amount of tech tools that Team Ridges and brokerages and small teams are operating in. And bringing all of those tools together to save our staff time and our agents time and really, again, continue to focus on simplifying this while looking at what's already being built. We don't want to reinvent the wheel. We want to work with the best tech partners and bring them together. And I think that's symbolic of this kind of death of ego in the industry where we all get to set our sword down and work together to make it better. 

Speaker 1 (23:43):
Okay. There's a lot there. I want to double back on one thing so nobody misses it. This is just my own observation, so feel free to react to it and then we'll kind of dive into the combination of operational efficiency and tech integration and a more efficient agent. We'll spend a few minutes there. The one observation I want to make is based on, John, your language of like circle back, circle back, circle back. And what I've seen among even, like you look at it on paper, it's a really good real estate business, let's say a real estate team or a brokerage and neither the team leader nor the operations leader, let's just say that that exists in this company that I'm kind of like, it's an amalgamation of stories I've heard, that circle back piece just doesn't happen on a consistent basis. And therefore, you mentioned like revisit the foundation, revisit the foundation, keep circling back. 

Speaker 1 (24:33):
And so when I look at your partnership, I feel like Winston, it's not like you didn't know that that was necessary, but at the same time, you're doing so many other things and growing this business that's double the size of what it was 18 or 24 months ago, and you just can't. And so A, feel free to react to that, but B, I just want to make sure to raise that for the folks that watch and listen to this show, whether you're early stage, mid-stage, or you're a mature organization, that circling back is so key to making sure that you're still on the right foundation. 

Speaker 3 (25:08):
Yeah. I mean, if you are a team leader, brokerage owner in the online lead space, you can't really stop growing for the same reason that those online leads will generate referrals, therefore your capacity and agent count has to increase to service those clients that are just going to continue to call in. And so if you're not growing, you're dead and at every growth stage we've had to kind of reiterate and look at how we can continue to improve every aspect of the company. And so right now we're focused on building lateral AI integrations with Zapier to help save our staff's time in recruiting and onboarding and educating and transaction management and services to the agent, like listing coordination and then how are we continuing to support our agents at a really high level and continue to provide value. And I think we're on Zillow's wave here. 

Speaker 3 (26:10):
We're writing Zillow's Wave and the key philosophies around data transparency are more important than ever right now as a massive value add to an agent. I think because all of our agents are on one CRM follow upos of course, and they're all on the same tools, we as a brokerage have the ability that not a lot of brokerages have to provide really clear data insight to help better drive our agent's production and support their growth on an individual basis. And then for our staff too and sales managers or our principal brokers, like we're building out like similar kind of data transparency to like, okay, well, you're calling our agents, you're supporting our agents, but how effective is that? What's the attendance on the meetings that you're hosting and those workshops that you're hosting and really measuring our sales manager's impact as well. So data transparency is our massive, unique value add that I don't think a lot of other brokerages are focused on. 

Speaker 3 (27:16):
And so when we're connecting with our agents, we're providing real insight and we can share that data with our agents, but they don't really know how to interpret it. So we're really focused on data driven business strategy meetings and interpreting that data on behalf of our agents to provide more value. 

Speaker 1 (27:38):
Through sales managers. 

Speaker 3 (27:39):
Yes. 

Speaker 1 (27:41):
Yeah. John, when you think about 2026 and where you are in the cycle that you described earlier, what are a few initiatives that you're really excited about in this kind of per agent productivity, agent efficiency, transparency between staff and agents on particular deals or on things overall, equipping and empowering sales managers, I'm sure at your size and given the way you just described the structure a little bit, the sales manager is probably a super key role for driving per agent productivity. What are a couple of things you want to like either add, build, tighten up, circle back around on? What are you looking forward to in 2026? 

Speaker 4 (28:18):
You're asking for the secrets? 

Speaker 1 (28:20):
No, I'm asking for whatever you're willing to share in this 

Speaker 4 (28:24):
Topic. So I have this pet peeve of, and I learned, by the way, I learned this while working at Zillow and observing great leaders, there's this idea of like where people will say, "We're building the plane while we're flying it or we're landing the plan while we're building or whatever." And building and growing are not mutually exclusive. You can actually do both. It just takes your ability to go back and forth between the two. So you're identifying areas for improvement and then you're saying, "This is what a project or an initiative I'm going to work on in order to improve that so I don't continue to perpetuate the same existing challenges." And oftentimes people are like, "Well, we're just so busy. We're so busy." And that's the whole idea of I'm working in the business, not on the business. I always am working on the business. 

Speaker 4 (29:11):
There's no time where I'm just working in the business because that means that I'm not getting to be creative and build the infrastructure in order to support scale. So Winston mentioned it, one of the big initiatives I did at Zillow when we were in sales management was we talked about data transparency. We built better reporting and better tools so that when you did a one-on-one, you actually could actually communicate not the outputs because oftentimes people are focused on the outputs. Most of the time it's actually focused on the inputs, the behaviors that lead to the outcome that you want. So we're building a number of initiatives around transparency. They're not just focused on how many homes you sold or where did your business come from, but rather what are the appropriate behaviors that will lead to what it is that you want. And then showing trend lines so that when you sit there with the x-ray and you can actually quickly say, "This is the reason why you saw a dip in your sales or this is why you're seeing an improvement, let's double down on that. 

Speaker 4 (30:05):
So now creating the circle back for the agent, I think decipher learning is an example of that, the ability to scale time. And so if somebody in the input dashboards isn't attending workshops or they're not going through Zillow's preferred partner training programs where you're doing role playing, those are all things that are inputs that will lead to ultimately the outputs that you want. I have a number of crazy ideas that I really want to work on. I have a really interesting one that I've been working a lot with AI on and it's different. It's very, very different. And it's not about paying agents to recruit other agents. It's actually completely unique and different. It's about production. But the key is being able to balance and understand that your time is your biggest asset and you didn't just wake up and your parents dropped you into middle school. 

Speaker 4 (30:50):
You actually started in preschool and then kindergarten and elementary, middle school and high school. And so I have a lot of ideas thinking two years out, but once you don't work on those until the foundation, you work them in your head, you work on them on AI, you work them on a whiteboard or whatever. So we have a number of big projects that will launch next year. And I think the first one will probably drop in like Q2 and then Q3. And they're probably going to be far more exciting for me and Winston than they are for our listeners. But then once we get through those, we'll have some really cool ones that we'll work on. 

Speaker 1 (31:25):
One more pass on Cipher. I think it's one of the most exciting things for me in talking with folks like you guys is again, taking all the documented stuff and maybe it was in another platform, like a third party platform, maybe it was in some kind of an internal Wiki or something, but taking all of the training and education and making it available on demand through natural language so that I don't have to search the exact right terms to get the exact right article that is going to answer my question because I'm wondering it at 12:45 AM. Any other like obvious wins or words of encouragement for someone about getting, A, of course, everything out of their heads if they haven't done that, but getting it into a platform that makes the information more dynamic and more accessible for the benefit of the agent. 

Speaker 3 (32:19):
Yeah. I have a clear thought on that. I think in our industry, there's this like resistance from like front of the house sales team to like back of the house operations and historically sales has always been the leader in that. And like you look at the pay discrepancy between operations folks and sales is huge. There's a huge discrepancy in pay. And I think one of the things we've really excelled at is that we've always placed an equal value, if not more, in operational efficiencies and value to staff. And so as we're continuing to build out Cipher, our LMS system, we're considering kind of how the agent is digesting this. And as it is now, a lot of people say, "Hey, here's how you sell and here's how you work with our operations team separate." And just by presenting that information separate, we're perpetuating this division between front of the house and back of the house where it's important to our culture that our agents value our staff and how they're supporting and leveraging their time and their business. 

Speaker 3 (33:35):
And so as we're presenting this information, it's cohesive. It's one workflow, right? You are learning the buyer console and at the same time, right after, okay, here's how you do buyer console. Here's how you search and send properties and show homes and when they're ready to write an offer, here's how you write an offer. And that's all in one workflow presented in one, not separate. I think it's really important in shifting the narrative and the friction that team leaders especially experience in like front of the house and back of the house. So like combining that into one workflow is really exciting for us to shift culture and also make it just more easily digestible and how the agent is experiencing the whole process of working at works and for their client. 

Speaker 1 (34:28):
And there's a 0% chance that that's not felt by the buyer or seller as well for that kind of cohesion and like unified vision and experience. 

Speaker 3 (34:38):
And it comes back to cross selling too. I think a lot of agents, especially new agents, don't see the value of presenting their client conversations as like we. I've had so much success at cross selling my co-op broker's success as like my own. And so the same is true when they're having conversations with their clients around their team. This is their team. That's why they're here is to better support their agents. We want them just in conversation cross-selling that, "Hey, for the price of one, you get 10 people backing us and we're doing almost a billion dollars in sales in the Pacific Northwest." That's a lot stronger of a conversation with the client and will increase conversion as well. 

Speaker 1 (35:26):
Yeah. Really good call. Okay. I don't want to miss now the opportunity just given that we don't have all afternoon together. Although I would love to hang out with you guys the next time I'm up that way if schedules permit, but just because I really appreciate what you're doing. I've really enjoyed getting to know both of you at least a little bit. And Winston, the last time you and I talked, you had me all lit up on your vision for ... I mean, a lot of people talk about affordability. We mentioned the five and a half versus four million homes. Certainly we've heard a number of, gosh, I'm just thinking about the 50 year mortgage thing that came up and other people like acting like what's going to unlock this whole activity is moving interest rates by half a point. But the supply side is the obvious big mover that I don't feel like I've heard a lot of great ideas about. 

Speaker 1 (36:19):
There are a lot of NIMBY issues, et cetera, but you had me all lit up on your vision and I'd love to have you share that a little bit and then John maybe weigh in on how interesting and engaging that was for you as well. But Winston, I'd love for you to take that anywhere you want to go. 

Speaker 3 (36:34):
Yeah. I mean, I think we're looking to like the future of our industry. The biggest challenge that I don't think a lot of people are talking about is housing. We're looking at, we've all been waiting for rates to drop. Sounds like that's going to come in 26, which is going to bring in a whole new flood of buyers. Great. Okay. Again, finding the business isn't the challenge, it's keeping up with the business, but for us today, like we're operating in Seattle as a really high price point market and in Portland and Bend. And it's all the areas in between those markets that excite me from an affordability standpoint. So when we're looking at like population growth and our markets and geographic expansion just continuing to move east because that's the only place there is to go. Housing, creating more inventory for our shared clients with Zillow should be our long-term focus. 

Speaker 3 (37:29):
And that really excites me because yeah, we sell a lot of houses, but we have a lot of people who just can't afford to buy at the six, 700,000 range. Really, there's the bulk of our clientele that are sitting in our follow-up boss account would love to buy. Everyone wants to own a home, but not everyone can. And so really looking at how to leverage partnerships like Zillow and Zillow seller leads as an opportunity to better identify buildable lots and strengthen our relationships with our builders to start really forward thinking and creating more housing infrastructure. And I think even longer than that, there's an opportunity to redefine materials and design and housing completely and create more opportunity for folks because everyone deserves a home. That's a basic human right. 

Speaker 1 (38:27):
Interest rates can come down to have point. It's going to bring a bunch of people out of the woodwork or down off the fence that they've been sitting on for a long time, but that doesn't say anything about the millions of people who couldn't even get into the conversation no matter what the interest rates were. How do you think about this, John? And is this any part of your ... When you look at the projects laid out in front of you, are you engaged in this directly? 

Speaker 4 (38:47):
The key here is it's not going to happen because of some type of policy or something just politically. It's actually going to happen because you have each side of the marketplace working together and collaborating on a shared vision. And so when you think of Zillow, Zillow has the consumer audience, they have the actual people that are looking for housing. But then as the professional side, with that shared vision and having a professional mindset where we care about affordability and care about getting everyone into a home, you can actually bridge the gap on each side of the marketplace. So you have the consumers that are looking for the home, you have Zillow with the audience and the infrastructure and the platform, and then you have the professionals that care. We've had a supply and demand issue, but the solution's not going to happen because of policy. 

Speaker 4 (39:29):
It's going to happen because the professionals, the consumers, and the big companies work together. 

Speaker 1 (39:34):
What are some of the obstacles and roadblocks, Winston? When you think about this, I mean, it's obviously logical. If people built stuff, it will sell in general, if it's priced right, and especially when we're reaching to an audience that isn't being served right now because they're just priced out of their market, what are some of the obstacles and how are you shaping up your designed activity or your strategy for helping move this forward? Like what's in the way and what are you working on? 

Speaker 3 (40:02):
Yeah. I mean, focusing on strengthening relationships with builders and recruiting investor minds into the company, I think is a focus in addition to continuing to grow our presence in a lot of these areas that are underdeveloped and politically that there's a lot of conversation around rezoning and expanding urban growth boundaries nationally. And so our focus is expanding our coverage, building our relationships with builders, of course, strengthening the relationship with Zillow to increase the amount of seller leads that we're receiving. I think a lot of homeowners, especially in these rural areas, are unaware of the opportunity that they're sitting on in terms of making more money and dividing those lots to create more housing rather than just listing the property as a whole. And so there's a lot of future opportunity where like rezoning is going to improve the value of these lots. So focused on consumer education for the seller is another challenge, but opportunity. 

Speaker 3 (41:16):
And then it's like, we have an opportunity to ... I mean, the only thing that's going to bring down the cost of housing is more houses. So more relevant today than ever with rates coming down. It's like, now we have all these buyers competing on that $400,000 house that are getting squeezed out. Let's look at where's the next area of growth and how we can redefine design and infrastructure around housing with less reliance on public utilities and more renewable energy like wind and solar, new building materials and structure there too. Yeah. There's a lot to talk about there that gets me excited. 

Speaker 1 (41:58):
Yeah. Spend just a minute, because there are obviously people watching and listening that are certainly doing some activity in rural areas that kind of fit what you're seeing in your own market. Speak to them about subdividing, what should they be looking for, what zoning needs to get unlocked if it's not already. Just talk the logistics a little bit to open more real estate professionals to potentially educating sellers and getting engaged around this theme. 

Speaker 3 (42:28):
Yeah. I mean, we work with builders who do a really good job focusing on educating the consumer who is sitting on a massive lot that could be subdivided into 50 additional units that they weren't even aware of. And so same is true for ... And that starts at the agent level too, and just not really knowing like, "Okay, I got a seller lead, I'll put a sign in the yard and we'll sell it. " I think the focus going forward is more agent education to better identify what that property actually could mean for the seller where in many cases, our sellers are actually netting more money on the sale with subdividing the lots. So not only do they get to make what they want, they actually can save and keep two or three additional units of their own and use that as an additional rental income. 

Speaker 3 (43:23):
At the same time, we're providing more housing opportunity, 45 more houses for other buyers. And the best part about it is these are our buyers. So these are Zillow's shared clients and we have some insight and just you look at what's happening politically, like there's going to be a lot of zoning changes that are going to create a lot more future opportunity to do this and therefore increase in the value of these sellers lots that they're not aware of. I 

Speaker 1 (43:51):
Feel like it is a whole new postcard campaign and digital campaign to educate potential sellers. I mean, in addition to communicating this internally, where is this? Obviously this is a personal passion of yours. It's a vision long term for not just your business and other businesses like it, not just for the real estate industry itself, it's about the future of what home looks like in the Unitited States. Where are you internally? Are you talking to your agents about this? Are you making these intros? Are you having like builders do like informal or formal presentations? Where are these ideas operationally in your business at this point? 

Speaker 3 (44:30):
I mean, just a little bit of background is like I half grew up on an earth ship, which is living completely off grid with solar and wind, a water catchment system that's used for gray water. And like, so I grew up half visiting my dad in New Mexico on an earth ship and then coming back to the city and just always throughout my life wondering why we're not incorporating more renewable energy and why are we so dependent on public utilities? And so this is something that's just like, before I even got into real estate, was really passionate about this. And now I'm like, oh wow, okay, this is why I'm in this position is because we actually have a chance to redefine living. So for now it's this like this future vision that I'm just stuck on. And so where we're at today is just increasing the operational efficiencies from a sales standpoint within the brokerage, knowing that that's going to lead to growing the partnership with Zillow and other seller lead platforms that will allow us to really continue education, improve education, grow our builder investor portfolio internally at works. 

Speaker 3 (45:46):
And then we have a couple contacts that operate in Oregon government that are really excited about what we're doing from a PR standpoint that I think will help back our voice here and provide more consumer and agent education with this in mind. But this is a focus point in conversation around what we're really building towards with all of our agents that I think sets a good tone for our culture because it doesn't matter what side of the spectrum you're on politically, I think everybody can agree that housing is a basic human right. 

Speaker 1 (46:26):
John, anything you want to add to that vision, whether it's on that operational efficiency side or whether it's on affordable housing? 

Speaker 4 (46:34):
I think Winston nailed that. I think the key there is like we're focused on that foundation that we talked about. And then the stronger we get through middle school and high school, it's going to allow us to open up doors and do far more things that are interesting, but that's the part of being patient and building. And I think that this is kind of the north star when you really break it down, but you can't get start in high school. You got to start small. 

Speaker 1 (47:00):
Yeah, it's funny. It reminds me of, as part of an organization before I joined Followup Boss, and there's a very strong, clear mission underneath that. It was to rehumanize the digital experience and rehumanize communication. And as we would talk internally and get excited about customer success stories and different achievements and pieces of positive feedback that validated our concepts and that people wanted to join this movement and advance it further, we always also reminded ourselves of our privilege to do it was dependent on our ability to do it profitably. Our ability to keep going and to do the things that are two years away are dependent on having a solid foundation to work from. And the better the foundation, the better the operation, the more profitable it is, the more we can find profit in places where it's reasonable, the more privilege we give ourselves to fulfill our mission and to find more people to keep a movement going forward. 

Speaker 3 (48:00):
Yeah. Why continue to show up if we don't have this long-term vision and high social impact? And I think that creates good culture and engagement with staff and clientele as well. 

Speaker 4 (48:12):
A lot of people have this desire, they have a desire on this big idea. They want to do this, they have this big goal, but it's actually just a desire because you're always going to want more. So until you really get kind of your house in order, you're just dreaming and you shouldn't stop dreaming by any means, but you're also like, you could be spending that time to get you and accelerate to being able to go fulfill your mission if you get everything really tight. 

Speaker 1 (48:42):
Yeah. Okay. Appreciate you guys spending almost an hour with me. I wish you continued success on this mission throughout 2026. Before I let you go, I got three pairs of closing questions. I've already asked all of these of you, Winston, so we're going to go back and forth. John, I'll give you the first pair of questions. You can answer one or the other. Some people like to answer both. You can do whatever you want. What is your very favorite team to root for besides works or what is the best team you've ever been a member of besides works? 

Speaker 4 (49:10):
I'll say to Seattle Kraken. I was an original season ticket holder. There were 40,000 people that ended up on the wait list and to be a part of a team from the beginning and to see them grow and struggle and see the obstacles was pretty cool. I was also a season ticket holder the second year, and we were even worse the second year, I believe. So I don't know, by nature, I like building and I don't look at every negative as a negative. I actually look at that as the learning experience and being a part of a pro hockey team and for the first two years was really, really super cool. And I still watch every hockey game I can here in Denver. 

Speaker 1 (49:48):
I love the way the NHL does the expansion kind of draft for new franchises. Winston, what is one of your most frivolous purchases or what's a cheapskate habit you hold onto even though you probably don't need to? Last time you talked about how expensive your selections of office furniture were. 

Speaker 3 (50:05):
Oh yeah. I mean, yeah. And at the start of my career, it's interesting, it used to be in the 1950s, 60s where a lot of this old heavily guarded real estate industries is today, it's all about like you hire the patriarch in your neighborhood who knows the most amount of people. It's like if you get the house in front of more people, it's going to sell for a higher dollar amount. Now, all of a sudden when we sell a house, it all comes back to how we're front loading the work, how we're preparing that house for the market. Once photos are taken, we really don't have a lot of control and pricing. And so I always thought it was funny how walking into a traditional real estate office felt kind of like stuffy, dropdown ceiling, like fluorescent light. 

Speaker 3 (50:56):
If a client sees that, it's like, why would they hire that brokerage? There's an emphasis in design and marketing that I'm really passionate about. We just opened four offices throughout the Pacific Northwest and I've designed every one of them with a lot of intention to propel a good feeling when you walk in and I'm really excited about that. I want to answer the team question. My favorite team is working with Zillow. And I think there's this huge misconception in the industry that like Zillow's this corporate bad guy. Zillow only makes up what like 5% of total market share and production across the country. They're still kind of the underdogs. And I think it's easy to blame Zillow because they're challenging a very traditional, heavily guarded industry, but Zillow is completely diversifying the industry and providing more equal access to education and more equal access for agents who never would have had a shot. 

Speaker 3 (52:08):
And it's working with them. I've learned so much in how to run a big business, but the people in leadership at Zillow, I really look up to and we've just continued to learn a lot from them. So Zillow's my favorite team. 

Speaker 1 (52:24):
Thank you for sharing that. Last one, John. What does it look like? What are you doing when you're investing time in either A, learning, growing, and developing, or B, resting, relaxing, and recharging? 

Speaker 4 (52:37):
I kind of look at both as the same, to tell you the truth. I'm a sucker for bad reality TV and sports and movies, bad movies like point break. But when I'm doing that, I'm also on Yahoo Finance, I'm on Twitter, I'm also often listening to a podcast at the same time. And a lot of that is on tech enablement, AI, but more so on finance. And so learning about financial literacy, I have a deep passion for getting time back, knowing that time is our biggest asset. And so I spend a lot of time kind of digesting the markets, business models, the financial analysis, all the different data points. But then what I like it, I didn't always use Twitter or I don't really use it. I actually just kind of repost, but Twitter allows you to curate information from people that you want to learn from. 

Speaker 4 (53:29):
And so every day I kind of make sure that I'm up to date. And so tonight, once I'm done working, I won't really stop working. I'll be on Twitter going through eight hours of posts and articles and podcasts so that I can continue to learn. And that's rest for me. 

Speaker 1 (53:45):
Yeah. How long did it take you to really dial in your feed so that it was what you wanted? Because that's where I gave up. I was following too many people. It got crazy. And I know that there is a better version of Twitter or X on the other side of some effort. I just never felt like putting in the effort because I didn't know how much it was going to take. 

Speaker 4 (54:08):
I just started back at zero. 

Speaker 1 (54:10):
Oh, good. There you 

Speaker 4 (54:11):
Go. That's it. I basically unfollowed everybody and then I looked for people that were intelligent and I make sure that the people that I follow are, there's no bias. So I follow all sides so that I can continue to learn and see what's happening. And then you start to see different people following different people and sometimes people will say, "Hey, follow this person." I think it's a really great way with the right mindset to get neutrality in your newsfeed and to follow people that are forward-looking and thinking about certain things. Same with podcasts. 

Speaker 1 (54:42):
Cool. Zero base. That's where we got to go. If someone wants to catch up, learn more, follow you, connect with you. Winston, where should they go? 

Speaker 3 (54:50):
They should go to Instagram and follow Works. I think that's the best place to do it. That is Works Real Estate Co. 

Speaker 1 (54:58):
That's linked up down below. John, anything you want to add to the link list? 

Speaker 4 (55:02):
Just name. I'm on the phone all the time, as is Winston. We love talking to people. We're industry people, so we love talking about building innovation in the industry, where things are going, but ultimately it's a small community of professionals and I think we all need to collaborate more and more often. 

Speaker 1 (55:16):
Cool. And I'll pick up on a phrase that you used, Winston, set swords down and stop making fake fights and move forward for the betterment of the consumer and then ultimately for what housing is in America. 

Speaker 3 (55:29):
Yes. 

Speaker 1 (55:30):
Yep. Well, I appreciate you guys so much. I wish you again success in 2026. 

Speaker 4 (55:35):
Thanks, Ethan. Great times, Ethan. Thank you. 

Speaker 2 (55:38):
Thanks for checking out this episode of Team OS. Get quick insights all the time by checking out Real Estate TeamOS on Instagram and on TikTok.