Speaker 1 (00:00):
How an 18 agent team became a 50 person brokerage. One big question, two big ideas and two hard rules behind the business model. The five-step three bucket process driving 200 pieces of content every month and a critical can't misstep in hiring staff that separates performance from promises. Devin Traian, owner of Talk Realty, shares all that and much more in this conversation. And the story starts with him arriving in Hawaii at age 19, hungry, broke, and eager to learn. Get tips you can use today based on his experience over the past dozen plus years. Right now on Real Estate Team os,

Speaker 2 (00:42):
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

Speaker 1 (00:56):
Butte. Devin, we connected at Unlock late last year. I really appreciate you spending time with these episodes and sharing them with your team. Welcome to your episode on Real Estate Team os

Speaker 3 (01:06):
Awesome. Super excited to be here

Speaker 1 (01:08):
Where we start, which is a must have characteristic of a high performing team.

Speaker 3 (01:13):
I think the one thing if I really boil it down to is the ability to improve. It's like as long as it doesn't matter what other characteristics you have, as long as you're willing to get better at the things you're doing, you're going to be successful no matter. What

Speaker 1 (01:29):
Were some of the key things that you needed to improve on just as an agent getting going? What was it like compared to what you expected and what were some areas you worked to improve on?

Speaker 3 (01:41):
Yeah, so when I started, I was 19. I didn't know anything. I didn't know anybody. I didn't know what a mortgage was. I didn't even know you could own a house at that point. It was all foreign to me. And so when I got into the industry, I was like, oh my God, I know nothing. I'm oblivious to this. And so I early on got exposed to script practice and I was like, okay, if I don't know what I'm talking about at I at least I can practice it and sound like I know what I'm talking about. And that's kind of the thing that helped me build confidence because you get out there and you try something and it doesn't work and then you try it a different way and you're like, oh, that worked pretty well. And then you do it again. You're like, oh, this play or this thing seems to keep working. So for me it was just having the actual real estate conversation, being able to talk. That's what took me the longest to learn years.

Speaker 1 (02:38):
Was that from the organization that you were with? Were you going to events or where did you develop scripting and some of the other basic skills? Was that provided with the first brokers that you joined?

Speaker 3 (02:52):
I had a listing appointment and I watched this video on YouTube from Mike Ferry years. This is like 15, 12 years ago. And he's like, okay, say these things, say these things. And so I was driving to the appointment and I was listening to the scripts, and what I would do is I would just show up and go in and I would just say the words and then sometimes they would say good things, sometimes they wouldn't. But that's where I initially learned it. And then I learned it from Keller Williams and then I learned it from Tom Ferry. And then there's a few other YouTubers that did it. And so I wasn't partial. I was happy to take the knowledge from anyone that would provide it.

Speaker 1 (03:32):
Awesome. What was going on for you? Where were you in the arc of your real estate journey when team occurred to you? What was going on in your business when you said, you know what? I think I'm going to start a team.

Speaker 3 (03:42):
Sure, sure. So basically I was 19. I started, I knew nothing. And for the first five years I sold very little year one, nothing. Year two, I sold a home. Year three I sold three homes, and then it was like six and then 13. So it kept growing exponentially, which was cool. And then by year seven, I was probably doing around 25 units, 300, 400,000 GC. I was like, oh, this is pretty cool. But it took me a long time. I know some agents come in and knock it out. The first year, that was not me. I sucked. The reason I went after expired listings early on in my career is because I didn't have a car very early on. And so I had a moped. And so I was like, well, I've got a moped and everyone would tell you that you have to go pick up your buyer and bring them on showings.

Speaker 3 (04:36):
It's like, okay, well, they're probably not going to want to get on my moped with me, so I can't work with buyers, which means I have to work with sellers. I was like, okay, so I need sellers. And then I was like, well, I don't have a database. I don't know anyone. How do I get sellers? And there was all these ideas that you can knock on doors, you can do this or you can cold call expired listings. I was like, oh, that seems interesting, because they already wanted to sell versus a door knocking. They have no interest. Or as far as I was aware, I was like, oh, that seems really easy. I call them, I ask 'em if they want to sell again, and then I show up to their house. It wasn't that easy, but it sounds nice. It sounds nice in the beginning.

Speaker 3 (05:17):
And so what I would do is I would book the appointment and then I would park my moped a couple blocks down, and then I would walk up and they'd always be like, oh, how come you didn't park in the driveway? And I'd always be like, oh, I found great street parking way back there. And they're just like, okay. And so early on, I was so bad at it. And I remember the first listing, I actually took these amazing clients. I show up, it was a fourplex. I had no idea what I was doing. And all I remember was I was just like, okay, my job, I'm just going to repeat the words that Mike Ferry told me to say. And so I kept saying the words and I was like, okay, and are you ready to list with me that whole thing? And they're like, yes, we are. And I was like, oh, what do I do now? And I was great, and I grabbed the paper, I was like, please sign here. And they signed. And then in the video with Mike Ferry, he's like, just don't stay much longer after they sign. Don't give yourself an opportunity to lose the sale. So as soon as they signed, I was like, thank you very much. Goodbye. And I just dipped.

Speaker 3 (06:28):
I sprinted out. I was so nervous I would lose it at that point. That was the beginning stage of the arc. And then eventually I got so busy where I had way more clients I could handle. And that's when I started bringing team members in. Not because I wanted to build a team, but I just needed help. And I was very adamant against the team model early on because everybody in my market names the team after themselves. And I didn't love that. I was like, I don't want it to be the Devon show. I felt like it was kind of corny and whatever. And so everybody kept joining. Eventually I had this team of six people and there was no team name. It was not official, but the clients were getting confused and they're like, wait, who's Devin? What is this? What is this? I thought you were Keller Williams. I thought you were this. And I was like, God, damnit, we need a team name. Okay, fine. And then pineapple in Hawaii is the symbol of hospitality. I was like, okay, pineapple, pineapple homes, let's do it. And we ran with that for at least in another five or six years before we launched the brokerage.

Speaker 1 (07:32):
The early folks that came around you A was there, did you have an assistant and then B, was it the traditional model where you started with buyer's agents? Or were you just bringing on folks from the brokerage that you liked and that you seemed to work well with?

Speaker 3 (07:47):
Yeah, so I had an assistant, so back then, oh man, it's funny you don't know anything about business or I didn't early on. And so you only kind of know the problems you have, and so you don't think about the issues in the way that maybe a normal business operator does. So I knew a problem I had in my business was I didn't waking up early, I hated it. Fortunately, I've knocked that habit, so I was really bad at getting out of bed. And the second thing was I didn't really enjoy or likely generating. And I was like, okay, well, I really should solve these problems because this is like, I could see how this would become a thing. So after I had just a little bit of money, the first hire was an assistant and her job was to come sit next to me and just take notes and tell me who to call and kind of just click the button while it's calling and just hand it to me.

Speaker 3 (08:49):
And so I pretty much told her, I was like, look, I don't want you to do anything other than just keep me on the phone. That's all you're going to do. And if I'm not ready to do calls, whenever you come in, your job is to just sit there and get paid and drink coffee. That's all you do. And they loved it. They're like, okay. And so my very first role was an assistant who would just take notes, help me make calls, prep my call list, that whole thing, and that accountability because they're waiting for you to be there at 8:00 AM. And so I would typically, I have no problem speaking out at a

Speaker 1 (09:22):
Stage where you're looking to burn cash.

Speaker 3 (09:24):
No, no, no. So I was like, oh, I am paying this girl to do this thing. I was like, well, she's going to be there at eight. I don't care if I'm late, but she's going to care. And then I'm just like, ah, it's not good. So I would show up on time and do my calls, and that really helped me keep on top of it. But then I still had the issue of waking up early, which I still hated doing. And so I hired a more or less like a housekeeper. And her job, Karen, she's lovely. It was like this little older lady, and she would come to my house around 5:00 AM she'd knock on my she'd, let herself in, she'd knock on my bedroom door, she'd wake me up and I would just snooze my alarm clock. But when she's at your door like, Devin, time to wake up, you can't snooze it. It can't be like, oh. And so those were the first two hires I ever made, which I think is great.

Speaker 1 (10:21):
And it's functionally for your own accountability, that's all it

Speaker 3 (10:24):
Was. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (10:25):
Yeah. Describe Pineapple Homes as it is today, market size, structure, culture, anything you want to share to kind of characterize where you are here in early 2026?

Speaker 3 (10:37):
Sure. So Pineapple Homes has kind of slowly been phased out. Now, the name of the brokerages talk, TALK, let's talk. And so we kind of took the team model and then turned it into this Team Ridge style, I suppose you could call it. And so when we transitioned, we had 18 agents on the team, and then we went to the brokerage. We brought all of them with us except for one. And then now the brokerage, we have 42 agents and roughly 10 staff, so a little over 50 people. And so we're rocking and rolling. Yeah, it's pretty cool. We're actually the fastest growing brokerage in Hawaii by a significant margin. I look at it every single day.

Speaker 1 (11:22):
Awesome. Good for you. So let's spend a few minutes in that.

Speaker 3 (11:26):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (11:27):
Talk about the evolution of Pineapple Homes. I mean, you introduced the beginning of it, you were really busy, so you brought some folks around you. You got it up to 18 agents. So talk about the evolution of pineapple Homes and when brokerage occurred to you, what was going on? Why did that make sense? Why was that the next right step for you and your vision?

Speaker 3 (11:49):
I was running the team model for five, seven-ish years, depending on when you want to call it. And I had noticed that the model of a team was that I would often bring in brand new agents, spend anywhere from a year to three or four years with them, and then naturally they wanted to grow. And so I kind of battled with that. I kind of knocked my head against that wall for a while, and I was like, some agents, not all, but some agents don't necessarily want to be a part of a team, and that's totally fine. And so I kind of realized, I was like, am I wanting to be a team because it's convenient and I don't want to get e and o and I don't want to deal with these broker problems and do this thing, or am I wanting to be a team because I really want to give what's best to the agents in my company?

Speaker 3 (12:57):
And so I kind of went round and round with that for a little while, and I realized that as a team model, no rule that says I can't just take that and be a brokerage and offer the same exact set of services, but then the agents don't pay the team and the brokerage simultaneously. And that doesn't mean it's right for everybody. I found that I could do that, and it may be, being in Hawaii, we're a little bit more of an island where it's less of a big deal if you're part of a brokerage or not. And so I really looked at it from the angle of I wanted the agents on my team to have the best opportunities. I wanted them to have the ability for growth. And even the same reason I named the team Pineapple Homes versus after Dev and trying is when I joined an organization, I want to feel like the star myself.

Speaker 3 (13:44):
When I was with Keller Williams, I didn't necessarily feel like the star was like KW was a thing, and I was kind of the helper. And so I wanted the agents in my company, I wanted them to have the opportunity to shine. And so that was a big part of the reason for going independent. And early on, the growth was, it was really natural. We didn't recruit, we didn't run ads. The big thing we did was sell. That's all I focused on. And so at the height of my sales career, I had 17 escrows at one time I was cranking. And so I took the same systems that worked really well for me. And I just said, okay, David, okay, Ian, team agents run the same playbook, do the same thing. And many of them did and it worked extremely well. But the team was initially built on heavy prospecting and lead generation, heavy lead generation. And that's why all of the agents we've brought on, especially early on, did extremely well is, I mean, as a team, we would often meet from eight to noon every single one of us every day, and just prospect for the first four hours. And that's all we did.

Speaker 1 (14:58):
Is there anything from your time with KW or exp that you're like, I definitely want to take this with me. What are a few things that,

Speaker 2 (15:07):
My God,

Speaker 1 (15:07):
That you either, because the thing that I hear from folks who have gone this route is like, I discovered what I did and didn't want. You already shared one big one, which is you want Ian, for example, to be the star of the Ian show for his clients. Anything else from your experience running the team that you said, I definitely want to double down on this? Definitely want to not include or avoid this. When you started talk,

Speaker 3 (15:35):
I mean truly a million things, a million things, but when I launched the brokerage, I said, okay, what does real estate look like in 20 years from now? Truly, what is it going to look like? And I spent a lot of time with that question, even using chat pt to really think through it and be like, okay, well, ultimately it's always going to go to the way of where it becomes more and more convenient to the consumer. That is just naturally how everything progresses over time. As a market changes, even with Zillow, it becomes more convenient, whether it's data, resources, whatever. And it's like, okay, well, as far as an agent standpoint, what are the things that will become more convenient to an agent over time? How does a company make their life easier so they can really stay in that high leverage position kind of like I did.

Speaker 3 (16:36):
And so when I looked at the models of all the brokerages and I actually printed every logo and put 'em on my board and the whole thing, there's two companies I've really kept an eye on. So the first one was Compass. And I actually love that Compass said, we're going to work with really good quality agents, so we are not a numbers game. We are a quality game. That's like, that was their direction. I love that. I think that was brilliant. What I didn't love was that their splits and their fees are significantly higher, and that cost to pay to bring in high quality agents, that has an inherent heavy cost, and the agents in the company have to absorb that. Somebody has to absorb it. And so there's this trade-off. And then exp said kind of an alternative. They said, okay, well, what we're going to do is allow the agents to keep the majority of the commission kind of cloud model, and they can spend those resources on whatever they deem is important to their business.

Speaker 3 (17:48):
And I was like, okay. I was like, this is important. High quality, great people in an organization. Yes, allow the agents the flexibility to spend their things on what they want to spend it on. And then I was like, okay, is there a world where both of those can be true? I was like, yeah, of course. Why couldn't there be? And so when we launched the brokerage, I said, first rule, invite only, unless I myself or my principal broker who I trust dearly, have sat down with this agent and vetted them. No bueno, no access gate closed. Just like I've seen what one or two people can do to an organization who are pain in the butts, and it's not. It sucks. I've done it. And so it's like, okay, first rule is invite only. Second rule is you have to sell no exceptions. You don't have to be a Devon, try and do 50 sales, that's fine, but you have to contribute to the company's bottom line so we can continue to build and provide support to our agents. Because when I was with other companies, I noticed that the more sales I would do proportionately, the more I would pay in. I felt like the less support I got and support would often go to the bottom 20%.

Speaker 1 (19:04):
In relative terms, someone's got to pay all the bills and you're paying a disproportionate share. Exactly. No, thank you. It's

Speaker 3 (19:10):
Very proportionate. No, that is spot on. I was like, well, I didn't really like that either because I feel like as an agent, the more I give, the more I should receive. So then I was like, all right, well, how do we build it? And then I truly just sat down. Well, I called every company and sat down with them and got their comp plan and got them to give it to me by pretending the interview. And then I compared every comp plan and went through chat GPT, and I was like, how do we align incentives? So the agents that do more, make more the agents that recruit, make more, how do we make it in a way where we only bring in quality so people want to be, so it's a little bit more exclusive. And eventually we just built it out and then we started running with

Speaker 1 (19:55):
It. Dude, I love your assessing the scene. I love the idea of charting out. I'm picturing a whiteboard or something. Oh, yeah. Or a digital whiteboard.

Speaker 3 (20:06):
Oh yeah. No, I have a 14 foot whiteboard. Seriously, and I just wrote everything on it. I have a photo.

Speaker 1 (20:13):
So I love the approach. It's so smart, especially the idea that you're looking at it from a long-term perspective too. What is going to continue to be true in the future as far as the eye can see? And it is that the customer will pay for convenience or bias toward convenience at the same price. Repeat, repeat, repeat. I mean, we've seen that for certainly if you look at the last past 20 or 30 years of consumer behavior, it's a hundred percent that. So anyway, I really appreciate that approach. One specific follow up question with regard to making sure that everyone is contributing and receiving from talk in an appropriate and fair way, do you have a production minimum on the way in or to stay within the brokerage?

Speaker 3 (20:58):
Yeah, right now is you have to do a sale within the last six months, which isn't like a lot, but I know so many companies who have a hundred agents who don't do anything. And so you have to do two sales a year minimum.

Speaker 1 (21:15):
And by the way, I just want to translate that to the mainland, and I'm just trying to do an equivalent. So if someone is listening in Indianapolis, that's like six homes.

Speaker 3 (21:25):
It is like six homes. Yeah, it'd be about a million dollars in volume sold or so at least one to two. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (21:32):
Cool. One of the things when we connected and we were chatting informally and in an unstructured way, one of the things that I observed about your approach, I'm just going to call it training. You're building another business besides, or maybe multiple businesses besides Talk Realty, you also opted to have a non-real estate coach, like a general business coach. Talk about either or both of those activities or talk about the philosophy that led to that. When did it occur to you to say, yes, I could go down the traditional real estate coaching route, or I could go all in on my real estate business, but I'm going to build different muscles in different ways by working with and thinking and being challenged outside the bounds of what can sometimes be a bit of an echo chamber?

Speaker 3 (22:20):
Correct. This is actually a really good question. And so here's one thing I noticed. I've had many, many real estate coaches and they haven't changed my life truly. I had this coach Vonda Martin early on in my career who changed my business as a whole. That's a great story, which we won't spend too much time on. But one thing I noticed with most coaches or real estate trainings is if you show up and they tell you all these things that you should go do, it's like, okay, you should go after expired, you should go after probate FS bill, you should do this, you should use this script, you should use this listing, you should blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And at a certain point I was like, well, there's only so much time I, I kind of want to do it all, but I can't do everything.

Speaker 3 (23:10):
And so I was getting a little frustrated with my real estate coach because it was always about, here's how you work harder. I'm like, Frick, dude. People own businesses where they don't do anything. How do we get there? And I started asking that question and I never really got good answers. And so I hired a business coach and it was just like, whoa, whoa, whoa. No, you're CEO. Okay, your job is to build the systems, hire the people, train them on it, establish the focuses, like deploy cash as necessary in the right directions, and then you work towards the things. And so it went from here is how you do more to here is how you leverage your time, not just with an assistant, but you actually hire somebody who can do something that generates more revenue than they cost. And that is the game.

Speaker 3 (24:08):
For an easy example, we have photography in-house in our company. And so for our media team, we probably spend roughly maybe a little more, maybe 120,000 a year on that division in the business. And we recently rolled out our updated pricing for our photo packages and our media days and all of this stuff. And that will break even, maybe make a little bit of money as a cost center in the business. But what's cool is I don't really run it. I'm not necessarily a part of editing. I'm pretty, I shoot video, I'm part of content creation, but I don't pay for that because it's subsidized by the agents. And then they get a huge benefit and the company gets advertising. So it's like as a business,

Speaker 1 (24:55):
And I'm sorry, just the agent benefit, they're paying less than they would out on the open market,

Speaker 3 (24:59):
A million percent.

Speaker 1 (25:00):
Oh my God.

Speaker 3 (25:01):
Because we don't need to make profit. We don't have to have double margins on that. And so the mistake I made for a decade was I constantly treated myself as an employee instead of actually saying, well, how do I hire and delegate this appropriately? And that

Speaker 1 (25:21):
Is the shift. What are a couple things you knew about yourself? You shared some near the top, but I think that was very early on in your career when that light bulb went off for you and you started assessing your own strengths, your own passions, the state of the business where you wanted the business to go. What were a couple of your early decisions maybe with regard to bringing someone in or finding the right person or elevating an agent into a particular position? What are a couple of things you leveraged yourself out of once you became clear on how you were going to do that?

Speaker 3 (25:52):
Excluding agents? I probably have maybe about 60 full-time employees across all organizations. There's a lot of things when I think about partnerships, a couple things with this first one is if it's a hire that's above $20 per hour, not just someone cleaning or if it's an actual thing where this person can help generate revenue above $30 an hour, the first thing I look at is when I bring this person on, are the incentives aligned? So for example, in our real estate brokerage, we are going to host 64 external public events. We're running, we're going to do close to five a month. And so when I hired our community growth manager or events manager, Amelia, her pay package, she gets bonuses based upon number of agents in the company we hit. She gets bonuses based on high performers that we hire and bring on. And so it was funny, I was sitting down with her yesterday and we were going through her reporting where she tracks how much her bonuses are, and we were just building it out.

Speaker 3 (27:14):
She just started a month ago, and I was like, what's great Amelia? And she's like, well, I was like, I want you to hit every single one of these bonuses and I will help you get every one of these bonuses. And she's like, I know it's great because we want the same thing. And so I've made the mistake, and I still make this mistake a little bit too much sometimes I have to remind myself is when you hire people, give them the opportunity. When you win, they win. And I don't want to say when I lose, they lose, but it's make it a win-win based on their compensation plan because otherwise they're not going to want to put, why would they do the extra work? Give them a reason to do it. So I think about that a lot in almost every position I bring on nowadays.

Speaker 1 (28:06):
And are there any other things you're looking for as you're looking to build out these functions? For example, events management and community building, are there other characteristics you definitely look for and have you set yourself up in a way to invest in a person to turn them into the performer that you see that they could be? Or is it you are looking for people that have been there, done that, and do you just want 'em off and running? What's your philosophy or approach on other staff positions?

Speaker 3 (28:37):
Oh my gosh, yeah. So it really depends. For example, prior to starting the brokerage, I was interviewing principal brokers for two years. I move fast. I like to think I'm better at sales and marketing and content creation and energy moving stuff around. I'm not a slow down and let me double check stuff. That's just not my personality. And I can have, but I certainly won't do it unless I have to. For example, when I started our rock climbing gym, I had to sit down and read our 80 page lease and I didn't do a very good job, and I still have some mistakes because of that. It depends on the position. When I brought on our principal broker, I knew exactly what that person was going to look like. They had to be detailed, they had to have far more experience than me. Ideally, I kind of was hoping to bring on, I don't dunno if this is kind of an issue, but I was hoping to bring on a woman so we could kind of balance each other out just so it was like we had this double approach to fill in a different need.

Speaker 3 (29:51):
For example, we run what's called wire workshops women in real estate, and that's a great marketing and recruiting opportunity, but Heather runs those. Devin doesn't run those. It makes no sense. And so with that position, I needed somebody with 20 years of experience. She owned a brokerage before, and so I waited a year for her timing to be right before we even started the brokerage. I needed that person. So with that role, it was like I couldn't take any chances because changing PBS is very hard and there's pain associated with that. Whereas let's say it's a salesperson or a video editor or a, even if it's like someone who's going to manage my email inbox, there's some elements there, but the risk for bringing on the wrong person is a lot lower in those positions. So I'm usually a little bit more willing to take a chance.

Speaker 3 (30:51):
But when I hire now though, what I look for is either proof of performance versus promises, because I find a lot of people promise how great they are versus I'm just like, well, prove it. Show me what you've done, and if you haven't done the thing you've already promised, then I'm not too interested. Secondarily, early, we do a lot of test projects when I bring people on. And so when I brought Amelia on, I think her test project was to build out our budget for, she had a bunch of things, but it was like, let me, all right, first build the budget for what we're going to have to spend between these 64 events. And what she had to do was she had to call the venue, she had to get the pricing, she had to finagle, she had to negotiate the pricing, she had to then take that put into Google spreadsheets.

Speaker 3 (31:44):
She had to write a list of find out eight audio video calls. She had to do all this prep work, and she put together a proposal that was far better than I could have ever done. And so now I'm typically, in the beginning of most people's career watching this, you're probably going to be looking for generalists, people that can kind of do everything pretty good, but eventually you're going to be like, no, I need a Heather who's really attentive, and I need Amelia who's running events and super bubbly and can handle the chaos. So I need somebody who can generate ideas for content. So giving them the test project gives you the opportunity to work with them to see how well they perform prior to, because I've brought people on test projects before and they do a terrible job. I'm just like, oh, okay, now I know. But unless you give them a chance to show you, you're going to hire them, onboard them, put 'em on payroll, and then you find out that they're not that great, and then you have to start over.

Speaker 1 (32:42):
Yeah, really good. I like the test project idea for all the reasons you outlined. I would do that when I was hiring in a totally different industry in a different role, and I wouldn't assign a deadline either.

Speaker 3 (32:56):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (32:58):
So I would get a sense of urgency and I would make myself open. It's like, I wouldn't say, do it whenever you want. I just would not list a deadline for it, and I would make myself totally available for follow-up questions. Dealing, I mean, you have a very specific one. I was dealing kind of with hypotheticals. I would give a whole scenario and they would need to write a bunch of promotional copy around it. That's great though. So mine was hypothetical and I was like, you can make some assumptions yourself or reach out to me if you want. And whoever was engaged and whoever was on top of it, someone's urgency and passion and attentiveness and communication, the way they approached it was almost as important to me, at least in my scenario as the ultimate deliverable. And then it would be part of the, I think that was second or third round of interview where we would just talk about it. How did you think about it? How did you approach it? And justify some of their decisions and choices and things when we would talk about how they did the work. But then I'm not asking them about something they did three years ago in a totally separate environment. We're talking about something that I made up that you just did and how you approach it so you would understand how they thought as well.

Speaker 3 (34:07):
Yeah. Well, that's so smart too, because instead of saying about their history, which is very hard to equalize across multiple candidates, you now give everybody, I'm assuming you give 'em the same thing and then you can compare apples to apples. So I think that's why that's actually really, really smart.

Speaker 1 (34:24):
Okay, so I know that just in generally speaking, I mean you brought it in house, that's not by accident. I know that media has been important to you from a marketing perspective. Beyond homes itself, I assume that it's probably helpful from a recruiting standpoint. It's probably helpful in terms of agents building their own brand presence, staying in front of their sphere, et cetera. I would love to talk for you to spend just a couple minutes breaking down your approach to your media division. What does it look like? What do agents get? How does this go?

Speaker 3 (34:53):
So I don't have it here, but I can send it to you if you want to share this document, but it's called the Creator's Compass. We run it through. And so I'm going to just go on this. I could talk about this a lot, if that's okay. Okay. So the first thing with content you have to understand is the idea is the single most important piece in terms of generating views and leads, if that's what you're looking for. And so if you have a really, really good idea, it's not like it's two or three times better than a bad idea in terms of view count we're talking. Sometimes it's 10,000 times better. So I have a video on YouTube that did 85 million views is crazy. Seriously, it's on my channel.

Speaker 3 (35:42):
And then we took that and we copied it, and we did it again and again and again. And now our YouTube channel makes money. It's weird. And so we get paid to advertise, which is totally another topic. So the ideation of your content is far more important than anything else. And for example, let's run with a simple thing here. If I say, here's a video of me walking you through a home and it's a nice home, it's blah, blah, blah, that might get you a few hundred views, whatever. But if I take that same house, that same setup, and let's say I decide to run a marching band through the center of the home, and I get it on video, and the open house buyers have no clue, or the sellers don't know, and it's like their official announcement that we got their offer accepted, and there's a marching band in the middle of their living room, and it's like, now imagine it's like a tiny little kitchen, and we've got 40 people with trumpets going through now, obviously significantly more work.

Speaker 3 (36:46):
But I'm going to tell you that video will, that'll get hundred thousand, 200,000, a million, a couple million views, maybe way more. And so the ideation of your content, and it doesn't have to be that big, extreme, is far more important than anything else. And so first, you've got to have good ideas, and that's a muscle. Then you've got to figure out, okay, what is my selection process? So ideation and then selection. Once we have our million ideas, how do we actually choose what we want it to? And that's when you'll start to think about what is the brand I want to build? What is my reputation? What type of image am I portraying of myself? And then once you have selection, then you have pre-production. So the next third tier is you go through and you prepare for the videos. Maybe you have to write a script, maybe you have to get some visual hooks or interesting pieces.

Speaker 3 (37:37):
Maybe you have to schedule an open house or you have to get some dogs or a humane society for your content like we did. And so then you have the pre-production, have actual shooting, filming, and you schedule the shoot and you do the whole thing. And then you have editing and review, and that's where you finalize, okay, which first two seconds of the video, do we do this hook or that hook? Do we select this image or this image? What's our final shot? And so you spend a good amount of time there, and then naturally you post it. And so we use something called Monday for monday.com for all of our project management. And so we do 200 pieces of content a month. And so it's like, it's an assembly line. And so we have our ideation, our selection, our production, our filming, and our editing. So it's like I could talk about this all day. Yeah, of course. I love it. It's fun.

Speaker 1 (38:30):
So talk about the idea. I think a lot of people are like, oh, yeah, yeah, ideas. Okay, that makes a of sense. You don't have to have all the ideas. Maybe you did in the beginning, but you don't anymore. Talk about where does that ideation and prioritization, how does that happen? I mean, you can put a Thursday afternoon creative meeting on the board, but in my experience, having built a career, doing creative work, that's not where the is coming. Yeah, you can't shoehorn 'em into a time block. So talk a little bit about that process. How many people are you soliciting ideas from, and what's the process of narrowing them down?

Speaker 3 (39:09):
So two things on this. First of all, I call 'em buckets. We create three different types of content. The first one is we create entertaining content. This is 60% of all of the content we make. And the only purpose of entertaining content is to get views. It drives traffic to the page. And then the second type of content is educational. So this is where we inform the customer of the process, the things that we do, the services. This is where we teach them how to be better at the thing. And so this isn't just real estate, this is our rock climbing gym. We teach them how to be better climbers, how shoe systems work, the whole whatever. And so that's going to be a good 20, 25% of your content is really educating the consumer. And then the third one, which is only 10%, is your sales content.

Speaker 3 (40:08):
So this is the one that has the strong call to actions. These are client testimonials or social proofs. These are offers, Hey, we have this promotion going on right now, by the way, I never see agents running like promos do it. It's like a great, Hey, we're having this spring special for this home thing. Are you interested? It creates people to buy or gets them off the fence at least. And so it's like entertaining gets views that gets 'em to your channel. Education shows expertise and demonstrates value and also builds their confidence as a home buyer if that's what you're trying to do. And then selling is what actually gets them to engage. And so these are the three buckets. And now to your point of it's like, okay, now we know where our ideas fit and how much of which ones we need. Now what you want to do is, I call it, so the beautiful thing about content is it's public by nature.

Speaker 3 (41:09):
And so for example, if you and I owned a bakery and we're doing this promotion or we're trying to sell, we have a secret recipe for croissants. We don't have to share that recipe with the world. Nobody can come in and see our recipe. But the cool thing about content is if somebody posts a viral video, I can go in and I can very easily dissect the ingredients by just watching the video. And you can do this across all niches. So instead of sitting around and trying to come up with your own ideas, what we often do is we pre validate. So we'll look at content that already works and we'll say, okay, this is a different niche. How do we get inspiration from this and do the same thing? And sometimes, and this is a new concept to us, we haven't spent a lot of time pre-validation up until a month ago, but it's just like, you're going to spend all this energy making videos. We may as well make videos that we think is going to be more successful. Otherwise it's like, we don't need practice. Let's make good stuff.

Speaker 1 (42:17):
Yeah, love that. Do you, just a personal question with regard to ideas in particular. Are you walking around with a little notebook? Are you dictating into your phone? Because my guess is as you're walking around, driving around, going through your life, an idea is going to come

Speaker 3 (42:35):
All the time.

Speaker 1 (42:35):
Are you capturing stuff on the fly? And if so, how?

Speaker 3 (42:37):
All the time. I use Apple Notes religiously. I've got a whole note taking system, foldered out and everything. It's very easy. I probably take down maybe 10 to 20 notes a day on

Speaker 1 (42:51):
Ideas. Cool. And I guess last question in the zone as you're going through validating, pre-validation, sorting through the ideas, getting them into the right buckets, deciding which ones we're actually going to make this week or this month, is that a three person team? Who's involved in that?

Speaker 3 (43:11):
Nico. So my creative director and I, yeah, he runs it. So we have him and then we have two editors. And so he's the one that him and I work on ideation and selection and of course prepping and filming, but his job is to kind of run it, whereas my job is to kind of be a part of it,

Speaker 1 (43:32):
Guide it, be a support, be a voice, et cetera. Of course. Last question here, actually, this is a real last question. In this zone, you find you go, or where did he find

Speaker 3 (43:40):
You? He reached out to me early on in my career asking if I needed help doing listing photos. And I said, no, but I need help doing video. Do you know how to take video? And he goes, well, no, but I'll learn it. And so him and I actually kind of over the last four or five years, learned video together.

Speaker 1 (43:59):
Love that.

Speaker 3 (44:01):
We just took a photographer and I liked him. And it's cool because we're kind of buddies at this point, so when you're shooting content, it can be a little like if you don't trust the guy behind the camera, it's a little nerve wracking. You want somebody who's also going to be willing to be like, dude, you kind of look like crap today. Fix your hair, do this. You're like, okay.

Speaker 1 (44:23):
Yeah. That honesty that we're past all of this, I am not treating you as a client where I'm going to maybe be more delicate or

Speaker 3 (44:32):
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's a great point.

Speaker 1 (44:34):
Well, I really appreciate you spending this time. I really appreciate you. By the way. Do you watch or listen to this show or both?

Speaker 3 (44:41):
I usually listen when I'm driving. Yeah, I bet. I've watched maybe

Speaker 1 (44:47):
One or two. Well, thanks for spending time on that. You might then know if you've been getting to the end of them. This last set of questions, the first one is, what's your favorite team to root for besides Talk Realty or what's the best team you've been a member of? And it can be any kind of a team. It doesn't have to be a real estate team.

Speaker 3 (45:03):
At my gym, the climbing gym, it is just one of the best, most wholesome communities, just great people. They love the earth. They want to see good things happen. It's just a really cool culture to be a part of. So that's my

Speaker 1 (45:23):
Favorite one. Yeah, that's a super interesting sport slash recreational pursuit as well. It just combines some really interesting things. Obviously you need to be strong in a lot of unique ways, including the hands and some other things that some

Speaker 3 (45:36):
Other,

Speaker 1 (45:38):
But then also just the mental aspect of it too, and the strategy, and it's a really interesting, I love that. Thinking of that as a team as well, what is one of your most frivolous purchases, Devin? Or what's a cheapskate habit you hold onto even though you probably don't need to?

Speaker 3 (45:54):
Well, so I recently just bought a Lotus Amira, which is a very expensive sports car, two seater. It's kind of loud. It's got turbo. It's very fun. There's nowhere I can drive it fast in Hawaii. There's nowhere I can, you're

Speaker 1 (46:17):
Checking a lot of boxes in this category,

Speaker 3 (46:20):
So there's nowhere I can use it, but I do get a lot of joy out of it. Yeah, it's very fun.

Speaker 1 (46:25):
Good for you. What does it look like for you? What are you doing when you're investing time in learning, growing and developing, or what are you doing? What does it look like when you're investing time in resting, relaxing and recharging?

Speaker 3 (46:38):
What's actually something funny? I've been thinking about hiring a part-time professor almost to be my education coordinator. I was thinking about this and I was like, I would love it if somebody for five to 10 hours a week would research articles, learn about topics, facilitate my education, and I just meet them. I've had mentors in a lot of different things. I spent about a good year with a programming teacher who I'd meet three days a week in the morning for an hour, and I learned Python pretty quickly that way. And I find myself, my personality is if I'm with somebody and they're telling me something, I can focus so well and pay attention and take notes, and I'm like, I can lock in. But if I'm watching a video where I know I can click the pause button any point in time I know myself, and I would love to say that I can power through.

Speaker 3 (47:39):
No, no. So when there's somebody just talking to me. So I have been thinking about that. I do spend a good amount of time while I'm driving with chat PT voice, and I'll just ask it to explain topics or understand something. I'll be like, Hey, how does this work? Or what's going on with this? Or, I saw this article about this thing, but what does it actually mean? And this is a quality I'm really grateful for that I've picked up, which is really trying to understand something before I form an opinion around it. And I noticed this early, early on. I had a roommate in college, but sometimes I'll notice, I'll talk to other business owners in general, and I'll say something and sometimes they'll immediately just be like, no, that doesn't work. And that's okay. But what I find is the ones that say, oh, I have a different opinion. Could you tell me more about that? Or How did you come to understand that? I find that as a skill can really help you build a better company if you're willing to just breathe for a second and be like, all right, why is this the way it is? Or why do I think that? So your first question around education and then, what was your second question?

Speaker 1 (48:55):
Sorry. Resting, relaxing and arching

Speaker 3 (48:57):
And relaxing. I recently read an article, didn't do any homework on this. I don't know if, I assume it's true that we actually relax by doing things that allow you to focus deeply on something rather than, a lot of us assume or think that it's sitting on the beach and you have nothing going on and you're just sitting there blissfully. But I find when I'm just sitting and there's nothing going on around me, my head starts spinning and I work up about stuff. I'm like, oh, what's going on? What is this? You worry about things. And so I find actually the most relaxing thing for me is to be focused on something. And so some of my personal hobbies, I think that's why I like climbing is you really have to zone in. I think that's why I liked diving. You really have to, you're focused on it. I really enjoy chess. And so the whole time you're playing chess, you're just thinking about the moves in the system. So the way I find I relax best is actually by being really focused on one thing rather than just nothing at all.

Speaker 1 (50:04):
Yeah, agree. I really like that. It's kind of like a flow state versus like a monkey mind or something is what you set up. Yeah. No, that's it. That's it. Yeah. I feel that completely. I also really appreciate your approach to essentially first seek to understand, and I think we would be in a, not only would people be running better businesses, but I think we'd also be in a much more productive society overall if more people took that up as a habit. So really love the way that you wrap that up. If someone wants to connect with you, learn more about you, where would you send them

Speaker 3 (50:34):
At? Devon? Tryin. D-E-V-I-N-T-R-Y-A-N. Yeah. And we put out a lot of free content. I tell this to our team is like, you cannot over overgive. I really mean it. And so we put out guides on expireds and FSBOs and how to do our social media playbooks and the whole thing, and it's free. We're a pretty open book about all of it. So if it's all on there.

Speaker 1 (50:58):
Awesome. Love that. I'll round up some links. Drop 'em right down below. Whether you're watching in YouTube, you're watching or listening@realestateteamos.com, you're watching or listening in Spotify, you're listening in Apple Podcasts or you're somewhere else. There are links right down below and include some stuff where you can learn more about Devin and what he's doing with Talk Realty. Devin, thank you so much for being here. Appreciate you so much and hope you have a great rest of the week.

Speaker 3 (51:20):
Thank you, sir.

Speaker 2 (51:22):
Thanks for checking out this episode of Team Os. Get quick insights all the time by checking out real estate team Os on Instagram and on TikTok.