The agents are the ones that actually make dreams come true. They help families find their homes and everybody wants a home. So agents take care of everyone. But who's taking care of the agents?
From Tel Aviv to New York to San Diego, Tamir Poleg's journey with Real is anything but ordinary. In this conversation with Ed Stulick, we go behind the scenes of the brokerage shaking up the industry. No offices, all tech and a culture agents actually want to be part of. From humble beginnings to 10,000 plus agents here. The vision, the challenges, and the waves still to come.
This is Perspectives Unlocked. Hey guys, it's Ed Stulick. We are in New York City, just moments away from meeting with the CEO of Real Broker, Tamir Poleg. He flew out all the way from Tel Aviv, Israel. So excited to have a sit-down chat with him and really share with you the story behind Real, why it started, how it started, what the inspiration was behind it, and so much more. But also, this video is special because I'm giving a little bit of a token of appreciation to Tamir for what he has created. He's changed lives, he's changed businesses, he's changed mine, and so many others. So, we're going to be coming up with something really, really cool that I want you to witness. So, without further ado, let's dive in.
This whole time I couldn't think of a proper idea of what I wanted to film with Tamir, but then it started to resonate with me. And what better way than to do something that resonates with me, which is a suit for my boy. And just something nice, you know, work hard, be kind, tattooed all over that suit. Dude, it's going to look so elegant, so nice.
And so, the story begins in the concrete jungle of New York City, where my team and I got the opportunity to visit the Real Broker headquarters and meet with Real's CEO, Mr. Tamir Poleg, who just had a long 12-hour flight from across the seas. As we approached the office where Real first started, Tamir and I took a load off and browsed through some fabrics and swatches for the suit we're creating for him in this video and proceeded to an interview about the story behind Real.
Okay, cool. So, yeah, I just want to keep it very casual. The point of this whole project here is my thank you, which I'm sure a lot of the viewers that are part of the company right now want to say the same thing and show the same appreciation that I'm showing to you today. Because personally, you've changed my life. This company has changed my life. Not just saying that for the camera. It truly has. It allows me to do things like we're doing today, collaborate more, grow my business, and helps me push and scale others' businesses as well that are around me. It's a beautiful thing. So again, this is my little token of appreciation to you and to the company. So thank you for even meeting with me here today.
Sure. Thank you. And actually, when you say that, I feel embarrassed because I think that I feel the same way, but from the opposite direction. So I just feel grateful for you and for every agent that actually decided to trust us and come over and help us build a company. Like at the beginning I was pinching myself when agents were joining, like why would they do that? They have running businesses, they figured it out, and even though I knew that this is a better place for them, I still understood the process people had to take in order to get to a decision of okay, I'm now betting on this newer, younger, maybe uncertain future. But yeah, for me, I feel like the agents that we have with us as partners have changed my life. So I just feel the same way you do.
I like that you say that though. It is truly partnerships. When I joined, I was around, I don't want to say 1,400 agents, somewhere around there. Very early. I heard of Real maybe 4 years before I even made the switch. Someone sent me a website, a link like, 'Hey, join real.com.' Completely threw it to the side. Don't even show me this. I'm saying this on camera in front of you. I said, 'No, there's no way virtual can work. How can virtual brokerage work?' It was very early when I joined, right? So I saw a lot of the hiccups in the beginning, the errors, but I'm very happy to be one of those guys that picked up the shovel and dug to help this company grow to where it is, you know? So, I'm super appreciative of that.
And it's funny that you're saying that because, you know, when we started the company, for the, I don't know, first couple of years I was the marketing person, the salesperson. I was putting the ads, I was having all of the attraction calls with the...
You were even doing customer support, I hear.
I was doing support. But the thing is, at the beginning in 2014, 2015, all of the attraction conversations were around, yes, we don't have offices, so how can you support me if you don't have offices? And I was trying to tell them that it's possible. Like what is it that you actually do at the office? Try to think about it. You can do all of those things remotely. And if we build a technology that's powerful enough, then it can replace the office. So at the beginning, all of those conversations evolved around what do we do if there are no offices. But I think that 2018, 19, 2020, COVID for sure, we just don't have those conversations anymore. Like everybody understands that it's okay. You can work from anywhere. You can be flexible. Would actually maybe even better most of the time. So it's interesting to see how industries evolve and how psychology works as well.
So then let's dive into that for a second. I'm noticing how Real is truly taking the bull by the horn and saying we're going to do it this way. So creating a disruptive wave, let's talk it in the industry. Tell me a little bit more about why you wanted to take this route.
I think that when you spot an opportunity or a situation that you believe, you truly believe, should work differently and can be improved, then if you're an entrepreneur, you want to act upon it. So if I look at myself in my past, I was a construction worker, I worked in sales for tech companies, I had my own real estate company focused on construction and multifamily investment. So I knew technology and I knew real estate very well, and I knew the value that agents bring to the transaction as well. So I think that as I was looking for opportunities to do something with my real estate background and technology background, I looked at the brokerage industry and I realized that, or at least I felt that, nobody truly cares about the agents. Like think about it, the agents are the ones that actually make dreams come true. They help families find their homes and everybody wants a home. So agents take care of everyone, but who's taking care of the agents? So nine years ago, I was looking at that and I said, you know, I feel like nobody's taking good care of the agents and I want to be that person and how can I be that person and how can we create a company that really provides better opportunities and just create better futures for real estate agents in this country. So this is how it started, just by looking at what's out there, what are the alternatives for agents and then realizing that this can be done so much better. I think that doing the right thing is the theme that eventually will get you to a place where everybody wants to be a part of it because you're doing something right for them.
Absolutely. I mean, segmenting off of what we're even doing today, right, with tailoring a suit custom to you, custom to me, which I'm so excited to at the end of the video to really show what the true product is from Lost Tots Tailor. Let's pause this for a second. We're now going to take a step away from the interview for just a moment and show you what phase two of this project entailed. And because we needed to be with Tamir in person again to make sure that all the measurements we took of him fit right, we figured we'd catch him on his next trip out to the States, which was Viva Las Vegas.
All right, it is 8:00 a.m. We got in last night at 4:30 into our hotel. It was a long night and I should not be up right now, but we got a long day ahead. So, five more minutes. So, we're headed to meet with Tamir right now. We're walking over to the Cosmopolitan Hotel. That's where we're taking place of our fitting. And it's hot as hell outside. And I wish we could do this in New York instead, but we're doing it in Vegas.
And now back to the interview. I saw Real. I saw that you can take Real and you could flip it around and it's still the same concept, same logo. Blew my mind. I was so intrigued with it because I haven't seen that yet in the business. So, where did the logo idea come from?
It's actually a funny story. We started the company Real in Houston because this is where my old company used to be, and then at some point we wanted to scale our marketing efforts because I was the only marketing person, and we said, okay, maybe New York has better marketing talent. So let's move the company to New York. We rented an office in this building, not this floor, and the first person I wanted to hire was a designer. So we put out an ad for a designer, and the first person who showed up was a young guy. I think he was 22 years old. He was designing for about a year. We had a really fun conversation, really funny one. It was a Friday afternoon, and I told him, 'You know what? I really like you. Go home and think about a logo for a young tech-based real estate brokerage and let's see what you can come up with.' And come Monday, he sent me that logo that we are still using today. Obviously, we hired him. His name is Dan. He's been with the company for 6 years, I think. He left recently, but the logo that we are still using is the same logo that came from a weekend assignment. And you know, typically companies pay, I don't know, $100,000 for getting a logo done, and there's a lot of thinking behind it, and he just nailed it. And agents love it, and we love it too.
I think true genius comes from simplicity, and that is simple. True simplicity, honestly.
But he was a genius. We should give him that.
