Welcome to the ones to know. I'm Kelly and you're not going to believe who I'm here with today. So, I have Jay Cooper who we know and we're here with Robert Reffkin. Thank you for being here. Yay. We're so excited. There's so many changes in the real estate industry and what an opportunity to have you here. So,
I'm glad to be here. Thank you.
Yes. Yeah. Thank you for coming, Robert.
Well, I have two powerhouse men here on my couch, and I love it because I think what's endearing about you both is that you were raised by and continually supported by strong women. So, tell me a little bit about that.
Well, my mom, Ruth Reffkin, she is an agent. She's been an agent my entire life. First as a life insurance agent, then as a real estate agent for the last 30 years. She's an agent today, you know, works every day, loves the business. Yeah. And she actually created a group called Plus, which helps agents helps sellers that are moving to assisted living. It helps them move to assisted living. It's a group with 1300 agents across the country. And that's a big part of our business. So I'm inspired to help people realize their entrepreneurial potential. I think all real estate professionals are entrepreneurs and my mom, if real estate did not exist, she'd be an entrepreneur in some other industry and so it's a real privilege to work for agents and to help you agents realize their entrepreneurial potential and be a part of their success.
And I love that program because I do feel like there's a lot of agents that are I don't want to say like aging out of the business but they built these amazing businesses. So they need to have that network of other younger agents that they can kind of partner with to still keep their business going. Give a shout out to share the business.
Yes, there's that great book, The Golden Handoff. Did you read it?
Yeah, it's really, really good.
That's a great terminology. The golden hand is good.
Good book.
Um, okay. So, when you started Compass originally, you know, you were kind of like a disruptor in the market and I know you probably had like a vision and do you think this vision has come to fruition? How do you keep that vision going?
Yeah, I mean the vision has been the same. I mean the first like three or four months it was a different thing but since the first six months it is just being best in the world at helping real estate agents grow and realize their entrepreneur potential. That's it. And so we just asked agents what to build. We invested over $2 billion in technology. We launched something called concierge where we frontload the cost of staging to help make homes move in ready. Every market we went to, we asked agents, 'Which market do you want us to go to?' And then it just turned out that that was like the referral traffic, the airplane traffic where people moved to and from. And so we had a lot of referrals, but I kind of pride myself on not making things up, just asking my customer, my client, the agent, what they want and building it. I think I say disruptor because it kind of reminds me hopefully this isn't offensive. You know I love golf but like the live PGA kind of like someone said that last night. Yeah, it's similar. I know it's not similar in some ways obviously but like it was just a real like capital-backed kind of way to get top professionals and then really launch such an incredible brand. And then of course the market like recalibrated and we've all done amazing. But it was an interesting way to start. Kudos to you.
Yeah. So in your recent kind of I guess it was a couple months ago on Inman, I thought it was interesting how you talked about the funnel and it's a really good way as leaders in our industry to kind of talk about how we support the agent. Can you tell me a little bit about it?
Yeah, so I was just saying that my view of the company is it's a reverse triangle. So the agents are at the top and then we have sales managers, brokers of record that work for the agents. And then you know our regional vice presidents or presidents work for them and then executive staff work for them and then I work for them all the way up. But it's ultimately I mean they're the ones who tell me what to do. I think over these 13 years what's been the most consistent is recognizing who the client is. That the agent is the client. And so in everything I do, I'm trying to get the company to realize and act accordingly that the agent, the client, if the agent says we should do something or go somewhere, then let's do it. If not, why are we doing that? They there's 1.4 million agents in the country. They're doing things every day. The answer to everything around us is in what they're doing.
Yeah. As well as the broker owners, which for me has been a lot of fun. It is like a second group of people who are also incredible entrepreneurs and they just tell us what to build and what to do. Yeah. And that's how you foresee it too. I mean we've always said that to your staff of like you know the agents are our clients do the best we can for them every day and you very much live that way. I know you're always on the phone answering questions available to the agents all the time. So you do a great job. I think that always gets the best result for buyers and sellers is when the agents have the tools, resources they need. So, it makes it kind of easy, but it's a hard business that they're in, right, day in and day out. We've done that a lot with staff trying to mirror or ride along with our agents on a daily basis. Like, it's a wild ride. It's hard to do. So, if they don't have that support system, it's easy to fail, too. So, it's sort of a privilege to be able to sit and support agents that way. So, we did that. Yeah.
And one of the way we support them is with our offices. But you know what do you foresee of like where the real estate traditional office is going to like go in the future?
