Welcome to Action Solves Everything, the show for those who want to stop overthinking and start producing. I'm your host, Alex Montagu, broker leader and founder of Lockstep Realty. Around here, we believe movement creates momentum. Clarity comes from doing, and the agents who take action are the ones who win. Every episode is built to help you grow your skills, your confidence, and your career. Now let's get to work. Welcome to another episode of Action Solves Everything. I've got a good friend and guest today. He's based out of the Detroit metropolitan area. Mark White, team lead of Mark White and Associates. Mark got in the business in 2018. He's been growing a team over the last couple of years. They've grown up to 40 agents in 2026. And, man, I think last time I talked to Mark, they. They didn't have half of that. So I can't wait to dive in today to learn how they've approached that focus on systems ops, finance, marketing. Mark really does it all. What is up, dude? How's it going? What's going on, man? I'm happy to be here. Thanks for having me. Oh, yeah, dude. How do we get to 40 agents? Where did this come from? That's a great question, because when I first got into real estate, I joined a team myself, and I was an agent on a team, and I grew there and did really well and ended up being a sales manager and. But I always wanted something more. I always wanted my own thing. And I kind of talked to them about, hey, can I have some? Like, is there any options here for me to, like, build a team here, build within the team, and scale something of my own? And they pretty much looked at me and said, like, we believe in you. We think you'll be great on your own. You should. If you want more, we don't have more for you. Which is a really honest answer, and I appreciate them for that. And so I actually just left and I left the team and joined EXP and was an individual solo agent. And that was my plan, was I'm just going to. I've only been on a team. Let me learn what it's like being an individual agent for as long as I need to. And within three months, I had people asking me if I started a team and if they could join my team. So, you know, I told the first person, hey, this is the wild, wild west. I have nothing set up to be a team, but we will figure it out. If you want to, you know, run through the desert with me, let's Go. And she was down. And then we were kind of off to the races and the word kind of got out and some of my former teammates, you know, wanted to leave where they were at and come over where I was starting. So we got up to 10 pretty quickly, but we really stayed at floating around 10 for, for about a year or so. And I was still pretty heavy in production. We had, you know, and I was building systems and doing all the things on the fly, you know, working long days, late nights, weekends, still selling houses and trying to figure it out as I went. You know, I mean, I didn't have a, a mentor per se, but, you know, through my connections in real estate over the years, I've. I've come to be connected with a lot of really influential brokerage owners, team leaders, coaches, et cetera. And I would just dive into all of their advice and watch their masterminds and join their free things and pay for coaching here and there. And I think really the catalyst was bringing on my director of sales, Joe, about a year into starting the team. He really took that part off my plates with helping helping the agents get trained, helping them understand the business, helping them understand prospecting, et cetera, and allowed me to really focus on bigger picture items, operations, marketing, financials, you know, all the other things that a CEO wears and does, you know, to get their business up and running. So this is a long winded answer there, but yeah, we're, we're at 40 agents now and it's exciting. We're still growing and we've got some really cool things on the cusp that we're, we're super excited about. What, what's been a catalyst for that growth, because I know, I mean, look, I think you and I met probably a couple years ago at an exp con through Marissa Shout out to her ultimate connector. Yeah, but, you know, I know growth is something that was on your radar, but look like you were grinding through it, man. And look, I think it goes to show, like for team leaders that are out there, if you're a team leader that is still in production, all the other businesses, all the other things inside your business still need your attention too. So there's clients that need you, there's agents that need you, the marketing needs you, the finance needs you. Operations, the transaction, coordination. Oh, and by the way, there's a whole human element here that you have to be awesome at to run a team as well. So, like, how has it gotten to the point for you where it's like gas on a fire with The. With a value prop behind. Hey, come work for us. Yeah, Great question. So I'm going to answer that question with a quick question. Kind of fun here, Alex. If. If, you know, knowing what you know now, if someone came to you today and said, alex, I want you to start a real estate team, would you still start your real estate team? So this question's. Actually, my answer is yes, because I'm clear in my understanding that something like my calling in real estate is to lead. And it's not to lead homebuyers and sellers to water with the concept of buying and selling in real real estate. It's to help realtors build better businesses and build their highest quality of life that they can have. And so, you know, as somebody who compromised a lot for a long window of time on my life, I know that I can help agents be better agents, generate more income and have more quality of life, and so they can design more of what they want than what I had to do to get to where I got here today. And over the last, like, I don't know, couple of years, I mean, my kids are four. And when I had my twins, I'll never forget this, when I brought them home, I remember looking out our front window and my kids are in these little bassinets, and they're these little twins, and I'm like, my life's never going to be the same. I have to figure out how to do all of this because I'd built a pretty powerful, pretty large engine. And over the last four years, I've tried to wade through the waters of figuring out how I want lockstep to run. And over the last month, I've realized that, like, I was sitting in a seat I didn't belong in anymore, and I. So I wasn't sitting in the seat that ultimately led our team how they needed to be led. And we're actually going through a transitional process right now that has me getting back into that seat and taking a lot of that stuff over. And I feel about as energized and as rejuvenated coming into the office as I have in a long, long time. So that's my long winded way to say, yeah, if I. If I could do it over, yes, I would. I wouldn't do it the same way we did it. That's a different conversation. But why don't you answer that question? Yeah, for sure. I mean, at the end of the day, the answer is yes, for sure. I agree with you. I love my life. I love the opportunity to help and lead agents. And very similar to your answer. I don't want to just repeat it all, but I felt the same thing. You know, I do still enjoy helping friends and family with some real estate dealings, but my higher calling as well is to help agents, whether they're new or experienced. But I especially get a kick out of new agents, you know, selling their first home and having their first breakthrough year and leveling up their lives. All the while taking care of their clients in a better way than they could have without us or on their own. And seeing those agents, you know, hit those milestones of, you know, getting the new car or taking a big trip or buying their first house or doing their first investment, whether it's a flip or a rental, those are really rewarding moments. I definitely wouldn't do it the same way either. And depending on the day that you catch me, I might have a different answer. There's certainly days where I want to pull my hair out that I already don't have and just say, what the hell am I doing here? But more often than not, the days are, are, are good. And I'm really thankful for, for the, the risk and the, you know, the, the work that I put into building, you know, what we're building here. And I'm really excited for the, for the future too. So I took us down a segue there and I totally forgot what your question was in the first place. That's okay, let's go back to it. What is your guys value prop that has so many agents wanting to come work for you guys? Yeah, great question. So we have, we. Earlier this year we did. Well, let's start a couple of years ago. Two years ago, we redeveloped our comp plan for an agent on our team to have a really fast accelerated promotion capability. So they start with their, you know, a team split from a lead that we give them at a certain number and they start with their sphere split at a certain number. And we allowed, we built a tiered program where based on their GCI and the amount of business they're bringing into the company, we're rewarding them with increases in their splits. So we have nine different levels and they're, they're, they're able to earn up to 95% on their sphere of influence business. I will say you got to be a dog to hit that. You know, we're talking 400, 450 in GCI every year. But we believe that if you're someone who's bringing in that amount of volume to our business, we are Happy to reward you with a really low cut on our end for your business. And so that's been really nice. And we operate in a way where if we have an agent who's experienced and wants to join our team, we will look at their last year's gci and even though they didn't do that business with us, we'll slot them into the tier that fits based on their business size already so that someone doesn't have to look at joining as a team, as a demotion. They can hop right into the leverage and the support and the systems that we provide while. While not taking a haircut from their original business. Right, because most individual agents are going to be on some sort of a 75, 80, 20 or maybe a 100% model. And they are traditionally avoidant of teams because they think teams equal, I give up all or half or more of my commission. And so this has allowed us to really have conversations with experienced agents and give them an option to leverage and scale our systems and our people and our tools without taking that haircut. So we started there last year and then this year we went one step further and actually we developed what we call a hybrid model. So we have three different models that someone can join our team under and technically a fourth if you just considered joining under our downline and exp and our revenue share group. So when we sit down with an agent, we tell them, hey, this isn't one size fits all. We have four different options. Let's go through these options and tell everyone, tell you what each gets, what those splits look like and figure out what works best for you. So the first option is our team agent. That's going to be all of our leads, all of our ISA set appointments, access to over a hundred thousand leads in our database and just full support, maximum accountability, maximum services. And you know, going into offer writing done, done for you. They fill out a form, their offers are written and sent for them. Same thing with their exclusive right to sell and their listing paperwork. Our VA fills those out for them. We have our signs installed, we pay for the photographs, we pay for the lockbox to be installed so they don't have to even go back and put a lockbox on the door if they don't want to. Our sign company will drop that off and pick that up with our signs and a bunch of other stuff. Right. Training, weekly trainings, really in depth training as well, beyond the weekly trainings for a newer agent. And so that's kind of our original offering. Right. Was the team aspect then we created. And those are going to be, you know, it's worth saying those are going to be lower splits for the agent, a little bit more for us because we're providing so much more to them. The next one is our hybrid model is we have what we call scale and that's an 8020 model. The only difference there between the team and scale is that scale obviously is paid at 8020. And they just don't have leads. They have access to all the other systems, all the support, all the software, hardware, everything listing photos, paid for, marketing, paid for, sign drop off, you know, lockbox install, transaction coordination, all of that is included still. They just don't get the leads. So this is really great for someone who already has a good book of business and knows how to generate for themselves but is sick of paying all these bills here and there, one off, one off, you know, unpredictable income expenses are still come due. This takes all the expenses off their P and L for an agent. And let's be honest, we know most agents, if they're not running a team, don't even have a piano. But that's a whole different conversation. But this takes all the expenses off their plate, lets them leverage our systems and still take home 80% at the end of the day for any deals that they do. Our third option is 9010. We call that our elite partners. And the 9010 model is just stripped down of the, of the photo, the photographs, the listing services, closing coordination. So it's really bare bones. They get everything that they get all the tech access that EXP provides, all the tech, tech stack that Mark White and associates provides and access to my sales manager and myself with mentorship and guidance. But they're not getting leads. They're running, they're pretty much running an individual agent business at a brokerage. They're just getting a 9010 split out of it and get to leverage our software and our, you know, all of our systems and support as well. What kind of delegation of your 40 agents? Like where do they fall in those three tiers? Like percentage wise? We are, we're still heavily in, in team, I would say probably 85%. But we've only, we've only formally started attracting agents with the new model in the last 60 days or so. And so I'd say out of the, the most recent 10 on hires we've made, I'd say probably 50 of them are in the, the hybrid model. Wow. So again, I think it's just, it's, it was just a, we needed to get creative on how we could meet agents where we were at and where they were at. Excuse me. And this still provides us, you know, a way to attract people into a different model where they fit. Because let's be honest, man, like we, we as team leaders, we would love to have all the, the 10 million producers in our, in our market. Right. But they are established now. They don't, they maybe don't need as much support or systems, but they're never going to join a team. When a team split, you know, on average, from everyone I've spoken to, is 50. 50, right. Why would they give up 50 of what they're doing when they've already achieved it on their own? So this allows us to have those conversations with some heavy hitters and, you know, get them into a system that can help them scale and grow beyond that while giving them time back. And that's one thing that a lot of agents that I speak with will really don't consider. They look at the splits only and they think, all right, well, okay, I'm going to give up, you know, X to join this team. But we have to do the math on what time we're getting back as well and what stability. Because as we know, real estate can be cyclical. We don't all, we're not always promised to check every month and, you know, those expense checks go out. And I know, you know, this as a team leader, every month we pay our bills no matter what, whether we're having a good month or a bad month. So, you know, again, it's given us a really nice avenue to have some different conversations with agents who wouldn't look at a team in the first place. Yeah, I think this is interesting because we have a fixed model across the board and it has a scaled commission structure with different tiers for our agents. And I think the other thing oftentimes it's agents don't think about is everybody does side by side comparison, apples to apples of like, If I did$10 million at Team A and I did $10 million by myself, here's what I get. And look, I think working around people is energizing. I think the right community pulls the best out of people. And I don't think it's fair to do side by side comparisons like that where all you do is look at the trade of what a split is. Oh, I don't, I don't. I would never come to the office. And it's like, I hear that a lot. And it's like, yeah, you should see My office, first of all, it's beautiful and I have a view of water and people really enjoy it and there's people walking around a pond and all sorts of stuff. But also it's like, come be around people that will push and challenge you and. Or what skill can you learn by sitting and hearing your neighbor talk on a call that you wouldn't otherwise hear at home when you work distracted half the time with the TV on or something like that? So it's like, it's impossible to put things side by side like that because a true. I mean, look, we. You watch it in sports all the time. It's like somebody has a down year, they get traded to another team, they're in a better environment, and they excel and thrive and, and ultimately win a championship or something like that. So it's like the right environment can really change somebody's life. And the other piece is like, what is your happiness worth? So, you know, you're talking about 80, 20, 90, 10. I think if I was like 90, 10 and I worked in your market, the one thing like, yes, the software, yes, the tech, all that stuff's phenomenal, but it's access to more people. So it's like it's somebody to go to lunch with, it's somebody to riff a conversation with. It's somebody to learn from to go, hey, I just heard Mark say you did A, B, C and D. How did you do that? And that's what, like, it's one thing to do, you know, earn into that 90% and build a powerhouse business. But like, you have to constantly be learning and challenging yourselves in rooms that are growing and evolving. And I, I think so often realtors, they sit back, they protect themselves. I mean, I did it my first, like six or seven years in the business. It was like, I'm not going to share, I'm not going to collaborate. It took me like multiple years at EXP before I even started doing that because it was just like, I would rather do my own thing. But then I started, like, spending time with more people and then couple people join my team and I'm like, it's actually fun coming to work now. I'm not just doing deal after deal after deal and just plotting through transactions. You're building relationships and you're making an impact and you're doing with people you actually enjoy. And it's what's cool is like. And you'll see this as you keep growing. We have folks that have been on our team since we started, so we're like Almost four and a half years in the relationships that you have, and they become true friendships, and it's less about, like, hey, let's talk business. And it's like, how's your son? How's your daughter? I'm invited to birthday parts. That type of stuff is what life is all about. It's not just deals and commissions and transactions. I mean, I think oftentimes as realtors, we lose sight of that. Yeah, no, absolutely. It's all great to make, you know, 200, 400k a year and run around crazy, like, you know, doing deals left and right. But, you know, I mean, even I know you felt it too, and that's probably why you started a team. It's like, how. How long can I be happy doing this? Right? Like, if. If I. There are certain agents for sure, certain, like, personality types that will figure it out, will delegate. We'll get assistance and be able to figure that out. But a lot of real estate agents are not really meant for business operations. They just want to show houses, sell houses, meet with clients, and then they're running around because they don't have any systems behind it, and they're chasing their t and they can't predict their income. So I think that's really, you know, really important to think about in terms of, you know, do I really just want to make as much money as possible, even if that means I don't see my kids, I don't see my wife or husband? You know, like, what kind of life is that? Right? So. Well, yeah, dude, I. I think about this, and I was talking about this before we jumped on, when we had our kids, I was still showing houses and selling real estate. And I remember I had a client call me. He was working through an inspection on a house that was well over a budget that he and his wife had set. And he was like, brother, I just need you for 20 minutes. And I was like. And I helped him because that's what I was wired up to do, and that's something I enjoy doing, and I would help him again. But having twins and building a family and having a commitment to the dad and the husband that I wanted to be, I realized really quickly there is no way I can do all the things in my life that I want to do unless I figure out a model that supports the things outside of just being a great realtor. And I think what's cool about your model is, like, people's life changes, man. You have kids or you get married or you meet a spouse or you find new Passions. It's like your agents can find a different opportunity and have support and all the things opposed to just going, I'm commission focused. Here's where I work or I work on a team, and here's what the deal is. Yeah, absolutely. And that was one of the other things too, is we've noticed beforehand if the agent didn't fit right in the team model, because not everybody does, They would think there's no other options and they would, they wouldn't even have a conversation with us and they would just leave. They would just leave exp. Leave our, you know, leave our team. And no heads up. Now that we have options, we have a conversation. We can have a conversation with these, with an agent who isn't in the right bucket and say, well, hey, what aren't you liking and what do you want more of? And let's see if maybe one of these other options is going to be better for you before you just walk out the door. Right. You joined us for a reason. If this model isn't right, let's get you in the one that does and, and, and run at it from there. Yeah, I think I think of this all the time. And when, when I see it, it always makes me laugh, but it's like nobody knows what the hell they're really doing. We're just working really, really hard to figure it out. And, you know, I, I have that conversation pretty transparently with agents on our team. Like, and it's, it's, it's from a position of vulnerability to be like, if you guys don't tell me what's wrong or you don't tell me what you don't like that we do. We can't fix it. And so, like, getting that feedback from your agents to then go, hey, there's a better fit here. I mean, look, the traditional agent and I've done this. I didn't like how a model was built. I didn't like what his structure was, so I went out and sought better opportunities. Instead of going and having the conversation with the person in front of me to go, is there a better way here? Now, anytime I ever left a brokerage, I knew there was not a better way. But in your instance, like, you guys have been proactive about having a model in place that gives somebody the opportunity that if they want to be there, they can if they choose to. It's awesome, man. And look, I've had a handful of team leads on the podcast. You're the first guy with a model like this. It's really Neat. That's awesome. Yeah, love that. What People might catch on. Yeah. Dude. We're going to talk more about this after the call. But like, so what is. You guys have grown. How many agents did you start the year with? I guess I'd say we were around 30. Right? Around 30, yeah. So, you know, we've had a few that have left. Most, this is not, you know, just to say most of them didn't go anywhere else. They just chose that real estate wasn't the right fit for them. So, you know, out of the 20 we've onboarded, we're probably about net. Net 10, give or take. Yeah. So like where are you guys headed and what does the future look like for you? Yeah, our goal is to onboard 60 agents by the end of the year. Our goal is also to keep any of those agents that will show up and do the work and produce. Right. You know, we're, we're not. While we, while we are operating like a team, Ridge. And that, that word's been thrown around a lot more recently. We, we aren't in the business of just letting people hang around if they're not going to do anything. We want, we want a culture of people who are committed to getting better, committed to learning, committing to bettering their lives and their selves and their clients lives. So, you know, our goal Is to hire 60 and hopefully we can keep 60. That's probably unrealistic, but if we can keep 45 of them, that would be great. From there we want to repeat that every year. Right. So just a, just a month ago was officially my director of growth's first day and that was sort of something that just kind of fell into our lap. We'd been connected before. We actually worked together at our first brokerage and we, we joke because I'm, you know, I'm in my mid-30s and my director of sales is also the same age as me. And our director of growth is pushing 60, I think maybe just over the hill. So he, he's our gray, our gray hair, you know, dog and, and he kind of, you know, he's been around for a while. He gets the business, he gets the industry and it's been really nice to have him on board. He's taken the recruiting over pretty much 100%. You know, my director of sales and I will still have a conversation with someone if we're connecting with an agent for whatever reason, but we tee everything over to him and let him do his process in terms of, you know, finding out what's important and Putting them in the right model and getting them, you know, getting them going through onboarding. So, yeah, so we're, we're excited. His target is 60 a year. And, you know, it's looking like we're kind of. It's only been 30 days with him, but we're. We're at a good pace already. And I'm excited for. He's got some really cool things that he's working up to, which. Which I can share a little bit of here if we want to go there. We all know that EXP has a commercial division, but it's. It's. I wouldn't say it's super huge. Like, people don't know about it a lot, you know, like kind of this fly under the radar thing. And I believe you know Kurt Shul, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah. So Kurt is our. Our sponsor, and he's got some guys here in our area that are looking at opening up a commercial office under EXP and my. My recruiting. My director of recruiting, director of growth. Bruce comes from a little bit of a commercial background. His previous job here was grow starting starting up and running and leading a commercial brokerage for someone local here. He was the. The team leader of that commercial brokerage. So he took it from ground floor to where they are today and then wanted a different opportunity. So we're kind of applying that model to our office. At the same time, we're looking to put someone in place to. To run a huge launch of commercial agents across the country. You know, speaking candidly, Alex, like, EXP is a great place to join, but there's a lot of other competition in the market now that makes a lot of noise, and it can be a little more difficult to attract residential. So we're kind of making a play at attracting EXP Commercial, believing that it's the next untapped market and a huge opportunity to build a downline at EXP under the same model without really ever dipping our toes into commercial too much. Right. We're just putting the right people in place to. To then go after and recruit some of these commercial agents who are at the bigger legacy names or even smaller shops. Dude, it's awesome. It's. Look, this is what makes entrepreneurship fun, is it's like finding the creative path that works for you and putting your own spin on it. Um, and, I mean, Kurt's a rock star, man. I. He's a guy. You meet him once, you never forget him. But hearing that, it's. It's neat. And I think about what some of these legacy Commercial brands are in our marketplace and I have some close friends of mine that are at these legacies and it's like, oh, we'll never leave, we'll never leave. Well, one of my buddies, two of my buddies were just at Jones Lang LaSalle forever and they've been there since I graduated from college. And so that's, you know, 15, 16 plus years and they just went to Coldwell Banker and it's like, why'd they move? And it was like they got a better opportunity. And the reality is, is like culture, yes, but if an opportunity is better for you to build something that's more designed for you or there's a better infrastructure in place or somebody has a different flair to it, business people will always look at that. So it's like this is a really cool thing from your seat. And from my seat it's like, hey, this is a clever approach to say, hey, we have an infrastructure that can totally change your business if you're open minded to it. And it's not like you're going to sit here and run that. Like there's a whole exp side of things that will support you and help you and it's a way for you to grow through the downline situation, which is really, really neat. Yeah, we're excited about it. Alex, tell me you're pretty deep in AI at the moment. Yeah, so you know, it's, I've spent a lot of time in it. I, I've done, I, I do monthly masterminds with agents, it's brokerage agnostic and I started it back in June and I've done nearly, I've done 11 of them, three of which have been AI conversations. And the first one was easy, it was a year ago. I talked about prompt engineering and how to write proper prompts, which nobody does and nobody knows how to do. So like I talked about that and like role context output and like how to prime the pump to make sure you're getting the right answers in your conversations. And the second one I did was about tools and implementation of those tools. And so we looked at it through the lens of like what are traditional day to day things that realtors do all the time. And so it's like canva, it's email, it's listing description, it's like the basic entry level things that you do every single day as a realtor and how do you utilize AI to help create more efficiencies in your operation. And then the last one I did, it was so interesting. It's like These cloud Cowork was blazing a trail, like lovable in these apps. And like these AI agents have like really taken off. And I remember sitting down to like put together my plan for what I want to talk about and I'm like, this stuff changes every freaking day. Like, I don't even know if I write a plan to teach on June 1st. When I do my presentation in four weeks, it'll be outdated. So I talked a lot about in that one, like the AI agent path and like what that looks like and how to utilize it and what those conversations need to look like and using your AIs as more of a consultant and how to start replacing some of the actual work you do. But look, I think this lack of connectivity for a lot of people, like, hey, I'm going to use AI to do this, this and this. It's like I think the people that utilize AI the best are the people that are going to help them have better, more realistic, more clear, clean conversations with people on the other end. And AI is the gas behind the scenes. But what are you working on? Because you told me you're deep into it. Yeah, I, well, I'm, I'm just off the edge of the deep end. Like I just jumped off the diving board and I'm, I'm, I'm, you know, submerging deeper as we go. I've been using chat for a while, a couple years, but I recently made the switch to Claude and I've just been playing around really. The last week on Claude, the first thing I had to do was build out an automated weekly team meeting cadence or slide slideshow for me. So essentially every Monday it'll, I was able to plug it into Zillow, Realtor and the feds data. And every Monday it'll run an updated market report for my county and then it'll also analyze those numbers and spit out an analyzation of the market for that week that I can then use in my team meeting. That's insane. It's really cool. Yeah, yeah, that runs automatically Mondays at 7. I don't even have to do anything. The only thing I do need to do is prompt it. Has it built me an HTML website actually. And when I press E on the keyboard, it'll ask me to edit those slides so I can edit every week and have our announcements, our agent shout outs, our coming soon listings, anything. Yes, any. And then it will just pop it into the slides and I'm ready to rock. And at the same time it will also generate a six slide carousel Post of that market data and market analysis with a caption that automatically shoots out to Slack. We use Slack for team communication so it shoots out to a Slack channel at all. My agents have access so they can just download the photos, copy the caption and put it on their social media. And that was like, that took me like two hours in one day, you know, so, oh my gosh, I'm really excited for, you know, spending another 40, 50 hours and what we can, you know, replace place and have done by AI that will just, you know, hopefully make all our lives easier and help us bring in more business. So that one's really cool. I also use Lovable. My first time playing around with that to I built an app for our team agents and I built an app for our leadership. So it's not anything crazy. It has, you know, it's pretty basic but it does have one place for my agents to go with all of the hot links and all of the systems and tools that we're going to need that they're going to need on a day to day basis instead of having to bookmark everything or keep it in Chrome or wherever. It's one app, one place. I was even able to code it so that when we have a new agent or a new vendor added to our Excel spreadsheet, it would automatically pull that data into our contacts, log in the app so that it doesn't require manual updating all the time. And every, every time, you know, someone new is added, that number that contact is available to our agents. So that's been really nice too. And we, we it makes it a lot easier to direct new agents when they join exp and a team, especially if they're new. But even if they were experienced and somewhere else, there's a lot of, there's a lot of information. It's an information overload at first and so having an app to be able to direct everyone to and say hey, like kind of ignore everything else for right now just focus on this app, learn what's in here, go through these things and this is going to be the place that you live. How much time are you spending building this type of stuff? Probably too much. I mean, I'll be honest, I've always been pretty techy by nature. I'm by no means a coder or anything like that, but I've always been able to dive in and figure things out. The apps probably took me maybe two hours each and then I've gone along and added some new things to it as I, as I thought of new ideas for them. The Claude, you know, Mark, what I just shared with the market update and the team meeting slides, a couple hours, maybe three hours. And really that was part of that was because it was my first time using cloud code, so I just had to figure some things out with that. But I am living a lot in operations right now. We're doing a whole overall of our onboarding offboarding system. We use Monday.com for that, which is a great project management tool. And so that's been taking up a lot of my time. I'd say I'm probably spending half my work week on operations right now, but it won't be like that forever. It's just, you know, I think we needed. We had what we had and it was working, but we knew that we were on a growth trajectory. We need to kind of level it up and bulletproof it. So I'm starting with onboarding offboarding, and then I'll be going into transactions next and looking at that and plugging some holes and using automation wherever I can and making it more efficient for our closing department as well, to make sure our clients are getting the support they need, our agents are getting the leverage they need, and everything's running as smoothly as possible. Yeah, I mean, look, like, I hear all this stuff, and I know there's going to be people that listen to this and think, man, I have no idea how he does any of that. Um, and as you've been like, sharing this, like, I'm like, man, I bet Mark could help me. And the reality is, I would tell anybody this around AI the best person to help you learn AI is the bot on the other side of the conversation that you're working with. So, look, maybe it takes me four or five hours that you do in two or three hours, but the next time it's a little better. And it's a little better. And, you know, to the folks listening, it's like, you have to figure out what works for you as you build this. And I hear about, like, your slide deck and the reporting and things like that, and I'm like, man, that would be really, really effective for our team. And it gives me the idea of, like, okay, like, what things do I want to look at and how do I get that information put into our team presentations and team meetings that we host? And it's like, oh, this can streamline a lot of that stuff that can really help our staff and our entire operation. But I had a meeting the other day with one of our staff members, Kristen, and she Came in and she was like, she had a percentage breakdown on what a time study she was doing was. And it was showing how much of her work week was delegated where. And I was like, okay, do you want to talk about this? And she was like, I have to get XYZ built out and Claude, so it's automated and I don't have to do it anymore. And I was like, how many hours you think you pick up doing that? And she's like more than 10 hours a week. And so it's like the redelegation of those 10 hours. It's not particularly just like higher dollar per hour work. Yes, it's that, but it's like you could go make better connections in the office with people to make longer lasting impacts on their lives. And so it's like AI is such a special tool right now. It's like it gives people bandwidth and look, it's a massive help to small business. If you had to hire all this stuff out, there's no way you could afford all the stuff that you have to do to run the team that you run. And running a profitable real estate team is really, really, really hard. And AI gives like a beacon of hope, a beacon of hope around that. But it also like, it's a path forward so you can, you know, be as profitable as you need to be to support the agents that you have. Yeah, it's, it's funny, I was actually just, I was super excited about everything I built and I, so I was sharing it to my, my girlfriend and she knows, so this isn't a surprise, but soon to be fiance. And she was like, okay, but like baby, like can we not AI our life? Like as in like can we not, you know, automate the, the human to human relationship that we have? And I was like, no, you know, absolutely. My sole goal with AI is to make, is to give me more time so I can walk on beaches with you and go on hikes with you and do all of the things that we want to do in this wonderful but short life, right? So I think it's, that's one aspect that's really important is like, let's not all turn into machines. Let's remember why we're all here in the first place, why we all got into business or got into real estate, right? And a lot of it was probably, I know we all, I talk about this so many times, the false promise of flexibility and unlimited income, right? The reality is, the reality is in real estate that we are always on, right? And if we're not. Our client will like, you know, will probably go somewhere else. So it requires us to be on. But regardless of the industry, even outside of real estate. Right. I mean, when you think about just economy and humans as, you know, as a whole, like our whole purpose of work is to provide us with an experience that we will be happy with as our life comes to an end. And so I'm really focused on using AI to enhance that experience and remove the monotonous day to day things that don't need my direct input on and just make my life and anyone who's around me here at our company, Right. Our team's life better as well by sharing these tools and tips with them. And you know, I think it's, it's so crazy, like it's come so long in such a short time and it's changed. Like you said, it's changing every single day. I'm a big podcast guy and I was listening to a podcast recently and they're, you know, and this, this, this guest was, you know, deep in it in Silicon Valley and you know, take it with a grain of salt. But he, he's comparing it to inventions like electricity and how it may be more benef, like more of a life changing society changing invention than literally electricity. And I can't even imagine where it's going to be in six months, let alone two years. Yeah, but with all that said, we've got to remain human. We've got to keep the human element. We can all tell when your AI wrote all of your social media. We can tell when your AI is a video. We've got to use it to leverage our human aspects but not replace ourselves. Ourselves is where we have the power. Dude, I love all of that, man. I could keep going down this path with you forever. Yeah, dude. I just had a conversation with one of our staff members and we're looking into hiring a marketing person in house. And the reason I've thought about this for a long time is like, I think, I think of the story Hermosi tells about when he hired a marketing person and he's like, they came in and they were like, what are we going to work on today? And Hermosi is like, we're going to do this. And the guy was like, now? And he's like, open your laptop. And he's like, we worked for eight hours and the project was done. And it like, I think about how many things we have in this business where it's like, things take more time than they need to because we want to get them right. And there's other distractions that come up or other obligations. But it's like, man, I've thought about this. So my staff members, like, you know what, talk to me about what that person looks like. And it's like the person that can just jump in and understand they can work their way through Claude and they can work their way through AI and they understand all this stuff better than I do. And it's like to really build businesses that we want to have and we want to run, like, you need a level people around you and having a skill. Like some of this AI stuff, it's like, it's a cheat code. And it's like you can build newsletters, you could build email templates that actually could be written by AI, but they don't sound written by AI because you've primed the pump correctly to make sure it puts out the right output for you and the systems are done and it's. And you can do more. And look, we work in as like, you have two service businesses. One, you serve your agents and your staff, and then two, you serve the clients that you help. And you could do better at all of that with the right people and the right things in place. And AI is a monster, monster catalyst to help with that. Because at the end of the day, there's one mark, there is one vision and there's. But there's only 24 hours behind it. And so if you don't leverage that stuff and you don't move with these times, like, you will always fall short of the things that you want to do because this will just move past you so, so fast. Yeah, I love this conversation. I'm going to steer us towards the end, though, just in lieu of time, we've got. We always close this with two questions. First one's quick, like, where can folks find you online and how can they reach out to you directly? Yeah, for sure. MarkWhite sells.com Instagram is kind of tricky, but it's. O h, I underscore M A R R K. Shout out to the movie the Room, which is ohimark. And anyone can call me directly. My personal cell phone, 248-88-17986. Call me, text me. I'm happy to talk about anything and everything. And I appreciate you having me on Alex. Oh, dude, this was fantastic. The this podcast is called Action Solves Everything. And look like I remember meeting you and then connecting with Jeff Cavender together. And Jeff was on the show earlier and it's like, the people that are on this are people that are, like, building and winning, and they, they're always trying to get better, and they're always trying to move things forward. And so, you know, I see you as a major action taker. And, you know, the people that take action are the people that change the world, and they're the people that change our industry. And so we always ask everybody as we close this out, what does taking action mean to you? Yeah, it's a great question to me, honestly, like, I'm gonna rip off Nike. It's like, just do it, man. Nobody. I, I, I. At 28, I wanted to change my life. I wasn't happy where I was at, and I knew nothing about real estate. I had no family in real estate. I had never bought or sold a home before. And I took a leap of faith and took the class. 40 hours, passed the test. The next, you know, the first Monday, I was licensed in seven days, and I never looked back. I just kept learning, asking, educating myself and believing in myself. Taking risks, taking some calculated maybe some not calculated, and just never giving up. And no one showed me how to run a real estate team. No one showed me, you know, how to use Claude. No one showed me how to, you know, read a P and L. I had to learn all these things. And I think for anyone out there that's listening, maybe starting a team or had just started a team or any industry, whatever it is, even if you're just an employee somewhere, it's. It's really just about betting on yourself, never giving up and doing the next right thing that will put you in the direction of where you want your life to go. Just do it. Just do it, baby. Awesome. Yeah. Mark, this was phenomenal, dude. Thank you so much. I know so many people got so many good nuggets out of this. You're well on your way, man. You're a rock star. Congrats on your success, dude, and we'll see you soon. I appreciate it, Alex. Thanks again, man. Thanks for listening to Action solves everything. If today's episode was pushed, you challenge you or help you even take one step forward, send it to someone else who needs that same nudge. We all get better when we grow together. And if you're looking for a partnership that actually believes in coaching, collaboration, accountability, and actually becoming the best version of yourself, shoot me a message online at All Social handles at Alex Montagono. That's a L, E x M O n T a G, a N, O. Remember, success rewards the ones who move take action, and I'll see you on the next episode.