Justin Stoddart
Welcome back to the Think Bigger Real Estate. I’m your host Justin Stoddart. Today we’re going to talk all about leverage. If there’s one thing that I know about the life of a real estate agent is that there’s never enough time to do everything that they want to do. for newer agents, they feel a little bit different, and they have lots of time, but they’re short on funds. And I have with me today, some very bright gentlemen who have created in what I believe is a game changing tool to help real estate agents and brokerages thrive in this new economy. So before I get into that, I want to remind you that think bigger real estate, you can go there and get weekly updates as to what’s happening on the show, get show notes, links, etc. So be sure to go sign up for that. Moving forward, let’s talk to let’s introduce the first guest, I’m gonna have two gentlemen, they’re gonna come on to describe this amazing tool called broker hive. The first is Linden Hansen. he’s a he’s a top agent here in the Portland market, has a great business a great reputation. I’ve known him for years. And he’s a he’s a smart guy, Linda, thanks for coming on the show today.
Lyndon Hansen
Justin, thank you for having me. Thank you for putting me in front of this, this arena. I really, really appreciate it. And being part of the forward thinking community. Yeah,
Justin Stoddart
You bet, man. You’re a big thinker. You’ve proved that to me over the years that the way you do real estate, and that you’re proven it even even now more so with this, this solution that you’ve come up with? You know, it’s interesting, as I’ve contemplated what you guys have created, I’m reminded of kind of the textbook of building a real estate business, right? The Millionaire real estate agent, doesn’t matter what brokerage I go into everyone’s quoting from this book. It’s kind of like the Bible of real estate, if you want to have a business, not just sell homes, if you want to have a business, the millionaire real estate agent is the book that people reference to as and there’s a whole section here about leverage right? Now the who, how and what of real estate and the authors of the book, say leverage answers three questions in your business? Who is going to do it people? How will they How will they DO IT systems? Or what will they do it with tools? And the thing that I want to point out from this book here, is that what broker hive what you guys have created Linden is a massive tool for people to use, in order to get more of their time back be able to serve their clients at a higher level? Tell me a little bit how you came up with this idea for a broker hive? Like what is it and tell us how you came up with it?
Lyndon Hansen
Yes, so it all started eight months ago, when my fiance and I were heading to the hospital to deliver our second son. And I had so many appointments to book out that day, and just so much to do that I was not able to get enough coverage, and bless my fiance’s heart, I ended up having to go into where the same day. So what I found was a major problem that while we all have these busy careers, we also have a life. And it comes to a point where we just shouldn’t have to put up with something like that, because we don’t have the tools in place to be able to get the coverage, we need to fill the bandwidth when we need it. So that’s when we add broker hi got together and really tried to to come up with the simplest form of a tool that we could come up with. So what we created is an agent only platform, which allows realtors to post and except work for each other, which allows us the ability to be in multiple places at once. So we do that by delegating tasks to those with the available bandwidth, which acts as a productivity and scalability tool, if you are a busier agent, which I happen to be a part of a productive team in the Portland area, and we do a large amount of business. And if you’re a newer agent, it acts as a survival tool, right? If you come in and you don’t know how you’re going to pay your dues in your fees, than a tool like this, where money is available to gain experience and and earn a little bit of income while growing and sustaining your business. What a great thing. And then at the office level. It’s a recruiting tool as well. Because as you know, when you’re in the industry, people always asking what you’re doing. So to be able to bring people in some of these companies such as Keller Williams happens profit sharing. So the more that we can recruit and bring into to our business, the better we can serve our own careers. Emily,
Justin Stoddart
you know, I’m really interested in some some of the solutions that you guys are touching on here. You said a productivity and a scalability scalability tool for the productive agents, right for experienced agents, not all real estate tasks that are essential to get done. Pay the same Would you agree?
Lyndon Hansen
Correct. And one of the big terms that I’m sure you’ve heard a lot recently is revenue generating activities, right? dollar generating activity. So what if your dollar per hour has reached a specific level, it makes sense to delegate specific tasks. And that’s where the whole idea of teams come in, right? But I can tell you firsthand that I’m on a team and a tool that this would still serve me really more than a few times a week, because we just have so much to do, and we’re trying to grow, right?
Justin Stoddart
What are some of the most common tasks that you can delegate to other people? You know, essentially, for those that haven’t seen it, I’ve been privy, to see the software see it in action. And it’s kind of it almost has like an Uber like interface, like, it’s super impressive, these guys have done a fantastic job. And it like it shows kind of where the task like so if I’m, let’s say, a newer agent, and I’m opening this app, and I’m looking, I can see other brokers in my brokerage and specific jobs that they need to have done with different ways to get paid, right, whether I’m bidding on I’ll do it for this much. Like there’s all kinds of different ways to structure that. I think it’s I think, you know, that component of it is absolutely brilliant, what are some of the most frequent things that you see agents using this for some things that really productive agents shouldn’t be doing?
Lyndon Hansen
Sure, um, I think open houses is the prime example. Right? I mean, sometimes these last two to three hours, you have preparation, potentially door knocking, scripting, going around setting up signs, and the follow up with that with that, right. So if you’re a productive agent, you could be talking about a whole day spent on that one open house. So I think an open house would be an optimal way to use this, I think attending inspections, because those tend to be a long time. And as an agent, as long as we are thoroughly reviewing, we’re in contact with the inspector, we get the full details, we can be good to go showing properties or touring, I think especially because being multiple places at once, just allows you to be that much more productive, right. So some of these are going to be emergencies. Some of these are going to be jobs that are scheduled out and really thought out, right. So showing houses I think is very, very important to well, if I’m on the east side, and I need to be on the west side with something else, then I quickly pop on their delegated and it’s done, I don’t need to worry about it, we have tracking in place to send notifications, the payments, we have partnered with square, so it’s automated, and you don’t have to worry about that at all.
Justin Stoddart
So it’s so slick again, can everything that you’ve described, there is an eight, especially here in the Portland market, I know there’s a lot of going a busy market places around the country that have a very similar experience where traffic is not good, right, getting from the west side of Portland to the east side of Portland used to be 30 minutes right? Now, depending on the time of day can be several hours. And like you said, It limits your ability to serve people right at like, not only from a quality standpoint, but a quantity standpoint, you can only do so many appointments in a day, when you’ve got to be navigating traffic when, whereas on the other side of town, there’s other agents sitting over there wishing that they had a home to show. And you can delegate that and everybody wins.
Lyndon Hansen
Everybody wins, you’re supporting agents, your office, you’re getting retention aspects on the office level, you’re creating productive agents. And if you want to target specific tasks gain specific experience. So first, I want to learn about inspections because I’m a new agent. So I’m going to hit as many inspections as I can, or I really want to target learning the lead generation avenue of open houses, I’m going to you as many of us that can, that’s something you can do as well, I know that even from a productive agent standpoint, I want to use this tool to target work and specific neighborhood to try to learn more about those neighborhoods as much as I can, I think that would help my overall business.
Justin Stoddart
That’s brilliant, I hadn’t even thought about that Lyndon, is it, you think of it simply from the terms of a productive agent, like there’s a whole bunch of things I should not be doing. And these other agents need money, therefore, I’m willing to delegate it. But what what you just opened up for me is that these newer agents, so they, they, they’re gonna be a lot better served out doing for open houses in a weekend that they would not have been able to get had they tried to just walk you through their own office, right. Or for home inspections, you get up to speed really quickly, I always tell agents that one of the biggest challenges that I see agents face when they get in the industry, is that the biggest challenge is getting the customers. And because they have a hard time getting new customers when they’re new, they don’t ever get enough reps quick enough to actually become a good real estate agent, you don’t get enough home inspections to get good at home inspection. You don’t get enough open houses to get really good at open house, you don’t get enough of whatever right you name it. Exactly, what I hear you saying is that you can really as a new agent, hone in on a specific geographical area, or a or a specific activity and say, I’m going to fill my day doing this thing until I’ve mastered it. And I’m going to move on. And I’m going to focus through broker hive, doing another one of these activities until I master it. And really quickly, you can take a crash course, with not just the book side of real estate, but the hands on experience side of real estate and get yourself up to speed really quickly,
Lyndon Hansen
very quickly. And when I first came into the industry, I can joke and laugh about it now. But my mentor on the real estate side, Bradley Wulf, who is just the most phenomenal agents in person, I know, he used to put up these these segments and these tasks, these jobs on the whiteboard, when we actually white walls, our whole room, we called it the war room, so you can remember it right on the wall. And he would make me do these things repetitious Lee until they were right. So I would have to get the nail in until I mastered it, and you would cross it off to the next one. So it’s that same sort of aspect.
Justin Stoddart
It’s like boot camp for real estate agents self imposed boot camp style, like you’re gonna you’re gonna do this until you get it right until you master it. And then you’re going to be Daniel son, you’re going to be a master, you’re going to be a Jedi.
Lyndon Hansen
And one of the important things to bring up to is right now if I’m a new agent that’s entering, who am I going to call if I want an open house right I may call my friends, my friends may not be under the same liability umbrella as be right they may not be under KW. They may be with Remax. So right now that is a big it’s a concern, right? If you are somebody who’s the compliance manager, the reviewing broker of the office, which you don’t want to deal with this worst case scenario, somebody’s having something happening, you dealing with the he said she said or whose liabilities going to deal with that. So what we’ve taken away is the concern about the liability being under different umbrellas. So we really, we need this tool to be implemented at the office level, we would like it to be implemented at the office level, and then encouraged usage to make the most productive agents that we can. So what we’re just really love agents to, to request this with our office, if that’s something they feel would be a benefit. Now,
Justin Stoddart
I think everybody that’s listening to this, if you are a managing broker and have the ability to make the decision on this may be saying I need to meet with these guys and learn more about this. Because it sounds like it could be a great option for my productive agents for my newer agents, and even a small revenue stream for the brokerage like total, win, win win all the way around. If you’re an agent listening to this, and you’re not a managing broker, you don’t make those decisions, it would behoove you to take this episode, share it with it, share it with your managing broker and say we please look at this broker hive.com and take a look at what this is going to do for our office. I think it’s, it would absolutely make a ton of sense for anybody, regardless of where you’re at. Right? You guys are not just limited to the Oregon market, you guys are national, correct.
Lyndon Hansen
That is the goal. And we currently have seeds planted in five or six states. We made a great trip to Vegas last about two weeks ago now and had some great discussions nationally with a brokerage. And and the reception thus far locally, has been more than incredible. So we really appreciate anybody who has reached out to us at this point and the feedback that they’ve given us because also something that it’s important to mention is that we’re looking for early adopters, we’re looking for partnerships so that we can get some of that feedback and solve as many pain to pain or agent to agent communication pain points that we possibly can within our industry, because what we’re finding out is that there are more than one. So we’re going to need more solutions, we have an additional features that we’d like to roll out. But right now, keeping it simplified is is really the goal. You know,
Justin Stoddart
the one of the things that agents are probably thinking about is like, well, I don’t know who’s on the other end of this, right? Like, who’s, who’s going to take my job? I’m going to delegate it, how about someone’s going to pick it up. They’re gonna be at my open house. How do I know this person? Well, you guys have implemented a review system correct? Where you can you can agree to have that person do the job or not correct?
Lyndon Hansen
That is correct. And this is actually a perfect segue for me to introduce you to who is behind the technicalities of this platform. will have our CTO articulate how the peer to peer reviewsystem works.
Justin Stoddart
I love it. Let’s bring on Hey, thank you Lyndon. love what you guys are a big fan everybody listening and we look forward to hearing from you. Good stuff, man. All right. Now let’s introduce Josh van Eiken. Josh, should I butcher your name? And I do. Okay.
Josh van Eiken
No, you did. Great. Nailed it. I love it. Welcome to take to the think bigger real estate show. Yeah, you’re a big thinker. Just like Linden and UU and Gabe, are kind of the the masterminds behind writing all the code for this and kind of creating the user interface, making London’s idea come to fruition. True.
Josh van Eiken
Yeah, absolutely. My brother and I have between us about about 40 years of experience, basically, solely in software startups. Back in the early 2000s, we created one of the first electronic laboratory notebooks for the pharmaceutical industry, that essentially replaced the paper notebooks that scientists were using the lab. And from there, this is about our fifth startup. And we have basically spent our career building building enterprise software that is scalable and stated.
Justin Stoddart
I love it. And I as I mentioned earlier, I’ve I’ve seen your app, I’ve played with it. And it looks as good as Uber. I mean, it’s really well done and very user friendly. I was I was impressed. You know, sometimes when things are kind of early, early stage, they ship before they look too pretty. You guys have done a great job of making this thing. Have a great, you know, user interface user experience, I’m impressed.
Josh van Eiken
Thank very much. Yeah, we spent a lot of time trying to make it as as simple and user friendly as possible.
Justin Stoddart
Talk to us through any any else like any other parts of like the technicalities that, that agents need to know or maybe brokers need to understand. As far as the implementation, right, I think we probably have people’s interest piqued if they’re, if they’re a new agent, right? And they don’t have enough business or if they’re an experienced agent, they’ve got more tasks than they can fill in a day. Or if you’re a broker, I think that covers about everybody, we probably have their interest piqued. Tell us, what does it look like from an implementation standpoint,
Josh van Eiken
From a location standpoint, it’s it’s pretty straightforward. I mean, once once an organization decides to actually deploy a broker hive, we simply set up a new organization on our back end, and they appoint one or more administrators to essentially administer the onboarding process. The onboarding process is very straightforward. You simply provide a list of email addresses. And that’s it. And then every every agent, who whose email address gets entered receives an email with a link to complete the registration. And it’s pretty straightforward merchant registration, you essentially register with with square, so your name address, you put a credit card on file, square to be able to send money in a bank account also on Fiverr square to be able to
Justin Stoddart
Looks like Joshua dropped out for a sec. Oh, he’s back. Here we go.
Josh van Eiken
Okay, here we go. Yeah, so the the Android version will be out. Hopefully next week, and then we will offer us some type of desktop solution. Next to us on Mac and Windows. By the by the end of October.
Justin Stoddart
I love it. I love it. Great stuff. I’m impressed. Maybe talk agents through really quickly, kind of as we wrap up here. What, what is kind of your favorite functionality? Like what like what piece of it do you think is really a game changer for agents? I know, you probably love all of it, because you built it. And if you didn’t love it, you fixed it to where you do love it. But if there’s one thing that you’re super proud of, what’s a component of this, you feel like is really kind of game changing
Josh van Eiken
Essentially, the current solutions that are in place with these companies are basically email lists. And so people are constantly being bombarded with with emails for jobs. And so I think that the part that we’re most proud of broker hive is we’ve been able to change this metaphor to where people time can basically go search for jobs. Yeah, so they’re able to just simply open up the the app goes search, and they get a listing of jobs ordered by distance. Or they can go directly to a map view, and see all the available jobs. And they’re able to filter that on the basis of distance or price, or specific day,
Justin Stoddart
you know, it’s true, the inbox has become a very cluttered place and not a very productive place. Right, we go there, because we have to go there. But if you had a very specific objective to either delegate work, or to, or to pick up work, what you know, obviously, the app is is perfect for that people can be very focused on what it is that they’re trying to accomplish, and go in and get it done and get out right without having to feed through their inbox, get distracted, all kinds of other things. So awesome, awesome functionality. love what you guys have done. I’m going to ask, I’m gonna ask you this question. And if Linden wants to chime in as well, great, but it’s the signature question of our show, which is this, you know, you guys are big thinkers, I believe that every agent in America is going to know about broker hype. I really do what you guys have built or some variation of it, you guys were first to market, I think that there’s a lot to be said, for that I’m confident with your abilities, you guys are going to stay on top. But there’s I think it’s the future of helping agents continue to be to fiduciaries and to stay ahead of the curve of technology, leveraging technology, as opposed to being leveraged by technology. So again, I love what you’re doing. So where I was going with that is that you’re a big thinker. What does a guy like you do to continue to be a big thinker, teach us what it is, like how you continue to think big and expand your own possibilities?
Josh van Eiken
That’s that’s a fantastic question. I mean, I think throughout all of the startups that we’ve done in the past, it’s we’re always looking at underserved niche industries. So these these are our markets that that have money money to spend, but but RR are not being served by software. And so to be able to find that, that white space, where you have a very specialized need, and there’s opportunity, I think that’s that’s really the key thought process to being able to see where solutions like like this are necessary.
Justin Stoddart
It’s great stuff, being able to identify an underserved market, and then be able to have the skill set like you guys have, right the vision and the skill set to step in. And, and create a big problem like, like, there’s a lot of people that sit around and be like, Oh, we should invent this, we should invent that. In fact, I know when talking to Linden, is the number of agents that have been like she was going to create that years ago, right. But the fact that you guys saw the problem, created the solution and moved on it. That’s it. That’s a great lesson that we can all learn from that is that when we see a problem, either be the right guy to fix the problem, or align with the right guys like Linda has done to get the problem solved. And you know, watch how your world gets big really quickly.
Josh van Eiken
Yeah, yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, it really does come down to execution, and being able to to manage all aspects of building a software solution and no business to be able to put put it all together.
Justin Stoddart
I love it. Well, I will thank you, Josh, as well as Linden and Gabe has been in the background for what you guys have built. Again, I think it’s a big solution for the real estate industry. I also want to thank you both for you all for coming on the show today. And contributing to the think bigger real estate audience has been my total pleasure to have you guys on here. And I look forward to seeing I’m excited for you like I’m actually kind of giddy to see what happens and where this goes. And it was some point the future. Maybe you’ll come back on the show and tell me about all the huge successes you guys have had. That’d be awesome for all of us, as well.
Justin Stoddart
So good stuff into one final request of the audience and for all of us is to Go Think Bigger. Appreciate you guys and thanks, everybody for tuning in. And we look forward to catching on next episode.
Josh van Eiken
Yes, thank you very much. We appreciate it.