Let me put out the elephant in the room, okay?
Everybody in the business of home has a pitch.
Almost nobody gets asked a hard question. This
show fixes that. Do you fire it or name it as
a partner and put its name on the door? Would
you do it again? And how did that work out for
you? Welcome to Signal. I'm your host, Inman
CEO, Tom Bohn. Oh, my gosh. Great question, because
to put it lightly, we were bootstrapped. And
you start thinking to yourself, how is that even
possible? I'm sitting down with the people who
actually move the industry, top producing realtors,
the CEOs making the big bets, the prop tech founders
out to blow it all up, and the designers deciding
how the rest of us live. And we skipped the talking
points. You told Ryan Serhant, TV celebrity,
you know, all over the place. No. Thanks, but
no thanks. Okay. And what was the reason initially?
Building a brokerage is really complicated and
really hard. It is not for the weak. Every other
firm I see is a subscription -based business
or it's run by a total wacko. Big personalities,
real opinions, and a rock and roll pulse that
treats this business like the contact sport it
is. Not everyone should be in this industry.
Trust me. I'm in the make money business. Who
would win in a street fight? You or James Harris?
Ooh. And so this is not get rich quick. This
is building a business. Do you start to say,
where do we go from here? Interesting enough.
And then maybe this is sort of the insights that
I can give people in the industry is the media
doesn't always tell the whole story. And the
whole story is then comes signal or noise, our
rapid fire segment, where we run through the
week's news launches and breathless hype asking
one question. Is it a real signal of where the
industry is headed or just noise? There's a lot
of noise in our industry. High energy, zero nonsense,
and a lot more fun than it has any right to be.
Zillow versus Compass, I had to ask it. The celebrity
agent TV brokerage, signal or noise? Ooh, good
one. People are no longer moving to Florida,
signal or noise? The rise of non -traditional
brokerages. That is, I shouldn't admit this out
loud. Where do I even want to start? If you build,
sell, design or bet on the business of home,
pull up a chair.