Brad Weimert: Oliver Graf, I appreciate you coming 0.2 miles to visit me in sunny Carlsbad.
Oliver Graf: All the way over here. Cheers. Glad to be here. We’ve been trying to do this for a while so it’s nice to finally put this together.
Brad Weimert: So, you had me on your show years ago in a horrible audio situation. Like, backstage of Traffic & Conversion Summit.
Oliver Graf: As they were breaking it down.
Brad Weimert: As they were breaking it down. We’re drinking beer and trying to stay focused but it’s a blast. So, I’m glad to get a chance to flip the tables and talk about you and Big Block and what you’re doing next.
Oliver Graf: Happy to be here.
Brad Weimert: Little backdrop. I’ve known you for probably 10, 12 years, something like that.
Oliver Graf: At least. Yeah.
Brad Weimert: Give me the stats on Big Block, because you’ve got these accolades and numbers that are just impressive for people. And I say them, but I messed up the numbers too.
Oliver Graf: Yeah. So, just a quick back story, I guess. We run a nontraditional real estate brokerage. Nontraditional in the sense that we pay our agents 100% commission as opposed to a percentage of the deal. So, that makes it more like a membership model. So, they join the brokerage, they pay low fees. If they’re doing production, we help them maximize their profits on every single deal for their membership. And I think because we’ve kind of taken that nontraditional approach and kind of really gone the opposite direction of like most other real estate brokerages is what allowed us to grow so fast. So, some of the stuff you’re talking about is we have over a thousand agents in California and other states. We have a few franchisees. We have been in the Inc. 500 eight years in a row. We were in the top 50 three times. We’ve had years where we’ve done over 4 billion.
Brad Weimert: Couldn’t you just say the top 60 four times? Because one year you were 56, right? And you were 56 like ten years in the business. I mean, that growth at that point is pretty sick.
Oliver Graf: Yeah. So, been a real trends billionaires club for real estate top brokerages nationwide. I think we’re in the top 100 considering we’re like a relatively smaller independent. It’s been a fun ride.
Brad Weimert: I love it, man. I love it. Well, I want to talk about the beginning and then talk about kind of some of the growth mechanisms here and levers. In the beginning, your first office, I think I visited and you had some people up the stairs in the back hall on the phones. And at the time, you were also playing with or doing online marketing for other people. So, you had kind of a marketing agency while you started Big Block. What was the first big jump where you were like, “Oh, this is the right thing,” because you were doing multiple things at that point?
Oliver Graf: Yeah. So, to color that in a little bit, when we first started Big Block, this was kind of a new idea, this, “Let’s do a membership model.” Like, at that point, we’ve been in the real estate game four or five years and we wanted to open up our own place but we didn’t want it to be like every other brokerage. We didn’t want to do floor time. We didn’t want to do mandatory meetings. We kind of just wanted to be left alone because we had a lot of experience with marketing and getting deals and all that. And we really just wanted to plug in somewhere where we could get good support, good training, things like that. And what we found was there was two sides of the coin. There was either the full-service big box, the big names that you would know, which are they take a good percentage of your commission, you come to the office. It’s very structured, things like that, which is great for certain people. And then on the other side of the coin, the more independent style was very just like rent a broker like, “Don’t call us, we’ll call you,” like no support, no training, no nothing.
And so, our goal was to kind of find that middle spot where we could really empower agents to go out, be entrepreneurs, do their own thing, do their own marketing, put as much money back in their pockets so they can put it back into their business. And at the beginning, we didn’t really know if this was going to work. It was kind of like this seems like a good idea, but I don’t know, maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. At the time, we were experimenting with a lot of marketing, which is, I think, how we met through War Room and Traffic & Conversion Summit and all that. And back in those days as we were building Big Block, it was as most entrepreneurs, it’s a slow and steady grind. And so, we were basically doing anything we could to kind of keep things moving, keep bills paid, keep overhead, moving, things like that. And that’s where we started doing little marketing projects for different people, which ended up being really cool.
Like, we’ve worked with a top surf photographer here in town and helped him sell a few hundred thousand dollars in art in one weekend, which was like for them, like unheard of. So, different just got to do different cool stuff like that but then as Big Block started to kind of gain momentum and again, to your point, like we literally started it just picking up the phone and smiling and dialing. Like, we were just salespeople. We talked to…
Brad Weimert: Calling agents.
Oliver Graf: Calling agents.
Brad Weimert: Trying to convince them to…
Oliver Graf: And just saying, “Hey, like there’s another model. Have you heard of this? Are you familiar or have you heard of 100% commission? Here’s how it works. Here’s why we think it might be a good fit. Da da da da da.” We had a question-based script and we would just do that all day, every day. It was just me and Sam and my business partner, who I think has also been on the show.
Brad Weimert: Sammy K.
Oliver Graf: Sammy K.
Brad Weimert: Yeah, man. He’s like Episode 2 or 3 or something.
Oliver Graf: There you go. So, check that one out too but, yeah, it was literally like me, him, and another guy in a room just pounding the phones all day trying to see if we could get traction, traction, traction. And then we ended up getting our first, like 20, 30 agents and we found that they were really believing in what we were doing like, “Wow, this is really good like this is really maybe a better way, da da da da,” and then that’s kind of when it clicked. And so, we put a big board in the office with 100 circles on it, and our goal was to get to 100 agents. And then we basically just filled in a little smiley face on each circle for every agent that we got. And then it took us probably another eight or nine months to get to that 100. And then that’s when it kind of started to snowball because we did some creative things around referral programs and different things like that. So, making it easy for your clients to refer you business has been like a good strategy for us.
Brad Weimert: So, I want to pause on that because this is sort of the inflection point of, hey, you’re seeing if it’ll work or not. It’s a new model for the industry at the time and then you said something which is interesting. And I remember Sam saying this also but you said, “Your clients,” and most people in the real estate space, in the brokerage space, do not refer to their agents as clients. They refer to the buyers and sellers of real estate as clients.
Oliver Graf: Yeah.
Brad Weimert: So, tell me about that frame and kind of when that hit you and why it’s relevant.
Oliver Graf: Okay. We could really go deep on this one because I think that like our philosophy in general from the beginning was that our agent was going to be our customer and our client. And we believe that if we do the best for them, they will in turn do what’s best for the people buying and selling real estate who we view to be as their clients, even though we’re a brokerage and they’re all our clients, right? But just in terms of a philosophy, that’s how we looked at it. A couple of reasons that came to be is I’m a big Seth Godin guy, loved all of his books, and I remember a lot of his earlier books. He used to talk about like, “You don’t need R&D if you have a great product. You don’t need good marketing if you have a great product.” So, our whole thing was if we can just be the brokerage that really cares the most about our agents, our clients, our customers, then that will help us win the game because no other brokerages are doing that.
Most of the other brokerages, they looked at the people buying and selling as their clients and they look at the agents as kind of like a number. Where we really took the opposite approach, which was we’re going all in on the agent, like every decision we make, is this best for the agent? And if not, we’re not going to do it. And so, because of that, like, because we really have like a hardcore customer-first, agent-first philosophy, we’ve really built a great option for agents to plug into because that’s really at the forefront of every decision from operations to marketing to everything in between.
Brad Weimert: Yeah. So, I want to go deeper on that. When I talk about onboarding staff or our onboarding clients, I look at I think of it in terms of the entire experience. So, we refer to the client experience for Easy Pay Direct. When you’re talking, when you’re looking at the agent as the client, what was different or how much emphasis was there on the onboarding process, the support process, and sort of the maintenance process?
Oliver Graf: Yeah. So, it’s 100% different. Like, a great book I can recommend is called Tribes. I don’t know if you’ve read it but it’s basically like the way you should look at your onboarding is like the indoctrination into a tribe. So, we really look at like every touchpoint with the customer as an opportunity to make an impression and do something remarkable. Like, most people think remarkable is like something cool, but really it means like worth making a remark over. So, if we can, for example, when you join Big Block, we’ll send out a giant box of swag and like cool like just promo stuff, coffee mugs, dress ball, license plate frame, everything. And that’s totally unexpected like they don’t know that’s coming. We also send birthday cards. We send work anniversary cards. So, every year they’ve been with us, they get a card. We do monthly socials for our agents. We have weekly trainings. And every single one of those has been just tailored to give the agent a better experience than they’re used to getting.
Brad Weimert: I love that. We’re going to see how good these mics are right now.
Oliver Graf: Yeah, we are. I don’t know. It’s kind of a vibe, though. It’s kind of swanky and…
Brad Weimert: Super swanky.
Oliver Graf: Frank Sinatra.
Brad Weimert: Super swanky.
Oliver Graf: Kind of fits the Omni here.
Brad Weimert: It does.
Oliver Graf: So, cheers to that.
Brad Weimert: Cheers. We’re also going to see how good the server is momentarily here.
Oliver Graf: Yeah. 100%.
Brad Weimert: So, client experience for you is the age and experience. I love that. Let’s go back to inflection points. You’re figuring it out. You’ve got 30 agents. It moves to 100. How long did it take before you got the Inc? So, do you know the Inc. math, how the Inc. 500 math works?
Oliver Graf: Yeah.
Brad Weimert: Because I think that’s relevant for people to get. Because you can’t get it in your first second year.
Oliver Graf: Yeah. It’s minimum three years. They go three years back and they look at year-over-year growth. And that’s off tax returns.
Brad Weimert: Right. So, we’re going to actual numbers on top-line growth.
Oliver Graf: Yeah.
Brad Weimert: And how far were you in before you hit the Inc.? What’s the first time? And the first time, what number was it?
Oliver Graf: It was 26, 30.
Brad Weimert: 26, 32, 20 something?
Oliver Graf: Yeah.
Brad Weimert: Yeah. Three years in a row.
Oliver Graf: Yeah. I’m blinking. It’s been a while, but yeah.
Brad Weimert: That’s crazy.
Oliver Graf: It’s 26, 33, 30 something, and then 56 later.
Brad Weimert: Later, later, Yeah. So, how long was it before you hit it for the first time?
Oliver Graf: In our fourth year.
Brad Weimert: Okay.
Oliver Graf: And that’s just because that’s when we applied. So, it’s an application process. You go through the process, you send in all your numbers, and then you find out where you rank on the list, if you made it, if you didn’t, and what the numbers are.
Brad Weimert: Once you realized that it was working, what were you doing to grow it? What was the big lever?
Oliver Graf: Man, that’s really like what we all focused on. So, again, we looked at growth as two things. One, recruiting, bringing in new people and then retention, keeping the people we have. And helping foster an experience to where we are remarkable and they want to refer us people. So, focusing on that from the top down was what did it and I don’t know if you want to go more tactical on that.
Brad Weimert: Sure. Yeah, totally. Because I think the thing is one of the hardest things in business and life in general is to take complex topics, drill into a simple concept, and just lean on that concept. And that’s true of mission statements. It’s true of core values and it’s true of business mechanics. But if you can figure it out to that, make things remarkable and everything has a role to that, it creates at least the idea of a simple framework.
Oliver Graf: Yeah. Exactly.
Brad Weimert: But how you get there?
Oliver Graf: Check this out. Here’s how we got there. This is a hotel. Oh, right on cue.
Brad Weimert: Right on cue. We were going to applaud Jessica for the champagne.
Jessica: Everything okay?
Oliver Graf: Yeah.
Brad Weimert: We’re great.
Oliver Graf: Fantastic.
Brad Weimert: Cheers, now that we have more.
Oliver Graf: Yeah, one more time. Where are we going with that?
Brad Weimert: Remarkable tactics, right?
Oliver Graf: Yeah. Okay. So, here’s a hot tip. So, everyone always tells you not to work in your business, to work on your business. But most entrepreneurs, we get so in the weeds of the day-to-day, we don’t really ever do that. So, we came up with an idea that was once a quarter we’re going to go on a business retreat. It was me, my partner, and then sometimes we bring a key staff person or something. But the entire goal was to just work on the business. So, the first time we did this, we actually went to Hawaii, which at the time we couldn’t afford like wasn’t a good idea financially. But we went to a couple of masterminds and we came up with this idea and we were like, “We’re going to go do it and let’s just see what we can come up with.” And in that trip, man, like we were just on the beach, feeling the vibe, and just flowing, right? Like, every day we’d wake up, maybe do something in the morning, but then we’d lock ourselves in the room. And another aside, by room, I mean, outdoor patio with like umbrellas and a nice view. Right?
Like, that was our criteria. We want to be able to work outside and we want to have a nice view while we’re working. So, check, check. But that week, man, we came up with so many good ideas from like referral programs to marketing campaigns, and we really just took the time to step back and work on the business. So, one of the specific things that came out of that was a referral program where if someone refers, we call refer five and it’s free. So, they refer five people to join. Now, they’re free, their dues are waived, so they’re true 100% off of that.
Brad Weimert: Nice.
Oliver Graf: So, that ended up really kind of helping in terms of growth because now we have agents that we’re really focused on like really building a great culture, like building a great community inside of our business. And then once we did that, now we had a mechanism to incentivize for referrals, right? So, we started getting more and more referrals. Another thing we came up with that trip was the Mercedes Benz giveaway. So, every year we give away a lease on a Mercedes Benz to one of our agents for a referral. So, it’s literally as simple as every agent anyone can participate for every referral you send us. Your name goes in the hat. At the end of the year, we literally pull a name out of the hat and that person gets a three-year lease on a brand-new Mercedes Benz. And so, that’s been like just different stuff like that. And those come from these getaways that we do where we’re just not thinking about like the day-to-day stuff. We’re able to really zoom out and kind of look at things differently and just kind of be more creative.
Brad Weimert: I love that. So, I love the idea of blocking the space. I also think it’s really important to get out of the office to do that. You have to get away from the things that remind you of the tactics of the day-to-day and move somewhere else. And it doesn’t have to be Hawaii, that’s dope, but just anywhere else that isn’t the day-to-day grind space.
Oliver Graf: Yeah. Exactly. So, here’s an even easier one, right? Like, if a lot of people going to Hawaii for a week isn’t that simple of an option, and I get that. But why not next time you go to a seminar, stay one extra day, and that one extra day you just implement something that you learned from the seminar.
Brad Weimert: I love that.
Oliver Graf: Right? Like, that has also been really awesome for us because we’re in a lot of masterminds and different groups like that. And so, every time we go, we stay for one extra day. And that last day is when we’re, again, we’re able to kind of decompress like the event’s over, the networking is over, craziness is over. Now, we can just focus on being creative and implementing something that we learned over the last couple of days.
Brad Weimert: Yeah, I love that. The other thing that struck me when you were talking about that is that your giveaway, the car, at the end of the year wasn’t focused on production. And that’s a really interesting concept because I think, for me, when I think about incentives, which functionally that’s some sort of incentive kind of. But what happens is the people that don’t believe that they can achieve the highest level, which is most people.
Oliver Graf: Right. It’s open to everybody.
Brad Weimert: Then they just don’t even bother.
Oliver Graf: Exactly.
Brad Weimert: The referral thing, you could get your name in the hat from one, right? So…
Oliver Graf: Yeah. And I do think not to cut you off there but I think it’s important to have both because we do have those things that are open for everyone and then we also have stuff that’s exclusive for our top producers. We have a private event. It’s called Winner’s Circle. We’re actually going on a cruise in December with our Winner’s Circle group. So, Winner’s Circle is that exclusive thing for the people that are the top producers so they feel that like VIP experience, it’s a higher level event, it’s a mastermind. It’s usually two events a year and we mix it up between like a little vacation, like we’ve gone to Cabo, we’ve done cruises, stuff like that, and then also like masterminds, traditional style, like bring in speakers and do panels and stuff like that. And that’s just for that group.
Brad Weimert: Just for the performers.
Oliver Graf: Just for the performance. Just to make them feel special as well because I agree, it’s important that you have stuff for everybody, but you also want to have that stuff for the people that do want to accelerate, that do want to be at the top.
Brad Weimert: That’s great. So, you’ve got crazy growth year four, then five, then six, and the momentum keeps going. Are you just pressing the pedal down or are you trying to, do you have more of these retreats where you find new things?
Oliver Graf: Yes. So, the retreat we were doing once a quarter at that time. So, it was like it became a really important part of our business. And we weren’t going to Hawaii every time we started going to like just local within a 30-minute drive, but somewhere on the beach or somewhere in the mountains, nice view, outdoor workspace. And we would take those retreats and sometimes we would go with like a specific problem, like we are going to figure out the answer to this problem over the next three days come hell or high water. Sometimes it was, we want to roll out a new marketing campaign or we want to open up a new market. So, we’re going to specifically just work on that one thing. And then other times it was more of just like a general, like we got a list of topics and we’re just going to kind of brainstorm them one by one.
Brad Weimert: And were there other big levers through that? What I’m getting at is so there are kind of two philosophies or a thousand, but for the sake of simplicity, there are two philosophies on growth. And one is be very narrow in your focus and just keep doing the simple thing and keep doing it and keep doing it and keep doing it and keep doing it. And there are a litany of probably the largest businesses in the world that that’s it. They’re boring and they just kept f*cking doing this one thing and then the other is sort of increase LTV for your existing client. Hey, cost a lot to acquire a client. How can you make more from that one existing client? And often that is shiny object syndrome, right? It’s like, “Hey, how do I do additional things that are totally not my core competency, but it may or may not increase volume?” As you grew, which path did you take and why?
Oliver Graf: I’m going to say both because I do think you kind of have to be a little bit of both. I think we took both in that we remain singularly focused on the agent experience. So, that was our singular focus on the Big Block side but where the shiny object syndrome came in that we all face as entrepreneurs was what other businesses can we add onto this? And that’s where we looked at increasing revenue as opposed to figuring out how do we get more out of each agent. It was more, okay, now we have this agent base. We’re doing this number of transactions. What’s attached to that that we can bolt on? And the first thing was transaction management, which is basically just like paperwork for real estate agents. A lot of real estate agents that are busy, they don’t have time to make sure all the contracts are scheduled, all the inspection, stuff like that. So, they outsource that usually for $300 to $500 a file. And so, we just opened a little transaction coordinating company, hired a few transaction coordinators, and then started integrating them in with our socials and in our back office and in our marketing, social media and whatnot.
And so, that’s where the kind of shiny object syndrome came in because we just kept doing that. Then we did an escrow company, then we did a property management company. Now, we’re doing a software company for brokers to help them run their business, improve their growth and how quick they’re growing, help with retention. And basically, it’s like a broker management tool.
Brad Weimert: Sweet. So, it assists them in growing their business.
Oliver Graf: Yes. It gives them a sweet assist in their business.
Brad Weimert: Yeah, I love that. I also know that it’s a tremendous distraction for so many, so many, so many people. Did you find that to be, of course, that increased LTV. It grew the company. Two questions. One, in retrospect, was that the choice that resulted in the most growth? Would you have done it differently today?
Oliver Graf: That’s a good question. I’ve thought about that a lot. Like, if we had just not done any of those other things and just focused on growing Big Block further, faster, which path would have been better? And I don’t know that I have a clear answer. I don’t know that I have a clear answer. Like, we might be in more markets. We might have a bigger agent count. But whether that would have been bigger and better than focusing on really we call it like the wheel of a transaction. Like, when a house sells, there’s like 80 different businesses that touch that house from a mover to insurance to a mortgage to escrow, title, all these things. So, we chose the route of let’s start adding in the things from the wheel and whether that was the right call or not, I don’t know. I mean, we’re pretty happy with it so far. So, yeah, it’s hard to say.
Brad Weimert: And you will never know, right?
Oliver Graf: Right. Yeah.
Brad Weimert: The other question is more tactical, and I’m just curious. Structurally, are all of those independent arms under the umbrella of Big Block? Is that part of the Big Block company or are those independent companies legally?
Oliver Graf: Good question. They are legally different companies except for transaction coordinating because we can do that in-house. So, that’s just a DBA of Big Block Realty. The other ones are all separate entities, separate licensing. Like, escrow is a whole different animal, right? Like, you need trust accounts and everything’s got to be very separate. Funds have to be here managed in this way where property management is kind of a little bit more loose. Right? There’s not so much like regulation and different stuff like that.
Brad Weimert: So, the other question around that, if there are separate entities is clearly you made them to just scoop the revenue and probably also convenience of the things that are inevitably going to have to happen with all transactions anyway. Do those entities only serve your agents or do you open it up to other people that use your escrow?
Oliver Graf: Yeah. No, we open it up. Obviously, like our book of business is a good starting point but just like everything else, we try to open those up. We try to, again, focus on the experience that everybody’s having. So, for example, in our escrow company, most escrow companies, they just focus on the person that hired them, which is generally the seller and their agent where we focus on the experience of both agents, the home seller, and the home buyer. So, we’re in communication with all four parties. We’re sending things to all four parties. We’re really trying to enhance the experience for everybody. And again, that will allow us to try to bring some of those people that work the buy side and to use us on their next listing and kind of, again, focus on that experience piece.
Brad Weimert: Yeah, that’s interesting. When I think about those things, having a department inside of your company that serves the rest of your company well versus opening it up to the exterior, there are kind of two big things that create extra work. One is modifying operational systems where you’re opening the door to a different stream of communication. Right?
Oliver Graf: Right. Yeah.
Brad Weimert: Internal versus external. And the other is marketing. The other is like, do you go and solicit business to grow that business independently? And do you think about it in terms of, hey, we had this department that we want to, now, it’s a business, we want to grow it. Did you approach it that way? And do you today where you’re like, “Hey, each of these five businesses that are not Big Block but support Big Block agents are critical to Big Block agents. Help us increase the value of every single big block agent, our clients.” Is it about them or are you actively trying to grow each of those five businesses separately?
Oliver Graf: It’s about whatever is best for the client in each of those businesses, right? That’s how we’re going to look at it. And I think the division has pros and cons, right? Because the division in terms of different entities and different this and that and different rules and different guidelines and things like that creates a lot of chaos. But also having those different things, there’s also a lot of stuff we can centralize, right? Like bookkeeping, we have one bookkeeper that manages all the companies. Marketing, we have one marketing team that works on all the companies. So, there are different things where it makes it a lot easier and there are other things where it just complicates things.
Brad Weimert: Yeah. Devil’s in the details there, I would imagine.
Oliver Graf: Yeah, exactly. I don’t know if I haven’t answered your question but I took a swing at it.
Brad Weimert: I like it. Well, let’s try again. Do you put any energy behind marketing to specifically grow those five companies independently right now?
Oliver Graf: Yes.
Brad Weimert: So, you do have some engine that’s like, “Hey, we want to get more transactions to move into our escrow company,” even if they’re not Big Block transactions.
Oliver Graf: Yeah. Without a doubt. And same thing with property management. Like, we want to be managing a few thousand doors. Ideally, majority of those come from Big Block but if not, we’re exploring, we’re sponsoring networking events, we’re sponsoring trade groups, we’re on the scene at conferences, different things like that. And then doing magazine advertising and then the digital stuff as well.
Brad Weimert: Now that you’re, how many years in are you?
Oliver Graf: Total for Big Block?
Brad Weimert: Yeah.
Oliver Graf: Probably 12 or 13.
Brad Weimert: So, more than a decade in. Now, when you look at that today, are the marketing efforts in those other what some people would look at shiny object editions, does the marketing and the growth of those companies distract you from the core today? Because we talked about like you don’t know, right? We’ll never know what the product would have been had you not done that but I know that when I add things, one of the considerations that I consistently have when I’m thinking about should I do this additional thing is what the ongoing support is related to it. How is it going to change my life moving forward if I go down this path right now? And immediately my brain goes into, “Okay. I want to tap bolt-on this thing. Yes. It’s going to produce additional revenue.” How is it going to impact my day-to-day?
Oliver Graf: Yea. Exactly.
Brad Weimert: And how will that ripple down to the rest of the core business?
Oliver Graf: Yeah. We look at that pretty simple. I’m a simple guy. I like to keep things simple. And Ryan Deiss at one of the War Rooms taught us a really awesome system, which is basically like a scorecard for new ideas. Not only new ideas but scorecard for everything you’re doing currently in your business and then a scorecard for things that you’re thinking about doing or new businesses they’re adding in. I can probably dig it up. I don’t remember exactly what the things are but it’s like how difficult is this going to be to you? How big of an impact is this going to have? How much is this going to cost? How much brain damage is this going to cause? And it’s basically just five simple questions. And you score each one on a scale of 1 to 5. And then at the end, anything that’s less than a 20, let’s say, is just out. And so, we’ve done that a couple of times over the years and have found it to be pretty effective with that.
Even at Big Block like right after when coming out of the pandemic and all that and when the dust was settling and all that like we really took a hard look at everything we were doing and it was like, “Let’s literally score everything,” and I mean everything, like every Instagram post, every podcast episode, every marketing piece. Anything that we were doing related to marketing, we scored it on those five things. And it took us about a day and it was a little back and forth, a little bit of a debate, but we ended up scrapping like eight or ten things. And by scrapping those eight or ten things, we were now able to bring on two or three new things that were more effective at like moving the needle big picture.
Brad Weimert: Man, that’s so hard for so many people. So, hard, period. We get attached to something, to what we’re doing.
Oliver Graf: Yeah, that’s the tough part is getting attached or if it was your idea. Like, there was a lot of ideas that were my ideas that we ended up scrapping, and it was painful but, again, like I took my emotions out of it. We scored everything. I scored it, my marketing guys scored it, my business partner scored it. We came together and kind of talked through it and then if it didn’t meet the minimum number, it was just like let’s cut it.
Brad Weimert: I love that. I mean, objective analysis of actions relative to their movement and the outcome. Direction to the outcome.
Oliver Graf: Yep. How much does it cost? How much brain damage? Do I like doing this? And does it move the needle, basically?
Brad Weimert: Yeah. I think that the, we were talking about this before we started as we were walking up, the element of one of the things that I think when you’re new in business, shut the f*ck up and just do the thing and don’t overthink it. Do the thing. Do more of the thing. Don’t worry about the details so much. Do more of the thing. Just take a lot of action. And then as you hit some sort of scale and it varies from business to business, you hit a point where you need to start looking at what is going to engage you. And if there is an action that you feel like you’re pushing a rope, at some point, you can keep pushing the rope and you can make things happen just like you did when you were little but you would be far better served to delegate that out or just pick a different action. And in the case of you’re talking about like different marketing initiatives, people fail so hard on this right now with social because they get stuck in their ego and they just want to be heard.
And as I leaned into social personally, the only way I rationalized that period is that the content was valuable independently to me for follow-up sequences. So, look, it catches traction. It doesn’t. Something pops. It doesn’t. It provides top-of-funnel leads or it doesn’t. None of it matters because what matters is that I got the content that will allow long-term follow-up internally as a company and that I can get behind.
Oliver Graf: Yeah.
Brad Weimert: Right? And I enjoy sitting here at the Omni in Carlsbad.
Oliver Graf: Exactly.
Brad Weimert: Drinking champagne.
Oliver Graf: Yeah.
Brad Weimert: Hanging out, right? But if I didn’t enjoy it, man, this is off the table 100%.
Oliver Graf: Yeah, I’m the same way. I have the podcast as well. And it’s hard to quantify a podcast, right? It’s hard to say because I did the podcast, I got this much business out of it. It’s really hard to do that. But what it’s great for is networking. What it’s great for is getting consulting from really heavy-hitter people for free, right? I’ve been lucky. I think you had Cardone on your show.
Brad Weimert: I did.
Oliver Graf: Grant Cardone on, Ryan Serhant, Robert Kiyosaki, and in the real estate space like these guys are absolute legends and there’s no way you’re going to get a meeting with them, right, like as some dude that has a brokerage in San Diego. But when you spin it as it’s a podcast interview, now all of a sudden I literally get to talk to you for an hour. I get to ask you any questions I want, I get to meet you, we’re going to connect, and then we’re going to exchange information. And now, we now have a relationship based off this podcast, right? So, it’s like advanced networking and to your point, content for days. Like, I’m not the type of dude that likes to sit in front of a green screen and shoot a bunch of videos or like do any of that. So, I find the podcast is the best way because it’s really natural, it’s really authentic. We get to go to cool places and drink a beer and have a good conversation and then use that for networking and content and social and, and, and, and, and, right?
Brad Weimert: Yeah. I’m with you. And the genesis of that path was you have to like the things that you’re doing. That has to be part of the criteria and not all of it but…
Oliver Graf: And pause. If you don’t, go do something else.
Brad Weimert: Yeah. Well, so that’s actually an interesting question and I’ll press pause on the social stuff altogether because I think there’s a thread to pull there, but if you don’t like it, do something else. That sentence comes with so many asterisks because, first of all, if you’re sub 1 million or 2 million, just shut the f*ck up and keep doing it. And if you don’t like it, you should have figured it out well before but if you find you don’t like it when you’re in the path, keep doing it until you learn the lessons that you need to learn that you can take to the next thing. And then you can decide that you don’t like it, but learn the lessons, right? Build a business big enough where you can take the lessons and the learnings with you. Today, interest rates have tripled almost. The real estate market is struggling nationwide. Transactions have screeched to a near halt. And as I think people may or may not know, but what the average realtor sells one house a year?
Oliver Graf: I think it’s 2.5 to 3.
Brad Weimert: Okay. Not enough to live on, probably, depending. Tough industry. So, when you say if you’re not enjoying it, do something else, I have to imagine in these markets, which this is the first time you’ve hit this in Big Block. You have to have had the sentiment, “I’m f*cking like this right now.”
Oliver Graf: Well, yeah. Okay. So, that’s a good distinction, right? There’s, “Do I like this as a business thing I want to pursue, thing I want to spend my time on, thing I enjoy doing?” And then there’s, “Right now, the market’s tough. I need to put my pads on and I need to man up. I need to shake and move and pivot and dance and do whatever we got to do to get through it,” which is we went through it in 2008. We didn’t have Big Block at the time but we were in the business and that was an absolute bloodbath. But it’s interesting because it also breeds a lot of opportunity, right? While transactions go down, a lot of people also exit the industry. So, the people that stick around and the people that are working now and grinding now and still selling homes now are the ones that in a year or two when the market re-shifts again and interest rates come back down and all that, they’re going to be the ones that are positioned to be ahead of the curve to win like we’re already seeing. And, yes, the market’s brutal right now and we’re having to pivot and adapt and kind of shake and move, which we’re doing but there’s also opportunities.
See, the good thing about a market shift like this is it’s not independent of our business, right? It’s all the brokers are going through this right now, all the escrow companies, everybody. We’re all in this together. And so, as some of those ones that are less prepared, those are the ones that start to sell, start to get out of the business. And that presents opportunities again for the guys that stick around, the gals that stick around to come in and pull that market share. So, that’s kind of how we’re looking at this this time, this market that we’re in.
Brad Weimert: Yeah. Well, look, obviously I’m drilling into a potentially tender area.
Oliver Graf: Yeah. Yeah.
Brad Weimert: Of course. And I can do that.
Oliver Graf: It’s not as fun as it was a few years ago.
Brad Weimert: I could do that.
Oliver Graf: So, back to the fun thing, it’s not that fun right now. And there’s many days where I’m not enjoying it but again like do I enjoy the business still? Yes, absolutely.
Brad Weimert: Yeah.
Oliver Graf: So, I think there’s do I enjoy this as a thing? Like, I’ll give a perfect example, right? If you’re a dentist and you hate being all up in people’s mouths all day, then like that’s a problem. Whether the market’s good or bad, you hate being in people’s mouths all day and that’s not going to change whether the market’s good or bad. So, that’s I think how you have to look at it in terms of like, do you like it or not?
Brad Weimert: So, the through line here and we’ll go back to scoring the activities that you’re doing on a routine basis is objective assessment. And so, what I heard and the way that I internalized that was you probably have to dig a layer deeper than do I like it or not and say, what are the five points that contribute to this emotion of liking it? Does it check other boxes? So, like when I got into payments, inevitably, people are always asking, how did you get into this? And so, the story gets told a lot but I built a list of criteria when I left direct sales, and they were things that I needed in the next gig. And there was no cap on income, recession-resistant, location-independent, tech-focused, B2B, the ability to make a lot of money fast. And I found payments, checked a lot of those boxes. A lot of money fast thing, it does not check. And so, I did a bunch of real estate investing. I was flipping homes in ’06, ‘07. So, I lost several quarts of blood in that bloodbath.
Oliver Graf: Sure.
Brad Weimert: But the fundamental there is this idea of objectively looking at the criteria that you can make a decision on. And right now, with real estate down, those checkboxes are still checked. It’s just one of them might not be, but the fun factor isn’t there right now. But I think that that’s also a really important lesson because it’s very easy to say, “Look, if you’re early in business, just f*cking do it.” But as you make more money and as you pass the point of functional retirement, you have to have deeper reflection and say, “Am I just being a b*tch here?”
Oliver Graf: Right. Exactly.
Brad Weimert: Or should I quit?
Oliver Graf: Or do I want to do something else? Yeah, yeah. That’s a good question.
Brad Weimert: Yeah. I mean, he’s got a little bit left. I don’t have anything left. I had too much sugar right now. No more champagne for me. Can I do a Herradura and soda? A tiny splash of cranberry, a couple of limes.
Female: We do have Herradura, though.
Brad Weimert: You do? I had it yesterday.
Female: Okay. And then you said on the rocks?
Brad Weimert: Yes, rocks. Yeah. Thank you.
Oliver Graf: Boom.
Brad Weimert: Boom. Just like that. Bam as it is.
Oliver Graf: Yeah. Bam. Exactly.
Brad Weimert: That’s what I used to say boom all the time, which I don’t know. Exclamation.
Oliver Graf: Switch it to bam, bro. It’s all brand.
Brad Weimert: I did because it’s similar to the podcast. I switched it to bam. It’s hilarious. And like every once in a while, somebody gets it, and then it’s little free marketing for me.
Oliver Graf: There you go, 100%.
Brad Weimert: Yeah. I think that’s important, man. I think like actual objective assessment is important. So, you’re still in it. You’re in real estate. You’re not abandoning because the interest rates went up. Yeah, it sucks a little.
Oliver Graf: Yeah. But like, here’s the thing, right, and this is what people trip out on, like real estate in 2020 went like off the charts. Everything sold in 5 minutes. Money was dirt cheap. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Brad Weimert: Crazy, crazy, value adds.
Oliver Graf: Exactly.
Brad Weimert: Increase in value.
Oliver Graf: 100%. But the market was just as hard back then because for every listing you had, there was 20 offers. So, it was just hard in a different way. It was hard in the sense that like, “Sh*t, I’m not going to get a property unless I’m willing to pay $100,000 over ask price and I’m going to beat out all these other people and I got to move fast and waive all contingencies and do all these things,” like that was hard. And now it’s just a different kind of hard, right? It just moved. Now, it’s more on the listing side. Now, how do I attract buyers with these higher interest rates? And they’re already coming out with creative loans like 3-2-1 buy downs, where you can get cheaper rates for shorter terms, different stuff like that. So, we’ll figure it out. We’ll get through it.
Brad Weimert: Well, what I love about that is there are a million sort of parables about this, but at the end of the day, how you respond to a problem is where the value is. It’s not the problem. It’s how you respond to it. And that starts with how you think about it and your thought process there is valid. And you can find empowerment in a million different permutations of the truth. So, that truth of it’s f*cking hard all the time. It’s just hard in a different way. It’s much more empowering than nobody’s buying houses. It’s just…
Oliver Graf: Yeah. I was talking to another entrepreneur about this the other day, and he was like, “Yeah, it’s getting really competitive and it’s getting really hard.” I’m like, “Dude, every business is getting more competitive and getting really hard.” That’s just the more people there are, the more competition there is. That’s just the nature of the beast so like buckle up.
Brad Weimert: Yeah. Or don’t play the game.
Oliver Graf: Yeah.
Brad Weimert: Yeah. One of the things that I, as ingrained, it’s like a knee-jerk reaction at this point, but frequently people are like, “Oh, how are you doing?” It’s this bullsh*t initial conversation you have to have with everybody in your life all the time, right? Anybody you haven’t seen for a week.
Oliver Graf: Right.
Brad Weimert: “Hey, how’s everything going?” I’m like, “Aagh,” and, “It’s f*cking busy right now.” And that’s my response. I feel busy. I’m trying to do more than I probably should. I probably should pair down on things. It’s busy, but the following sentence is, yeah, but it’s what I signed up for.
Oliver Graf: I’m electing the alternative.
Brad Weimert: Yeah. I’m electing for this to be the case.
Oliver Graf: You had to be the guy on the couch every day and not having anything to do.
Brad Weimert: Oh, my God.
Oliver Graf: That’d be way worse, right?
Brad Weimert: Yeah, it’s terrible. It’s terrible for me. I love that. Well, Oliver Graf, I have a million other questions, but I also know that we’re approaching the hour here. When you want to push, man, you’ve got – what’s the YouTube channel?
Oliver Graf: I have a Founders Club Podcast where we do entrepreneurial interviews, founders, real estate investors, brokers, all that kind of stuff. On social, OliverGraf360 at everything. OliverGraf360. Perfect timing. Cheers.
Brad Weimert: Cheers, man. Love it. And the YouTube channel is OliverTV? Did I f*ck that up?
Oliver Graf: OliverGrafTV.
Brad Weimert: Nice.
Oliver Graf: Yeah. You just search Founders Club or Oliver Graf, you’ll find me.
Brad Weimert: I love it. Well, I appreciate you coming on time, man.
Oliver Graf: Yeah. Connect. Let me know you found me on this podcast and we’ll say, “What’s up?”
Brad Weimert: Until next time.
Oliver Graf: My man.
