Eddie Brown [00:00:00]:
I think that if you don't evolve with the industry and the technology that the industry provides, you're going to fail. I mean, you have to evolve along with it. It doesn't mean you have to do every single thing, but it does mean that you've got to evolve. You've got to grow. When you stop growing your value at that point and your business is dying.

Matt Fowler [00:00:27]:
Hey, everybody, and welcome back to the DoorifyMLS.com podcast, that's fine. Saying Doorify the former Triangle MLS. Today we have a special guest. Eddie Brown from our board of director is joining us to talk about. To talk about the company and what it means to be a director. Welcome, Eddie.

Eddie Brown [00:00:47]:
Hey, how you doing?

Matt Fowler [00:00:48]:
Great, man. Thanks for joining us today. I really appreciate it.

Eddie Brown [00:00:51]:
No worries.

Matt Fowler [00:00:52]:
Eddie and I spend a good bit of time together because the MLS board takes up a lot of time. I know that people don't really know who's on the MLS board and what they do and, and why. So we just really want you, the subscribers who are going to be watching this broadcast, to get to know these guys. I couldn't really do what I do at all without any support. So we just want you guys really to know that Eddie's an actual realtor person and one of you to get us started off, Eddie. Tell us a little known fact about Eddie.

Eddie Brown [00:01:24]:
Well, you know, I thought about this for a long time and I don't think anybody knows this about me except for my closest relatives, is that my dad's father was 100% Cherokee. He was a full load Cherokee. Wow. I found out that back in the 1830s, my ancestors actually walked the trail of tears back in 1832 or 30, 30.

Matt Fowler [00:01:51]:
Yeah, I think Crayola tears was 38. So your grandfather did.

Eddie Brown [00:01:58]:
Well, my grandfather was full blown Cherokee, but his, his relatives back walked the trail of tears. That was whole, I think it was called the Indian Removal act of 1830 or something.

Matt Fowler [00:02:10]:
That's right.

Eddie Brown [00:02:11]:
Yeah. But that's not very many people know about that, about me is that my ancestors actually walked that trail of tears, so. And had some pass up.

Matt Fowler [00:02:20]:
Yeah, I'm writing a book about that period. Eddie, we should talk about that. Yeah, we should talk about that. My ancestors were already settlers in the lands that the Indians moved through and were witness to the thing that happened and some of them kind of peeled off and stayed in Tennessee and north Alabama. That was a tragic period for our country in so many ways.

Eddie Brown [00:02:41]:
Yeah, it was.

Matt Fowler [00:02:42]:
So that's fascinating. I did not know about that. So on your board service, do you remember when you came on the board.

Eddie Brown [00:02:50]:
Well, I started on the board of directors for Raleigh Regional in 95.

Matt Fowler [00:02:56]:
Okay.

Eddie Brown [00:02:57]:
I was the president in 2003. And if I remember correctly, I'm getting old, but I do remember things. I think I started the triangle mls or whatever we were called back then. In 2004, the year that I was past president, I think I was on. So that's basically 20 years or so that I've been on. And I've been in real estate since 1988. So that's when I started doing full time real estate. I had my license and I was doing some part time stuff, but I started full time in 1988.

Matt Fowler [00:03:33]:
Wow. You stay in a cycle or two, I think.

Eddie Brown [00:03:36]:
Oh, yeah.

Matt Fowler [00:03:36]:
Since 88. Yeah. I'm going to ask you a question about how it's not on Andreas list, about how you talk to agents today, about just the scope of time. And when you look at what's happening to us today, of course there's a lot of angst and anxiety going around. But I started real estate in 93, so I'm a little bit behind you. But I've seen those right after the SNL crisis, and then there was.com boom and busts and boom and bust and oa credit crisis. All that stuff all the way through to Covid. Before we get to that crazy stuff though, Eddie, what do you do when you're not practicing real estate?

Eddie Brown [00:04:21]:
I have two, two or three main hobbies. I love the outdoors. Number one, anything outdoors. But I like turning wood into things. So that's one of my hobbies is I have a woodworking shop and I like making, you know, stuff out of wood and music. I have a strong love of music. So those are my basic things that I do. Either I'm hanging out outside somewhere, fishing, hunting, doing something or building something or playing my guitar and singing.

Eddie Brown [00:04:49]:
So.

Matt Fowler [00:04:50]:
Oh, that's a great set of things to do. You're really. You're really a creative guy, Eddie. We really, you can see that in what you spend your time on. You have been known to dial into a meeting from a freestand. I've seen that before.

Eddie Brown [00:05:03]:
I have.

Matt Fowler [00:05:04]:
You're multitasking, man. I get it. You know, and now we have the technology to do that. Right, right. So, you know, Eddie, you've been on this whole ride with us with triangle and choice and compensation, the name change, the focus on the consumers that we brought in a few years ago. A specific question I want to ask you about. I'll set it up with the b to b to c concept that we've been talking about. Where triangle has seen itself as a glorify, seeing itself as a business to business.

Matt Fowler [00:05:36]:
A technology, maybe like a copying copier machine company. You don't have one in your house. That's a business to business service. A business service. And we've been a business service our whole 30 year history. But people are telling us that consumers don't know that MLS is the most fair and open housing network in the world. And we can tell that they don't know it because they tell the regulators and the courts and attorneys find ground to counter that claim that we're the most fair and open housing network in the world. And we believe we have to tell that story because we believe it's true and we believe it could be better, certainly.

Matt Fowler [00:06:16]:
But there's a meeting in Milan today with a lot of the MLS leaders that we work with, meeting with countries in Europe who want to have MLS. They're actually trying to figure out how to bring clear cooperation into their environment so that they can assure their people that all the listings that can be bought are in the list. So I think that's a big conversation to have. But we added a c to the b, two b when we built our strategy very intentionally, and that's the consumer. So it's b to b to c and the b in the middle is Eddie Brown. I don't go housing. I don't have a license to practice real estate. I support you in making sure that that consumer has the most clear and accurate and complete transparent access to the data.

Matt Fowler [00:07:07]:
And as fast as the fastest app on the app store, which we're now in the process of being able to enable every participant of the Doorify system to be able to have the capacity to get to that data in a sub second update. So how does Doorify Mos on its promise of connecting people with properties from Eddie Brown's perspective?

Eddie Brown [00:07:31]:
Well, no. I tell people that I started real estate in the era of books. We did not have an electronic system to look up, so you had to look up things in a book. And when it first came out, the electronic version of it, it was interesting. It was very clunky and very slow. And when you printed something off, it was a dot matrix printer back and forth. And there were people that continued to use the books until they quit making the books because they did it where they were afraid of change or whatever. They just didn't want to learn the new way.

Eddie Brown [00:08:06]:
And that's what I kind of tell people now, is that a lot of our tools could go away and we could still do business. But if the MLS went away, it would be very hard for us to do our job and to serve our clients the way that they need to be served. So a lot of our other tools could just basically go away and we could still function. But if we didn't have that repository for all the listings that we can easily go to and search for our clients, then we're going to be back into the book era. So, and I don't think anybody wants to do that, but I think people are afraid of change still. And when something happens, you know, just like when the Internet came out and they said, you know, the Internet destroyed the people who book vacations, travel agents, travel agency, that it was going to do the same thing to the real estate industry and didn't, you know, it.

Matt Fowler [00:09:02]:
Never did because the house is not a plane ticket.

Eddie Brown [00:09:05]:
Exactly. That's a house is a lot more personal and I think that that makes a big difference to people. But yeah, I mean that's, I just think it's our number one tool that we use and I think, you know, the, the more that we enhance that by adding different choices and you know, I said something today at our sales meeting, Matt, that the guy didn't even think about it because he was a complaining a little bit about, you know, choice and the way that everything, and he did admit that everything's going good now. But the thing that he did not realize, I said, just think about it. If one of our three choices went down broke for an extended period of time, all you can do, you can switch right over to another one and you got another service to use. And he never even thought about it like that. That, hey, you know, this gives us the ability to continue to do business. Even if one of the three choices happens to go down because of whatever, you can still do your business.

Eddie Brown [00:10:04]:
So I think we made a lot of good choices and that we're doing, I think, you know, the board has made good decisions by taking your direction and I think that as we continue to move forward it's going to be even more enhanced to make it easier to do our jobs.

Matt Fowler [00:10:22]:
Yeah, we really just built the thing that is going to give people the real choice. Right now they have the choice of the three largest mls in the country. But none of those are very innovative, frankly. Yeah. The new ones, the new AI ad listing tools that are about to come out in January, there's a bunch of stuff coming out after that. We had new cmas, new consumer portals, like a collab center sort of thing. But there's a new one from a couple of different organizations we'll be able to announce this year. I feel like thats going to really change peoples minds about whats possible.

Matt Fowler [00:10:58]:
And the guy didnt think about resilience. We went out to the council of multiple listing services a couple of weeks ago, Eddie, in Seattle, where you got to see under the hood of what the MLS industry, and it really is an industry, looks like. And we think about resilience a lot. And I want that guy who doesnt think about it at all and all of our subscribers to be aware that there's a big group of people who spend time thinking about little else to make sure that if one goes down, there is another one. And that's not, that doesn't just happen. We have to build the infrastructure to do that. And the infrastructure that we had was so antiquated that the change to modernize it just hurt that much because we had waited that long to do it. It was sort of hanging over our head.

Matt Fowler [00:11:48]:
Know, deferred maintenance is the way you think of it in the real estate term, that youve been taking the rent every year but you havent been putting money back in the building and thats going to come bite you at some point. And it did and we had to get it done. And you and I both went through that and talked to realtors in the field every day during December and January, February, March was pretty rough because one of our vendors struggled getting the new data into their old system. That, that sounds like throwing them under the bus. It's not. It's just describing what actually happened. But they've got their new system out. The flex MLS system looks good.

Matt Fowler [00:12:29]:
The corelogic system is going to get updated to spall and I think that that's the beginning. That's the end of the beginning. But it's when we add all these new options that people just would not have had before is really going to change their minds. I mentioned earlier, I wanted to ask you a question that wasn't on Andrea's list. I asked. That's crazy. And Brett, this question earlier, you've got people in your office, Eddie, that you talk to that don't like change, that run up to the machine to get the thing they need to get to the meeting that they need to get to and they know how to use it. They're experts at it, have changed them forever and they can go through and get what they need.

Matt Fowler [00:13:10]:
And then we changed it all on. So now it takes them a minute and they might even need to come into the office an hour early, you know, a couple of times a week for the next little while to get used to it, you know, to do a CMA or two on your own house, you know, to practice that, send yourself that email out of the new system. What does that look like? How do you, I know they don't want to do that. They don't have time for that. They're going to tell you. So what do you tell those people? How do you talk to them?

Eddie Brown [00:13:44]:
I have a stock answer to those people. I always say, well, what if Henry Ford had thought that same way? We'd still be riding horses if that had been the thought process of Henry Ford? I think that if you don't evolve with the industry and the technology that the industry provides, you're going to fail. I mean, you have to evolve along with it. It doesn't mean you have to do every single thing, but it does mean that you've got to evolve. You've got to grow. And when you stop growing, you're dying at that point, and your business is dying. So there's many an agent that has failed in this industry because they weren't willing to change to the new ways that things were good. It's just like whenever we started doing buyer agency eons ago here in North Carolina, everybody thought the world was coming to an end, and it didn't.

Eddie Brown [00:14:41]:
So you just have to keep changing. And as you know, because you're a tech guy, the more technology you get, the faster technology is created. And we're at light speed right now of creating new technologies and stuff. It just seems like something new is coming out every other week, week. And, you know, you mentioned cmls. I learned so much there. This path, it's the best one I've ever been to. You know, I saw some technologies that I think are going to be the new wave of selling real estate, like the AI stuff.

Eddie Brown [00:15:17]:
I mean, it's going to make it so much easier to do things, to enter listings and make changes on listings, to do searches. And I think it's just, you know, I was, I left there feeling really good about the direction that we're headed in.

Matt Fowler [00:15:31]:
Yeah, imagine a crack team using that stuff, Eddie, you'd look like 50 people.

Eddie Brown [00:15:35]:
Yeah.

Matt Fowler [00:15:36]:
You know, I mean, you would look like an enormous group of people if you have that stuff dialed in. I think speed really matters. You can't use the AI stuff unless you reinvested in your, in your plant. It's just like any other business. If you, if you're making widgets and the machine that you bought ten years ago that you know how to use really well spits out two a day and your competitor has one that's 20 a day. Well, you can use it. You can know how to use it as well as you want, but you're still behind. Correct.

Matt Fowler [00:16:05]:
And I have to, we have to be the ones that go into the guy with the two a day widget and say, hey man, it's not going to work anymore.

Eddie Brown [00:16:15]:
Yeah.

Matt Fowler [00:16:15]:
And you know, it's not our responsibility to go put them a 20 widget machine. Were just evangelizing about the existence of these things and that you can swap one out. Thats our real focus for next year strategically is getting out to the brokerages, talking to the ctos, talking to the people that are the tech guys that download the data from the MLS to make sure that theyre doing it in the less than a second way, not the every half an hour way. Every half an hour worked before and it does not now because of the need for us to be as fast as the fastest app on the app store. Speed is critical and I want our subscribers watching this podcast to know and we'll stick it in the show notes down below. We have the number one MLS certified data system in the country and that we are more certified by the real estate standard organization than any other MLS out of the 500 something MLS in the country. And we only built that to make Eddie Brown's brokerage tech stack faster. Right.

Matt Fowler [00:17:20]:
Just, we did it for a lot of reasons, but that's the biggest outcome. So tell me a little bit about how if I'm out there talking to these, these brokers saying, look, you got to look forward and think about what tech might be possible. Do you have to go to a meeting like the national meetings and talk to these vendors? Because your competitors are. Tell me how. You're a bic, right? So you're looking at new tech. You're looking at new technology all the time. I want to encourage those other vix out there who might be thinking about throwing in the Powell, you know, or looking at this or having to sell to some big company. How do you plan to attack this tech going forward?

Eddie Brown [00:18:00]:
Well, we try to look, evaluate every one that we feel will be beneficial to our firm and as we, as we look at them. And I like your analogy of the widgets. You know, if I can put this technology in place, that I can do five times the amount of work in the same amount of time, or probably even less time than we're doing now, that's the technology that I want to put in my wheelhouse. I want to have something be in there where I can select that and be faster than other, you know, than other firms, be faster than other agents, be more accurate, which, you know, is, you know, another thing that I have had big on my list is that, you know, the people don't realize how lucky they are in our area, that we have fast and accurate data. You know, a lot of these mls is that you look at, they just aren't up to speed, in my opinion, with the accuracy, and that's been one of our main calling cards for years and years and years, is that we wanted to have the most accurate data set out there. And we did a real good job of that, except for that short period of time when, as you said, a certain company did not fulfill their end of the bargain, and they put us behind a little bit.

Matt Fowler [00:19:29]:
Yeah, they caught up just for the record. But you're right, accuracy and completeness of the data is super critical. And we saw one of the AI tools that you referenced that has 70. I'm remembering Justin's numbers that has 70% fewer errors because the computer typed it in. But I think just as important is it filled out 80% more fields. So instead of just hitting the minimums, it actually checked all that was appropriate. And when you look at that house online on Zillow or on realtor.com, comma, next to one that only had the required fields filled out, it looks diminished. You know, if the remarks are nice and long and thoughtful, it filled out more of the page, and it just.

Matt Fowler [00:20:17]:
It looks. Looks more complete. The seller can see that, right, that you've. That you've described their home more fully. And the, the program that we saw in Seattle will fill out 80% of the more of the fields, but it does that four times faster than filling out, than a human filling out that same form. So those are the kind of things that I think will let us build the operating efficiencies that you were talking about into our businesses and do more with less going forward, which is what efficiency is all about.

Eddie Brown [00:20:50]:
Yep, absolutely.

Matt Fowler [00:20:52]:
Let me ask you one more question about how you feel our mission. You were in the room the other day at strat planning, and we're coming together with, with our new plan. It's still got the five primary objectives with. The main objective for next year is, is improving driver satisfaction. So they just went through that period. We understand they're not happy. If we were a restaurant, we'd get a one star. And we've got to fix that because the thing that we just built, I'm confident, is a big part of making us the best MLS in the country.

Matt Fowler [00:21:26]:
We're well on our way to get there, but our subscribers aren't generally aware of that because of the disruption that occurred to the main program that they used. So how does our mission of what we're doing help me explain the mission of what we're doing, Eddie, to the actual subscribers out there in the field trying to sell a house? In the midst of all this, we.

Eddie Brown [00:21:48]:
Know the better that we can serve the consumer. It helps them to fulfill their dreams of home ownership. And I try to tell this to people, there's about two to 3% of people that would prefer to rent. Everybody else wants to own a home. Whether they do or not at this time, they want to own a home. So I think to be able to give them the access to timely and accurate real estate data is only going to help to facilitate home buying and selling process. So I think the more we can advance in those fields, the trickle down effect is it's going to make it easier for homebuyers and home sellers and make it easier for the agent who's out there in the field as well to be able to serve them properly. One of the things that you hear is that I don't feel like my agent did enough, or I don't feel like they missed something or they did this or they did that.

Eddie Brown [00:22:54]:
If we, as the dwarfide MLS, if we can prevent that from happening by giving them the best tools to use so that the client is going to think they're Superman and superwoman, then that's where I feel like our goal should be as the board is to not only make the agent look good and make it where they can do more and better, but also end result is to help the consumer to be able to fulfill their dreams of either buying a house or selling their home and buying another home.

Matt Fowler [00:23:30]:
Right, so you're saying if we just focus on doing MLS better that it's going to, it's going to help the consumers with the speed and accuracy. And that reflects back on our, on our broker in the middle. We were talking earlier, steady about the b to b to c concept. That's what we're talking about is like we're the first b. We don't go to the sea without you guys, to the consumer. So it's a matter of integrating that workflow. Our new tools will let us get updates under your company's brand out to the consumer in a sub second update. That's our primary focus for next year.

Matt Fowler [00:24:14]:
Really. We started with accuracy and we're moving to speed to make sure that that kind of competency reflects on your brand because if you're the first with the update for the house that they're looking for, every time something happens they're going to come to rely on you for other expertise as well as the technical expertise you've demonstrated by beating the big guys with the alerts.

Eddie Brown [00:24:40]:
Yeah, and I also think that the consumer portal is also going to be a huge advantage for agents as well because they can be assured that there are no ulterior motives there to try to take their client from them where a lot of the other sites that they may go to do have that motive to take the client away and get, you know, be able to charge fees and whatever, you know, down the road or to somehow become connected with that client so that they can offer.

Matt Fowler [00:25:16]:
Them other services or to get in between you and that client. Correct? Yeah, we, we're actually the hopefully part of the solution to that particular problem. We've had agents say you're just going to sell these leads back to us. You're going to get this brand real big and sell it to Zillow, which is I think a compliment. I think Zillow's bought some great companies and hopefully we would be worthy of that kind of investment. But we're the not that. What's important about us is who owns it. And who owns us is the Eddie Browns of the world, the broker community in the Raleigh Durham area that make up the Doorfi membership.

Matt Fowler [00:25:57]:
We own the brand, so the rules are written here in North Carolina, not in Canada or California, and the leads are distributed back to the listing broker as a member benefit without charge or hassle. And what we really want to do is plug that into your CRM so that when the moment somebody asks Eddie Brown about a property on eddiebrown.com comma that the phone pings, its not an email thats sitting in a stack for half an hour. Its right now, which is where that consumer asked for the information and they expect information back from you within 15 minutes or theyre moving on. So id like to see if we can hit 15 seconds and demonstrate that competency. That's really what the consumer brands about, what our technology updates about. We'd like the people of the homebuyers and sellers to know that MLS is the most fair and open housing network in the world. That's where they come to find out information about first time home buying and where they go to see every single house for sale. And that's something we spend a lot of time and money making sure that that is the most complete and accurate list.

Matt Fowler [00:27:07]:
So, Eddie, thanks for spending time with us today. I really appreciate it.

Eddie Brown [00:27:11]:
I enjoyed it.

Matt Fowler [00:27:12]:
Yeah. We will have a few more of these meet the board interviews coming up soon. So tune into the next door five podcast. Thanks for joining us, everybody.