Offerin' Real Estate Insights

How to Get Started in Real Estate: Mastering the Home Buying Process from the Inside Out

• OfferIn.io • Episode 7

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Thinking about getting started in real estate? Wondering if you really have what it takes to make it through the grind, the slow months, and the unexpected curveballs? 

In this episode of the Offerin Podcast, we take a refreshingly honest look at what it means to step into the world of real estate investing and how the road to real estate success is rarely a straight line.

Darrin is with real estate investor and broker Ben Walkley, who shares how his journey began with a smoked-out fixer-upper and spiraled into a painful, but transformative lesson in character development. Along the way, Ben opens up about the value of self-awareness in real estate, why shortcutting your way to success almost never works, and how owning your mistakes can become your biggest asset.

This episode is a goldmine for the new real estate agent or anyone exploring how to become a realtor. We explore essential real estate skills like property evaluation, understanding real estate contracts, and navigating the home buying process with confidence. Ben also shares how years in the title business gave him a behind-the-scenes education that most agents never get—and how real estate mentorship can fast-track your learning if you find the right partner.

Whether you're learning real estate from scratch or looking to sharpen your real estate mindset, this episode offers the kind of real talk that sticks. You'll walk away with a clearer view of the path ahead—and the tools, mindset, and tech (like Offerin) that can make the journey a whole lot smoother.

👉 Discover how Offerin helps agents win more deals, save time, and look like heroes to their clients. Visit Offerin.io to learn more or schedule a demo today.

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All right. Welcome, everybody, to yet another exciting episode of the Our Friend podcast, where we're offering up great advice and great stories. I'm really excited about today's episode. We're going to be chatting with Ben Walkley. Super interesting individual and I hope you guys really enjoy the the conversation. The goal of today is to pull out these nuggets on how to get started as a real estate agent. So if you're a new agent, what are the nuggets that are going to help you become successful? Now part of this is on my mind because, going through this offering journey, you get to deal with real estate agents day in and day out. However, there's something disconnected in my in my brain. I really don't know what it's like to be a real estate agent. So one of the things I've decided to do is to get my real estate license. Go on this journey, see if I can pass the test. I hear how how crazy this test is, but at the end of the day, it's just cramming for a couple minutes, remembering it, taking the test and passing it. So I don't anticipate, going out and putting a sign in the yard and selling a house. But I do want to really understand what it's like to lease, get the license, and then be able to relate to on a deeper level. So that's what I'm doing personally. I want to I want to connect with you guys as, as our users, more and more. And so I'm super excited to have this conversation with Ben today. Ben. Yes. I'm so glad you're here. Out of all the people I know. You know, you have such a unique perspective towards real estate. It's just, like, contrary to the norm. Yeah. You know, listen to a lot of different podcast and, read blogs and see stuff from different coaches or whatnot. And you actually don't have a coaching business which which I'm thinking you have such a wealth of knowledge that, you know, that would be amazing if you did. But hopefully this, this vehicle, this conversation will help a lot of agents. And then also, you're not really on technology. You personally, you're not really out there doing stuff. So but you have a very successful, history and background in real estate and just love to hear. So give us a quick bio. Quick as and however long zero. You know, a minute or ten minutes. But what's your what's your history? What got you into this? Okay. So. 2023, my dad. I was graduating from college, and my dad said, hey, do you want to buy a house? Okay. And and I said, yes, I, I definitely want to. That 2023. 2003, 2003, 2003. Sorry. So, it was a little, it was an estate. This burned out, smoked out a house in Akron, Ohio, and I went and talked to the people, and it was, I thought I was like, awesome. Negotiated from 25,000 down to 23,000. This thing I probably did, a if you gave it to me, I'd be like, mad. Want it? Negotiator. Yeah, man. Yeah. I was so proud of myself for negotiating a horrible deal to a bad deal. That was the beginning. It was horrible. Everything was. Everything went wrong. The contractors went wrong. The the price was the wrong amount. I made no money on it. Was just. It was bad. Was the goal to flip it or was a goal to it. Was to live there? Yeah. I didn't understand anything about location or contracting or money or, you know, I guess I knew about my degree is in accounting and finance. So that part I understood. But just it was. It was just bad. It's the reality. Yeah. Then the second there was a house that burnt up the street and I wanted to flip a house, but that is where we we bought that house and, I, we it was the first time I, like, really dabbled in like, lying. Yeah. About stuff like, we definitely we we shortcut it. We we we made this house look good. But it was it was so bad, like, what we did to it. And and then in the end, somebody bought that house and they ended up losing. It was like, I think there's only one house I've ever sold or somebody lost in foreclosure. I had, like, extreme guilt about that house for like a decade. Made a bunch of money, but felt horrible about it. Right. So, the third house is where everything really took off. And I will say that this is probably why I'm so passionate about, like, actually, we just talked about this. I'm going to just tell you the same exact thing. With Aiden. We sold that first house. We needed a place to live. And there was I was working at an attorney's office and I, What were you doing at the attorney's office? I was working with the title company. Right. So my career has been in the title business. So, I went, they had a closed bid process, so got an a property, and they put out to all the investors. Hey, send in a sealed bid. There was a there was an offer on this house, and I went to the secretary and was like, hey, do you think you can hold that thing up to the light? And see if you could tell me what it looks like? So she did. She held it up. It was 70,000. She did it. She did it. I guess. So I was like, I mean, I was pretty cheap at that point in my life. I mean, like, every, you know what they say, like you have, I had saved my first nickel or whatever. That was me. Like I was just tight. So I, in my infinite wisdom at the time, offered 70,100 because I didn't really want to, you know, call. I don't want to waste any money. Yeah. Yeah. So, I don't know, a week later, you know, I got the winning bid. Turns out surprised. So the the attorney calls me into his office, and he's like, hey, did you did you cheat? Did you look at this? What a defining moment in my life. And I look back now. Oh, boy, I owned it. I was like, I did it, I'm sorry. So this guy, he makes me go. Call the other guy. Call the other guy that lost out and tell him what I had done and tell him he wins. So I felt like about like, you know, this. Okay. Right. Fast forward a week. I'm now, like, at an all time low in my brain. I'm just like, what a loser, right? I don't have a house I'm living in, like, my my parents in law's basement. Okay, this second deal comes along for houses. Two lots, two houses. They, There had been an offer on this. Maybe it was longer than a week. It might have been a month or something. I don't know. There was an offer for 90,000 on these four properties. Okay. I went to the attorney and and said, hey, can I just buy one of them for like 45? I've got a little bit of money. I just need to buy a house. He says, no, they got all offer. I got us out. So, I knew it was it was a known thing at that point. That's not a closed bid. Yeah. Well, it was at some point it had been, but it was 90,000 was the current offer. And there was a hospital lean against the property, and the hospital was the one saying, hey, we'll take this much or that. The estate was just like, wasn't going to get any of the money anyways. So I went back and said, Will you sell them to me for 100? And, they said yes. Oh, and like later on in my story is like where God like totally opened my eyes to, that his like reality, his love for me, his, you know, like purpose on this earth for what I should be doing. Like that didn't come till way later, but at that moment when they said yes to it, within a few days, the same day the attorney said, oh, hey, by the way, the neighbor, the one one house was by itself, the other one was a house with a lot on either side. Oh, he said, hey, the neighbor on the lot over here wants to buy this lot. He hadn't told me that before. I went and talked to him. He said he'll pay 18 five. This other guy that I knew, just a friend who was an electrician, he and this guy lives in this house to this day. He wanted to buy a house and this other house was perfect for him. I wanted nothing to do with it. I had no idea that these lights were worth 20 grand. Was what they were worth. He was willing to pay 62 five. So at the closing this guy bought this house for 62 five. This guy turn around. Got this for 18 five I was into a house and a lot for 19,000. I was willing to pay 45 for this house. So so I spent like 15,000 bucks fixing it up. I had no idea what it was worth. I went to the bank. The bank was like, well, hey, well, we'll give you a line of credit for 110,000. This thing's worth like 150 or whatever. Wow. And my mind was just like. And then later, a builder called me out of the clear blue and he offered me 20 grand for that other lot. Well. In one moment, right there, like, the value of telling the truth got, like, seared into me. Like, don't try to force something. Manipulate something, whatever that I do that again, I did, I didn't it didn't like totally take at that point. But later I mean it took dramatically like that, like telling the truth part really. Like I got that part. But it didn't stop me from doing a bunch of other stupid things. Like, it's like, this is a nugget for somebody if you're trying to buy an investment property. And no, we're talking about real estate agent. But if you're trying to buy an investment property and you have the thought go through your head, oh, well, I can make up for this on like saving money on contracting, like abort, abort. Don't do that. That is like a big red flag. Don't do that. You're going to fail on those ones. It's going to cost you okay. So I got I title business all that stuff that start at that point I started buying and selling properties. And the way I learn is just by experience, trial and error from there until today. I, I think we own 126 rental units and, I was in the title business, all of that, most of that time. And the but what was the first question this is like. Is this a rundown of your history? Yeah. So okay, so I'm going to get to I'm going to speed it all up okay. So I'm in the title business now. In the title business you're neutral. So you're seeing thousands of transactions. So I'm seeing people do it right. I'm still seeing people do it wrong. I'm seeing people do it shady. I'm seeing people do it honest. I'm seeing all this different money flow from the banks, and I'm just absorbing all of this information. Some of these people, I'm like, I want to do that. I started doing what they were doing right. Like it was just some of it. But but always along the way, something God put inside of me that I think is where what you're talking about stems from is that at the end of the day, this is about people. It's about their home. It's about their life. Like whether it's a real estate agent or a rental or whatever. And like that has always been coming to the forefront of my mind. So 20 some year, 20 years of the title business, I just took the extra, extra money that I made and if a good property came along, I would buy it. That's an stories for another time. And then a two and a half. Let's see here. Three years ago now, almost three years ago, I sold the title company and went into real estate. Okay. And total transparency. I wish that I was, like, a better human than I actually am at the point at. When I started back into real estate, I was like, for so long, I was like, real estate agents, like, they don't get it. They don't. That I was so negative towards real estate people. Wow. I'm shortsighted. Right. So like once I once I started two and a half years ago into this for real, like, hey, this is what I'm going to do now and really started learning it. If you have a real estate agent that is brand new, they have a lot like it's a hard work for them to make it. And if you have one that actually knows what they're talking about, it's super valuable. It's just very it's a professional skill that is requires a lot of detail of understanding in order to be able to actually advise somebody how to do something. Yeah. Let me dive into something you mentioned, a real the idea of real estate was not gelling with you. You didn't like real estate agents. You didn't like though. Okay. Oh, like, yeah. Obviously not individual people, but just the whole idea of a real estate. What was it that you didn't like? What things stood. Out? I mean, it was definitely people like, because I, you know, on the title company side, you'd get all these, like, high pressure scenario people just getting mad about stuff. And I was just like these, it's real estate. People don't even know what they're talking about. Like, I had that kind of chip on, kind of like. Lack of knowledge, but yet. Yeah, well, because they can. But I didn't understand is that I had a lack now lack of knowledge about what they were doing. They have a lack of knowledge about like finance maybe or title or like, but they have a very real knowledge of something else that I lacked. So I had that kind of like negative. I just didn't understand. Okay. Yeah. Which was So real estate agents themselves, do you feel so, so looking back on this is quick conversation so far you talked a lot about character. Your character had to be developed. You, experiential things or you need to experience it. Fail here, learn there. When there fail here. Yeah. If I'm a new real estate agent, like I mentioned, here in another month and a half, hopefully I'll be a licensed agent and gone through that experience and again. Now, what if I'm brand new? What would you tell me? Here's what you need to do. Sounds like another thing to is is knowledge. So character experience knowledge. Just absorbing everything. Sounds like a couple things that you pulled out so far. It. Okay. Number one, you need to have self-awareness. Okay. So real estate people come to the table with something, okay. I'll go back. So, number one, you need to have self-awareness about what you have and what you don't have. Number two, you need to, understand that for most people, you're generally you're kind of like starting in a business or a self-employed business, and you're wearing all of the hats of, like, what it takes to develop a business. So you need to understand that, that some of those are going to come natural and some of them are not. And it takes time to do that. So so you need to have enough like runway in order to make it because it takes time to get there. And number three, then I think this is the one that causes people to make it or not make it. You kind of, in simple way would be like, you got to really want to do this. Like you got, and I would for me, I would to tie the character part. And it's like, I like hospitality, I like seeing, I like providing a great place. And I like people like moving forward in their home. Like, I think the home environment is very important for families. Like it's very formative for children. Like if I said to you, think back to your room when you were 11 years old, you can do it. Michael Jordan posters. Yeah, you can go there in your mind like it matters. Was it chaotic? Was there fighting was well, whatever. So all of that stuff is it matters. So, self-awareness. I remember, this guy, his name is Pat Bartman. He's a he's up in Cleveland. He's a real estate agent. He was a banker for, like, 15 years. And I remember that he was, like, so done being a banker. And we sat down, had lunch, and I was like, Pat, you've got it. You don't. You don't even know that you've got it. You're going to come to the table with one of the main parts of being, you understand finance. That's a major, Mike. Finance building construction science. That's a big one. Knowledge of the contract act. How like how it all works together. I mean, these are a few of the main things you need to understand. Well, he already has, like a full one third of it just nailed. He quit his job like, a week later and started. I was like, whoa, get your job back. You know, he did awesome. Like, he just immediately was able to, like, translate that into, like, a solving a major problem. Awesome. So if you're coming into real estate and you're like, well. I've got great construction knowledge, like, I'm really good at that, but I'm like, really bad at money. And I'm really I don't understand how the flow of transactions and how people blah, blah, blah. Well, you just need to know that about yourself. So you so that you're patient with yourself because you, you have to develop these other skills. Well go ahead. I was going to say patience. You're dealing of that. We had a chat with with a guy last week. And he was, you know, year and a few months into real estate and he's like, listen, you know, I have like, $8, you know, I'm living on. And I'm just, you know, whatever I need to do. And he had that commitment. He's like, I'm doing this one way or the other. You know, how long does it take for an agent to make money? You know, it depends. Yeah, I guess it. Yeah, it does by product versus the actual product. So you don't get into real estate for the money. You haven't said once yet that, hey, this was what it takes. At the beginning of this, I was like, that was all it was about was the money. But it led me down this like shortcut road instead of this longevity road. So how long does it take? There's a there's obviously no exact answer, but I would say, like from the day you start, like the first six months are should be like very challenging for you. Like if you have a, if you have, an understanding of the three things I was talking about, you're going to build into some other stuff. But. Let me go back. If you are like 22 years old and have not had a ton of life experience, I would say like it could be challenging for you. You have to find a niche, right? You have to find a mentor. You have to find somebody that's kind of like that already has. Oh man, there's such a good points here. Like, if you're brand new at this and you understand this one thing, this will speed up the timeline, okay? If there is a, aging agent, there's think about marketing. There's all these agents that let's say they're 50 to 70 years old, and all the money that they have spent on advertising, goodwill, relationship, whatever for their career, the the work is going to be the phone is going to ring for them because they've spent decades doing that. Well, they're getting older, they're getting tired, they're ready to transfer their business. A young agent doesn't have all of that. But that money out here is already spent. So I think we talked about this before. They need to connect with those older agents. Okay. Go back to being an agent though. So number one know what you have. So like take you for example, you, worked for USA as a recruiter high level. So you have like, a drive, you have your relational. So you're really good at connecting with people and getting to know them. How many real estate investments have you ever done? Just your home. Do me, my my father and I, just you, like me personally. Went out there and bought something and said, I'm doing it. As a flip. As a flip, as a rental. Anything. Zero. Okay, great. Important to know that. Now, have you ever done a bunch of renovations on your house? Yes. Okay. Probably 30. Yeah. Lots of construction knowledge, minimal understanding of real estate transactions because you've only been a part of them when you're buying your house and lots of relationship. So. Okay. Like, you actually need to. There's some stuff here that's going to stop you from being trustworthy because you just haven't done it yet. Okay, so, you need to know that you also are, you have just skills, right? So when you're when you're an agent and you're brand new, I would say one of your skills from knowing you is, follow up. You're great at follow up. Like, just I don't know if that's a skill or what that is or. But it's just like, you're good at it. I'm minimally good at that. So deploying your skills, but then surrounding yourself with other people that have the skills that, you know, you don't have them. Right? Like just even if you can do that with a couple people, I see a lot of real estate agents. Maybe they don't. They're not disciplined with their money. And so you know it's like commission non commission non that's like very challenging for them to like be disciplined in their finances. And they they it's like I'm doing awesome when in reality like they they actually just break in even because like their bills or getting behind or whatever. That's another thing I wanted to point out is like just in, in being a real estate agent, your statistics show the 75% of real estate agents. So there's 1.5 ish million real estate agents out there. 75% of them sell five or less houses a year. Yeah, and of that group, 49% of them sell zero. Yeah. And that other 26% sells. So. So yeah, more to bring up that average. But and this is not a 100%. But my guess is that if you interviewed that top percent and said, hey, how much of your how much, how many of you actually have some of your own personal real estate that you dabble with flips, rentals, whatever? I'm going to guess that that number is super high. Because those are the people that actually understand. The flow of money, the. Product, this is the product. I mean, it's the house, the land, the the systems. Like they become experts at it. They have stories to tell about, like, hey, this is right. Like, this is good, this is bad. Like, watch out for this. This is the or this is what they really mean. Like there's that because they're doing it's like very real to them. Somebody that has never bought a home that gets a real estate license to sell other people a home like they don't even know about home yet. They, they've never they've never had the pain of something breaking. And they were planning to go on vacation. Now they got a whatever they, they don't know about, you know, don't fix it. So, yeah, I think, I think as a, I think a person understanding the challenges mine was I am terrible at marketing. I don't understand, I am getting better at it. I just like getting the phone during how to like some people are so social, they can go into a room, right? They're just poppin. People are like, my kids call it aura. I there you go. They've got aura. So everybody wants to be around. They're fun to be around. They can almost get away with not knowing as much. Yeah. These kind of like people like, let's say people do business with they who they know like and trust. Right. Yeah. So, yeah I'm like all right I got to get a little bit more aura. So there's like or a farming out there now and it's kind of like Memorial Day or something like that. Yeah. You got some aura but I have zero. Yeah I really do. Yeah. No you got more than I do I don't know. So, so just knowing, but at the end of the day. Yeah. Knowing that you lack things is, I think actually in a healthy way, what will cause you to work on them so you can move forward. So that was one of the big points like knowing where you're at. Yeah. So that Knowledge, lack of knowledge and saying, hey, I got to take a status of where, you know, my, my shortcomings. Is there a list of saying, hey, here's the, you know, one, two, three things I need to know. Here's the, you know, like ten things that I have. To. Have to know as an agent. And then you can kind of, you know, measure yourself, you know what I'm saying? So like, one might be the finances, the deal flow and how how contracts work and construction knowledge and, you know, is there certain things that you can think of again, if you don't know it now, it'd be great for our listeners to know. Well, I mean. If there were saying, like, if I'm a new person, I'm like, oh, okay, let me, let me grade myself on these five topics. Okay. So from my last two and a half years of just kind of exploring this, I. Mean, you've been in real estate for 23 years. You haven't just been okay. But okay. So you guys are selling what, over a north of 100 houses a year? Okay. Yeah. Just three of you coming to the table with, like. I mean, I have a high construction knowledge. I have high finance knowledge. I have a high transaction knowledge. I have a, the three things that you that a new agent, when they're helping someone buy a house, they need to understand these three things. There's price, there's quality, and there's location. And you're going to sacrifice on one of these three things. It's important that you don't sacrifice on two of them. So the person buying a house, person. Buying a house okay. Yeah. So as an agent, when you really dig into those three things, you're able to like help people get to their true motivation, some new people buying a house they'll want, they won't want to sacrifice any of them. And so then they switch which ones are important. Let me give you a for example. Sure. Let's say you want a really nice house at a really good price. Sure. What's the location of that house? Probably going to be like, far away it. Well, not far away. It's going to be rough, right? Like the where you're like, well. From where you really want. Maybe there's like more crime there. Maybe there's, like, you can buy the nicest house in, like, a crime ridden area at a really, like, a really great price. I was thinking like 20 miles from the city kind of thing, right? Where you have to get far or. Like way far out or whatever, or take a different one. It's like, phenomenal location. Yeah. Right. If you're if you have to have a phenomenal location and you got to have it at a really fixed price, what kind of condition is that house going to be in? You're going to sacrifice quality. You're going to sacrifice quality so that that little metric of. And this guy said to me, his name is Tom Kaufman. He said it to me one at a closing once, he said, Ben, this I was probably griping about something in life like I ordinarily do. Ben, you're lucky if you get 80%. Think about that. You're in life. You're lucky if you get 80% of what you were hoping for. Quit trying to have everything be perfect, right? So as soon as somebody can understand, like there is no perfect house, there's no perfect location, nothing about this process is going to equal the magic source of all the sudden you have this like, peaceful, blissful life. This is not true. That comes from somewhere else. This is a this is a it can actually help you live amazing days. Like if you pick the right house and have the right scenario. Like your days can be good there. Like you can then enjoy your life. But it's not like magic or something like that. So in order to make a decision, you need to be able. We always talk about helping people make an accurate decision, like where they're like, for example, let's just say location and quality was like number one and number one for them. Well, what are you going to sacrifice on the price? Sure, you're going to pay for it. And it's like as long as you let's say you're going to pay 20 grand over price, as long as you know that you're paying more for it, you're chalking it up to your vacation fund and saying like, hey, I'm not going to go on vacation this next couple of years. I'm going to I'm going to be on vacation at this house because really, what I wanted that's like a active decision. A bad decision would be like, hey, I paid what I thought it was worth, and it was actually worth way less. Now I put myself in a financial bind that's not good. We want you to have the ability to know what you're doing. Okay? So as a new agent, helping people understand that little trifecta that's. Great is. Really important. Now, if you don't know how to tell quality as a new agent, well, you got to get some help. If you don't know how to evaluate the the pricing of House, you need to get some help if you don't know how to, if you don't understand contracts and like all the levers that you can pull, let me give you a great example. Someone has a house in an estate. Okay, okay. Let's say there's some problems with it. One person offers 200,000 $20,000 earnest money, no inspections. Cash then. And the person knows there's the owners. Like it's an estate. Like it's not their house. They don't know somebody else offers 250,000 with financing and, 5000 earnest money and inspections. There's $50,000 difference there. People might take this one, right, because they're unsure of, like what what all of this equals like, is the deal going to fall apart is or whatever. And the key factors over here were big earnest money, no inspections. Right. Like, is it easier. This person over here is saying like, this is a lock, we're locked and loaded here. This one's like, well, maybe it's not going to work out. Well, that has everything to do with the seller. You have to understand as a, like a buyer who you're dealing with as the seller. And that's a key to negotiating so that that's like nuances. So like as a new agent you got to find somebody that it really understands, like the different kinds of sellers actually if you've if people could read our book, we, we like describe this in there. The different and I learned that at the title company I'm like, oh it's actually categorical. Like if you have Mrs. Smith who like is pristine with her house and you do a home inspection on her house and find something, you can ask her to fix it, it's a point of pride for her. Like she will fix that. Don't ask her to reduce the price. Ask her to fix it right. Jim Smith of his house is like my kid. Say, I read you guys bonds. Barnes bonds. Right? And there's a bunch of stuff, Jim, who was not fixed anything in the last 20 years. You don't ask him to fix anything. You ask him to just lop off ten, 15, 20 grand off the price. And he's like, sure, I don't care. I was more than I want it anyways. I'll sign it up. Right? Like, you have to know who you're dealing with as a seller. Same thing with the. When you're selling a house, you need to understand who these buyers are and that that comes with time and that's great. Yeah. We're going to wrap up the conversation. Now just a couple few things about you and your your brokerage. Okay. So, What's the name of it. Exactly? Okay. And how can people find you? Okay. Yeah, exactly. Usa.com. And our goals for this next 12 months are, are just to become known. You know, we have a flat rate. We have a packet with these different packages that instead of the traditional percentage model, we have different, flat rate packages. We have salaried agents, we have we use offer in which is wonderful. And you know, we have a real we have a real team based approach. Like there's not everybody we all work together on these files. So we want to become known. I mean, we're a small company and we're or bite against the grain a little bit, but I actually I used to think it was a negative thing, but actually I think we're leading, you know, Zillow, Redfin, Trulia. They're all doing the same thing on a, on a, on a national level. That what we're trying to do at a local level. And I just think the way the internet is going, what Zillow is doing, I think actually things are going to head in the direction that we're already heading. So it's not a it's not a negative thing towards our competition. I think it's just like, hey, this is the future. Like, this is the way things are going to go. These houses are so visible, so visible. So much data is available that people and people are so much more educated. The consumers are so much more educated because of the available information and, you know, all the social media and everything. So are you guys looking to hire agents? Yeah. Yes. Hey, I might be looking. Yeah, sure. Okay. Well, you know where seriously, where where would you be looking? Northeast Ohio. Yeah, I think, our goal would be to start, seeing more in the Cleveland market and in the Columbus market. We would like to have some agents in those markets. Great. You guys are one of the top users of offering, that's, you know, you guys are super users. Yeah. Tell me why you guys use it. We couldn't function without it. Really? Yeah. I mean, our ability, our value on our weekends and having a life and not being bombarded with offers from the houses we're selling is just. It's just we can actually set things up with our clients and say like, hey, here's the software, here's all the things that are going to happen. And it it relationally manages the sale of the houses during that offer process, which can be very disruptive. And then it so it's huge time saving for us. And then it actually educates our clients about the all their offers. And so then our ability to just deliver our expertise, which is our just professionalism, is all that is needed, which is what's the thing of value anyways. All of this like rigamarole of like having to like do paperwork and stuff is just like it's not worth it. Like we just can focus on the meat and potatoes and the clients love it. So the technology helps you guys leverage efficiencies. Oh yeah. Decrease administrative at a time. Yeah. You're saying weekends, right? You get your time and and focus on on what you guys wanted to be. Yeah, I mean absolutely. But a lot of times people are looking at to buy a house on the weekends. Sure. And so they're wanting to write up an offer and it's just simply like, hey, you know, put it in there. It's going to go right to the seller. You know, it's great for the buyers agents because the seller gets it like they they are going to get it in front of the seller. And immediately to immediately, yeah, yeah, they don't have to wait maybe a day or a couple days or hours. And I'm excited about the, the new, integration with that loop on. When that's all done. That'll be really slick, I think, just to make everything even more streamlined. Yeah. Can't wait. Yeah, man. You're awesome. Yeah, I'm sure we could have talked for hours. We'll have you, like, continuously on, perpetually on. But, you guys, we are super excited for this conversation. Just to recap, all the new agents out there. There's some great nuggets in here. Sounds like, you know, character, learning, experience, just knowing your shortcomings. On top of the model of how you can connect with buyers and sellers and what motivates them and be a great agent. So wishing you all the best in your careers and wishing that, you know, we can take some of these nuggets and they can help you be a better agent. All the best.