The $300-an-Hour Filter: How Jayson Burtch Built a Southwest Florida Real Estate Empire

Guest Bio

Jayson Burtch leads a top-producing real estate team in Southwest Florida, expanding up the state's west coast into St. Pete, Sarasota, and Naples. He got his start in real estate at 18 after inheriting exposure to real estate investing through his grandfather's rental portfolio, but the real turning point came a decade later — a coaching program in 2012 that took his business from reactive and market-dependent to fully systematized. Since then, Jayson's business has roughly doubled every two to three years, built on a combination of relentless work ethic, diversified lead generation, and — more recently — AI-driven database reactivation.

Show Notes

Tim sits down with Jayson Burtch, a Southwest Florida team leader who's spent over a decade turning raw hustle into a systematized, scaling business. Jayson doesn't sugarcoat what it took — by his own account, his team is regularly working north of 70 hours a week, and his philosophy is blunt: "nobody works harder, I won't be outworked." But underneath the grind is a business built on real systems, starting with a 2012 coaching experience Jayson calls the single most educational year of his career.

The conversation covers how Jayson's lead generation philosophy evolved from pure cold-calling to a diversified mix (still 60-65% past clients and sphere of influence, even with heavy paid lead spend), why he holds his team accountable with a hard "5 conversations before new leads get turned on" rule, and how AI is reshaping both his marketing (the shift from SEO to AEO) and his team's ability to reactivate the massive graveyard of old database leads that would otherwise convert with a competitor. Jayson also gets candid about what surprised even him about his own business — the chaos behind the curtain, and just how many hours it actually takes.

In this episode:

• How a $400/month tool called Zillow first changed Jayson's approach to lead gen back in 2012
• Why "nobody outworks me" is Jayson's actual operating philosophy, not just a tagline
• The coaching program Jayson calls the most pivotal moment of his career
• Jayson's follow-up accountability system: 5 real conversations before agents get new leads
• Why 60-65% of his business is still past clients and sphere of influence, despite heavy paid ad spend
• The "$300-an-hour job" filter Jayson uses to evaluate whether he's actually working like it matters
• How AI is helping Jayson's team re-engage old leads that would otherwise convert with someone else
• The shift from SEO to AEO (answer engine optimization) as more buyers start their search with AI
• Why Jayson believes the agent population will shrink 65% in the next 5-7 years — but agents themselves aren't going anywhere
• Jayson's advice to his younger self: get properly educated, and don't listen to negativity about coaching

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Welcome to Under Contract, where I sit down with some of the top real estate agents and team leaders in the country to talk about how they've built their businesses, what's working right now, and where they see the industry going next. Today I'm joined by Jason Birch. He is from the South Florida area. We'll get specific about that. Jason, uh, thanks for coming on. I'm excited to have you. Appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 0:27

Thank you for having me here, Tim.

SPEAKER_00 0:29

Awesome. Let's go ahead and jump right into it. Something I always like to start with because I like I think it's important to understand someone's journey uh gives context to everything that came afterwards. So, how did you get into real estate? And at what point did you realize this could become a serious business rather than maybe simply a job?

SPEAKER_01 0:47

Oh, that's a good question. It was so long ago, it's hard to actually tell me back. Um, so I was very young, uh, about 18 or 19. My grandfather had passed away. And when he passed away, he had 27 houses that were he had all he'd bought paid for. You know, the rentals had paid themselves off, etc. And uh I was working in construction and knew that wasn't what I wanted to do for the next 40 years of my life. Um, so I think I really got into it more for the investment aspect of it, but needed to make some money in order to make those investments happen. And then before you know it, you're uh, you know, you're so thick and you can't see the forest through the trees, and you you just learned that the commissions is the you know the easier stream of revenue. Uh now I am back into investments, you know, in and out as the markets turn and so forth. You know, we do a lot of that too, but that's actually what drew me to the industry was the idea of using it to invest.

SPEAKER_00 1:37

I love it. Okay. Now, obviously, you've been in this game for a long time. I mean, uh, so and I've seen the success. I did quite a bit of research on what you've you've done more recently as far as the amount of deals, what your team's up to. Um, and I think that typically every successful business seems to have one or two moments where everything changes. Sometimes it's a key hire, sometimes it's maybe a change in marketing strategy. What was do you think would be the biggest turning point in your business from where you were back then to obviously where you've gone now?

SPEAKER_01 2:10

By far, there was a pivotal moment when we got in coaching. Um, everything was almost, I wouldn't say a 180, but it was definitely a 90-degree turn once we got into coaching and we figured out that this was actually you could be systematic, uh, that you could scale, that all of these things weren't just random, you weren't just dependent upon market conditions. And um, that that was like a pivotal point for me. And that was right around 2012, 2013. And uh about every three years thereafter, we've seen our business double. About every two to three years, our business has continued to double.

SPEAKER_00 2:44

And when you say coaching, can you tell me, walk me through what that's our first coaching experience?

SPEAKER_01 2:49

Well, really, it was just an eye-opening experience was the uh I would have never done it, but the broker at the time uh saw a lot of potential. I mean, knew I was a hard worker, and uh, she paid for the entire thing for me to go to. And so I found, you know, it's hard to say no. Uh so we went and just just hearing that again, seeing some of the people I had heard of and seeing the success they were having and how simplified they had made it uh just in that conference got us into um first passive coaching, like you know, a group type coaching. Uh, and again, in 2012, it wasn't nearly as available. You could just go watch YouTube videos. There wasn't a single YouTube video yet uh on how to do these things. Um, but learning the systematic approach to it, that there, you know, it's how many people you contact, you know, how many different lead sources you have, all of these things are systems that you can therefore figure out how much money you want to make. Um, you know, and the wider you're casting that net, you know, the more opportunities you're gonna have and the more resilient you're going to be to the market, you know, turns, dips, and so forth. So sure that was the pivotal time in our in our business. Now we've had a couple of different coaching changes since then, um, you know, and do a little bit more in-depth coaching. Uh, but yeah, that if I had to say was the pivotal moment within our career. And it was, I learned more that year than I did the 10 years prior. I'd already been in the industry for over 10 years and learned more that year about actually running a business.

SPEAKER_00 4:11

Wow. Okay, I love it. And I'm I assume I I gotta ask because I'm I'm a numbers guy. Like uh you're saying essentially you saw that this thing could be systematized. And yeah, and do you look at it like through number, like very number-centric uh as far as what agents should be doing? If if they do X amount of actions, it could lead to Y amount of results, type of thing.

SPEAKER_01 4:34

What's uh you know, what's getting tricky now, to be honest, is you you know your numbers.

SPEAKER_00 4:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:40

Is now that we're growing a team, it's trying to figure out other people's numbers and you know, and then trying to figure out averages because this person's not gonna do that. You know, it that's far more complicated, at least I've found it far more challenging. Our numbers, I knew exactly. You know, if we did this, this, and this, this is what's gonna happen. Now change, you might you know miss it by 15 or 20 percent, but you're gonna know you know roughly where you're at by your own actions. It's been the the scaling part that has been challenging is when you're trying to scale other people's actions.

SPEAKER_00 5:10

That makes sense. That makes sense. Well, obviously, there's you know a couple million agents in the United States, but only a small percentage of of them build truly exceptional businesses. So let me ask you this: what do you believe is the biggest thing that differentiates your business from everyone else?

SPEAKER_01 5:29

Um, what differentiates our business as far as myself? Nobody works harder. I I won't be outworked. I will not outwork. Yeah. Um, so that that's just it. If if when things get harder, I tougher, I just work harder. Um love that. Yeah, so that's one thing for us. Um, and then the consistency, uh day in, day out, day in, day out. Um, it's almost hard to take time off. If I take time off, I have to leave because if I'm I'm not just gonna sit at home, it's it's not gonna happen. Um, so I have to plan those vacations for those times of week. If I'm here, there's no way that call comes in. I'm not going to take that list equipment. I'm not gonna go show that house. It's just it's my blood.

SPEAKER_00 6:16

Yep, some of us are just wired that way. So I I I totally understand. I love it. Um now I'm gonna go in a slightly different direction because I'm I'm curious. I love asking this question, which is like if I strip away your reputation, all your assets, the existing assets, the business, and if I dropped you in another city tomorrow with no database, no reputation, no contacts, talk to me. How would you build another top producing business today?

SPEAKER_01 6:46

It's funny you say that because I've actually thought about doing that just for the challenge of doing it. I like nostalgia. And then you also got to come to your senses that wait a second, you took a long time to get these advantages. Um right now, it's it's uh, you know, I think it's a lot easier now than it's ever been. Uh, one thing I would do, and this is gonna sound weird, is I would join a team, I would use the leverage of somebody else's brand already in a market to get my feet wet, learn the nuances of that market, where where the weak spots are, where I could take advantage of, where I can dig in quickly. And then, you know, over a year or two years, I would probably you know wean myself away from the team, but I would join onto a team to take advantage of their leverage. Uh the other aspect right now is you you can there's always, you know, uh you can always work cool calls, those are always going to be there. But I would also buy a lot of we do buy a lot of lead gen. So wherever I went, I would buy lead gen because it can super uh it can fast pace your results. Um, I mean you can only call so many people in a day before you lose your sanity, but if they're calling you, if they're coming in hot leads and so forth, um, so I would I would go in and I would have a I would invest in myself, which a lot of agents are afraid to do for some reason. Uh they want to broker, they want to blame the team lead, they want to blame, well, no, the the broker's not investing in the leads because you're not working the leads that are already there. So then they don't invest in themselves and and then they complain that you know it's so hard to make it. Well, it is if you don't invest in either time, money, or effort.

SPEAKER_00 8:15

I love that. That's great. Yeah, no.

SPEAKER_01 8:17

We've talked about wanting trying to do that before just to see if uh, you know, how it would work. Um, but I really do. I see people come in right now and we have them up to two to three deals a month right off the bat, you know, and they're coming in from everywhere. Um, so I think there is so much leverage out there with the internet now. The other thing is you can learn so much quicker. We didn't used to work, and this is just in the last four months. We didn't used to work outside the two county area, and now we're working almost the entire west coast of Florida and part of Florida because I didn't used to like to work in neighborhoods I didn't know the nuances of. If I'm gonna work in that neighborhood, I don't want to put you right next to where there's gonna be a garbage dump coming up and I didn't know I don't live there. Yeah, now with AI, I can learn more than 80% of those agents on my drive to the appointment. Uh I love that. Really expanded where we're able to work and how we're able to kind of grow into different markets.

SPEAKER_00 9:09

That's awesome. Well, we're gonna talk about AI in just a minute, but uh, while we're on the topic of lead generation, you know, one thing I've learned over the years is that great business owners often evolve how they think about growth. So, like, how has your philosophy around generating new business changed over the years? Have you always been a big paid lead gen guy, or or have you kind of morphed into that?

SPEAKER_01 9:30

Or um no, we more morphed into it. Um, in all honesty, one of the other agents went with me to the coaching conference that I was, you know, said was my pivotal moment. We both came back in. We were, they all said we were brainwashed. I mean, we had nothing on our desk except for the three pieces of paper we were told to have. We got there at 7 a.m. like we were told to. We did our script practice till 7:20, like we were told to, you know, we were we were all in. Um, but there was another agent down the hall that was brand new that had much less experience, and he was outselling us. And he'd always been the top two in the office. And I'm like, how the hell is he doing this? So one day I went down and I asked him, and he said, Well, there's this new system out. Um, he goes, I'm not gonna lie, it's really expensive. It's called Zillow. Now, this is 2012, 2013. I'm like, What's expensive? He said, like four or five hundred dollars a month, and I was like, Oh, so I signed up eventually signed up for 400 because I wasn't gonna keep getting outsold by a young kid that was new, yeah. And what I noticed was I was getting just as much lead gen, I was getting just as many sales every month off the 400 spend as I was the 40 hours I was spending doing cold calls. Well, this is a little bit more scalable. If I just spend another 400, then I'll do two deals, and so that was kind of like the epiphany moment to me that you don't and I don't believe in getting rid of one or the other, you do sure, you know, because then again, there is no lie that Zillow could go away tomorrow, yeah, you know, or whatever it didn't matter what your lead source is, things change tomorrow and it could be gone, so you better be diversified. Um yeah, that was kind of how we got into it having both, and now I would say even with as much as we spend it, we do spend a ton, it's still 60, 65 percent is past customers and SOI.

SPEAKER_00 11:18

Sure, sure. No, it makes sense. I mean, that's that's a sign of a good healthy business, you know. So yeah, and we've been doing it so long, yeah, for sure. I think that's one of those things that definitely compounds over time. So staying on the lead gen, but maybe transition a little bit to I think where what we've seen in building um our AI platform is that teams often they don't lose business because they they lack leads, they lose it because good opportunities slip through the crack. So I want to talk about follow-up for just a minute. Um, where do you think most agents like leak the opportunities? What do you think maybe broken into follow up? And I'd love to hear about uh how you guys are are doing follow-up.

SPEAKER_01 11:59

I would love to say it's our strong suit, but in all honesty, I think we give so many leads to our team um that there's way too many that do slip through.

SPEAKER_00 12:08

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 12:09

Um, you know, and we're we're looking at you know AI for some solutions too that we're working with some people right now on stuff with that. But um the yeah, that that's not and maybe I'm being critical, but you know, but it's not something I think we do a great job at. Now we have requirements on our team, and the way we try to do that is we make them call, they have to have five conversations, not five dials, but five conversations, um, 90 seconds or longer with uh follow-up calls, past leads before their leads get turned on for the day. And if you make your calls, they don't get turned on. Some agents will go two or three days without any new leads because they haven't made their calls. I love it. So that's the one way that we kind of do that's almost a little bit of a fail-safe that if you're not doing the old, I'm not giving you new leads.

SPEAKER_00 12:54

Yeah, yeah. No, I like that. That's actually pretty smart. Um, while we're on the sort of that, that's a great tactic. I I want to make sure. Uh, one thing I like to do is make sure that agents listening to this walk away from these conversations with something concrete they can actually put into practice. So if you were coaching an agent who's already doing some business but wants to significantly grow over the next 12 months, what's one specific thing you tell them to do start to start doing this week?

SPEAKER_01 13:21

Well, where are they at and where are they trying to get to?

SPEAKER_00 13:25

Yeah. Well, I'm I'm thinking about someone that's probably, you know, maybe they're doing you know, a deal a month or something, but they want to get to three or four deals a month. I know I know the the cycle can be different depending on action.

SPEAKER_01 13:39

Whatever it is, the answer is more action. Yeah. Uh and whether that is, you know, if you're uh a solo agent and you don't have any marketing spend, more open houses. There doesn't take hardly any money to do good a good open house. You can do three to four a week. You know, if you're not doing anything else, uh, one of the biggest things I would say is are you treating it like a real job? Because this is a $300 to $400 an hour job, and are you treating it like that? Um the best information or best suggestions I ever got was to work it like a $300 job and your boss is looking over your shoulder. Um what you're doing today right now if this was a $300 an hour job. Um, so if you treat it that way and you start doing these open houses, you start doing your follow-ups, um, and you put the 50-60 hours a week in, you don't have to do that forever. But if you're trying to truly gain momentum, that's how you're gonna do it, is by you know more action.

SPEAKER_00 14:32

I love it. That's gold, that filter to look through. Start behaving like it's a $300-$100 an hour job because it will be if you keep uh working on it. It absolutely is. Yeah, absolutely. All right, I want to pull back the curtain for just a second because most people only see the listing, the transactions. For a moment, I'm interested in what happens behind the scenes. So if I spent an entire day inside your business, what would surprise me most maybe about how you operate?

SPEAKER_01 14:59

Um what would surprise me? Probably the chaos. That wouldn't surprise me, actually. We try to control it, but the absolute chaos going on um in the background, uh, we we put a good front on, you know, and I think everybody that that's part of the trick, but in the background, it's it's flying every which direction. I mean, we now have five ISAs working, we have a marketing team, we have, you know, it's just um trying to track everything. But that I would say that would be the most surprising that how many hours we do put in. Um, you know, I talked to some other agents that are on similar levels, and I'm shocked that they can work 45 for you know, less than 50 hours because I'm like, man, that that's that's a trick I haven't learned yet. Is you know, we're we're here 10, 11 hours, and then it's home long enough to check in with the kid, eat real quick, and then grab the computer for another hour and a half while you know we um so I would say that would be the other surprising thing is I if I was to clock my hours, I'm sure we're well north of 70 hours almost every week.

SPEAKER_00 16:06

Wow. Yeah. I think some people might assume at your level, you may not have to work as hard because of the leverage that you've created. We're we're supposed to be getting there uh through our coaching organization.

SPEAKER_01 16:17

Right now, they say it gets worse before it gets better, and I think we're right in the middle of that. Sure. After start getting all of this stuff built out, and then you can you start having people for different things. I do have like now a trainer um that helps train our agents that way they're not, you know, we're not constantly getting interruptions. Sure. Um, you know, we have um we have had instead of trying to make all the phone calls now, we have ISAs. So we're getting things in place there, and we're we're maybe six months to nine months away from having the goal of being able to scale back. But in all honesty, I can't do less than 55. I don't feel engaged. If I'm working 55 hours a week, I feel like I'm just uh part-timing it or not giving up my full effort. So if I could scale back to that, that's kind of where my goal is, is to be right there.

SPEAKER_00 17:01

Well, I mean, there's a big difference between 70 and 55. You get two hours a day back to do. You got to know yourself too, you know. And if if you know that 55 is a nice, healthy number for you, then there's nothing wrong with that. Um, now as businesses grow, the bottleneck usually kind of changes from getting business to building systems, which is kind of sounds like what you're up against right now. So if you wanted to double the business, I which sounds like you've been doing pretty traditionally every couple of years, what what would need to be true in 2028 or 2029?

SPEAKER_01 17:36

I can tell you what we're doing right now is we're expanding into other markets, like we talked about. We have been uh we've been so geolocal and we've turned down um so much business, and we would try to get referral partners, but we'll send out five to seven for every one that gets sent back. I'm like, we're on the wrong side of this. Yeah. Uh so now we're building out agents in these other markets, and this has only happened really in the last four or five months. Like I said, with the AI, now I feel a little bit more comfortable working in some different markets that I can help people. We know how to generate the leads, we know how to generate business. It's now cracking into those markets, getting a few agents in each one of those markets so that we're not also spending all of our time driving back and forth. Um, that's what we're gonna do to grow our business from here as we're expanding into St. Pete and uh Sarasota, St. Pete, and down to Naples. Okay, love that. Okay, well, we touched on real quick on that. The other thing that we noticed was how much easier it was to get into St. Pete. Really? There's such a huge population up there, and then not just population, but there's so many vacation homes. So the amount of homes up there, our ISAs are setting us about four appointments up into that county, more than maybe five times as much as they set into our own county. So it's been easier to get a momentum going. Um not there for as many open houses and stuff like that. So we haven't generated as much business from it yet, but it has uh it's we're seeing it, it's there.

SPEAKER_00 19:01

Yeah. Well, I think as a uh lifetime lead generator, I'm always like go where the traffic's already going, right? Just step in front of it. So if the flow is going to same Pete, then not a bad place to plant your flag, uh at least one of your flags. Um, okay, so we talked we touched a base on AI. I want to talk about that for just a second because obviously AI is impossible to ignore right now. Absolutely. Um and building our AI platform has given me the opportunity to have a lot of conversations with teams where about where AI creates real value and maybe where it's kind of hypey. So, where do you think the biggest operational opportunity is for AI inside a real estate business today?

SPEAKER_01 19:42

Um, we're working with a company right now that's supposed to be rolling out a product um in the next three to four weeks. That will be doing um voice, it'll be AI voicing and texting a lot of our old leads, uh picking up off the context of the last conversation in the CRM. Uh, and that way kind of, you know, and then re-engages them, flips it right back over to you. That's that's the thing I'm most excited about. Um, is because there are so many of those leads where we give our agents so many leads that it's a shame when they send me the reports that show how many people bought with somebody else after we've had contact with them, it just drives me crazy. Yeah, um, so that that's one of the things that I'm most excited about, uh, really getting into. I've been somewhat resistant to AI just because I've been doing this so long. And I know that's a it's you can't ignore it, and you're gonna go the way of the dinosaur. So I'm adapting, but I'm not at the front of the curve by any means.

SPEAKER_00 20:42

Well, I I yeah, I the thing is I don't always think being at the very front of the curve is the smartest, but I think you're still towards the front of the curve a hundred percent, which is that's really exciting. And that's cool that you you guys linked up. That's um for us, like that's similar to uh what our platform does. The only difference is, and this is not a pitch for my platform, but is that um what we we decided to do, and this might be something interesting to talk to them about, is uh we same kind of thing. We looked at there's three buckets of leads, there's new leads, there's your active leads, and then there's your kind of like a graveyard database. And we after talking to a lot of agents, we said, like, there's the real opportunity there because there's a slightly that's where the yeah, that's where the money's at. They say that 90% of leads will be purchased not after day 91. But so many agents focus on the uh those 10% and they're all kind of fighting for the same thing. So I think there's a real opportunity there. So one of the things we did is we partnered up, we kind of combine AI and d data, and um and essentially what we do is now uh the AI goes and it looks into your database and it starts looking for life events online that would trigger uh, you know, oh, this person just got married or you Know this person, their relationship status changed and whatnot. And so I think that that combination is gonna be incredibly powerful. And I think you're if you're already getting into that, you're I think you're in a good place, man.

SPEAKER_01 22:12

So yeah, and again, we're really excited because we have a huge database. Uh our CRM is huge. And then using um using those lists to therefore create uh custom audiences through Facebook and Instagram, though those are the things that we're really looking to try to get into. Um, it's always trying to balance that with what's your bread and butter right now, and you know, it's it's that constant balance between trying to get done what you already know and what you know is gonna be the future.

SPEAKER_00 22:40

100%. 100%. Yeah. I mean, and the thing is that even if you didn't use AI, you have a great business that would continue to grow. But there's a world where you're gonna get phased.

SPEAKER_01 22:50

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:52

You gotta you gotta address it at one point. Um, now so one more question about AI. Uh, because I just love asking agents this. Uh, if AI could eliminate one task or workflow from your business tomorrow, what would it be? This is a bit of a selfish question, by the way, because I just love to hear what great agents would say to this.

SPEAKER_01 23:11

Well, one of the well, there's two aspects that I I I honestly I think transaction coordination, and I think that's when it's probably closest to. We hear this this one comes up a lot.

SPEAKER_00 23:23

Uh yeah, there's a theory that you know, paying three or four hundred bucks a uh a transaction or whatever it is, that's the kind of volume that a team like yourself does. Yeah, that's expensive. And I don't know that it's necessary uh in the near future to spend that kind of money.

SPEAKER_01 23:39

I agree, I agree. Um, because it is so much a if this then that, and that's what AI is perfect at.

SPEAKER_00 23:45

A hundred percent.

SPEAKER_01 23:46

Yeah, you know. Um now where we found some glitches. I mean, we just hired a new director of operations. She came in, our old one was completely resistant, wouldn't touch AI. I mean, anything more than a quick little question to chat was as much as she would do when we tried bringing in a little bit more AI, and we've already found some glitches there. So, I mean, I think always, you know, the it we're you're gonna have to be patient with it, but like we scanned everything in and it was assigning things because it was reading handwriting to agents that didn't exist, and so the leads were were going out to nobody. Um, so you know, there's weird things like that that we'd have to pick up on, but I I see that being the future for it because again, so much of our stuff, if we get a title order, if it's in this county, it goes to that title company. So that's not something right now, it's probably a seven or eight minute process where the guy doesn't blink of an eye and they can do many of them at once. I love that home inspections. You know, if it's in this county home inspector, we use this person, or give the client the option of these three people, let them know a quick jot form or something could handle all of that coming back.

SPEAKER_00 24:50

Uh I feel like I've I've heard that enough that that's coming. Uh yeah, I'm sure it's coming. So uh let's shift. Uh, I got a couple more questions and then uh we'll wrap things up. I always like um asking for for something with eight for the agents that are listening who want to build a business like yours. If you could go back, I know it's been a while, to the day you got your license and you give yourself one piece of advice about building this business, what would it be?

SPEAKER_01 25:20

Um I got two. That was even better. In all honesty, one would be getting coaching. Um would be getting coaching. And I I remember when there was a coaching thing that came around, and again, back then we used to have to drive four hours and it was a two or two-day event, and you know, because there was no uh online stuff. And everybody in the office, because you are who you surround yourself with, talked about how oh, you'll just become a cold caller, you'll just be one of these phone salespeople, uh, whoever wants to do that. And I'm like, you know, it was so negative, I didn't want anything to do with it. You know, 12 years later, when I'm there and I'm like, well, no, that's how people make actual money, that's how this self-matic is by calling people who need your service. Um, so it would be that would be the first thing. And now, though, the coaching is so you don't have to have the money. I mean, you could do a growth coaching program for $99 now and get 90% of what we got in 2014.

SPEAKER_00 26:16

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 26:16

Or you can find it online for almost nothing. Yeah, so it would be get educated properly, not by your broker. Unfortunately, most of the brokers and most of your broker managers are broker managers because they couldn't make it as agents. They could have made it as an agent, they'd be making real money as an agent. So you're wrong people. Um, but yeah, get properly educated and proper mindset. Uh, because this is a rough business. And if somebody prepares you for it, um, you're if you're not mentally tough, you're you're gonna you're gonna have a rough time.

SPEAKER_00 26:47

That's great advice. That's great advice. Um, okay, let's see here. I'm gonna want to end strong. Um let's let's finish by looking ahead. So five years from now, what changes do you think we'll see in real estate? And what do you think will still never change? Because you hear a lot of rumors, especially with the AI and whatnot, that you know, what is are ages even gonna exist and whatnot, which I have my own take on, which I think agents are safe. Um, but I do think there there will be shifts. So I'd be curious what your take is.

SPEAKER_01 27:20

Uh, I agree a lot with that, with both those statements. Um, I think in five years in particular, five to seven years is probably that window where um, much like travel agents, when people are buying $50,000 European vacations, they're not planning on themselves. You know, they're going, they want somebody that's going to be responsible for all those things, that's double checking it. They don't want a computer, you know, putting these things together. I think our industry will be more like that. There'll be a lot less of us. Yeah, but you it'll be those who really know their stuff that can are professional, know their markets. Um, again, people buying million-dollar houses, and I don't know what a million-dollar house will be in five years with the way it's going. But yeah, but those people again, they don't want AI figuring out who their home inspector is gonna be. Yeah, somebody local that's gonna be responsible for it. Uh, they want somebody they can call afterwards if there's an issue. So um, I do think it's gonna be scaled back, and there'll be maybe 35% of us, um, you know, in five to seven years, but I I don't think agents as a whole will go anywhere.

SPEAKER_00 28:24

No, for sure. Uh yeah, I I think uh the 80-20 will kind of uh play itself out. You're you you said 35, but somewhere in that range where the people that were doing a lot of the business anyways are just gonna rise to the top. I also I'm kind of a firm believer, I think anybody the over the age of let's say 30, uh I can't speak to what young people might do in the future. Um, but everybody uh on the other side of the spectrum, I think this is the biggest decision they make, uh typically financially, unless you know they're in the business or something. But typically this is the biggest. And I just think not having someone to guide you through like you're a big obviously proponent of coaching, like not having someone to coach you through this process uh seems kind of crazy to me. Uh, and and I don't have skin in the game, but I do think I certainly wouldn't go buy a uh a million-dollar home without having someone in my corner.

SPEAKER_01 29:22

Uh, unless I was we see stuff all the time that we use AI for and then we catch it and it's really off.

SPEAKER_00 29:28

Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_01 29:30

So I mean that's not an investment. When you're buying the most expensive thing you're gonna buy in your lifetime, that's not something you want a hundred percent computer generated.

SPEAKER_00 29:38

Um it's definitely it's definitely a tool right now. I would say it's a tool, it's it's not a replacement. Um, and I don't think it will be a replacement for frankly, a lot of the people that have the income to to buy the homes. I just think they're gonna lean towards uh to this.

SPEAKER_01 29:56

I mean, well, each time they try to roll these things out, like Zillow tried to roll out a thing where they could put the different doorknobs on and people could open them up well, and people were hacking them and breaking into house, yeah. So anytime, yeah, you start getting security issues when you start taking the people away. Um, yeah, yep. So, you know, I I think people do feel more comfortable. Secondly, if you sold the, you know, I've got people now, I'm on the third generation. I sold their grandparents a house, I sold their oh yeah. You know, those people, they're not going anywhere. Trust do you can't trust uh replace the trust that you have. No, and that's a lot of them are using AI to find those agents, and you know, that's where we've really started shifting a lot of our marketing. I think it's what AEO instead of the S is shifting there because more and more people are asking, you know, we're having to figure out how to get into those algorithms.

SPEAKER_00 30:44

Well, because uh most let's not talk about real estate agents. Most people in general that use AI, aka probably chat GBT, you think it's Google. Yeah, you know, they use it as Google. Uh if you were doing anything beyond that, you're like in the 99th percentile, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:02

Uh, because most human beings right now just think it's uh an interesting and that's exactly where shifting all our Google, you know, our Google analytics and spend our SEO stuff or figuring out how to spend all that into S our A AEO now because very smart.

SPEAKER_00 31:17

I love that. Yeah, you're going you're going where the where the money's going. And I think even I look at even industries like the car industry, where they they've done stuff like where you can go to the carousel and uh pick up, yeah. I'm like, I don't really know that many people that have done that. Like, I'm there's probably a there's obviously a percentage of them because they wouldn't still be in business. But I'm like, most people I know still go to the car dealership, and that's a car, we're talking about a fraction of the purchase of a home. So, like, I don't think nearly about as much about my car purchases as I do my home purchases. So you can't trade the house the next week. Exactly. So uh I think uh good news, I think uh agents are safe, but I think you're dead on, Jason. I think you gotta step your game up though, because it's gonna be, you know, there's gonna be a lot of people to feast and then but a lot of people that famine uh if they don't step their game up. So I love it now. Um before we wrap up, I I want to just ask you where can people learn more about you and your team?

SPEAKER_01 32:19

Uh the birch team.com, B-U-R-T-C-H. Uh that's our website, our social media. We're on Facebook, uh, we're on Instagram, so forth. Um and then they can always reach out to me at 941-626-5432. Uh, like I said, we're expanding, we're in Southwest Florida, we're expanding all the way up into Central Florida and down to uh we're not in the East Coast yet, but all the way up and down the west coast of Florida.

SPEAKER_00 32:46

Love it, love it. Yeah, definitely check out Jason and the team. Uh, they're definitely doing some cool things. Awesome to hear that you guys are growing big time in uh Southwest Florida. So, Jason, thank you again for joining me on under contract. I really enjoyed the conversation. My pleasure.

SPEAKER_01 33:01

Thank you for having me, Tim.