The Biggest Threat To Brokerages Isn’t Compass or iBuyers – Rob Hahn

Brokerage Insider

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Long regarded as one of the best prognosticators in the real estate industry, Rob Hahn, also know as the Notorious ROB, joins TRIBUS CEO Eric Stegemann to discuss the business of brokerage.

Rob goes into detail as to why teams are the biggest threat to the real estate brokerage business.

TRANSCRIPTION

Eric Stegemann (00:02):

Hi everybody. And welcome to brokerage insider the podcast where we interview the leaders in real estate and technology. I'm your host, Eric Stegemann. And I'm the CEO of TRIBUS, a brokerage platform vendor. And today I am honored to be joined by a good friend of mine. Mr. Rob Hahn. Rob, welcome.

Rob Hahn (00:23):

Thanks for having me. I don't know about honored. I mean, you know, like we've, we've gotten drunk together, man. It shouldn't be

Eric Stegemann (00:30):

Well, you're a very busy human and have lots of stuff going on. So I thank you for taking some time out of your day on here, especially a new podcast, you're always kind of a, does anybody actually listened to this thing or not?

Rob Hahn (00:45):

It's just an excuse for me to talk to you, you know, and then we'll get to have an interesting conversation, maybe debate, maybe, you know, whatever

Eric Stegemann (00:53):

You, you, you have this and Rob has this great podcast that he does with Greg Robertson. Who's also a friend at Coliseum and they call it Industry Relations. Right?

Rob Hahn (01:05):

Sorry about that. Yeah.

Eric Stegemann (01:07):

Ah, so that podcast is called industry relations, right?

Rob Hahn (01:10):

Say again, I'm sorry.

Eric Stegemann (01:12):

Podcasts that you do with Greg Robertson is called industry relations, right?

Rob Hahn (01:15):

That's right. Yup. Yup. So I try to block everything off, but phone calls keep coming in.

Eric Stegemann (01:22):

That's okay. I get it. I get it. No problem. We just recorded another podcast, not long ago with an agent who's a high power team leader and the entire time his phone was buzzing in the background to say, Nope, no problem. No problem. Now Rob is the managing partner of a consulting firm called 7DS and associates. He's also the purveyor of notorious, Rob that's notorious-rob.com where he writes probably the most insightful commentary and news updates about the real estate industry. And so Rob, as you know, this, this podcast is really directed towards brokerage staff and leadership inside of brokerages and franchises. That main listener base. What I will tell everybody listening is if you don't regularly read a notorious, Rob, you probably should sign up for the email alerts so that they're in your inbox. Cometary is, is oftentimes years ahead of time as to what actually happens. So, you know, Rob, what I wanted to start with, because I don't hear, you know, I know this story cause I've known you now for 11 or 12 years.

Rob Hahn (02:33):

It's been a long time, man. We met, I think before you started TRIBUS, we were talking about the name, you know? Yeah. I remember

Eric Stegemann (02:40):

I was probably the first person outside of my little team in st. Louis that I told about the idea for TRIBUS and Rob wrote a post about our company very early on. In fact, I think the next day or the day after I went back and wrote 2000 words about drivers and it, it helped us get launched. So for that, I am eternally thankful and getting the word out.

Rob Hahn (03:06):

No man, you've, you've grown the company. So, you know,

Eric Stegemann (03:09):

Thank you. But you know, the thing that I don't hear you tell the story enough and I think is so interesting and worth mentioning is how you got to where you're at right now. Because I don't think people know all the nuance of, of how September 11th weaves itself into your story and what you did before seven DS. So why don't you give us at least the highlights of how Rob got to be in the story?

Rob Hahn (03:38):

I don't know if that's like that interesting, but I'll give you the reader's digest version. So I I'm lawyer larvae, right? So I went to law school. But instead of studying law, I did, I played magic, the gathering a whole lot, you know, I was on the pro tour. It started writing a bunch of stuff for it online. You know, this is before, you know, before online was a thing. Right. and long story short, I ended up going to work for the magazine called the dual list. That was being published by, was the coast. I moved out to Seattle while I was there. They're like, let's, you know, we want to do this, something with a new, this thing called a website at the time, I was one of the key people behind the number one magic website I figured, Oh, let's start a company.

Rob Hahn (04:26):

So quit that, you know, started that, did that for through the first.com bubble. We saw the bubble coming. So we sold out to USA networks. So I went there and worked there for a while, which was really fun times left and started another startup, you know and we were doing great. It was a cruel concept around micropayments, which wasn't figured out in 2000. Well, the unfortunate thing for us was we were located at world trade seven and our second round of funding was scheduled to close to September 15, 2001. So you can imagine what happened right when nine 11 happened that I wrote, I've written about that, you know, on the blog people can find it. So after that, you know, it was just a terrible time. You know, for two, three years during which time I ended up kind of, I was doing some consulting work and it's just trying to, trying to survive.

Rob Hahn (05:26):

And I ended up hooking up with a online agency that was, that had religion as its main client. So that's sort of how I got into real estate, but I started off in the commercial side, which I think gives me a sort of a different perspective or at least gave me a hugely different perspective on everything on real estate, on technology, because I was coming at it from the commercial side of things. I worked at callback commercial, you know, for, I wanna say like four years after which I left and, you know, started doing my own thing. And I've been doing that since 2009.

Eric Stegemann (05:58):

And so here he is with that ex from you know, working from the franchise perspective or the corporate perspective, at least at Coldwell banker commercial, but Rob's were with some of the most well known companies that the leaders in our industry, he's also been a major advisor to the largest MLSs in the country. I know you did work with what's now bright or what was a MRAs before that, as well as the number of other MLS is talking about all sorts of things, which he probably can't share with us what he told them about. But,

Rob Hahn (06:34):

And in fact, most people don't know what I do for living. Cause I feel like, you know, even the fact that I'm working with somebody is nobody's business. Right. But my client, unless I have to do disclose it, I don't. So people are like, how the hell do you make a living? I'm like, well, you know, I just don't talk about my clients. Yeah. That's all.

Eric Stegemann (06:52):

Would you say specifically, like, who is your, at your average customer? What, what kind of work do you do for them, et cetera. From a high level?

Rob Hahn (07:00):

Yeah. I mean, from a high level, I basically ended up tending to work with some of the larger and larger companies because they're the only ones who actually have the money. Right. Cause I'm, I'm far from the cheapest guy out there. And the other thing that's sort of unique I suppose, is I, you know, I usually tell people, like call me when, you know, when it's sort of a bet your company type situation, right. When you really don't know kind of what to do, like I'm not the guy to call. If you wanna increase your, your agent retention by 5%. Like I'm just not that guy. Right. You know, if you're, if your thought is like, we just want to increase our website traffic by 5%, you know, there are plenty of other guys including Eric and who could probably help you out better than I can.

Rob Hahn (07:44):

I think you call me when you have, you're facing a strategic crossroad and you really just trying to figure out what's the best way of handling that. So, you know, whether it's MLS is or brokerages or franchises or tech companies, I find that, you know, the best relationships are those where, you know, either the leadership has some truly like out of box thinking like we want to really pivot and do something else, then, then yeah. Then I'm your guy or you're confronting a real problem. And you know, and you want to try and figure out like, what's the way out, right. Then, then I'm your guy, you know? So that, those are I, those are the types of clients. I tend to have those types of engagements I tend to have. And it's, it's a lot of fun, you know, the downside of it is that maybe I, you know, I could potentially have grown much faster and become much larger if I'd done more of the traditional stuff, but I don't know. I just don't find that stuff, all that. Interesting. You know,

Eric Stegemann (08:42):

I was just going to say, if you, if you didn't say that line, I was going to say, I think that would be boring to you.

Rob Hahn (08:48):

I could do it. But you know, I mean, there are people who are, I think probably better at that sort of thing. And certainly a lot cheaper. So, you know, I just typically steer those people to other companies, other people that I know would do a really great job.

Eric Stegemann (09:03):

And so you think about some of the biggest ideas or the biggest questions in our space. So I definitely want to chat with you about a few of those, you know, one big one that's certainly at the top of my brain right now and has been for six plus months is the concept of I buyers, right? And, and obviously things have changed and they're buying according to the, the leading person that tracks these things says that their buying was down 90% during the virus, but, and some of them have pivoted, but w you know, if you're a broker out there, you're the largest, you know, we have a client of ours is the largest Remax in the world. And they do 35,000 transactions a year and dominate the market that they're in. Should they be worried about an ibuyer stepping into their market and eating up their listing volume?

Rob Hahn (10:01):

Yes and no. I know that's like a cop out answer, but let me try and explain it. Yes, they should be worried, but no, they shouldn't be worried about their listing volume because brokers just don't have any listing volume, their agents have the listing volume. Does that make sense?

Eric Stegemann 10:17):

Well, there's an interesting statement that we should,

Rob Hahn (10:21):

Right. So the thing, I think I'm probably the most controversial about the thing that gets me a lot of hate, and I don't really understand the hate is because ultimately I'm trying to help out brokerages. Like I like brokerages, you know you know, as I got my start in real estate was working with commercial brokers at the Coleman commercial, and I've always felt like the brokerages are brokers and the brokerage owners are the ones who are really, you know, they're, they're the driving...