Where Real Estate Gets Its Dirt

My interview with Jimmy Kelly, CEO of Lone Wolf

The first 4 months at Lone Wolf have been an awesome learning experience for me. Lone Wolf and W+R Studios have always had mutual customers, and I was always aware of the forms and transaction management business but now I’m getting a full immersion course. What I’m learning the most is this, at scale, it’s a tough business. I know that competition is starting to rise in this space, I would only say to them, be careful what you wish for.

With that in mind, I sat down to talk with Lone Wolf’s CEO, Jimmy Kelly. I was surprised but not surprised that he agreed to do this interview with me. I don’t think we made any edits or cut anything out, it’s about 30 mins long and worth the watch. Jimmy answered all my questions, even the tough ones (check out the timeline), and I still have a job!

Hope you enjoy and see how running a form business during the beginning of a worldwide pandemic is a little like Lucy and Ethel working at the chocolate factory.

Timeline:

:40 – Introduction to Jimmy, and history in software industry

4:20 – Greg and Jimmy discuss forms changes and frequency of requests

5:15 – Looking back on pandemic, COVID requests, and response from Lone Wolf

9:30 – Greg asks about product outages, instability. Jimmy discusses what’s going on at Lone Wolf.

12:00 – Greg: What do you say to customers who’ve heard that before?

16:05 – Jimmy discusses future of Back Office. 

17:45 – Greg: Are Transactions (zipForm Edition) and Transactions (TransactionDesk Edition) eventually going to merge? 

20:00 – Greg: What do you say to customers who want you to focus on current issues rather than innovating/buying companies? 

23:45 – Jimmy previews what he’s most excited about coming soon from Lone Wolf

29:00 – Greg: What can you share about Stone Point Capital acquiring CoreLogic? 

31:30 – Is Greg a thorn in Jimmy’s side?

My T3 Sixty Interview

T3 Sixty Organized Real Estate with Clint Skutchan with guest Greg Robertson

Enjoyed my conversation with Clint.

Join me on Clubhouse, today at 3PM Pacific.

First off if you don’t know what Clubhouse is, here’s a brief description from the New York Times.

“What is it?

A social networking app that lets people gather in audio chat rooms to discuss various topics, whether it’s sports, wellness, art or why Bitcoin is headed to $87,000. Rooms are usually divided into two groups: those who are talking and those who are listening (participants can see a list of everyone who is in a conversation, and the numbers sometimes run into the thousands). Unlike Twitter, Clubhouse is a closed, hierarchical platform: A moderator oversees discussions and has the ability to let someone chime in or to kick out the unruly. In addition to the “clubs” sorted by topic, two or more users can join together and start their own chat room.”

You’ll need to download the app and have an invite. I have a few to give out. First come, first serve. Also, Clubhouse is iPhone only for now.

I’m going to start the room on Clubhouse at 3PM today, PT. The topic I want to discuss is What is an “active user”.

If an agent has created a website but doesn’t login to the backend every month, do they not find value in having the website?

If an agent creates listing alerts for their past/active clients but doesn’t login to the backend of the app and change anything, does that mean their clients don’t see any value? Is “set it, and forget it” a bad thing?

If a vast majority of agents barely do one transaction per year and barely log in to the MLS, why should they pay monthly MLS dues?

Let’s face it, if you tied value to app usage then the clock on your computer desktop would cost $500 per month.

It’s complicated. I see all sides to this. But most times “logins” are not the answer. Sometimes just using the app once a year is worth it.

Increasingly vendors are under pressure because MLS organizations and associations are under pressure to deliver services that members value. But how we define “value” is, well, complicated. Especially since most agents don’t do many transactions.

The nature of Clubhouse is that it’s a live conversation, and not recorded. So join me at 3PM for a safe space to discuss this topic, hopefully, it can spur more offline conversations that can lead to a greater understanding of this complicated issue.

Looking for a new gig?

Chief Innovation Officer – MIBOR

“The MIBOR REALTOR® Association is the professional trade association representing central Indiana’s REALTORS® since 1912. Our Broker Listing Cooperative (BLC®) listing service provides MLS services to over 9,000 subscribers. As Chief Innovation Officer, you will focus on creating solutions that improve the delivery of services to members, protect and improve the listing dataset, administer and enforce policy, develop applications that increase efficiency of MIBOR processes, and participate in strategic decisions of the organization.“

I love the thinking around this position, really a great opportunity. To find out more about this job and others please visit the Vendor Alley Job Board!

FirstMLS and ARA open up virtual trade show to all agents

Atlanta REALTORS® Virtual “Showcase 2020”

“The 20th year of Showcase, the Southeast’s premier residential Real Estate Trade Show, is scheduled to be held VIRTUALLY, on August 27, 2020. The Trade Show will bring together REALTORS®, real estate professionals and affiliated industries on a single day. The one day show will feature a broad selection of essential industry seminars from national and regional speakers, industry items, services, and business tools.”

I thought this was pretty smart. Many of these local trade shows get good speakers and have great content, so now that they are virtual, why not invite all agents?

New Orleans Metropolitan Member Appreciation Day

With a couple of big events being held in New Orleans this year, it was great to see this turn out at the NOMAR Member Appreciation Day.

Back to the future for Palm Springs MLS members

Palm Springs Regional Association of REALTORS® listened to their members

“VESTAPLUS™, the newest MLS system to enter the MLS industry and serving over 20,000 REALTORS® to date, inked a deal to bring back their software to the members of the Palm Springs Regional Association of REALTORS® (PSRAR) due to strong demand from PSRAR subscribers. The MLS™/CLAW a luxury MLS services provider in Beverly Hills and Malibu is the provider of VESTAPLUS™. The VESTAPLUS™ software will be delivered via a 3-way agreement between the Palm Springs Regional Association of REALTORS®, The MLS™/CLAW and California Regional MLS (CRMLS)”

With CRMLS latest expansion it looks like they have 4 MLS System of Choices: VESTAPLUS, Matrix, Paragon, and FlexMLS. It’s good to be an MLS Vendor these days.

Brenda Carnegie joins Metro Market Trends, Inc.


Metro Market Trends, Inc. Welcomes Brenda Carnegie

Brenda has served in the real estate industry for over 25 years starting as an MLS Director in Clearwater, Florida. She has held
positions with Interealty (now part of CoreLogic), Realist, and Coldwell Banker Residential. Brenda was responsible for managing
MLS system installations, sales and member support, as well as developing and implementing Broker-based solutions.

Brenda was part of the realtor.com® Industry Relations Team from 2009-2015 as Director of Industry Relations, providing support to Associations/MLSs in the Southeast.

Congrats to RealtyWEB.net and Brenda!

NARlando 2016

Many of you are already in Orlando, personally I don’t arrive till tomorrow afternoon. Which means I’ve got a jammed pack weekend! Here are some of things that we have going on.

W+R Studios booth!
Stop by and see our newly redesigned booth. Our booth number is 1185. No ping pong this year, but sit in on a demo and get a free t-shirt!

MLS Association Executives Session
November 4, 2016 at 1:00 p.m. (that’s this Friday)
Hyatt Regency, Windermere Ballroom Z

Brian Donnellan has asked me to moderate a panel with Mike Wurzer, Matt Cohen and Chad Curry on the future of real estate technology. We are going to geek out on future tech and what it means for real estate. (I’m just glad not to talk about Upstream)

AMP Presentation
November 5, 2016 at 1:00 p.m. (Saturday)
Katie and I will be demoing our Cloud Agent Suite (Cloud CMA, Cloud Streams and Cloud MLX) and highlighting recent integrations we’ve done with the AMP API.

ListHub Party
November 5, 2016 5PM-9PM
ICEBAR – 8967 International Drive, Orlando FL
W+R Studios is co-sponsoring the ListHub party. We will have a cool photo booth set up for attendees.

Corelogic Party
November 5, 2016 8PM-11PM
B.B. King’s Blues Club – 9101 International Dr. #2230, Orlando, FL
W+R Studios is also co-sponsoring the Corelogic party as well (what can I say, we like to party!)

Come by our Suite!
Katie and I will be in our Suite at the Rosen Centre giving private demos. We have a few slots open so reach out to Katie if you like to talk about adding the Cloud Agent Suite to your MLS or brokerage.

Other than that I’ll most likely be at the lobby bar (but you already knew that.)

Just remember, DON’T GO BIG ON THE FIRST NIGHT!

See you soon!

P.S. We are going to miss you Skinny!

NAR announces partnership with Clareity Security.

I heard through the grapevine (do they have grapevines in Arizona?) that last week at the 2015 Leadership Summit Dale Stinton announced a new partnership with Clareity Security, dubbed the “NAR Portlet Project“. Despite the unfortunate name it seems like another big win for Clareity. Clareity will begin implementing NAR Resource Portlets in about 18 to 200 local and state associations in August and September. Which should reach about 100,000 members. The new “Portlets” fit into’s Clareity’s SSO Dashboards.

A lot of members get to their MLS system through their local association’s website but its not clear whether 3rd party vendors participating with Clariety’s App Store will be displayed on this new association dashboards.

Overall I think this is great for NAR. They have a lot of resources that not a lot of members know about (REALTOR University, .Realtor domain name site, MVP member benefits, and of course RPAC). Clareity strategy seems pretty clear, they want their Dashboards to be in front of as many agents as possible. Makes a helluva a lot sense to me.

Sponsored By VESTAPlus