How to Scale a Title Company with Process Innovation | Ep 16

One of the things that I really firmly and strongly believe in is integrity. Integrity in the workplace, integrity individually, and particularly integrity in our industry. Because we hold a lot of money, we hold a lot of responsibility, and we're dealing with people's biggest purchase they're ever going to make in their life many times. In a world where change is the only constant, Mo Shamil stands at the forefront, guiding title professionals to not just grow their businesses, but to master the art of innovation. With every episode, you're handed the keys to unlock unparalleled growth and stay ahead of the curve.

Get ready for a transformative journey. Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Title Agent Podcast, where we delve into the stories, strategies, and insights that drive the title industry forward. I am your host, Mo Shamil, Alltech National Title CEO. And today, we have the honor of speaking with a true industry veteran, Bob Flynn, owner of in-house title company here in the DMV area with decades of experience. Bob had witnessed and contributed to the evolution of the title industry, building a legacy of excellence and innovation.

In this episode, we'll explore the significant changes he's seen over the years, the lessons he's learned, and the future he envisions for title professionals. Whether you're a seasoned professional or just starting out, you won't want to miss this wealth of knowledge Bob brings to our conversation. Let's dive in. Welcome, Bob, to the show. Thank you very much.

Glad to be here. Yeah, I always like to start life story, whatever you want to share, like your where you grew up and education, profession, kind of little insights on your on your life story. My parents are both from New York, but ended up in DC for school. And that's where I was born. I spent just a couple years in Atlanta and then back to the DC area.

So I grew up in Montgomery County, primarily in that whole entire area until long after law school, ended up going to Georgetown Prep, where we have only two out of nine Supreme Court justices. We're trying to increase that volume to a few more than that. But and somehow they haven't gotten to me yet. Went to University of South Carolina on a golf scholarship and ended up deciding that I didn't really like the coach and didn't want to play for him and then just focused on my education. I knew from about seventh grade that I wanted to be an attorney.

My best friend's father was an attorney in Rockville, and I watched him walk around taking care of his eight children and folding laundry on the weekends with a tape recorder in his hand dictating letters. And that just fascinated me. And I would always ask him questions about the cases he was working on. I have a grandfather that was an attorney as well and listened to his stories. And what I loved about it was that it appeared to me to be an opportunity to have a different job every single day.

You had the same skills you had to use, but you were helping someone different almost every day. And I like the possibility of that. I like change that way. So then switched it up and came back to Maryland to the University of Baltimore. I had a great three years there and passed the Maryland and D.C.

bars after that. Lived in Annapolis for a period of time. All through that time, I was mostly doing trial work. I was certainly fascinated by the real estate side, but most of the things that I was involved with were litigation or battles, so to speak, related to real estate, whether it was real estate developers, contractors, homeowners, title companies. I did tons of claims work.

So did a lot of those things. And then when I moved to Annapolis, decided that I wanted to try to have a real job for someone. And I went to work for Fountainhead Title and was general counsel there for three years and learned an unbelievable amount from that organization and from the people that were there. A lot of them are still very good friends of mine in the title business. I know a bunch of them as well from Fountainhead.

Yeah, I'm sure. At one point, we had 400 employees and we did 36,000 settlements a year. So it was hard not to fall in the breadth of Fountainhead at some point. I saw the writing on the wall at one point that I thought the company was going to be sold to someone else and it ultimately ended up happening. And shortly before that, I left and set up my own title company and learned to do some things a little differently, which we can talk about in a couple of minutes, on how I thought we should approach the whole closing process that was a little different from the way we've been doing it for years and years.

I met my current law partner, title company owner, and girlfriend. And we merged all of our companies together, the law firms and the title and everything else. And we've been working together since 2012. We had interesting fun. We sold out in 2015, made it about two years of the three years and could not stand the corporate environment, the big corporate environment and the inability to control the process and ended up leaving and setting up our own title companies again from scratch in 2017.

And we managed to live through COVID and we're still here to fight. It's an awesome story. What do you mean Georgetown Prep? I mean, that's Georgetown University? No, Georgetown Prep's a high school and it's in Garrett Park, Maryland, right near Bethesda and Rockville.

It's one of the oldest high schools in the country and it is the oldest Jesuit Catholic high school. It was kind of a neat place. I mean, forgetting the spoiled luxury of having a 93-acre campus with a nine-hole golf course and an indoor pool. I mean, it was nice. But beyond that, I think we could have gained almost as much from sitting in a one-room classroom with the kind of teachers we have.

They were just absolutely top-notch, fantastic. And their goal was to make us better people. And I think they accomplished that incredibly well. I was so impressed with that. I have my son there.

So it was a good- That's awesome. My two Supreme Justices and Bob Flynn, let's just say. There are many more successful than the three of us, I can tell you. So yeah, you've had an illustrious career spanning several decades. What do you consider your most significant contributions to the talent industry?

And how do you hope to be remembered by future professionals in the field? This is a great question. And I think that my answer hinges on the same thing that anyone in business does. And that is when you look at a process and you do it every single day, you get jaded by the work that you do. And you get stuck in that rut of doing things the same way every single time.

I had a revelation shortly after leaving Fountainhead when I ran completely out of staff in my Annapolis office. And what that meant was I had to do the closings. I had to prepare the loan documents. I had to prepare the closing packages and get everything ready. I had to put the FedEx envelope together and send everything out.

I had to do the recordings and set it. I had never done that before. I had to write the checks. I mean, all that stuff was somewhat new to me. And the thing that it did was it said to me, there's better ways to do this.

And I realized that not only was I making several copies of the exact same document, I was touching those copies many, many times over and over again when I was getting them signed at closing, when I was handing them to the people in their folders, when I was sending them out for recording. And I thought it was the biggest waste of time to not sort of make it more efficient. So I tried to look at the systems that were being used in the offices that I'd worked in the past. And I started off with a very basic one. One of the big complaints everyone always had was, oh, title's not in.

We're not ready to go on Thursday. We're not going to be prepared for this. And the reason was that almost everybody was taking orders in, and they were setting their timelines based upon the prospective closing date. I flipped that around and decided that we were going to do it all from the opening of the file date. And so we said file has to be opened within 24 hours.

Title has to be ordered within 48 hours. Title has to be back in within seven days. And binder has to be back out within 10 days. So within 10 days of the time we got contract, we already had all of our work done, the preliminary work done, and sent out to the lenders. So people were waiting for us instead of us waiting for them.

And that turned things around so much because it not only made me feel like we were on top of the game a little bit better, but it also eliminated all those phone calls, all those emails, and all the other things that were happening behind the scenes that were causing people to have to go away from their work and flipping back from their work into something else. It just took up a huge amount of time. Later, I looked at the policies of title insurance and saw that we were having files sit around waiting for the recordings to come back so we could insert the date into the policy, then send the policies out. And I asked all the underwriters that we worked for at the time and said, does it matter if we have that date in there? Can't we just insure the instrument?

And they all said, yeah, sure, you can insure the instrument. So we decided to do table policies. We were issuing the owner's policy and handing it to the buyer at closing. We were issuing the lender's policy and it was going back to the lender at the time the closing package went. It saved time.

It saved- That's what it's called, the short-form policy now, I guess. so we could insert the date into the policy, then send the policies out. And I asked all the underwriters that we worked for at the time and said, you know, does it matter if we have that date in there? Can't we just insure the instrument? And they all said, yeah, sure, you can insure the instrument.

So we decided to do table policies. We were issuing the owner's policy and handing it to the buyer at closing. We were issuing the lender's policy and it was going back to the lender at the time the closing package went. Saved time. It saved money.

That's called a short-form policy now, I guess, is that? Well, short-form is a little different. It's a little bit different, but you're exactly right. That's eliminated the recording information. But you could do a long-form policy without it as well.

But we didn't have to pay for a second FedEx to the lender. And we got to the point where it was such a surprise to the lender that we had to put a huge yellow piece of paper in the package with bold letters on it saying, your original lender's title insurance policy is included in this package. Please do not look for it anywhere else. And it just saved a lot of time. That was, again, we're talking about probably 2007, 2006.

That was when I was touching all those pieces of paper and I decided we were gonna go paperless and not have all those files sitting around. So I started making, burning DVDs with all the documents on it for the buyers and giving them just a thin little folder with a DVD in it. And that just made an enormous difference. They thought we were kind of leading technology. Could I give it to other people?

All the papers, sure. I mean, many of the closings we did were for Habitat for Humanity. We did it for other people. They preferred to have the paper. Hey, fine, we'll help you get the paper and we'll print everything out for you.

So it was just those couple things seemed to really set us apart, make things a little bit more efficient and made it a little bit easier. And if you look at the title industry over the last many, many years, prices haven't gone up very much. We certainly make a little bit more money because our premiums are based upon the price of property. At least they've gone up. But the other charges are still around the same spot.

They're all right in the same area. And we all try to be competitive and that's wonderful. But we have not gone up with the cost of living. We have not gone up with the cost of inflation. So you gotta find ways to be more efficient in order to stay competitive.

You know what's gone up? Tell me. Salaries. Well, yeah, yeah. Rent, everything else went up, everything has gone up.

Salaries, costs of everything. All the technology, they all say the technology is gonna make things better, efficient, but just more and more and more. You are 100% correct. That's what you have to do to stay competitive is to find ways to save time and money and get more out of the people. When I was at Fountainhead, we looked at having between 10 and 12 files per processor per month.

And we are now hoping to get between 15 and 20 because you can't be competitive otherwise. You gotta stay a little more efficient than that in some ways. So it's always a challenge. 15 per processor or per employee overall? We're a national podcast, so different parts of the country, escrow officer, paralegal, processor, same person.

It is. And basically it should be per person because all you're doing by adding other people is you're shifting around the responsibilities. For example, if it was just me and one processor, we would lose our shirts on 15 deals a month. We would have to do a lot more than that. But when you add on, you add a closer, you add a post closer, you add a file opener, you add a receptionist, someone who can answer the phone, then suddenly you have to increase your volume based upon that because that one process was gonna be doing fewer and fewer tasks.

So over the years, you've likely guided many in their careers. Can you share a story about someone you mentored who went to make a significant impact in our industry? You know, it's funny. This is an unusual industry. I think in that a private title company that's individually owned, you don't very often see the mentorship issue come up.

I was very, very blessed. And I'm gonna talk about someone in my life that I'm not gonna call me his mentor by any stretch, but I'll give you a story about something that I thought helped both of us. It's my brother, Greg. And Greg has a title company in Montgomery County called Flynn Title. He is a fantastic attorney.

He has a great business down there. When he initially came out of law school, his first couple years, he came and worked with me for a while. And we were doing everything from divorces, title work, everything else. And he would walk into my office with a question, often, every day. And he said, what do you think about this?

What's the law on this? What should I do about that? And I finally, after a couple of weeks, realized, you know, I'm not really helping him or me by giving him the answer. Because if I give him the answer, I don't need him, because I can go do it myself. And if I give him the answer, he's not really learning anything.

So at that point, I said, after you have gone and tried to find the answer yourself, let's talk about the answer that you found, and we'll see how it works, see how it works. And it changed him and it changed me. And both of us were able to get a little further along with me being a better boss, or I guess a mentor, and letting them find the answer themselves. And I have another brother that does computers. And one of the greatest things that he always does is when he's trying to show someone how to use a program, he doesn't sit at the keyboard and plug the numbers himself and show somebody looking over his shoulder.

He makes them sit down and tells them where to go to click and tells them where to go to move. And by doing it, it's almost like being able to write with your hand, the memory clicks a different way. And I think those are just the kind of things that make you better at bringing someone along and making them a better person, making them a better worker and better able to cope with the environment. Our industry has undergone many changes throughout the years. What do you see as the most transformative developments and how have these changes shaped the way a lot of companies operate today?

One of the things that I really firmly and strongly believe in is integrity. Integrity in the workplace, integrity individually, and particularly integrity in our industry, because we hold a lot of money, we hold a lot of responsibility, and we're dealing with people's biggest purchase they're ever gonna make in their life many times. And it's really, really important that we carry on that way and do it. The technology advancements over the last many years have enabled regulatory bodies and other people to more closely monitor what we're doing. And that, I think, has helped in some ways to clean up the industry and make it a little bit better, which is not to say that I think that people should do the right thing because someone's looking over their shoulder.

I think they should do the right thing because it's the right thing and not because they're worried about it. On the other hand, the ability of regulatory bodies, whether it's the police, the Maryland Insurance Administration, or otherwise, to take a look at everything that's going on and make sure that we're following the rules can rid us of the bad actors that give everyone a bad name. And I think that's sort of happened even in the last couple of years. The review and audit process that the underwriters take us through is so much more extensive than it was 20 years. As it should.

Well, as it should, yes, exactly. Well, again, I think at that point in time, everyone was assuming that people were honest and doing the right thing. And we found out the hard way that wasn't really the case. So by having these new technology advancements in there, it's really done it. One of the first tech advancements that I got to experience was a fax machine.

And it was when I was very, very, very first out of school. And fax machines were the coolest thing because you didn't have to drive to someone's office or house. It took some messengers out of the business so we didn't have to move packages around. A number of days that we spent sitting around an office with a buyer and seller at the table, waiting for the messenger to beat the traffic, coming from Virginia to Silver Spring or Rockville, those days are gone. We don't waste that kind of time anymore.

And it was mostly because of the fax machine. I would say probably the biggest technological change that's impacted our industry is email. Not only can we communicate better and faster, we can also transmit documents and things that way. One of the things that I, and people are gonna hate me and call me a curmudgeon for being this way, but one of the things I try to avoid is telephone calls because everyone's busy. And if you call me, I'm gonna miss your call because I'm in a meeting.

Then I'm gonna call you back and I'm gonna miss you because you're in a meeting. And we go back and forth and neither one of us knows what the other one wants or needs. A quick email forces the sender to identify what it is they're looking for and concisely state it. Then the receiver can actually look at it, absorb it, make a decision. If they need to look something up or find some resource, they can do that and they send something back.

And on top of it all, we've now got a permanent record of it all happening so we can save it. And when I get questions from real estate agents about transactions that they're involved in, should I do this? What's the law on that? I always tell them, it's like, the reason why I want to do an email is because I don't want to lose my job. forces the sender to identify what it is they're looking for and concisely state it, then the receiver can actually look at it, absorb it, make a decision.

If they need to look something up or find some resource, they can do that, and they send something back. And on top of it all, we've now got a permanent record of it all happening, so we can save it. And when I get questions from real estate agents about transactions that they're involved in, should I do this, what's the law on that? I always tell them, it's like, the reason why I wanna do an email is because I'm gonna probably answer your question at 5.15 in the morning. I don't wanna have a phone call with you right there because I haven't even had my coffee yet, but I can answer your question.

And then once I get it to you, you print that thing out or you save it electronically in the folder for that client. And if you ever get called up by the Maryland Real Estate Commission and asked a question, then you can say, hey, I asked a lawyer and here's what the lawyer told me to do. And it just saves everybody. I think that's been our biggest thing. And email is definitely one of the biggest advances in our times, but it's also one of the biggest curses.

When you step away for lunch or closing, if you still do closings, when you go back, how many emails do you have? Oh, it's hundreds. I mean, it's hundreds. I gotta say, the art there is learning to filter. And so I have a different email address for different businesses and I have a different email address for my usual junk stuff.

And I just can't look at that until after I handle the title emails. Those are first and foremost. Clients take priority. So it's advanced to filter. Yeah.

So with the continuous changes in regulations, technology, and market demands, how have you and in-house title adapted to stay ahead of the curve and continue delivering value to your clients? Especially as an owner of the company, but even as someone that works in the industry, staying in contact with other people in the industry is very, very difficult. When I was doing trials every single day and in court every day, I saw almost all of the trial lawyers in Montgomery County, Prince George's, Frederick, Anne Arundel Howard. I saw the lawyers and I knew them. And we would talk about things.

We would stay up to date on what was going on while we're waiting for a trial just to call our case. We never had that blessing in the real estate industry. You don't get to see the people that are on the other side of a transaction, even on a commercial deal. And so one of the things I did was I joined the Maryland State Bar Association Real Property Section Council and was on that for many years. I chaired one of the committees there.

That meant at least once a month, I would be together with a bunch of other real estate attorneys and we would be talking about things. We've been actively involved with the Maryland Land Title Association as well and trying to keep up to date on things. Our underwriter is fantastic and they provide us with a lot of resources we need. But I think the social interaction that most of us are lacking from the professional standpoint is really what's gonna be required to find out what's out there and what's new. In just a crazy example, in 2017, when Stella and I set up our own company, we started with zero files, zero clients, zero money and zero work.

And we had to start everything from scratch. So we said, well, heck, let's look at this as an opportunity instead of a curse. And we started looking around for what software program we're gonna use. And we had used every one that was out there and they were good. They were very, very good actually.

But we were kind of looking for something a little bit new and a product had just come out that we'd heard about from a lot of people called Qualia. And we literally flew to San Francisco, met with the CEO of Qualia, had lunch with him, talked about what they had to offer and signed up. And we were, I think, the second company to implement Qualia in Maryland, but it's turned out to be a real blessing just because of the product that's there. Now, a lot of other companies have come out and they're jumping on the bandwagon and having the same kind of high quality technological push that Qualia introduced to the industry. But the most fascinating thing was when we met with the CEO of Qualia and talked to him, I said, he's hilarious.

He was 28 at the time when we met with him. I think he's still 28. He looks like he's still 28, the nicest guy. What we said to him, we said, what in the world got you to go into title? You have no history with it.

You're not an attorney. You have never worked in it at all a day in your life. And he said that he had a bunch of angel investors essentially that wanted him to run a company using their money and setting it up. And they said to him, here's some dollars. You have one year to go find the most antiquated, out of touch industry in the entire world.

And that's the one we're gonna attack. And he came up with title. So once they decided that, they decided to conquer it. And I think they've done a pretty darn good job. I mean, again, there's a lot of good products out there, but I like their group.

So with decades of experience, there must have been some memorable stories that stand out. Could you share an instance where you faced a particularly challenging situation or rewarding experience that left a lasting impression on you? I think there's a couple of things about that. First of all, learning from Ed Brush, who was the founder and CEO of Fountainhead Title was fascinating. I was in law firm mode, meaning we sat behind our mighty desks and our big chairs, and then we walked into a conference room and did a closing.

Everyone had to come to us. They had to come to us on our schedule and our time. There was no accommodations for anybody. They were just lucky to have us. And Ed Brush sort of came at it a different way.

And he said, wait a minute, this is not the kind of industry that we wanna have. So he implemented closings outside the office. Of course we had offices. Of course we had conference rooms to do them in. But we also were enabled to go to people's homes when it was legal to do so, and to go to a real estate agent's office.

And they loved that, because that was their home. And because we had the ability to fax and email, if a document came late or needed to be changed, we could still get hold of it. And it gave us that flexibility. But Ed talked about trying to get business and doing closings on the trunk of his car, having people sign right on the trunk of his car in order to get business, anything he could. He was a hustler.

And that was sort of a lesson to me, that you have to be a little bit innovative sometimes and come up with ways of recognizing what you're trying to do. What that told me was a couple things. One is that the target market for our industry is real estate agents and loan officers. Our customer and the people that pay us are buyers and sellers. But if we tried to market to buyers and sellers, we would lose our rear ends.

We would spend so much money on marketing. Expensive, very expensive. It's very expensive, because you never know when the target wants your services. We know that the agents can do that, so. And it's a very, very low yield.

You can spend tons of money. Exactly, exactly. We had an opportunity at one point to do a regional radio advertisement and thought, wow, that would be so fantastic to do that. The possibility was so ineffective. It was just, there was no possibility it was really gonna get anywhere.

So I thought, well, there might be another way. One way is exactly what you're doing, doing a podcast, because it's gonna be a regular thing that goes out. People will pick up on it and they'll look at you as an expert in the industry, someone that knows what the heck they're talking about and can either do the work for them or refer them to a source. The other, there's a couple of loan officers out there that are doing regular radio shows, just general information call-in shows. Brilliant idea, great way to do it, because people just pick up on it on their drive time.

They can pick up on it. Well, they're a direct to consumer, because you really have to understand the business you're in. We're a business to business, so for a startup company to focus on consumer, really just an expensive avenue. But a mortgage officer or a realtor, that's obviously that audience is consumer, so they will definitely get a return on their investment. And we just have to ride their coattails.

Absolutely. Generally, that's what's good. So our industry is constantly evolving, and I think the whole real estate market is constantly evolving. What strategies have you employed to ensure that in-house title remains a leader in the marketplace? There's a couple of things.

One is we've, so first of all, the technology is an enormous part of it, and we have been blessed with, every other part of our world is evolving with technology as well. For example, banking. We very rarely deal with checks anymore. We don't deal with issuing that many. We don't deal with receiving that many.

So the incidence of fraud has gone down somewhat. The crooks are pretty quick at picking up on, they need to do as well, but at least we have a little bit more control over what's gonna happen. We're not depositing a cashier's check that's fraudulent or anything like that. So we know we've got some good money we're dispersing. So that's been a huge help.

One of the things I have tried to set a culture for in our company, believe me, Stella is just as involved in all this as I am, I'm just speaking for, because I'm talking to you, is that we wanna make sure that we're trying to do the right thing. but at least we have a little bit more control over what's going to happen. We're not depositing a cashier's check that's fraudulent or anything like that. So we know we've got some good money while we're dispersing. So that's been a huge help.

One of the things I have tried to set a culture for in our company, believe me, Stella is just as involved in all this as I am, I'm just speaking for, because I'm talking to you, is that we want to make sure that we're trying to do the right thing all the time. And not just the right thing from a law standpoint, but the right thing. And there's a couple of reasons for that. One is that if you do the right thing, you don't have to look over your shoulder. If you do the right thing, you never have to worry about remembering what you did because you know you did the same thing consistently.

Sleep at night, peacefully. Sleep at night, peacefully. We have some friends in the title industry that are so focused on covering their legal rear end and avoiding liability at all costs that I think they overdo it. And for example, one of the type of companies, they record every single closing on video and audio so that every word that gets said at the closing is recorded and they store it on a drive. I looked at them and said, how many times have you had to pull that out and use it?

And they said, well, we never have yet, but we've got it if we need it. A little overboard. A little overboard. So I think you have to look at the risks you have in business and try your best to mitigate those risks and balance it out to what's going to be a waste of time. To me, recording everything was going to be a waste of time.

I just didn't want to do it. I didn't want to spend that much time on it. Exactly. So looking forward, what do you see as the next major shift or trend in the title industry and what advice would you give to professionals on how to prepare for these changes? I think the thing that we're going to see most likely is a change from face-to-face closings to more remote closings.

So, on a digital? It could be that. It could be a lot of different ways we can see it. Right now it's remote online notaries and digital closings with digital signatures, digital notary seals and all that. I cry about it in some ways because I think that the personal touch gets a little bit lost.

I have to say that Zoom and COVID have helped us get more comfortable and familiar with spending time with each other without spending time with each other. But there's something a little bit cathartic about going to a real estate closing for the sellers. Probably 25% of the time we have at least one of the sellers crying because they're leaving a home that they've just absolutely loved. We almost always see a happy buyer because they haven't had to make any mortgage payments yet, but they're getting into a new home. So, there's something about that moment that's emotional that brings you to the brink of where you need to be to do it.

With that said, the technology has advanced so far and so fast that when you sign up to do a remote closing, there's probably more security than there is if you're sitting face-to-face. We started a company a couple years ago called CyberSign and we're doing it with Mark Wittstadt, who's a foreclosure attorney and a title attorney, Dave Thurston of Crown Title, Will Esham, Stella and I. We kind of did it for our own convenience and we also kind of did it because we thought that there was some room there to do something. What we found over the last four years is that we can make it more secure for someone to sign remotely and know that it was them and know that they did want to sign those documents and that there was no question about their competency because of the digital recording that goes along with it than we could if we were sitting down across the table from someone. I mean, I've seen forged driver's licenses.

I can't tell the difference. If someone gives me a fake driver's license, I have to take it at their word. I don't know who they are. There's a lot of ways to hopefully catch that with an agent knowing who they are personally or someone else being involved, but that just eliminates so many levels of fraud and I really think we're going to go there. I laugh about it because an electronic signature has been legal under federal law in all 50 states since 2001 and there's still places that are looking at it like, oh man, that should be bad.

Our big holdup right now for the last couple of years has been dealing with the lenders, the investors to lenders, not the lenders themselves, not the originators and they're just unwilling to accept anything but the wet ink signatures. I think they're slowly softening on that. I know Fannie and Freddie are trying to give a little bit better guidance so they can say, this is going to be okay. You're still going to be protected even if it's a remote online notary closing, but I think that's probably where we're going to go and I think we're, fortunately or unfortunately, going to see more and more of those. We're going to switch from having a small percentage to a majority.

So you said that technology is moving at a rapid pace, but I think it's the opposite. The electronic signatures that were recognized back in 2000, 2001, it took so long for it to get even adopted. I think we're a little slower, in my opinion. I want everything to be digital and more secure and it's also efficient. You think about the savings in post-closing for lenders and title companies, the amount of savings, the quality control.

The one thing lenders complain about all the time is how expensive transactions are. Even for us, it costs a lot of money per transaction. Passing that 10, 15, 20, 30% savings to the consumer between mortgages and title, that'd be huge. The federal government now is big on, at least the current government is very big on, trying to drive costs down to the consumer. Yeah, it's just a good point and that was the other thing I was going to say or mention, is that there have been so many things happening and the market is set up for a big change.

I know that the realtors this month are going through enormous changes just because of the antitrust lawsuit. Maryland's neighboring state, D.C., I'm a member of the D.C. bar, and D.C. has been looking at eliminating or reducing the costs of real estate transactions for years and years and years. Part of that is a big question that they always ask is, what the heck do you as a title company do to entitle you to a high percentage of the title insurance premium that's being collected?

Unfortunately, for a lot of years, we didn't have anybody that was lobbying on behalf of the industry to tell them. There's a heck of a lot that goes into that. Somebody's got to do that work. The liability, the work and the liability too. Somebody's got to know who the actual owner is of the property currently.

We've got a clear title from all the defects that are on there. We've got to get it ready to be insured. And the title insurers can do that, but it's going to change the industry. They're going to have to gear up with employees that'll do that. The other thing that's sort of scary was the last year's shift for government insured transactions away from requiring a lender's policy at all.

And they were getting attorney closing letters instead that would sort of give them the comfort that they needed. And I've said that a bunch of times to people that are at closing that wanted to turn down an owner's title insurance policy. And they would say, well, if I have a problem with my title, I'm just going to sue you. And I would say, well, you're not my client. I don't owe you any duty whatsoever.

I might be dead by the time you want to sue me and you're not going to have anything. I might not have any insurance or any assets by the time you do that. The title insurer is going to be there. They're going to be standing behind this policy for a long, long, long time. And you need to think about the fact that that's going to happen for you.

And then the last technology thing that I think we're going to probably see coming is in the land records area. Almost every state is going to an electronic lands records system. It's been fantastic for all of us. For me to be able to sit at my desk and go to any county in the state and pull up records, pull them up in D.C., pull them up in Virginia, pull them up in Delaware, Pennsylvania, has been such a blessing. And instead of having to drive to a courthouse and take many, many hours to do, whether it's a legal project or a title project, it's a real pain in the rear end.

I think we're going to also see a little bit more sophistication come to the indexing system. They're talking about, and some states have already tried to and started to adopt block. Title plans. Well, better than, well, similar to title plan. Title plan, but electronic using blockchain so that there's no way to transfer the property unless you go through the blockchain.

You have to have the magic keys to make it all happen. And I don't think that government is sophisticated enough to do that right now, and they're not ready for it. But I know that we've made some advancements. I think we've been on Marylandlandrec.net for almost 20 years. And it's been fast.

I was excited when they went to microfilms and got away from the dusty old books because I'm allergic to malted milk. So it made a big difference. One thing that impressed me about Maryland is the definitely land rec, the having access to the land records. But one thing it's still backwards, still so far behind is recording certain counties, which is unheard of. but I know that we've made some advancements.

I mean, I think we've been on MarylandLandRec.net for almost 20 years. And it's been fast. I mean, I was excited when they went to microfilms and got away from the dusty old books because I'm allergic to moldy milk, so it made a big difference. One thing that impressed me about Maryland is definitely LandRec, having access to the land records, but one thing it's still backwards, still so far behind is recordings in certain counties, which is unheard of in other states. I'm just so thrilled that every county now does e-recording through Simplifile, and every county does e-recording of their trial documents, anything you're going to file in a court case.

If you're an attorney, they will not take your paper filing except on very, very unusual exceptions, so you've got to do it that way. And that just makes everybody's life a little bit easier, I think, and you can kind of know what's going to happen. Instead of waiting two weeks for your documents to come back rejected by the clerk's office, you find out fast so you can do something about it. So for those just starting out in the talent industry, what advice would you offer to help them navigate the challenge and build a successful and lasting career? First of all, don't be afraid.

I don't think that the days of hanging out your own shingle and giving it a shot are over by any stretch. I did it a number of times in my career, and it's worked out well so far. I'm still here. I think that getting into a situation where you can get advice from more experienced people in the industry to help you and guide you through the process is huge, and that can be a lot of the organizations we've talked about already, the trade organizations that are out there. You can never stop learning.

You have to stay on top of the things that are happening in the industry. It took me so many years to figure out things like who my target market is and things like that that I wish I had learned early on from somebody with more experience, and it would have saved me a little bit of time and made life a whole lot easier in doing it. I think those are the kind of things that would help the most. How's your golf game? You said you got a scholarship and you decided to pursue golf.

It's a silly story, but I quit golf for a couple of years, and then when I was in my late 30s, I took a sabbatical from my law firm for two months during the winter, and I had spent the whole entire year before that hitting between 100 and 150 golf balls a day, putting for half an hour, and chipping for half an hour. I went down to Florida, and I played on the South Florida Tour for two months, had an absolute blast. I got the opportunity to do the thing that I thought I'd wanted to maybe do for my career. I also realized that I was better being a lawyer. I got to a plus three handicap, and I was 1,587 in the world, which meant absolutely nothing.

It was impressive. In my book, it's very impressive. It was impressive with the number of golfers there are in the world, but the separation at that level got to be so small, and then when you got to the top 500, it was ridiculous. They were so much better than any of us. I stuck with it, and I used it as a tool for marketing, both for the law firm and for the title company.

I think you can learn more about a human being in four hours on the golf course than you can on anything else. You find out whether they're a cheater, or you find out whether they have a temper. You find out all these little things that can help make you a better title company or a better attorney for them because you know who they are. People drop their guards, which is awesome, especially with a couple of drinks. Definitely drop their guards.

I played recently. I had a really, really nice couple of rounds the last few months. I still only can play probably 20 times a year, 25 times a year, and I'm stuck at a six handicap now. We've got to play together, a fairly similar game. Love to do it.

How about a favorite quote? I wish I could think of one. There are so many, and I subscribe to a bunch of these different places. I get a quote every day, and I get overwhelmed by the number of quotes. I can't think of one off the top of my head.

One of the things that I've always kept in the back of my mind is that time heals all wounds. It's a good one because it gives you perspective in the moment so that no matter how bad things are going in your world, no matter how bad you think things are, you give it a little time and it's probably going to be okay. I've taken the corollary of that too, which is when we were going gangbusters crazy in 2021, I was waiting for the shoe to drop and preparing for that day when we were not going to have the files rolling in like we had and actually have to work again. You got to do both. You got to do both with a quote like that.

How about a favorite book or books? I'm a little bit of a crazy person when it comes to reading. I read between 125 and 200 books a year. Mostly fiction. It's my escape.

People use TV. I also watch some TV, but mostly it's an escape. My favorite author is a guy named Edward Rutherford. He writes a lot like James Michener does. Very, very long books, 1,100 pages, 1,300 pages.

They're usually about a single geographical location. He follows it from the time that that place was first inhabited by humans all the way up to close to the present time. Oftentimes, there are families that keep on reappearing in the ancestral history of it. He uses actual historical records to create his fake people. He's got one about Paris, two about Ireland, one about London, one about Russia.

I think there's the Tokyo one. Anyway, I love his books. They take a long time and really eat into my number count on the number of books I get through in a year. That's awesome. Well, thank you for joining us on this enlightening episode of Tile Asia's Podcast.

I hope you enjoyed our conversation with Bob Flynn as much as I did. His stories and insights offer a rare glimpse into the evolution of the tile industry and the enduring principles that have guided his successful career. If you found value in today's discussion, be sure to subscribe so you don't miss any of our upcoming episodes. We've got more incredible guests and thought-provoking topics lined up, all aimed at helping you stay ahead in this ever-changing industry. Until next time, keep pushing boundaries, honoring the legacy, pioneering the future of our business.

Thank you, Bob. I look forward to our next meeting in the upcoming episode. Keep pushing, keep innovating, and see you in the next episode.