How AI, Automation & 1031 Exchanges Future-Proof Title | Ep87

In a world where change is the only constant, Mo Shumil 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 and welcome to another episode of the Title Agent's podcast. Today's episode, we have Chip Ridge, founder of Perpetual Title, a company serving multiple states and recently expanding into 1031 Exchange.

Chip has been leaning into automation, instant escrow funding, online fee transparency, and multi-state growth, all while navigating regulatory complexity and shifting market conditions. In this conversation, we're diving into where title is heading, what technologies actually matter, how agencies can diversify revenue, and what it takes to build a company that doesn't just survive market cycles, but grows through them. Well, Chip, welcome to the Title Agent's podcast. We always start the show with asking the questions, tell us your story, how you got started, and your education, family, background, all that good stuff. Cool.

Well, I'm excited to be on, as we shared before the call, a long-time listener, first-time caller, and really excited to be part of this. I think you're doing a wonderful job. We'll talk about my favorite subject, me. I am a father of four. One sort of little-known fact, or maybe well-known fact, depending on how well you know me, is I have triplets, 16-year-old triplets, and so they keep me working.

The one grace of God by them is that I get up every morning, and I do have a sense of urgency because I got provided for them. But they're great. I'm married, been married for 25 years, have a lovely supporting wife, Carrie, a shout-out to her. In terms of how I got in the title industry, it's sort of an interesting story in the sense that a lot of, I listen to a lot of your callers, I mean, your guests, and a lot of it's family. They're grown up in it.

They were, when they were younger, they got put in the, they were searching abstracts or whatever. My story is probably unique in the sense that I was in the boat business out of college, and long story short, the best way to make a million in the boat business is start with three million. So quickly sort of realized that that was not a pathway for long-term economical success, and my wife was, we were starting to think about having a family, and she was like, you need to grow up and do something professional. Back when you actually, I'm aging myself a little bit, but I looked in the classified sections sort of begrudgingly and found manager insurance, and I'm like, you know, I know insurance, and I can be a manager, and lo and behold, went in and got a job with a company called Metropolitan Title. I lived in Lexington, Kentucky.

They were based in Michigan, if anybody knows, a guy named Ken Lingenfelter. He had a huge operation in Michigan, Wisconsin, and sort of threw up that corridor. I worked for them for about a year and then decided if I was going to go anywhere with them, I was going to have to move, and my wife was not wanting to do that, so I started my own company back in 2002. Been doing it, sold to BB&T in 2007, and then got sort of the corporate piece. I got tired of that in 2015, started a company called Millennial Title, and then now we rebranded in 2024, so just going on two years ago, to Perpetual Title, and that's the company that we operate today.

So what problem were you able to solve when you started Millennial, your second title? Yeah, it's funny, you know, one of the names, nobody can spell it, and that's one of the reasons for the rebranding, but you know, when I first, I was like, they're going to be the largest homeowner group in the country, and they're also, they want to do things differently than we've done in the traditional, you know, whatever we are, Gen Zers, Gen Xers, I don't even know what we're, boomers, you get called a lot of different things, but you know, they distilled it, they're actually of the internet age, so the idea was to really make it tech-enabled, and focus with the underpinnings of how do we meet the client where they need to be met. In theory, I really, I thought sound strategy, the realities are people need to be met in a lot of different ways, and I think one of the takeaways I had out of sort of the early days of that is, it is not one size fits all, you need to be careful when you want to go, you know, I know we're going to get into some technology discussions later in the podcast, but it was a bit humbling, and also eye-opening from a strategy standpoint of building out the tech and the go-to-market strategy. Why the name Perpetual, and what does that represent to you? So yeah, so Perpetual is really around longevity, and the fact that, you know, homeownership is the long game, and the idea that title is perpetual, you know, and what we do, if you really think about it, is it's all around, and a lot of people have no idea what we do, and that's why I love your podcast, that you're sharing ideas around how do we connect with our clients in a more meaningful and potential way, so Perpetual's around the home itself, but what we do in the titling side is to keep that in perpetuity so that that ownership doesn't get disrupted, so the work we do is important, and sometimes I think that gets sort of lost in the messaging.

What were some of the biggest lessons you learned early on as a founder? Early, when I was young and naive, and now I'm old and naive, would be around the people. A lot of times what I would make decisions that were not consistent, and it was based on people, and what I've learned and what we've really become focused on is creating a set of core values and sticking to them, and if the people don't match the core values, no matter how talented that person is or how many clients they may have or how much revenue they may bring in, they do not fit in your company, and you can't make exceptions to that because it really does infiltrate the culture of the company, and when I was young, I was candidly focused more on outcomes than inputs, and I think I've learned the hard way that the inputs matter. So you and I are big on technology, and when you say Tidal is heading into a tech supercharged world, what does that mean to you or look like to you? You know, you asked me today, and it might be different in a week.

I've really I've really dove in, you know, five years ago, I sort of chased the blockchain rabbit hole, and I still, in my core, in my soul, I believe that a lot of that wasn't super misguided, but I also think it was the marketplace was not, the technology stack and deployment, and more importantly, the framework wasn't ready for retail deployment. I think that's maybe starting to clear up a little bit, but say blockchain on the side, you know, if you follow me on LinkedIn, you'll see me talking about escrow X, and I do think payment rail systems are evolving and very fast, and I do think that some of the old traditional payment rails, the swift and having to go to the bank and having a wire take hours or even days to hit, I think that's yester land, but we're still holding on to it partially because the banks are sort of holding on to it. So I think our industry, because we deal with so much of that, and it's such an important part of what we do, that we have to lean in on that. The other piece that I'm very obviously, and it's a buzzword, and you talk about it a lot, but the large language models and the impact of, they've been around for, as we know, for 10, 15 years, but with the power stack that NVIDIA has, the technology piece, the ability, the chips, and then the data centers catching up, and now the deployment, whether it be through Anthropic or OpenAI or Google or some of these other large lang model producers, we're just seeing all of that happen at super speed, especially with OpenCLON, which can do the agentic piece of it. and 15 years, but with the power stack that NVIDIA has, the technology piece, the ability of the chips, and then the data centers catching up, and now the deployment, whether it be through Anthropic or OpenAI or Google or some of these other large-length model producers, we're just seeing all of that happen at super speed, especially with OpenCLON, which can do the agentic piece of it.

I'm just curious and not concerned, but definitely curious about where we end up, and I think it's gonna be pretty mind-blowing over the next 12 to 18 months. Yeah, AI is definitely real, and people, it's kind of scary, majority of people have no clue. Like even businesses, they have no clue what's gonna hit them. Well, I'm gonna steal this from, I had a really interesting conversation with Nate Baker at Qualia, and he had a great, he sort of framed it, it was really good. He goes, it's like these aliens dropped out of the sky, and they're walking around the street, and there's some of us that realize, like, there's aliens here, we probably need to do something about it, but there's a lot of people that are just walking around with their heads down, and so I think as an industry, really across the landscape, we can't have our heads down.

We just can't. We have to acknowledge it, and then we have to embrace it, and figure out how do we use it to our benefit, so. This has been saying this for like the last three or four years, like the train left the station. Love it, hate it, it's irrelevant. It's just either on that train or you're not.

Like literally, whether you like it, hate it, nobody cares. You're gonna be left behind. The whole point of this title, the podcast, really is to educate, tell Asians about technology, and as you know, our industry's a little older, and old school, so I wanna make sure people just wake up a little bit. You don't want me to wake up 1,000%, just like 5% to be aware of what's around you. It's gonna go past you.

Like going back to blockchain, I remember the first wave of blockchain, 2016, 2017, and I'm like, oh, it's gonna take over the world, take over the tele-industry, and like I was freaking out, like how can I get into this? Like I went to a bunch of conferences, and literally, and it kind of faded away, and the biggest challenge with blockchain was how to convince 3,800 county clerks, or whatever that number is, to adopt a blockchain and basically get rid of them. So that was like the, and I've seen companies go belly up, like how many companies tried to do it, and they went out of business. The last man standing that I'm aware of is Propy, and now they're completely pivoted to basically being a private equity buying a bunch of companies, and going back to literally a style agency, and selling the whole blockchain, whatever that means. But AI is definitely, it's for real, and how do you use AI yourself?

I know there's just lots of kind of bounce ideas here. Yeah, high level, you know, like a lot of people started with just the chat piece of it, and it was great for just reviewing contracts, and doing deep research, but recently are starting to build out some agents, so the idea around creating a level of agents, so we're gonna have agents that, you know, one agent that does the order entry, and then we're gonna have one agent that helps prepare the commitment. We'll have one agent that potentially manages another layer of the workflow, and there'll be an agent above that to check their work, and then there'll be a human. There's always, and I always share this with people, there's still going to be a human involved. I mean, nobody, I don't believe, would ever be comfortable buying and selling a million dollar house, and not have a significant level of human interaction involved.

So that's the comfort food that I think I can share with all my fellow title and escrow agents out there. The part, though, I think we have to be aware of is we're going to have to be more productive leveraging those abilities. You know, if you currently have somebody who's manually reviewing contracts and so forth, and manually entering in that information, and you're at scale, if you're a small whatever, you've got a very unique subset of clients and so forth, maybe this doesn't impact you quite yet. But if you're, if you're all tech, or you're, you know, we're not where you are, but if you're of any type of, I would suggest scale, and you're not using this technology to help enhance your workflow, and when you start to think about, okay, I need to order another data entry clerk, I would argue that's probably not the best use of resources. Like, there's, the tool's already there, why would you not be hiring another customer service relationship person that's going to be forward-facing and developing, you know, they got to know you, like you, trust you.

They're never going to know, like, and trust an AI agent. But, so, so yeah, that's the way I'm thinking about it. It is hard, though, Mo, no doubt. It's hard to get the team comfortable with some of this, I mean, that's really where I have to every day, you know, really massage it and support so that they don't get intimidated, and then also discouraged, and, you know, then your culture starts to become one of, of, you know, where the people don't, they're like, what's going on, am I going to lose my job? I mean, that's not what we're trying to achieve here.

The early phase of AI was more of just kind of a better Google search. Yeah. Content writing for marketing, like now, the way I use it is as a thought partner. It's incredible, like, you give it a defined role, you're a world-class strategist in whatever, finance or marketing, then how are you going to be that CEO coach or thought partner? And it's insane, like, the way it makes you think and kind of the questions it asks you, kind of go back and forth, kind of just to define strategy and how to communicate, it's incredible.

And now the next phase, which is talking about OpenCloth, I'm trying to figure out how to set up OpenCloth. I think I'm going to give up and go to commercial route. I'm not a programmer at heart, and it's a whole new world, but agentic AI is definitely here. And we looked at, I know Qualia has that, Qualia AI Clear, but it was way too expensive. We kind of passed on that.

We're trying to build something ourselves. So that way we can control ourselves. Very similar to you, we can definitely talk offline and continue this conversation. Just, it's fascinating to me. So- Yeah, no, I'm with you there, a hundred percent.

So how have tools like your fee calculator and instant escrow funding improved efficiency or our client's experience at perpetual? Yeah, I think going back to that mantra of trying to meet the client where the client wants to be met. I mean, that's our North Star, at least currently. Because it's a very competitive landscape, as you know, and this marketplace with lower transactional volume and some of the other challenges, macroeconomic challenges that we just can't control. As I said, the only thing we can control is the client experience.

And if we laser focus on that, we should have some success. So the tools that we roll out, albeit none of them are like mind bending from a technology standpoint. The UX is important. That's the one thing I learned from the blockchain. So you have, UX means user experience for- Yeah, sorry, I'm sorry, yeah.

So, you know, we always talk about make it for a fifth grader. And that's not to say that we're selling homes to a bunch of fifth graders, but I do think you have, you can't assume anybody has a certain knowledge base going in a lot of times. How many times do people, especially in today's world where affordability and rate environment is the lock in effect? You know, you might buy or sell a home every five, six, seven years. We wish it maybe was a little bit more, but that's the world we live in today.

So you have to just make some baseline assumptions that not everybody's gonna be super comfortable with all of the technology that you provide. So we try to stick to basic core tools. And then if there's somebody who's more sophisticated or maybe they're, you know, they're an investor and they're gonna buy more and stuff, we'll bring in tools like Ron, which is remote online notary. Obviously, eSign's been around for a long time. Some people love it, some people don't.

So we really do try to meet the client where they wanna, where they're comfortable. If we do that, then I think we'll do. Yeah, you have to be a residential resale world. You have to be flexible. You have, I think you can set, you can do some automation, high-level automation, like refinances, but purchase, the realtor controls the transaction.

Yeah. Tell us how you want it done, kind of thing. Yeah, we've tried the other way, Mo. I mean, you know, I've talked about, yeah. I mean, I've heard you talk a lot.

We've tried to force feed stuff and it just, and it makes a lot of sense to us, but it doesn't matter, I always say. to be a residential resale world. You have to be flexible. You have a, I think you can set, you know, you can do some automation, high level automation, like refinances, but purchase, the realtor controls the transaction is just, tell us how you want it done, kind of thing. Yeah.

We've tried the other way, Mo. I mean, you know, I've talked about, yeah, I mean, you've, I've heard you talk a lot. You, we've tried to force feed stuff and, and, and it just, and it makes a lot of sense to us, but it doesn't matter. I always say it really doesn't matter if the client doesn't, in a lot of time, our client is the realtor. So that's who we're really working with.

So. Have you, I don't know if you haven't answered this. Have you seen any measurable ROI or return on investments from implementing automation tools by any chance? I'm just curious. Yeah.

We plugged in CloseSimple as part of our tool for, it's essentially our pizza tracker, so it sends automated updates out, uh, on top of the software. Are you on a Qualia chip? We're on SoftPro. SoftPro, okay. Yeah.

And, um, so we've had to bolt on some, some tools on, you know, we're, I will say Qualia is probably a more encompassing platform. Uh, what we've done with SoftPro is we have brought in, you know, through APIs and so forth, um, we've, we've added layers of, of interfacing and interoperability, the buzzword that we all love to use. So, um, but no CloseSimple has been a really good one because it replaces some of the outbound communication that we were doing manually. And the agents typically, as long as they're getting updates, they feel good about, oh, this thing's moving. It's, it's, we're getting closer to closing.

So they're less, we're having to deal with less inbound traffic and they have a better experience, which is what we really are here towards. Yeah. The, when we're trying to kind of find a balance in automation and human touch, what should title companies automate aggressively? Yeah, I would say a lot of the back, the backend stuff. So I think order entry and really the internal file management piece of it.

Now the, the actual underwriting, having a set of eyes on the title work that still needs to be human touch. Um, we do not automate a whole lot of the escrow experience at this point. Um, we've looked at that, you know, did an automated CDs and so forth. Um, what we found is using templates, we can almost get to where we need to be. And the reason being is that we still want that human touch between our closer and the lender, cause there's a marketing opportunity there.

Uh, we want our touch between our closer and the realtor cause there's a marketing opportunity, even though we don't necessarily say it out loud, that human interaction, uh, that final, um, but then like policy, uh, you know, remittance and production that can all be done through an automated process. Um, even the recording piece, we're getting a lot better at using simple file and some of the other e-recording tools to just get that done. And, you know, very, very efficiently. Um, so there's, if somebody said, I think that the buzzword is, well, 80% will go to automation. I don't know if I'm in that camp.

Um, even though you probably could get there, refiles, you and I both know you could probably get to 95%, but I think, um, with purchase, which is the world we mainly live in, uh, I would say we're going to try to get to 50 to 60% automated and then have about 40% of it human touch. Um, how are you thinking about cybersecurity and fraud prevention as processes become digital? That is a big piece of it. And so we lean on our, our vendor partners, um, with like payments. There's some really good tools out there.

You know, close simple actually has a identity verification tool, um, for like seller fraud. Um, and they actually have their, their partnered with payments to do a, uh, wire instruction verification product. Um, the key is, is, is you just, you have to make sure your team is 100% committed to using those tools. You know, you can't because it's late in the game and everything's sped up. You can't bypass the, the process, um, because, and, and then, you know, we're, this is new, but FinCEN is, is we're working.

So, so Mo, I'll ask you a question like this. We, we heavily work with third party vendors that are very laser focused on those specific, um, situations. Cause we find that they bring the most robust solution and they also have the best education for our team. And it's, uh, it's not even optional. It's not even optional anymore.

No, uh, we were kind of, uh, we kind of put it back burner. It's like three years ago. We got hit with, uh, cyber fraud. Luckily we recovered the majority of the funds. Now I'm like, like we just, we gotta do it now.

And it's just, uh, the beauty of it, it's just kind of a multi, almost like multi-step authentication to prevent fraud, verifying the bank accounts, identity, and also the, uh, these companies have another layer of insurance, which is fantastic. It kind of really adds a little peace of mind. It doesn't mean we're immune. It's kind of really, you can just keep layering, uh, different layers of, uh, security or the prevention and, uh, risk mitigation. We just had a situation literally yesterday, a buyer, um, out of California.

Nothing against, we love California. Um, they were buying a horse farm in Kentucky. It didn't seem though to add up. Um, we ran their ID through, uh, through the, what the close simple partnership and it flagged it. And lo and behold, it was a, it was fraudulent.

I don't quite, trying to figure out what they were trying to accomplish. Some point, I think the, they were going to be available to not be legitimate, but we were able to sort of, we mitigated it like the second the contract came in. So the agents were able to just call everything off immediately. And they were very appreciative because they were going to do some heavy lifting, it was a, it was a sizable transaction. So we saved, uh, we saved some people, some valuable time.

You saved that realtor from spending that money. Yes, exactly. Is how I feel I'm going to spend that commission before even. Yeah, no doubt. Especially.

Yes, for sure. Good point. So, um, you're in a multi-state operation. What operational shifts are required to scale across multiple states? I know it's a, it's not easy and it's a, it's very painful.

Yeah. And, and, you know, we, back when we did a lot more on the, the refi side, we were in like 20 something states and the marketplace obviously shifted and we made a business decision to really pare back some of that. So every state we're in now we have bricks and mortar. Um, when you do get into the purchase market specifically, we look very much at our underwriters to as partners. So we build a, we build a close relationship with each of the local underwriters, um, council and, and agency management group.

And, um, we feel very strongly that it is a partnership. And so that's really helped us because, um, sometimes as you go into a new market, there, there's all, there is nuance to each market, you know, maybe the workflow nuance, maybe it's legal nuance, but, um, I think it's important that you, um, have a very intentional relationship because they're the ones that are writing that insurance product. I'm speaking from an independent agent model. And, um, you know, if you can get there buying and sign off, you're, you're, I'm not saying you're a hundred percent, uh, absconded, but, but it's definitely helpful. So, yeah, we, we really, we really lean in on those relationships.

So, uh, besides building that, um, uh, relationship with them, with the underwriters, what advice would you give agencies looking to expand beyond one state? You know, I always say the hardest is getting from zero to 10 orders in any market. If you're truly going to go in as what we call DeNova, you're not going to acquire a partner or whatever. You're actually going to sort of stick your flag in the ground. So you have to, you have to be prepared for that.

So, you know, going back to the people piece of it, um, you know, one of the things that we look at and we're, we look at 26 for us at Perpetual as a, uh, a good year to start to, uh, plant more seeds for growth. Um, you know, 2025 candidly wasn't as great as we were hoping. I mean, I think a lot of agents share that. It was always survive till 25. And I think we, 25 was sort of, uh, it wasn't down, but it wasn't, it didn't pop like we had hoped.

Um, one of the things that we have done mindfully is, and this ties into multi-state, we've also added a lot more commercial, uh, capabilities. Um, but that's its own silo. We don't cross pollinate. We, the commercial stays on the commercial side of the fence. Um, one thing is you'll end up frustrating your team if you start having them go back and forth and then you'll definitely frustrate your client.

Uh, so you have to really silo those. But the state piece of it is, is, is I think you have to be, you just have to be prepared for, you know, getting that lift off and, and really, you know, be prepared for it to be harder than you ever anticipated, because we, we've been in and out of some markets where we sort of flew in and we thought, oh, this is a great market, everybody's here. It's going to be great. Um, and candidly. having them go back and forth, and then you'll definitely frustrate your client.

So you have to really silo those. But the state piece of it is I think you have to be, you just have to be prepared for getting that lift off and really be prepared for it to be harder than you ever anticipated. Because we've been in and out of some markets where we sort of flew in and we thought, oh, this is a great market, everybody's here, it's gonna be great, and candidly, that's not a great strategy. It's not. Which one is first, chicken or the egg?

It's always sales. Yeah, yeah. Sales don't expand. Yep, you're right. You fake it till you make it on the operations side, but the sales, you can't fake that one.

Exactly. So I know you expanded to 1031 Exchange Services. What led you to add 1031 Exchange? So tied into that, when we made a more thoughtful commitment to commercial, it just made a lot of sense. We were having a lot of investors that were coming to us and we started to realize that we were referring out a lot of 1031s, which was okay.

We had a really good 1031 partner, but they, sometimes they would go, oh, okay, and then they'd go somewhere else that could do it all under one roof. So just that one-stop shop. And then from a financial aspect, if you can get a nice pipeline of 1031 properties, you get the buy and the sell, typically, or the sell and the buy. And you can, depending on who your 1031 financial partner is there's some interest income that can be earned. And it's a creative, for us, in somewhat of a meaningful way.

But I would say more of the convenience factor, to be candid. I think that's more important to us than anything. And I want to commend you for making that strategic shift to trying to switch to commercial. In a perfect world, I would love to mix the 90% commercial versus residential. If you pay attention to First American Fidelity's quarterly earnings, they were like up 20, 30% revenue on commercial.

Yeah. It tells you something. Okay, we don't want data center deals. We just want like a five, 10, 20 million dollar deals. Yeah.

With like leftovers. Yeah. Yeah, no doubt. That's a nuisance to them. Hey, you and me both, we're right on the same plane there.

Just give me your scraps. Exactly. So what should agency owners understand before entering 1031 Exchange, if they want to kind of make a shift to the space? So what we did, which is sort of, it was, in some regard, a little bit of the path of least resistance. We found a partner that had a technology platform built and ready to plug into.

So for us, we had to do some education, but they provide a lot of those resources. And I think it's about finding the right intermediary partner. I know there's some that go and do it 100% on their own. I would suggest that that takes a unique skill set that we were not prepared to have. So we really lean on our vendor partner, and they provide us the tools, the software, which is the most important piece of it, from the paperwork and the compliance.

And they also have a staff for any type of questions or challenges. And we're very lean into them on that a lot, because we want to make sure our clients get the right answer. We don't want to- Until, Chip, until you and I build an agent to this 1031. Yeah, yeah, well, that's real. There's no doubt about it.

So do you believe that diversification into adjacent services is essential for long-term survival? Especially we go to a lot of ups and downs. Yeah, and I think about that a lot, because I think the way I look at it is, if we're not careful, the opposite is starting to happen with our referral partner. You're seeing it with Redfin and Rocket, and they've got Amrock underneath them. I would be shocked if, depending if Kirkshire Hathaway stays in the real estate world for the next 10, 15 years, if they don't want to own every chunk of the revenue stream.

We know with builders, they already do a lot of that. So I look at it as, okay, how do I compete? And one of the things, and I think if you follow, once again, some of my LinkedIn posts, and we've tried to position a product called the Chipshot, somewhat narcissistic name, but it's really around golf, but the idea of bringing title to the consumer, trying to get us higher up in the sales funnel, so we're not so positioned at the bottom of the sales funnel, and connecting with the consumer. It's not a direct-to-consumer play, per se, but I think it's about, if you really think about this, or at least how I think about it, title should be one of the first things people do in the transaction. We should never fall below appraisal, or even home inspection, if you ask me, because if the title isn't ready to go, nothing else matters.

And I think somehow we've lost our positioning. Well, if in the West Coast, it's called a search and hold, it's a very common part of the listing, you do the search, then the agent has that part. It's really, it's different parts of the country, different customs. Yeah, and that's what I find in California, and Washington, and some other areas, Oregon, but if you go, as you just head East, that's really not in the way the workflow is built, and to me, it's a head-scratcher, because I would think, and the thought behind the Chipshot, really, though, was to connect with the consumer, give them something that was actually, once again, that fifth grader, the USA Today, give them title that they can understand, very visual in the context of we doing a golf course, but front nine, back nine, and really breaking it down. Here's who owns the property, here's where the mortgage, here's the tax, here's the lien, and so the idea is to get them comfortable with what the roadmap to closing looks like, because this is, going back to a lot of people, this is, they'll do this four or five times in their lifetime, so we can't expect them to know all of what we're doing and why we do it.

So let's look into the future. What will a winning title company look like in 2030? Wow, 2030, that's close, but yet so far away, right? In the world of AI, that's like 28 versions of iterations. There'll be the large language models, God knows where they'll be in six months, yet four years.

I think that it's a great question and I'm really struggling with how do we, I think about it this way, how do we stay relevant as a product? And that is going to be a combination of our ability to provide that efficient workflow and deliver really high-level service, which goes without. But I asked the question, Mo, and I don't have the answer, so to speak, I think it's curiosity, but what does the product really look like? That's my question. I think the product has to evolve.

I mean, we have sort of stuck around on this, this is our product and this is the way it's going to be. And I just wonder if the product changes, because of the tools and the resources and the ability, go back to really the last thing I'll share on the blockchain, circling all the back, you were way ahead of the curve. Think about it, you were 2016. I mean, that was eons ahead of the curve. But now with AI, we could go into these municipalities and put all that stuff in probably a day.

I mean, Google put the Library of Congress and this is what, 10 years ago. So you and I know the technology could do it. It's been here for a while, yeah. Yeah, yeah, so it's just about deployment and exception and regulation and all that. So I don't know, I'm not answering your question.

I'm sort of talking around it, but I think it's a great question. I think it's one that we have to continue to reflect on. And I go back to US now, we run it on the US. We break things down in 90 days. We have our rocks.

We know what our three and our five, I mean, our three and our 10 year is and our one year. But really, I think you have to stay in that 90 day zone because you have to course correct if something were to come up. For those of you that may not know what EOS is, it's an Entrepreneur Operating System. It's a way to run meetings, run your goals quarterly, three year, 10 year, everything is kind of filtered into quarterly goals and the rocks. It's highly, highly recommend kind of really looking into it and the book to read is Traction by Gina Wickman.

If you want to kind of get understanding of EOS. Yeah, it's awesome. And if you do it, you can get like, they have like an implementer and you get a big binder and it's a commitment though. Your company, it's like a lot of these things now. I mean, you.

meetings, run your goals quarterly, three year, 10 year, everything is kind of filtered into quarterly goals, which is the rocks. It's a highly, highly recommend, kind of really looking into it and the book to read is Traction by Gina Wickman, if you want to kind of get an understanding of EOS. Yeah, it's awesome and if you do it, you can get like a, they have like an implementer and you get a big binder and you know, it's a commitment though, your company, it's like a lot of these things now, I mean, you, you, you can't just sort of do it. It's either part of your DNA or what we've found is going back to the core values, that was my light bulb moment, um, sounds sort of corny or whatever, but if you truly, if everybody in your company understands and supports the core values, a lot of, a lot of the drama, as I like to say, and the HR piece sort of gets sorted out, which is, it's almost like when you run by core values, like a self-managed company in a way. Yeah.

And you, and you self-select, I mean, a lot of times, like what we found is people who couldn't really get behind the core values and one of ours is all in, we are all in on what we're doing and so the people that weren't all in, um, because it's tough, you know, it's a tough environment and, and people are frustrated because it's not as easy as it used to be. They self-selected out. They really did. They just said, it's not for me. Uh, will physical offices still matter?

My thesis is yes. And then, and, and because we've tried the virtual, we've, we've tried to, uh, you know, use Ron, we've tried to, um, use, you know, we, we work with a large notary network, uh, you know, obviously Esign, but I think at the end of the day, a lot of our business is still, they've got to know you like you trust you and how do they do that? It's person to person interchange. It's that physical connection. So I think offices will still matter.

Um, I think they're going to look maybe different and I think, you know, we've really redeployed. We used to do more like the traditional, you know, we wanted to, our offices are still nice, but, but we've definitely put less, less emphasis on the structure and physical plant and we put more on just utility, you know, it's an easy to get to and we'll go to their office and do stuff. And so we, flexibility is one of our core values. So we're, we're a lot more flexible. Are independent agencies positioned to thrive or will consolidation dominate?

Great question. Um, I am concerned that consolidation is my concern. I'm cheering the small independent. Um, I worry that the, the, the amount of resource requirement that for technology and, and the pivot that we're probably all going to be forced to really address is, is going to be really, really hard for the smaller guys to, it was sort of like when TRID first hit and everybody had to switch all of their workflows and you saw some of the old school, um, law firms, nothing against them, but they just opted out. They said, you know what, this seems like way more than it's worth.

Um, I think we're going to hit an inflection point where you're going to start to see a lot of smaller guys, um, you know, end up pivoting out. What metrics do you personally watch most closely? We're big on revenue per employee, um, which maybe sounds sort of, I mean, whenever I used to say it, it was when I was younger, I was like, that's all I would talk about, um, because it was a good marginal revenue, marginal costs. When we were really growing, it was a great way for me, um, to sort of understand, okay, when I add people, is it, is it moving the needle or am I adding people just to add people? Um, and that metrics, um, sales reps, contractors or everybody, or just W2 employees or just W, W2 employees.

Yeah. So, um, so that's one, but honestly my, my KPIs on today's world are, you know, I look at obvious order count, um, the revenue in the pipeline, we, we, we run on a dashboard, sort of showing what, what that is, and then we do, um, orders per employee, um, but we get granular too on our marketing reps. We really try to, and our marketing reps are not usually the traditional, they're not going out and just dropping and going. I mean, our, our marketing reps are pseudo hybrid, so they, they touch the file, they're typically going to be the person you see at the closing, closing and the loan, so yeah, I mean, it's, that's a good question. I mean, we, we are constantly trying to fully understand what KPIs we really, really are like going to die on the hill on, um, and we're still a working process, even on that someday, so.

Awesome. Uh, do you have a favorite book or one that you've read recently? A lot of, I have a couple of, um, so I, um, I just read this, uh, the, the science of scaling and, um, it's funny, it's sort of talks a lot about Elon Musk and how he sort of, you know, you think about all of the, and the reason that I think it's interesting is that it really does force you to think in shorter batches of time, which I think in today's world is, is that relevant context to me. Um, you know, I've also got on my computer, patients will, I mean, persistence will pay off. So they're almost like not at odds, but it's a, it's a, it's sort of a two guiding lights, but the science of scaling was just about going sort of all in and pushing yourself.

And I think as title agents right now, um, we do have to go all in on, on like keeping our product where it's not becomes, you know, I've seen some posts recently and I'm trying to remember who, who put them out there, but some really influencers in our, in our space around, you know, how we're under attack of the value proposition. I just think it's on us. We, we have to be proactive around the value proposition. We can't expect people just to figure it out. Uh, do you have a favorite quote?

Well, I've got your persistence will pay off. Um, my other one, that's not really a quote. That's just more of a guiding. I used to do the buck stops here, but that was my young, like, you know, sort of like for myself, uh, piece. But yeah, I w I would say the other one I'm sort of trying to lean on, um, in today's world is fighter pilot calm.

How do I stay here through a world that is just throwing a lot at us? And that's hard. Yeah. Uh, thank you so much. That was a tons of wisdom.

And, uh, and I really enjoyed the conversation. Any final words to our audience? Um, just, I think we got to stay all in and this AI, as you said, Amro, it's, it's, it's binary. It's not optional. It's, it's, there's, and that's, that can be scary if you let it be, or if I think if you surround yourself with the right group, um, like you said, you're building out agents and you're going to, that's what we're talking about doing is bringing somebody in to help because we still have to run our business, you know, and that's, that's the hard part is, is balancing what's happening today.

You have to sit across one to buy a house and we're going to do it in the traditional ways, but we know there's some new things that we're going to have to bring in, um, so balancing that. Um, and then finally, just thanking you, man, I think what you're doing is, is awesome. Um, it's good to have somebody in our industry really out there keeping the curious questions, you know, going and bringing in people a lot smarter than me on, onto your show to share wisdom and, and have these types of conversations. So thank you for doing it. Really do.

My pleasure. Well, Chip, thank you so much. I appreciate you. Yeah. Thank you.

Well, that was an amazing interview with Chip. That was a tons of insight and nuggets and looking at the future. It was incredible. We truly enjoyed it. Well, if you enjoyed our podcast, uh, please give us a review and most importantly, subscribe.

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