📄 Full Podcast Transcript – Interview with Trevor Koot and Jeff King

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and readability.

Adam Scalena: Okay, so we’re here with Trevor Koot. He’s the CEO of British Columbia Real Estate Association and Jeff King, the CEO of Greater Vancouver Realtors and of course, past guest fan favorites. Welcome back to the show.

Trevor Koot: Are you just using that for everyone now? You’re just like, it’s very select. And when you have multiple guests, is it like for one of us and not the other and you’re just not gonna tell who or?

Adam Scalena: No, it’s very select. It’s very select.

Matt Scalena: It’s a select group. You guys have made the cut.

Adam Scalena: Yeah, yeah, one of you is a fan favorite.

Trevor Koot: We’ll let you sort it out.

Jeff King: Yeah. Yeah. By the end of the show, we’ll hear enough of it. Once the F-bomb start going, we’ll figure out who the fan favorite is. As long as we outdo Brendan and Andrew, that’s all I care about now.

Matt Scalena: Yeah, the other one’s just a past guest.

Matt Scalena: So, so for you, were both on as Adam mentioned about 18 months ago, but it’s great to have you back for people who missed your first appearance or need a refresher. Can you start? And maybe we’ll start with Trevor by telling our listeners a little bit about yourself.

Trevor Koot: Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having us back, Matt and Adam. Jeff and I, we joked early on in our co-tenure as we both kind of got established in our roles that we were going to start taking this on the road. And we really have, we’re doing a lot of these kind of co-presentation appearances and any opportunity for us to do this, I always, always enjoy it.

So thanks for having us back. I’m currently, as Adam said, the CEO at the BC Real Estate Association. We represent about 20, just over 26,000 realtors in the province of British Columbia. Part of the bigger organized real estate ecosystem, including the Canadian Real Estate Association and eight real estate boards in the province, including the Greater Vancouver Realtors who Jeff represents.

My history has been, for the most part, professional history has been in the real estate sector. I’ve had been a realtor, I owned several brokerages, owned a mortgage, a couple mortgage brokerages, property management company. I was the chair of the provincial regulator in Saskatchewan. I was the executive officer of two of the real estate boards in British Columbia, Kamloops and the Kootenays, before we amalgamated those into the interior.

And then I find myself in this position kind of leaning on and leveraging all of that past history from each of those roles to speak to different audiences and kind of have a perspective of each of the audiences that I get the privilege and the pleasure of speaking with.

Jeff King: Well, I have no idea why I’m here now with that background, Trevor. So have good luck with the show, folks. So, yeah, that’s true. That’s true. So the, have my backgrounds much different than Trevor’s. Trevor’s sort of an insider who’s disrupting from within. And I’m an outsider who’s come in to see the disruption.

Trevor Koot: We’re yin and yang, Jeff.

Jeff King: So my career is kind of in three parts. I’m currently the CEO of Greater Vancouver Realtors, as Trevor pointed out, about 15,000 realtors in the Lower Mainland, covering from Whistler down to the Tri-Cities and of course, Greater Vancouver itself. My career has kind of been in three parts. The first chunk was in financial services, mostly reinsurance. And I saw the disruption that happened there when people started doing things directly.

trying to avoid insurance brokers, frankly, and different groups like that. Didn’t mean insurance brokers disappeared, but it meant that their role was different and began to change. And then in nearly 2000s, I moved to the music industry, music and entertainment. And that was the industry that was undergoing tremendous disruption when I arrived. Matter of fact, when I got there, I don’t think they’d realized how far along the disruption was. And I remember being interviewed and was pointing out some of the things I saw happening as a civilian, so to speak.

And they looked at me with the this guy’s an idiot the type of look on their face, but they did hire me almost on the spot and 20 years later kind of proved that I was on this on the track there that the you know, the consumer is undefeated. They will find ways to access information and music and all the stuff that they want to look for they will just find a way to do that and they want to disintermediate just intermediate everyone they can because there’s a feeling that a little players, middlemen in the old days, were not helpful. music went through a tremendous disruption. So I was the COO and Chief Corporate Development Officer for SoCAN, which is Canada’s music rights organization, the largest one in Canada, one of the largest in the world. And I was also CEO of some of the for-profit subsidiaries, predominantly in the United States, plus a couple in Canada, that did certain unique things. I went through that process.

When I got there, the company was doing about 120 million in revenue. When I left, it was around 600 million. They were good, very good success story of how to deal with disruption and adapt to a changing world and thrive, not just survive by your fingernails. And then I did what most people do not do in their fifties. I changed cities and I changed industries in my fifties, as I said, and came here, moved from Toronto to Vancouver and joined what at that time was REGVB.

something like that. Real estate board of Greater Vancouver. And we rebranded a little bit over a year ago. I’ve been here about three and a half years. Three and a half years last week, not to be precise.

Adam Scalena: What was the rebrand because it’s nearly impossible just to get that acronym down for a lot of people.

Jeff King: You know what? That was part of it. People would just butcher it relentlessly. it ended up being, it was so cumbersome to say, it was, people had several short forms that were just as confusing. So it became Vancouver, became the board. But did that mean real estate board or the board of directors? It became REBGV, it became REBGV. There was a lot of different things. That’s not good for branding when you’re known by five or six different things.

And then even the logo itself, I don’t have any examples in here, but it was a skyline of Vancouver basically in the mid eighties. And it was fine for this time, but it was all buildings that we had nothing to do with, didn’t own or anything like that. And nothing bad would ever happen to any of them. But God forbid if something bad was happening, I didn’t want to be the CEO explaining like, that’s X place or that’s whatever it is.

And there was something horrible happening in the basement, we had nothing to do with it. But it’s on our logo for millions of people to see. And it was very limiting geographically. And so people, you know, our catchment is sizable and it was kind of in your face that it was Vancouver. So we tend to refer to ourselves as GVR, not unlike YVR and all the rest of it and use that as an acronym. And I think that’ll give us further adaptability as we go along. And then the physical logo itself is much simpler than it used to be and translates to digital much better.

But you’re right. was a cumbersome, was a mouthful to say, you know, even when the chair and the recruiter called me to offer me the job, they butchered their name saying, we’re proud to honor, offer you the CEO role at REGV. And they sort of trailed off and I thought, what’s going on? Like, this is a real thing, right? You know, but anyways, happy to be here.

Matt Scalena: You know, this is in light of a question that I think we asked you last time, but it would be good as a refresher. And in light of we just had Trevor Hargreaves on the show from the British Columbia Real Estate Association talking politics. He’s very optimistic. Holy cow. But maybe as a a refresher for everyone or for those who don’t know like, what what is the the role of both the BCREA and Greater Vancouver Realtors in like what role do you play in the province? Is it just a membership is like to represent the real your realtor membership or is it something more?

Jeff King: Okay, so we’ll start with GVR, but I think BCRA is an important part of the story. There’s two or three main things that GVR does. We operate and manage the multiple listing service, the MLS. It’s a marketing platform. It’s the beginnings of a marketplace, frankly. And it’s really the main hook for most members to why they want to be realtors, not just the agents.

But results education professional development elements and there’s advocacy work all those things kind of tied together around tying around the the transparency and the openness of the MLS and the the training and development of the agents themselves helps and I think increase the public trust in the system and Our advocacy work helps to ensure that the industry is recognized and dealt with at different levels of the government You know all four levels frankly but

There are some core business things, mostly around the MLS and education that we do a lot of. We work very closely with our other boards in the province. Some of them, we share the same MLS. And then we have some of them, we do the training and development work with them or on their behalf in the fee for service. And on the advocacy front, we work extremely closely with BCRA, Trevor Hargreaves in particular, to make sure that we have a concerted and very focused voice.

I think one of the weaknesses of organized real estate over the years was that there was a concoction of a hundred different voices asking for similar but slightly different things and slightly different ways to different people. And I think it did not help the industry overall. And so the boards, the GVRs of the world, includes like Fraser Valley Real Estate Board, Victoria, know, Powell River, know, Vireb, the interior and Chilliwack and BC Northern.

try to work in a more coordinated way. GVR has really been leaning in on that front because I think it’s so important. Real estate is such a key part of the, not just the human experience obviously, but also the BC economy. And it’s important that we kind of get this right because we’re, I’m sure we’ll touch on it, but we’re in unusual economic times. And so having a voice and being coordinated in how we do it, it’s critical. We’re not huge companies, right? Like the three largest employers in organized real estate.

are CREA, the National Association that Trevor just mentioned, TREB, which is the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board, and Vancouver, GBR. The three of us together are around 400 employees, which is about the same size as the average Walmart in Canada. Now know that much different business models and stuff, but we should not give ourselves the illusion that we have thousands of engineers and hundreds of teachers wandering around the province able to do all this stuff.

No, these are fairly lean, relatively small organizations. And those are the three big ones. They go down to some very tiny ones with volunteer staff or a couple of employees. so we have to work in a coordinated way to pull these together. So that’s kind of how the local board does it. And the three-way agreement, which includes BCRA and the other provincial associations and the national body, CREA.

These are not a master servant or parent child type relationships. There really are three way agreements. Industry should be proud of it. We don’t talk about it enough, but we really should be proud about how we can connect and leverage these things better. Maximize it so that Trevor Hargreaves is a voice for the industry across the province. Different things like that. And so I think that’s kind of like, to me, I see it almost like a jigsaw puzzle. GVR is a part of it, an important part. There’s some business parts of it that BCRA at CREA don’t touch on but there’s parts of BCRA like forms and and broker hotlines and such and there’s things that CREA does Realtor.ca most notably that local boards can’t can’t can’t do and so that’s why it’s I think we have to change the narrative but but that’s generally what we do now

Trevor Koot: Yeah, that’s a great base and foundation because I think the listener can appreciate hearing this, that there is a lot of crossover. There’s a lot of things that we collaborate on, that we historically have done individually, and we’re starting to see opportunities for sharing those expertise and those services. So the BC Real Estate Association supports, as I mentioned off the top, over 26,000 realtors in the province. And we do that in a few different ways. The provincial professional development program that requires all realtors in the province to take 18 hours of continuing education over their two year licensing cycle in order to remain a realtor. We kind of host and manage that program in coordination with the eight real estate boards in the province. And Jeff mentioned all eight of those earlier.

The, I think of note is that the BCREA, the realtors aren’t direct members of ours. The eight boards in the province are our members. So the accountability kind of goes to the boards. But that’s where that creates that partnership and that opportunity for kind of leveraging all of our resources collectively.

Beyond that, have one of the guests that you bring on very often and is a notable guest on your podcast, Brendan Ogbenson, is our chief economist, runs our economics department. And that’s heavily leveraged in the province from a of a housing market perspective, a housing economy perspective and how that translates into the bigger ecosystem.

Not just for realtors, though that is the primary directive. certainly has influences beyond the organized real estate environment. We provide, as Jeff pointed out, the standard forms. That’s a key piece actually in making sure that the consumer is protected when they’re signing contracts, whether they’re a buyer or a seller, but also the services that realtors are providing are compliant with the regulations and the legislation. we oversee and manage, co-own those, all the standard forms that are used on a regular basis with the Bar Association in British Columbia. And then very notably, and I think everybody’s hit on it already because Trevor Hargreaves was recently on the program.

A big part of what we do is advocacy and we do that in a few different forms. We do it with government as Trevor pointed out when he was on your podcast recently, all levels of government. We make sure that we are a voice and we provide policy research and good metrics on the proposals that we’re making. And as Jeff pointed out, we do that in coordination with the boards. We do that taking into consideration the local diversity that can impact those policy suggestions that we make. Beyond that, we also do a lot of advocacy and work with the regulator. And so that’s more in the ecosystem of impacts directly to realtors on the ground, making sure that decisions that are made at a regulatory level have a reasonable impact on the business environment for realtors and brokers in the province. But I think, and you heard this from Trevor, I think beyond all of that and something that we’re exploring more and more, and maybe something we’ll get into as the questions unfold here is what is BCREA, the BC Real Estate Association’s role in having a voice in the entire housing continuum. We’ve really focused our voice historically on the transactional environment of real estate, on where realtors are playing their role. And rightly so, we’re here to work on behalf of realtors in the province. But there is a bigger role for BCREA to play in the housing continuum and being a voice when we talk about all, and you heard that from Trevor in the recent episode. Like we’re really starting to make sure that we have an impact throughout the entire housing ecosystem. that’s something I’m really proud of that we’re able to do and have the expertise to lean into.

Adam Scalena: Yeah, and the feedback from that episode with Trevor, a lot of people seem to agree with his ideas and really wanted to make sure that they didn’t go unnoticed by the government. I think you’re absolutely right. We’re in this situation in the industry and the profession where there’s lots of challenges right now in this moment.

You know, obviously there’s market conditions, what’s happening right now in pre-sale. But then of course, there’s the lawsuit that was successful in the States that’s now in Canada. You know, there’s AI that’s rapidly changing and coming into the industry. There’s potential of over-regulation at the provincial level in some capacity. What are your thoughts? Like, what are your thoughts on what the biggest challenges that we’re facing right now as an industry.

Jeff King: Okay. Yeah. All right. Yeah. there’s a multitude you you’ve hit on some of big ones there. the, the litigation and the competition bureau work is, you know, something to pay close attention to. I’m a firm believer that the industry has done nothing wrong and is very collaborative, and has an open ability for people to negotiate commissions. There’s no price fixing or nothing along those lines.

But defending significant class actions is expensive and a major endeavor and should not be taken lightly and so it’s not just GVR but it’s everyone who’s named which includes the big brokerages and basically, you know 70 or so of the Bodies and the organized real estate. There’s a few that missed so far like the BCRE crowd and such but but generally most of the real estate boards and A number of the provincial associations have been named in this litigation. That’s a major element to pay close attention to.

Another one you hit on is around technology. Absolutely. The idea that we cannot operate in an era where we sort of pretend there’s binders in the back seat of the car and we’ve got the keys and no one else can see what’s in there. That’s long gone. And there’s just the disruption that we talked about a year and a half ago. It is here. And we are seeing players that are better financed than what we’ve seen in the past who are working to try to find different ways to address markets and to bring different levels of transparency. I think the MLS operators, including GVR, can be a force for good in that space. And we’re doing things around price transparency and around the tracking of different elements that has been very well received overall. And I think that’s going to accelerate as we go along.

But the big thing that’s keeping me up at night is the overall economic situation we’re in. I don’t remember exactly what we talked about at the time. was post-COVID, or post-COVID is not the right word, earlier coming out of that, and there’s a bit of a surge in the market. But even at that point, I was worried about Canada stumbling into a lost decade, not unlike Japan in the 90s. Japan was boom town in the late 80s. Kids were learning Japanese. It was going to be the financial hub of the world.

And then 1991 happened, they went into recession and I could probably put forth a pretty compelling argument that they’ve not gotten out of that. And Canada has a similar risk. in the fall of 2023, I felt that way strongly. I feel even more strongly now with the current US administration, which seems to have a limited understanding of how trade works and is working off of, know, kind of archaic approaches that could be devastating to the Canadian and the global economy.

We saw some stats this morning, know, inflation is down and people are cheering, but it’s a nuance around carbon taxes and a drop in the price of oil because of weakening demand. I’m quite concerned that Canada could stumble into a thing where there’s minimal growth for a long period. And it’s not the end of the world. We will not be fighting bears for food, but it will mean that we are long ways away from the halcyon days of not that long ago.

Large centers, know, the MTV crowd, you Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, will still attract people to live and work and play and all those things. But the economic strain will be significant. And we’re going through a seismic shift. You know, the silver tsunami is starting. The greatest transfer of wealth in human history is about two years in. It’s going to last about another decade or so. But already there’s huge drains on that, you know, health care costs, living costs for elders, things like that. So I think people sitting back and saying, well, it’s going be great. Everyone’s going to inherit $7 trillion, which is roughly, I think, the number in Canada. And those go out and buy houses with that. There’ll be some of that. But there’ll be a lot of that money spent on putting grandma up in a sister living home. And there’ll be no further, I don’t want to say no further ahead, but the economy will just drag along. That is a major concern.

And Canada is closely entangled with the United States on trade and on almost all commerce, largely a resource driven economy. It was driven home again over the last 120 days. The number one industry in British Columbia is coal mining. We get excited about real estate and tech and tourism and all the rest of it, but coal mining is the biggest one.

You know, we got to pay attention to the sort of the macro sense and a very serious way. But those are some of big challenges, you know, and the and the disruption we were talking before the show started, you know, you know, it’s a disruption here or is it starting on that? Yeah, it is here and it is starting, you know, and it covers all the kind of the usual pest analysis type stuff. You know, there’s there’s young folks who feel disenfranchised that they’ll feel they’ll never own a home. And the current economic model, I’m not sure if it’s sustainable forever.

And we have the dichotomy of affordability versus attainability. And people terrified that the retirement plan is tied up in the house worth a million five in XYZ town. But if that goes down to $700,000, they can’t retire and they’re Walmart reader all of a sudden. It’s easy to criticize. That’s not easy to get ourselves out of this.

Matt Scalena: So Trevor, maybe the same question to you. I feel like that was a scary take on on where we’re at. but not not not not surprising, but but but scary nonetheless. I guess maybe let me put it to you this way. Do you see the the general potential economic malaise as being the biggest threat to the industry or something else.

Jeff King: There is a bright light coming, but I’ll let Trevor go first. Yeah.

Trevor Koot: Yeah, it’s a really interesting question because I think it depends on who we’re talking about. obviously when we talk about the realtors on the ground, think there’s going to, obviously all the things that Jeff just said, the economic, the potential economic downturn that could affect anybody’s opportunity to buy and sell across the country is going to impact realtors. And that is fundamentally going to impact their business. That said, I think there is an upside to all of the disruption, a potential upside as there’s always been, right? any time the introduction of the internet definitely disrupted a lot of businesses, but it created a lot of opportunity for a lot of different groups.

I think AI is going to be the exact same thing. It’s going to disrupt in one way. And if you don’t do anything to adapt, to learn, to be curious, to innovate, even if it’s just in your daily, the way that you do your daily work, the way you run your business as a realtor, it’s going to have a negative impact rather than a positive one. But the positive is an opportunity.

All the things that Jeff talked about are much bigger, obviously. They’re not something that, you know, somebody, an average realtor on the ground can do anything to have a major influence on or a major impact. There has to be adaptation. There has to be an understanding of what those impacts are going to be to business. It is, there is potential a potential environment moving forward, I think, as Jeff pointed out, that is worrisome. I don’t, I love the what keeps you up at night question because I’ve always had really good sleep habits and so nothing really keeps me up. I’m able to get a good night’s rest. But yeah, I think there’s also the potential for things to move reasonably well through all of the potential challenges that are coming. And I say that because I think there’s a resilience in Canada through geography, through the ability to have different economic opportunities in different markets based on whatever the resources are or the major industry is.

but also the ability for people to fairly easily move throughout the country and move into markets that are more affordable to them or give them more opportunity. I think we see certainly some positive moves from a policy perspective to lessen impact to have, to kind of give ourselves a little bit more runway when it comes to impacts from things like immigration and over immigration. We’re starting to see some positive moves there. The question is going to be, and I think this is, we hear it from Brendan, we heard it from Trevor, is going to be the ability for us to continue to produce housing at a scale that needs to be brought into market when we’re starting to see a hesitation from developers based on market demand. And that inequity is really what is going to be the challenge going forward and where there needs to be government intervention. the question is, it be enough soon enough for realtors to not be impacted on a bottom line basis?

Matt Scalena: Just thinking about all this disruption and it’s not, you know, maybe I’ll put it this way. Because we you know, you’re talking about adaption and you know, the role of say AI, for instance, as being potentially a useful tool, potentially something that that leaves some in the dust. You know, I was reading something the other day and they had somebody had that quote, know, it always happens gradually and then suddenly. And, you know, I feel like there’s a lot of things right now that are potentially on that suddenly component.

Like how in your mind does just thinking about how this all plays out like how does the does a typical realtors job I guess change over the next say one three and five years with all these changes and I mean maybe the economic malaise or the you government intervention is not a useful way to kind of think about this, but with all the potential disruption to the industry, like are we still essentially working in a similar way three to five years from now as we are today?

Trevor Koot: No, I’ll go and you can fill in Jeff. I think there’s two things. I think there’s the value proposition that realtors bring, which has evolved over time. I mean, you think about like if you sat down with a realtor and said, and asked them in 1984, 1994, 2004, what is the value you bring to your clients?

That is a very different answer in each of those decades than it is today. The other piece I think is, and you just highlighted this point in the question, Matt, is you said job. Will the job change? And I think there has to be a shift in thinking for realtors to consider themselves business owners. They have to move towards this holistic kind of idea that they’re not just an independent contractor. They’re not just a salesperson. They’re not just going out and doing a service as an individual. They run a business. And I think as a business owner, you move away from what are the individual little impacts that are frustrating to me. And you look at it as if I’m running a business, what are all of the things that I need to understand within an ecosystem and make decisions that benefit my clients and benefit the business as a whole. And you start thinking more innovatively. You start thinking about how do I leverage things around me rather than just blend in, just adapt my job to the current market and the current environment. And so I think from a value proposition, going back to value proposition, think when you think about, let’s use AI as the example.

when you think about the value proposition of a realtor today, it’s going to be different in three to five years. It has to be different in three to five years because the consumer is going to expect a lot of different things. The consumer is going to be exposed to a lot more information more readily. Other companies that are leveraging AI to quote unquote disrupt are going to start to fill in some of the value proposition gaps.

I always, I give a little bit of an analogy and I honestly can’t remember if I did this on the last episode I might’ve, but I’ll do it again just because I think it paints the picture. You have the moving sidewalk as an analogy at the airport and a young buyer, a young couple buying a home. Young couple is buyers, get on the moving sidewalk. Other folks are getting on and off the sidewalk, home inspector, banker, mortgage broker, lawyer, notary, appraiser, all of these different folks are getting on and off. But the only person who started that journey at the start of the moving sidewalk with that couple is a realtor. they’re still, and they’re the only ones that are getting off the end of the moving sidewalk with that couple is a realtor. And I think that that goes to show how embedded the realtor is in the transaction. I’ve said it before, I think there is an environment in the future where maybe we don’t have as many people, human beings involved in the real estate transaction.

But I think there will always be a human intervention. I think there will always be a human being and working with buyers and sellers and kind of managing that process and quote unquote, holding their hand. Our job or what we wanna see happen is that the realtor is that human being. And I think there’s a strong argument for that to be the case down the road. And then from a business perspective, I you know, I kind of already highlighted it, but the analogy that I use there is you have a shopkeeper that’s closing up at the end of a long day. They close their shop and they’re sweeping the floor and nobody, no business owner is sweeping the floor in that environment and going, nobody’s paying me for this. But we hear that a lot from the real estate industry is I do a lot of work that I don’t get paid for.

And I think that mentality has to, there’s an opportunity for that mentality to change for realtors to look at themselves as business owners, to consider that all of these disruptions that are coming are opportunities for me to run my business differently, to rethink my business. And you tie that to value proposition. And I think it changes, it fundamentally changes what realtors are going to be doing in three to five years, but it puts them in the driver’s seat of that change.

Jeff King: I think that’s a great synopsis. And I love the business owners element because I think generally realtors tried to do that, but it’s not uniform. And you’re right, Trevor, I do hear that a lot as well. Like, I’m not paid to do this or why should I bother? Can’t the lawyer do it or whatever? And I think that’s already starting to shift. And to me, a couple of other shifts are, you know what? It’s like It’s like other disruptions guys, you know, it’s around transparency, trust and timeliness. Right? So when music went through its transformation and all the rest of it, I wanted to hear that song now. Now I’d have to go drive to a record store and pay 20 bucks for a CD. I only liked one song and you’re able to do it in a timely way. And it was trustworthy because you could play it and all that type of the real estate is having similar challenges, right? And that’s where the tools like AI and machine learning and things will help.

And so last week I spoke to a group and they were saying, well, I don’t need AI. It’s for the young folks type of thing. I said, okay, what happens when you lose seven listings in a row because someone else can get a CMA, can get a comparable analysis done in a matter of minutes and not take three days to go look at everything that’s been sold over the last six months. And I didn’t realize it, but one of the other speakers later was going to basically do exactly that. Do on the fly, live give me an address and I’m comparables in 30 seconds. The brokerages and the real estate boards have to offer these types of services because we’re going to be competing with people that have that type of horsepower available to them. And I think that type of those types of elements, there will be people involved. I’m convinced of it. No matter how good AI gets. I think we’ve all seen the AI agents in Portugal. They’re doing some interesting things around how to ask questions and probe about different elements.

They can’t tell you what it smells like. They can’t tell you if there’s a hog rendering plant down the road, all that stuff. But a big part of Trevor’s job and my job is making sure realtors are in the middle of that whole, that moving sidewalk, going along with it. That it’s not necessarily the barristers or it’s not somebody else who steps in to fill that role. Like in the UK, it’s largely driven by the lawyers, right? And the estate agents, they get paid, but it’s almost like for showing them around and there’s some rudimentary stuff. I don’t mean to undersell it for them, but it’s far different than North American model. but I think the, because of how well organized it is and how resilient the industry has proven to be in North America, we will adapt and we’ll, we’ll look at it. I think there will be fewer people. I think it’ll be leaner. think the role of managing broker is going to be different. I think the role of the regulator is going to be different and the real estate boards and the provincial associations.

We all have to be thinking that how can we do this differently if we’re going to reinvent it now? How would we do it? How would we disrupt ourselves? If the gang, if someone came to us and said, all right, you four folks here redo this, you have till 2030 and each get a billion dollars. We’d find some pretty creative ways to try to turn this thing upside down. And believe me, there’s people within driving distance of where we are right now doing exactly that.

And, you know, I’ve said this a lot, but, there’s three main ways to make money off real estate. You know, the value of the property itself over the long haul going up, the mortgages, they’re not sexy, but there’s trillions of dollars there, you know, making money off of it. And then the commissions and the ancillary work around it. You can make money being a real estate lawyer or home appraiser for sure. And it’s great work and it’s important part of the machine, but you’re not buying an NFL team. Yeah. You know, it’s not, we’re not talking hundreds of billions.

But those big three things and people are zooming in on that. And I think it’s important for us to adapt and sort of, you know, paraphrase Darwin a bit. Darwin never said the biggest survive. He said the ones that adapt survive. And I think we have to be able to adapt. think we’re starting to see it even organized real estate. We’re starting to see some, adaptation start to happen, you know, closer working relationships, new ways of looking at things. And you got your laggards and your early adopters and all the rest of it, but

Those things are going to just keep picking up. The pace of change is incredibly fast. And then we throw in other dynamics, just like we just talked about, like the economic malaise and the new trading partners and all the rest of it. It’s an exciting time, but it’s a nerve wracking time. But it’s like the old adage says, if you’re trying to sail across an ocean and a storm comes up, you don’t yell at the ocean. You adjust the sails and you figure out how you’re to get through it.

And I think that’s kind of what the industry, this is what we have to do. And this is what people like the four of us have to do is to help people feel comfortable and help lead the way through this. The thought leadership and creative ways of looking at things, that’s an important tenet in how we’re going to be able to achieve what this will look like in 2035 or whatever.

Trevor Koot: I think such an important part to, and I’ll just make this really quick because I feel like our answers are going on and on, but I think a really important part of what Jeff was saying was like when you look at the CMA as an example, the market analysis tools that a third party can bring in and the boards look at it and say, okay, we need to provide a value proposition, a tool for realtors.

Sometimes the question is, we, right? What are the things that we can start to let go of? Like the boards operate very differently than they did 30 years ago when they were printing catalogs and distributing them to the, like that value proposition for the boards also evolved as it did for the realtors. And I think there’s opportunity for us to innovate, to think very differently, to be our own disruptors, but it doesn’t mean to do all of the things that we’re doing today differently.

It means letting go of some things and maybe venturing into new territory and breaking new ground. And I think that’s the exciting.

Adam Scalena: Do you see this as like certain new companies targeting like parts of the industry or is there a threat of like just a complete overhaul? Like, you know, I think even last time we spoke, we talked about the potential of like the Amazons of the world coming into real estate as one example. Like, do you see this as, I mean, for example, I mean, there’s been a lot of things over all of our careers that we’ve watched come in like DocuSign, for example, that’s taken a real big pain point out of the industry. Like, do you see it more of that at the part or do you see it a holistic change?

Jeff King: I think there’s, I think there’s kind of everything all at once is a possibility, Adam. You know, so as a sidebar, and this is not a plug, but when I’m ready, I’ll come back to plug it, but I’m writing a book and part of it’s woven around a quantum mechanics is like how particles move and, you know, and particles can be one place, move to another, and no one’s really sure how they get there. And that got me thinking about how companies innovate.

And the history is littered with companies that have innovated and then just stopped for whatever reason. And industries, just all of a sudden just sort of grinds to a halt. So I think it’s going to be some granular type stuff, know, ways to help the… I’m still kind of shocked how paper, like I know it’s digital paper, but paper-based the contract process is for real estate. It’s emailing things and to attachments to each other. DocuSign was viewed as a great leap forward, even though those types of tools been around for 30 years. I can see that type of thing with like, you know, essentially, you know, Trevor calls like a translation tool to help create a digital deal room to have more transparency, more timeliness, more trust. That’s going to be transformative. That’s going to be a game changer. But there is a macro thing as well. You know, we know we, you know, there are large players.

Looking to move in this space Amazon’s one of them that looking to move in this space and see how they can disrupt it They’ve got think tanks and and skunk works for lack of a better word looking to disrupt the various industries They’ve stepped into pharmaceuticals. They were stepping in the automotive They’re turning things upside down where they go into It’s a rabbit hole But if you ever want to see the downside of these things listen to the earnings call for see for Walgreens and CVS

for the end of year from 2024. And they talked about formidable new online competitors who were basically offering drugs at slightly over cost. And it was devastating to the Duane Reeds and the Walgreens stores all over the United States. for the first time ever, they’re contracting. And it’s the Amazon effect, just like how Walmart blew out mom and pop little stores and now these other big players. So those things are happening too, but I think there’s They’re macro, but I think there’s also a micro thing that’s starting to happen. And those things look at, you know, there is a lot of frictional costs, a lot of stickiness within the system. I think that can be dramatically improved. You you look at other investment vehicles, how you can move things around like personal investments or institutional investments. A lot of those are done on apps on phones now. That would have been unheard of. You know, no, I want to see the guy. I want him to take me to lunch or I want the lady to explain it to me exactly what I’m buying.

Now it’s like, here’s the pension fund. Have fun, right? It’s just totally things have shifted dramatically. So I think there’s a macro and micro thing happening, but I think there’s some things we’re going to have to let go. And some things we have to get much smarter about how we do it. And everyone trying to be all things, all people is probably a recipe for disaster. And so that’s why it’s important for BCRA and GVR to work together. Let’s divide up the work. Let’s get smarter about, let’s be more coordinated and different things like that.

Matt Scalena: Would you, you know, and I’ll leave this to either of you. if you were not a young realtor, but somebody who is just getting into the business or thinking about getting into the business right now, is today an opportunity or is it, you know, I know one, I am not sure exactly if it was Trevor or Jeff, but one of you said, there will be fewer of us moving forward. Like, is this a moment where you’d say, you know what, better think about plumbing instead? is it still an exciting moment for real estate?

Trevor Koot: I think, you know, I have to say it, business is really hard, right? it, okay, I will say it, business is fucking hard. And I think anybody, again, it comes back to, you know, you can’t make a decision like this based on watching Selling Sunset and watching Instagram feeds of other realtors in your area and looking at the cars they’re driving. You have to look at it as I am starting a business and starting a business is a leap of faith. It’s a giant risk and a huge investment both financially and emotionally. And I don’t know that there’s ever bad time to start a business because people make businesses work all the time. There’s currently business and people starting businesses today that are going to be successful. And there’s currently people starting businesses that aren’t. it’s not a matter of a good time to come in or not. It’s appreciating that you’re starting a business and you need to consider the entirety of the ecosystem and what you’re bringing to the table. I think

that there’s a tremendous opportunity with all of the things that are happening in the ecosystem around us. I think even the challenges with the broader macro economic environment, if somebody truly understood all of that and was able to be a true expert in that area and provide a service to developers and government and us and buyers and sellers really understanding all of those impacts, there’s a model there. And I think anybody coming in, if they want to be a salesperson and are just competing on the value proposition of being a salesperson, it’s going to be tough. I don’t care what market you’re coming in at.

Jeff King: I agree wholeheartedly. I think there’s incredible opportunity in real estate and in other industries, but we’re talking about real estate here. I think there’s incredible opportunity, but it’s not for everyone. But if you’re up for it or if you’re interested in it, there’s a chance to build something spectacular and to be a tremendous contributor, not just for your own life and the people you love, but also for the community and your clients, all those types of things. It’s just like law or medicine and all the rest of it.

The medical field has lots of challenges, but people are still drawn to it for different reasons and all that type of stuff. there is this transformation will generate other opportunities that we don’t see right now already. There’ll be aggregators, there’ll be different things like that.

Trevor Koot: And I think it goes back a little bit to what Jeff was saying earlier about kind of the larger disruption that could happen. And Adam’s question around, it have to be an Amazon? Will it be an all or nothing? And I mean, if you look at the scalability of selling a DocuSign type of solution to realtors, you’ve got a minimal market, right? Like DocuSign is obviously used in many different industries. There’s a broader use case for it. But if you’re talking about, let’s go back to the market analysis platform. You wanna sell a really cool widget and all it is is a different interface maybe to produce the same market analysis that a desktop version is currently doing or whatever. This creates just a different user interface for the client, whatever it might be.

you’ve got in Canada a max uptake of 170,000, 160,000 realtors, 1.5 million in the US. So you’re pushing just over one and a half million kind of potential clients. It’s gonna take three months for a competitor to come out with a solution that’s just a little bit shinier than yours. you’re only gonna get a small percentage uptake from that kind of full scalability of 100 % uptake.

Those individual solutions are really hard to get market impact and to actually make into a business. And you can ask any tech startup in the prop tech industry how hard it is to get your foot in the door and then actually get scale. And I think to Jeff’s point, there’s a lot of stickiness. There’s a lot of kind of predisposed, pre-established legacy environments around the MLS data around the different aspects that really allow for an Amazon to come in and just do a sweeping kind of change. So all of that to say that that stickiness, but also the opportunity to be innovative on a more of a local small scale level is what realtors can really bring in. If you can come in and start thinking very innovatively, you can start to look at things from a technology, leveraging technology perspective, and you don’t need to build a billion dollar company, then you can build a really cool business based on this, kind of that broader ecosystem and that legacy that will kind of benefit you.

Adam Scalena: And is that like, so just thinking about, you know, we have a lot of agents that listen to this program. What’s something that you would suggest to agents that they can do to ensure that they’re relevant and successful over the next five to 10 years?

Jeff King: know your market inside out, know your value proposition inside out. some are unbelievably good at explaining their value prop. Others, struggle with it. I think being able to explain that, especially as we move into a buyer’s, agreement era, that’s going to, that’s I think inevitable to emerge. That’s going to be important. Be familiar, on the macro sense around these various tools. And, because you will be competing with people who are very good with them.

And we’ll be able to turn like the CMA thing around and stuff like that very quickly. Those, you know, I coach and mentor a lot of folks in a bunch of different industries and that use the general messages, you know, lean in and don’t be afraid of the work. but have an open mind and, and, and really in very set growth mindset, you know, there there’s a tremendous amount of gatekeeping in real estate for a variety of reasons. And that came about probably for the right reasons.

I’m seeing that beginning to dissipate a bit, largely out of necessity. So build, I would recommend build relationships and build bridges with people, including people that you wouldn’t traditionally think could be strong allies. Because the world will look different. Like the role of the mortgage broker is going to change, I think. You know, all those things.

Trevor Koot: Yeah, and my response is very similar, Adam. I think be able to look at, have a perspective of the macro environment. Don’t just be so isolated to the MLS system and know the information in the MLS system or about a property specifically, but really have a good sense of the macro environment. And there’s all kinds of resources out there that people can continuously kind of learn and evolve and broaden their skill set. And then the other piece is going back to what I said earlier about kind of, and Jeff hit on it too, is that curiosity piece. Like don’t be scared of the new environment that’s coming with AI and technology and even the economic environment and don’t be fearful of it.

go out and embrace it. And I think if folks can take, so many good businesses and solutions have been created out of somebody thinking to themselves, somebody should, right? And then fill in the blank, like build a solution for this or change how this works or fix this problem or whatever it is, that someone could be you.

And if you’re well immersed in the environment and you’re not just looking at yourself as a salesperson, then that broadens that opportunity for you to really embrace the technology. It’s here. It’s fundamentally changing how clients are interacting with their agent, but it’s also fundamentally changing how clients are interacting with the data with the information that’s out there, with the internet, with the home itself and the expectations around the property. All of it is going to continue to evolve and folks, there’s huge opportunity of folks just look for it.

Matt Scalena: Trevor, since you were on the show, you started a podcast that you referenced without naming it as a podcast, but it is a podcast and it’s a good one. It’s called Business is Fucking Hard. And but it’s with a star. Yeah, I know. I don’t swear usually on the show. I’m I’m very, very nervous about swearing on the show. But what I had a question for you is you’ve had on a bunch of great guests.

And I think I missed when Jeff was the host.

Jeff King: That was a great episode too. You got to hunt it down. Yeah.

Trevor Koot: Guest hosted and I was the guest.

Matt Scalena: Right. Okay. Well, this is so the question I have is kind of in this line, like the one thing that I’m hearing is to really think about if you’re in real estate or realtor to really be thinking about your career or your your be thinking as a business, right? You’ve talked to people in various different industries. Is there a through line from your podcast that has emerged that you could share with our listeners? Is there one or two takeaways that you’re like, this is gold and it comes up often on the show?

Trevor Koot: Yeah, there’s a few and actually I’m just kind of working towards, I’ve actually put them on the website. So the website is businessesfuckinghard.com without a U in the fucking not the business. And yeah, that line kills every time. So the…

Yeah, there are themes on the website and certainly there’s, know, it’s a really fun exercise to walk through the story, the journey of a business owner from kind of where they started. The first question I always ask is what got you started in business or what was your introduction to business and entrepreneurship? And then just walking through the story and out of that come lessons and tips and lots of, you know, really impactful kind of things for current or aspiring business owners to take away. And to your question, a couple of them are, one of the big ones is so obvious, it’s not, is that there’s really no way to learn about running a business until you run a business. You can go to school, you can take all the classes, you can get a commerce degree, you can do all that stuff.

but so many lessons are learned in actually doing business. And I think there has to be a vulnerability for people to say, I’m okay with this costing me money and me making mistakes because that’s a part of me understanding how business will work and then I’ll do it better in the future. One guest even said he and his business partner for a long time put on their financials when they made a drastic mistake and it obviously cost them money, they actually put it on their financials as tuition.

because they wanted to highlight it for themselves that this was not an error, it was a learning and we’re taking it away as such. I would suggest to everybody out there, if they’re going to do that, talk to your accountant first and make sure everything’s above board. Yeah, yeah, exactly. But the other one, Matt, and I really appreciate the question because the other one I think is really important to what we’re talking about here. And that is, there’s still laughter.

The other one is, and it’s a hard one to get across, but it’s purpose before profit. that is, everybody that I talk to, obviously there has to be a profit element to business. There has to be an element of making money and being able to reinvest back in your business and grow the business. That’s obviously a fundamental aspect of business. But so many guests come back to, I do it for a purpose before I do it for the profit. And I think a lot of realtors, so many realtors out there are like that. They think about not just the purpose that they’re providing for their clients, the safety net, the information, the trust that can be created, the confidence that can be created for somebody buying the biggest single purchase in their lifetime.

but also the purpose that they’re offering to their community and to building a nice, a better community and contributing back to that community and creating that neighborly, that community feel and neighborly feel. so that is not a through line that I was expecting that so many business owners find motivation before money in the purpose as to why they got into the business and why they continue to be in the business. But it’s certainly a really strong outcome from the podcast.

Jeff King: I think know your why is exactly it for anybody, right? Know your why, play to your strengths. I’ve met thousands of realtors in the few years I’ve done this job. There’s a couple exceptions, but generally exceptionally high EQ. Very good at reading people, generally self-aware of what they’re good at and what they’re not good at. Not always so strong on financial planning, not always so strong on using administrative help to help them with different things,

Played your strengths and if you’re not good at something, have someone who is good at it help you with those elements. And growth mindset and drive are like the last two ones. I’ve never met a successful business person that did not have a growth mindset and did not have a lot of including the three of you. Like it takes a lot of drive to make this happen. If you just sit there and wait for something magic to come over the cubicle wall, it ain’t happening. And the road is littered with people who just said,

could have been a great hero, but it didn’t happen. no, wait a minute. And, realtors largely are self starters and are highly motivated that way. They don’t like having bosses. They like, don’t like playing by rules, like to do things. So they’re well built for that type of success. So I’m I’m quite encouraged about it. And I think that is a good opportunity and good time. I think podcasts, you know, shameless plug, but the podcast like this one and, and Trevor’s

gives you a good insight that, you’re not alone in this. It may feel lonely, but you’re not alone. There’s other people that they’re desalinating water in Abu Dhabi. They’re trying to reform how real estate operates. They’re trying to build the lead pipeline, whatever it is. You start realizing, okay, I’m not alone on this. I have to persevere and sort of power their way through it. I think the advice that Trevor gave is spot on.

Adam Scalena: but we all knew Matt wasn’t a good financial planner when he pulled up in the G wagon today. that’s, that’s me.

Matt Scalena: It’s a high on day.

Adam Scalena: Just kidding, Matt. It’s a hot dog. But anyways, let’s talk about Napster because I think that was one thing, Matt, that you had brought up earlier is that we’ve both kind of talked about Jeff’s comments on the last episode when he referenced Napster and real estate. And that was obviously in 2023. But now you’ve been in the position for two times as long basically.

Do you still see more or less parallels between the real estate industry and the music industry now that you spent some more time in the real estate industry?

Jeff King: Yes, yeah, even more so. It’s probably about a generation behind, but it’s very much akin to what music and entertainment went to in early 2000s. Things were becoming digitized, consumers are finding access to things. In our industry and real estate, it’s data and elements around transactions. Back then, it was just consuming music or TV shows or BitTorrent and all that type of stuff. But intellectual property and real property have owners.

They have people who have vested interests in it and they have people who want to be successful and they want to protect that. people investing significant dollars into the growth and development of those. Doesn’t matter if it’s a cute house that you want to go and you’re thinking you want to do it or if you’re trying to develop the career for Drake or whatever it is. And I see tremendous parallels. And interestingly enough, think banks, Canadian banking industries, they’re a couple of years behind what

real states is, but they’re going through their own disruption. Neo banking and open banking are starting to blow the doors off of that industry. And I, so I’m as convinced as ever, my, my early thoughts, both what was good and what was, needed improvement for real estate have been, solidified, you know, there’s some things I underestimated, that, I know the, the stickiness of some of the old bygone areas, ways.

are tough to move. Some people are very resistant to change. But the reality is that these are two industries that have a lot of parallels. I’m thrilled I’m in this role. And I give huge kudos to the GVR board for thinking outside the box to bring an outsider in, because most of the CEOs of the real estate boards are inside baseball types. They’ve either been realtors or they grew up in the association world and they went outside. If it wasn’t me, I’d

pretty convincing with another outsider, which I think was a smart move. But there’s a learning curve that comes with that. And you have to learn about the industry and the different nuances to it. But, you know, three and a half years in, this is industry is being disrupted. And we’re not that different than other ones who have done it. It doesn’t matter if it’s the horse, horse and carriage industry, they were disrupted. And guess what happened? You know, they had the exact same path if you look at historically.

You know, they tried to resist it. said cars are dangerous. would, the electricity would give you, make you sick, all those types of things. And eventually lost. It doesn’t mean they’re gone. People still do ride horses and all that type of stuff. It’s not like it used to be. And, other, you know, the, idea that real estate’s unique and we’ve never been disrupted in the past hundred years, it’ll never happen to us to me feels extremely naive. And, and I think something that I, I really focused on trying to change that narrative.

I want us to come out of this stronger and more resilient and more transparent than ever and a strong contributor towards the ecosystem, both real estate and the economy overall. Music went through it too. music, you know, a lot of companies collapsed, right? You know, 9,000 publishers in 1999. It was down to about 4,000 by 2022 or sorry, by 2002. Then it started to re started to evolve and they started figuring it out. Columbia House, all these guys disappeared because they thought we’re going to sue grandma in Minnesota. That’s our property. You can’t have it. Others, like where I used to work, tried to build bridges. Let’s license this. Let’s change the model. Let’s have this looked at differently. And some of them really thrived and did quite well. Now the music industry is bigger than the movie industry. 2024 is the first time the revenue for the entire music industry was bigger than for movies.

and movies are doing their own transformation. So I see a lot of parallels. They’re not identical. The sheer volume of transactions is like eye popping in entertainment compared to ours. But the dollar values for ours are eye popping. The average house, a million, two, whatever it is, the average transaction in music is fractions of a penny, but there’s billions of them every day. It’s the catalogs that move for hundreds of millions.

but not the individual transactions. But the general thing, the Napster model, Napster was a technology that came in and disrupted something that had been stagnant for ages and was making money off of like, we sold vinyl, then we sold cassettes, and now we’re selling CDs, nothing could touch us.

And then everything then it all changed just like the mats very opening point feels like nothing’s happening. And all of a it all happens all at once. I remember my first board meeting at Socan where I worked and I’d been there like three months and I was saying, what are we doing with all these digital channels that are coming? And there was 210 digital channels launching in Canada at the time. And I think it was the first time they heard it and, and they ended up getting licensed and ended up being a very

profitable source of activity for the Socan members. But it was an eye opener for me that these are senior people who knew a lot and were well plugged in. And they’re like, what are you talking about? It’s very bizarre.

Adam Scalena: Does it? And I mean, that’s that’s incredible. But I also feel like the average agent right now doesn’t see the disruption around them necessarily. Is that does that resonate with you?

Jeff King: I think that’s true. I think that’s true. And like most, we have 15,000 members. We brought out AI to help identify in pictures. We’re building out a database so that people will want, if you want to see kitchens with wooden islands facing to the south and these postal codes, we can pull it up. And we’re using AI tools to do those types of things. But the initial reaction generally was, okay, whatever, shoulder shrug.

And a few people just didn’t like the change because like one button moved from here to there. And so it’s it’s micro versus macro. yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s yeah. Well, there’s the other one I’m not allowed in on, but on the the the GVR members Facebook group, people go on there instantly and and let their opinions be known. And often there’s good thoughts and good observations. Other times it’s just like it’s almost like who moved my cheese and just like terror over over the evolution. so I think we as an industry, have to get better at the growth mindset.

Trevor Koot: Good 1990s leadership book reference, moving to, yeah, it three decades. I think the reality with technology though is that it’s always going to be moving faster. It’s always well in front of what adoption is, right? Because the biggest limitation to technology disruption is people, is the human element the resistance to having a button move on the home screen. so it kind of all ties back to what we were talking about before is this stuff is happening. It’s ultimately up to the realtors to decide if they’re going to be aware of it, be curious about it, kind of adapt to it early, adopt it early, innovate around it. The other piece is what happens

technology moves faster than an industry wants to keep up because of the human element. But the group that does make it all of a sudden happen overnight is the consumer. All of a sudden the consumer sees the accessibility to something or I mean, obviously in the music case, Napster was the tease to say to the consumer, you don’t have to buy a CD. Maybe this isn’t all legit, but this is a possibility.

And then the consumer said, well, if that’s a possibility, that’s how I want my music. And then the industry had to adapt, right? And it goes back to Jeff and I, he’s mentioned it once in this podcast. As I said, we’ve kind of moved into a road show environment. We have all the greatest hits. And one of them is the consumer is undefeated. We co-wrote an article in REM Magazine a couple of years ago. I can’t remember if it was before after we were on your podcast, but.

Jeff King: was around that time, it was around that time, yeah.

Trevor Koot: Yeah, it was right around that time, but it’s called the consumer is undefeated and that’s exactly what happens is we as an industry resist the consumer gets teased with something that is out there and then they want it and then all of a sudden we have to adapt and those realtors that are understanding what the impact of that Adaptation is going to be to their business are going to be the ones that win the day

Matt Scalena: You know, maybe as a final question, and usually we end with a headline for the headline for 2025. But maybe we’ll put it as the headline for 2025, what the real estate industry edition. What do you think the looking back on this year at the end, from your guys perspectives, what do think the headline will be?

Trevor Koot: I think it has to be around kind of that macro environment, around the switch from kind of an expected hot market coming out of 2024. was going to be, like everybody was expecting that it was, and it was going to be a really good spring and lead into kind of a turnaround year for real estate. That has forced consumers to look at things differently. There’s a lot of hesitation obviously from the geopolitical environment and what we’re seeing kind of cross border. Interest rates, I chatted with Brendan again this morning about the inflation announcement and what the Bank of Canada is going to do next week. And all of a sudden it creates a tremendous amount of uncertainty. Whereas before it was like everybody was pitted in, there’s going to be at least two drops, maybe three.

Now everybody’s, it just creates a tremendous amount of uncertainty. And I think the end of the year, we’re going to obviously, we’re going to have a much clearer picture of what 2025 looked like rather than what it’s going to look like. And that is going to be the biggest narrative is the impact of that uncertainty on everybody. It’s harder for people in with uncertainty, go back to the realtor and adapting to change and being innovative. It’s harder to do that when you don’t know where your next paycheck is coming from, when you don’t have the certainty of a market that can support you in a business. So there’s definitely that trickle down effect. And I think that’s going to be the leading story. then ultimately the impact of if we don’t have buyers creating demand, then developers aren’t going to build and that’s going to have an impact on all of Canada in 2027, 2028, 2029 and beyond.

Jeff King: I think that’s a good summary. It depends on when we’re reflecting on the headline, Matt. Like, is it like at the end of 2025, what’s the headline going to say? My guess will be real estate weathered the storm. But if we’re looking at it in the year 2035, what did 2025, what was the headline from that year? It’d probably be like, despite economic uncertainty, new trends started to emerge. You know, I think we’re going to see increased consolidation. I think we’re going to see

A political environment that continues to evolve. We’re to see free trade within Canada. We’re going to see some price adjustments. know, the GVR has got the highest number of listings in a decade, but a trickle for sales. There’s so much economic uncertainty, just stick to Trev’s point about the macro sense. Looming trade war. Canada’s bordering on a recession. The US is flirting with one. The news this morning sounds like they’re going to try to avoid it by making deals.

which basically means go back to the old way with all the large US trading partners. And then maybe they will skirt that issue. But my guess is that we’re going to be stumbling into a recession and then all these listings and people who are underwater and some of those things will start to shake out, including developers and stuff like that.

Matt Scalena: Group off the bandaid.

Jeff King: Yeah.

Jeff King: I think Canada, having said that, think the economic model for Canada is robust. I think we’ll survive. I think we will build new bridges with others, including Europe and Asia. We’ll have a heavy reliance on the US, but I think there’s a Band-Aid element.

Trevor Koot: Yeah, I mean, one aspect from an economic perspective of, you know, like, it depends on which side of the political aisle you sit on. There’s a lot of people that, you know, see the last decade as being a lost decade in Canada. And Jeff kind of spoke to that a little bit. I think, you know, again, if you look at it from a business perspective and look at Canada as a business, That creates a lot of opportunity. We have a lot of unlocked potential that as a result of being stagnant for a decade gives us so much opportunity to leverage, whether it’s natural resources or business models changing kind of the direction we go from leveraging the resources and refining them and creating output as a country.

it’s incumbent on people to make the decisions to leverage it, but that untapped opportunity is there, I would say.

Jeff King: Well, for sure. And just for the point of clarity, I don’t think the last decade’s been a lost decade. think I was talking about prospectively. think retrospectively there’s been some things, but there’s a pandemic. There’s a whole bunch of other stuff. I agreed about 2025 to 2035, just being flat and nothing happens. But I think there’s enough forces at play to try to avoid that. I think there’s going be new approaches around housing attainability. I would love to see housing as a human right become a thing in the Canadian constitution.

I think it’s kind of embarrassing it’s not. I think some of those things will help change some of the narrative. As we go along, we clearly have a somewhat economically minded and activist based federal government and they control the economic first strings for most levels of government.

Matt Scalena: Well, maybe we’ll leave it there, but we do have this section called the five or five lighthearted questions to end the show. Do you guys both have have time to stick around for that?

Jeff King: Sure thing, yep.

Trevor Koot: You bet.

Adam Scalena: Okay. question number one, a book that you’ve read recently that you would recommend.

Jeff King: A leader eats last. Simon Sinek.

Trevor Koot: The hard thing about hard things. Ben, last name is eluding me. Also as a podcast, I… Help me out, Jeff. Acquired.

Jeff King: I love acquired. Yeah. Yeah, those guys are great. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Matt Scalena: right, yeah yeah yeah, Acquired is phenomenal. Yeah, that is a great podcast. Number two, maybe we’ll start with Trevor in the last few years, what new belief behavior or habits most improved your life? I think we asked you this last time. So maybe we’ll say not last few years, but last 18 months.

Trevor Koot: I, so for me, I committing to a few more things for myself personally, and not, not being completely dedicated to, work 24 hours a day. so one, one thing is reading more. I had a hard time choosing which book I would say that was just the most recent one. I’ve been doing a lot more reading. but also I’m trying to relearn piano.

And it kind of puts me into a different state of thinking and a different creative mindset. And I, and I’m, I’m enjoying just, kind of letting my mind turn off for a few minutes every once in a while.

Adam Scalena: hobby without a screen is a nice thing.

Trevor Koot: Yeah, there’s that element too.

Jeff King: Hmm. That’s good. Um, the same question to me. Is that what I’m, uh, okay. The, um, uh, I’m trying to think. I was definitely on my sort of Peloton daily workout journey. When I saw you guys last, I’ve continued that I get 1020 consecutive days this morning. Um, and I, I want to continue to keep doing that. And I’m kind of motivated by that. I am trying to get better at saying no.

And, and, uh, uh, cause I will work the 24 seven thing. I don’t want to sound like a martyr. know it’s not smart. Um, uh, but I, uh, I’m just, really lean in and it’s a, it’s a weakness and a strength, guess, but I really lean in and I’m very cognizant of it. So I flew back from Toronto last night and, uh, uh, got, uh, got home here in Vancouver, uh, worked out for an hour and a bit. then did emails for an hour. And then when I went to bed, what am I doing? What’s good?

These are not that urgent. It’s Monday and a long weekend and I’m plowing out. this sounds great or whatever. And so it’s a lesson. You know, I’m trying to hold myself accountable by saying it publicly. I’m empowering you guys to help hold me accountable.

Adam Scalena: Over a thousand consecutive days, that’s like, you must be getting shout outs on the, if you do them live.

Jeff King: It is kind of exciting. I’m just, I’m a hard one to break.

Matt Scalena: For listeners at home, Jeff is showing us his streak. It is actually there.

Trevor Koot: That was in 1,021 days. That looked Photoshopped to me, but whatever.

Jeff King: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The, get a lot of shutouts. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. I didn’t show the bottom part of the bomb says, we can’t do anything about your mental health there. Sorry. You’re on your own on that one, buddy. But, uh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. But, uh, I do get a lot of shutouts and, uh, coincidentally, Pelton’s actually been pretty good. They’ll send you a little things for hitting key milestones and stuff. Like baseball hats and stuff. Like they’re not sending G wagons. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Adam Scalena: That’s how Matt got his.

Trevor Koot: It’s not like the swag that we’re gonna get as a result of being guests on this podcast. The gift basket last night was really appreciated.

Jeff King: my god, I can hardly wait. I sold the Rolex

Adam Scalena: Question number three. I will start with start with you Jeff. What have you been binge watching lately or a movie recommendation?

Jeff King: Okay, so I’ve been binge watching Brian Cox lectures. Brian Cox is a English astrophysicist. He’s got a YouTube show, but he’s hitting all the podcasts. And I’ve been going down this rabbit hole for weeks now with others, but mostly him. And I find it fascinating on that part. And then coincidentally on the flight back out, maybe it’s my mindset, but I ended up watching some of the classic business movies around the 2008.

collapse. So the big short margin call too big to fail that type of thing. they still stand up, you know, and it’s like, it’s interesting, right? Because they’re written not of the moment, but shortly thereafter. I was struck by the, the, and the big short when he went down to Florida to see what it was really like. And then the, realtor was driving around and it’s just a blip. Don’t worry. You should buy and stuff. And people, rising unemployment, people were freaking out. I thought, huh.

And that, cause you know, I’m sure we all subscribe to the same things. We see the same enthusiastic type stuff from some people and some doomsayer stuff from others. But for me it was a good way to sort of replug into the industry. But anyways, I’m doing that. don’t watch a lot of regular TV per se, to be honest. So, but I do a lot of documentaries and a lot of like I said, the sprying Cox COX he’s amazing.

Matt Scalena: Just as an aside, Blackberry movie that came out not long ago, I guess you were kind of in while you were in Ontario at the very least at that time, does that does that have a bigger impact? Have you seen it? First of all, I feel like that was an amazing movie. But did you watch it and kind of recognize the environment?

Jeff King: I’ve not seen it, but it was a huge deal and and blackberry is a good example You know, I’m not giving away too much but there may well be a chapter about how company in a book that I’m working on that Companies that innovate like they invented the smartphone You know Canada taught the world how to type with their thumbs and then all of sudden it was over because they just got too comfortable or didn’t or you know

There’s famous emails and stuff about how they made fun of Apple and all the rest of it. I was just reading this morning about Nokia and how they did the same thing. And I thought, who’s going to spend 800 bucks on a phone? This is ridiculous. So yeah, it’s on my list to see. I haven’t not seen it, but it was a big deal. But having said that, BlackBerry, the tech hub, including AI for Canada, and the second or third biggest, depends how you measure it, in North America, is in Southern Ontario, University of Waterloo and Toronto. And that comes out of the ashes of Balsillie and Zaretis, wherever his name was. And so they had the lasting imprint, but they lost the plot.

Trevor Koot: You have to watch that movie. You’d really enjoy it. And I think, you know, another great book that I read recently is called Billion Dollar Lessons. It was published right around the recession 2008 and talked about, you know, like it’s easy to look at good business decisions compared to bad business decisions a decade or two after the fact, right? But it could have easily been that BlackBerry pitting in, I mean, the whole buying the Toronto Maple Leafs thing probably didn’t help, but pitting into the keyboard, the push button keyboard versus the touchscreen.

Like maybe that was going to be the thing that the consumer gravitated towards and they didn’t like the touch screen and that would have saved Blackberry. Like that would have ultimately given them the market that they needed, right? And there’s, mean, the acquired podcast does the same thing. Like a super deep dive, you can see all of the things that just happened to be the right decision. It’s as much luck. Like it really is like a successful business. There’s an element of luck, right?

For me, think I said, I’m kind of like Jeff, I don’t binge watch, I don’t do that. I really like kind of business oriented movies, whether they’re documentaries or docu-movies, whatever that word is. And I think I might have said Tetris last time, the Tetris movie, which I really, really enjoyed. But I rewatched recently with my wife Jill, Air.

So kind of the Nike story around Michael Jordan and the signing of Michael Jordan. And I really enjoyed that. And then it ties back to the book, Shoe Dog by Phil Knight. And that’s a great read. Again, a guy fighting for a business that he really believed in and by all accounts, Nike should not exist today. Like they just happen to have the right financing at a couple of the right moments through the 70s and 80s and then went public and like by all accounts, Nike shouldn’t exist and it’s, know, obviously a multi a hundred billion dollar company now. So yeah.

Jeff King: It’s me I love I will hunt those down and the I love stories like that and it reminds me like the famous FedEx one where they couldn’t meet payroll so the CEO and the CFO went to Vegas and Gambled played 21 till they could get up to a hundred and twenty seven thousand dollars reverse so they can make payroll and Then and then up becoming just monsters conglomerate that you know that takes some stones to do that stuff

Trevor Koot: I don’t know if you guys have heard this, it’s Business, mean, no, it’s hard. Yeah. I don’t want to give these guys too many beeps. I don’t want them to have to go through the whole episode and beep all the time.

Jeff King: How hard is it? Really hard! We don’t want them to be listed as adult on the Apple podcast. So yeah.

Matt Scalena: It’s a family show, yeah. Favorite band or music we asked you this last time. So maybe recently, what are you listening to? I guess we’ll start with Jeff.

Jeff King: I’m doing a lot of remix stuff now. so a fair bit of like EDM and people who have been remixing modern or even classic rock, but they’re remixing stuff into it. And I find that I’m loving that. the some of it’s a little dated, but that’s kind of the stuff I’m drawn into. Just the other day, I was looking at the top five songs on Billboard.

Um, there’s a, a, a podcaster in Vancouver, um, JJ McCullough, and he does like cultural reference type stuff. And, uh, he’s quite good. I’ve met him a couple of times. Um, uh, he did a thing on the, the, uh, the period when there was no Pope, like the 14 days and what was going on. He talks about the, the leaves and all that type stuff. And, uh, and then he listed off the top songs on the billboard ones. I, uh, I had not heard of any of the songs.

and only recognize the names of one of the performers. my God, I’ve turned into my father. Like how did this happen, right? And so that got me motivated to start. And of course, once I started looking, I found a bunch of stuff and then they said, here’s Snoop Dogg remixed with EDM and Led Zeppelin. okay, I’ll check that out. And then you’re in a rabbit hole. So I’m doing a lot of that stuff though. And a lot of it’s edgier than a lot of your audience would probably be into. No swearing, but there’s some metal, there’s one, I can’t remember the name of the band, but there’s one where the lead singer is a German Shepherd and he barks and growls and stuff like that. It’s like, it’ll get you fired up.

Trevor Koot: Yeah, I don’t know how to follow that. I think last time I said, last time I think I said like classic raw, like, that’s still my go-to. I’m a creature of habit. Like I create a playlist and that’s just my go-to. I go back to it all the time. But in order to be different or change it up, I did a bunch of years of completing a couple of degrees. And during all of the times that I had to do assignments or write, I always plugged into the London Symphony Orchestra, kind of what Jeff was saying around kind of the remix, but it’s orchestral remixes of classic songs. So I’m not getting caught up on the words while I’m trying to write or, and I still do, I still do a ton of writing. I sit down every once in a while and write for a couple hours and I’ll throw on the London Symphony Orchestra tie into just some familiar music, but classical and then it’s a nice background, but not distracting.

Jeff King: Sometimes stuff’s wild, like the two cellos. I’ve gotten on those guys. I’ve gotten on a rabbit hole with those guys. Yeah. Yeah.

Trevor Koot: it’s, I love it. Yeah, I love it.

Matt Scalena: Last but not least, I guess we’ll stick with you, Trevor. Something in the last 18 months you’ve purchased for under $1,500 that’s had a positive impact on your life.

Trevor Koot: I’ll say this microphone. you know, launching the podcast, there’s kind of been this evolution of this thinking around the business’s hard concept and it’s been Writing that I’ve done, I first said the words business is fucking hard to an audience unscripted and unintended when I was early on in business and it got a round of applause and I realized, wait a second, I’m not alone. Like other people really do feel this with me. That turned into some writing that I started in 2019, which turned into a TEDx talk that I did in 2023 around kind of the same premise. And that turned into the podcast.

So it’s been kind of this, this evolution to create a community and Jeff actually pointed it out earlier, like just kind of create this community of people feeling like there’s a safe space to be vulnerable and, and, and talk about how hard business is and feel like they’re not alone because it really is for a lot of people. they, they feel like everybody else is, is having all the success in the world when for the most part, everybody’s kind of closer at the brink.

Matt Scalena: Yeah, social media doesn’t help that, that’s for sure.

Trevor Koot: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s a pretty picture. Thief of happiness, right?

Jeff King: Yeah, you know what? Social media doesn’t help. And I never compare myself to anybody. I don’t sit there and go, my god, look at that car or whatever. But yeah, but the negative stuff, or when you see someone that is just getting flamed out by the, say, the other side or whatever, and you just see the dark side of humanity. you’re my god. So Trevor, I think you took a break from it fairly recently. Yeah, yeah.

Trevor Koot: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I’ve got new. I’ve got a bunch of new episodes. I’m going to start doing seasons. just, it just was overwhelming to do one a week all the time. So I’m going to start doing blocks. Yeah.

Adam Scalena: Yeah, reminds me of podcasting is a reasonably hard.

Trevor Koot: It’s moderately difficult.

Adam Scalena: And we missed Jeff on the purchase.

Jeff King: Um You know, this is gonna sound kind of stupid but the first thing came to mind is I just bought a new suitcase I travel a fair bit I’ve always done the cheapest thing I could find at Walmart and all the rest and within four or five trips I would look like I was homeless and I might as well just have a garbage bag and tape it up with hockey tape or something and so I bought a relatively good one and It wasn’t 1500 bucks right like that, but it was relatively good

And I have admit when I got, when it came off the lounge, off the thing yesterday, thought, okay. The, that whole stress of, it going to blow apart on the, in the underneath the plane or all that type of stuff was gone. I wasn’t worried about that. Now talk to me in a year when it does blow apart and I’m all pissed off. spent 600 bucks on it. That might be different, but, but that’s something that’s kind of changed my life. Cause you got to take away the little things that just irk at you, at least for me. Cause I’ll just obsess on them. And so the Because I had the suitcase I had before was an air cannon one. It blew apart and then it came out and they clearly tried to fix it. I thought, oh, anyways, that was my thing.

Adam Scalena: Good luggage is underrated, that’s for sure.

Jeff King: Way underrated. Yeah, just like reliable cars. You don’t realize it till you don’t have one. Yeah.

Adam Scalena: Yeah, yes. How can people find out more about what you’re up to and where can they follow along? Maybe starting with you, Trevor.

Trevor Koot: Yeah, so I mentioned the podcast piece. We do a lot of content production at the BC Real Estate Association. So folks just keeping an eye on probably a few of our LinkedIn pages and the BC Real Estate Association LinkedIn page, lots of op-eds, lots of content within the real estate community as well.

LinkedIn from a social media perspective, LinkedIn is the best place to connect with me. And then yeah, and my colleagues, certainly Brendan and Trevor and others.

Jeff King: For me, it’s probably LinkedIn. I cannot accept any more connections. I’m at the max I got the 30,000 and then Microsoft sent me a contract but the contract basically said they could monetize my Connections so I would be an influencer and get paid for but I didn’t want to do that So you can follow me, but you can’t accept any more connections without deleting a few So I’ll delete for you guys, but I can’t do it for everyone and then on on X. I’m Jeff King 17

It’s a common name, I’ll let you know.

Trevor Koot: To get the 17th one, you were doing pretty good.

Jeff King: Yeah, yeah, well my next door neighbor in Toronto is Jeff King and that’s the one you really should have on the podcast. He’s he’s amazing

Trevor Koot: Well, there’s a, there’s a realtor on the island. think that’s a, that’s a Jeff King.

Adam Scalena: The chances of two Jeff Kings growing up next to each other though, that’s a…

Jeff King: Yeah, well, we didn’t grow up together, but we definitely lived side by side. King’s kind of a common last name. And in the 60s and early 70s, Jeff was a popular first name. I’m not sure why, but because there was always a lot of Jeff’s when I was growing up.

Matt Scalena: Yeah. Fantastic. Well, well, thanks again, guys, for coming back on the show. I think we said this last time, hopefully it won’t be 18 months before we can have you back. That was really interesting. And there’s a lot to think about from that. So thanks again.

Trevor Koot: Yeah. Thanks for having us. Always entertaining. Yep.

Jeff King: Our pleasure.