[00:00:00] All right, we're live, Abel, what's up, my man? I'm so glad you could join us to be the first one on for a day or two.
[00:00:08] Awesome. Thank you, Zack. I'm really excited to be here. You know, I'm a big, big, big Sisu fan since the beginning. And I'm and I'm honored to to be here with you today.
[00:00:19] You got the you got the dashboard behind you, which I'm seeing looks at me. I'm a little bummed because I know you got like an 80 inch monitor out there in your log.
[00:00:29] Yeah, that's even cooler. But that one looks great, too, man.
[00:00:35] Thank you, man. Yes. So this is so I have a dashboard here, my personal office, and then we have the main one on that 80 inch. I always the way I refer to it, whenever someone would come to our office, it's like think of it of departures and arrivals at the airport. Like that's how we track stuff.
[00:00:54] Yeah, I love it because I see a couple of people filing in here to join in and just jump. Quick comment. Tell us where you're coming from and we'll get started. Able actually has a pretty slick prezzie to build something for us, right?
[00:01:12] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, you see you see some of the. And for me to share screen, I just got to share screen, right?
[00:01:24] Yeah, yeah, so so maybe before we get into that, you know, I've I've had the pleasure of knowing you and working with you for the last. What's it been almost two years now. You were one of the early guys on the right way, way back when. But maybe to run a little bit about yourself. You're coming from Miami, right. But a little background and I'd love to hear that.
[00:01:45] Sure. So young Abel Gilbert in Miami started in real estate back in two thousand. And one is a mortgage broker, got my real estate license in two thousand and four, did both things until the market crashed after the market crashed. I really never disconnected completely from real estate. But when when things started coming back for me, where in 2010, when locally the local courthouse announced that they would start doing the foreclosures online, before that it was in person. So it was a very tight group of people that had a lot of control over it. Then as soon as it opened up, I saw an opportunity, spoke to an investor, said, look, we have an opportunity to buy really, really cheap properties. And long story short, I did probably about one hundred flips with with first an investor. Then I became a partner. I never disconnected from being an agent. One of the things that I love about real estate is being able to build relationships. And at one point of time, once I had children, because then a few years later, my wife and I were blessed to have triplets. So once our kids were born, I was like, you know what? I can't base my future in my income only on opportunities. And I realized that the residential real estate part of our business, if you structure it well, it could become a machine. So then I put all of my effort and focus in how do I make a residential machine? So I decided I'm going to stop like I was at the peak of my career as an investor.
[00:03:39] But he said, I need to stop now and I need to focus on being an agent. So very quickly, I figure out how to sell a lot of homes. And then I started putting together a team. Then other top producing agents in Miami started noticing that. And it became this like osmosis where one agent came, then another, then another. And it kind of changed my plans because when I opened my brokerage originally, it was really for my own business, my own deals. But then as other top agents started coming on board, I was like, OK, no, we've got to do this now. So we we originally started with a different name. Maybe six months into recruiting agents, we decided to create a name that was more relatable to what we were, what we do. So we decided to call the company One Path Realty and One Path came up out of what do we do? We hide. We I'm sorry, we guide people so we don't hide. We're not secret agents. We guide people. So we're guiding buyers, we're getting sellers, and we're also guiding agents through a path. So it's just, you know what sounds good? It's catchy. We came up with this logo, actually, it's a little different now. So. So, yeah, that's how things started off.
[00:05:06] I love how you say because it sounds like the spark and all of this was you had triplets and you're like, oh, that's right.
[00:05:14] Yeah.
[00:05:15] I think the best thing for us that sounds crazy, but the best thing for a lot of our business is to have triplets. Right. Or have have a career happen. You know, what's funny is our CEO, Brian, he actually he coaches a few agents still, and he tells them all to go buy a car that they can afford so that they did everything that they are givin it, like I got to pay this thing off, so I'm going to make my cars right.
[00:05:37] So, yeah, that's something that Porsche, right? Yeah. Yeah. I strongly recommend having triplets.
[00:05:47] Yeah, that was it was never in our wildest dreams that we would have multiples, but definitely I don't I like I told my agents, it's very important to have a purpose of have a clear why having children isn't like you should have children to like just have a why like let that let life take care of that once you get to that point. But it's definitely very important to obviously recognize your blessings and and do the best you can to to provide an. Be able to be the best you could be.
[00:06:22] Yeah, there's a there's a part in Sisu where you set your goals, but behind that goal, there's a line. There's some there's a reason. There's a deeper reasons, not just money. Right. There's something deeper that drives everything that you're doing for sure. So what we want I know you're very passionate about something which is marketing. I'm very passionate. I remember we connected on that when we first talked because you told me all these insane things you were doing with marketing. I was like, man, this guy's got it dialed. And then you told me was that a few months ago when I thought that you had one of the more dialed in marketing and that everything you're like now, we've revamped everything, like we took it back to square one. And I thought that was cool because I thought you already had it dialed in. Maybe there was something you were just kind of taking it to the next level. And I think that's what you wanted to show us and talk to us about it for sure.
[00:07:13] I've been I've been watching the conversations you've had with some of the other panelists. And, you know, that's why I'm also honored to be among all these other top agents. And one thing that we all have in common is that we obviously want to be able to track our lagging indicators, but also be able to predict how these lagging indicators are going to help us make the production that we want. And I do not lose focus of that, because within an organization, within a business, there's all these departments like the production, the sales, the people, the marketing. And when it comes to marketing, you know, it's funny you say that because we got that a lot to where we're on one path 1.0, a lot of agents in our local industry would always say, wow, even in the they would always be very proud of of showing off like what we do. But one thing I've learned is that business is all about marketing and innovation and and and even more than that, where I feel we're the main reason for coming up with one path 2.0 behind it was our message, like, what is our message? And then once we started, which, by the way, all of this was things to covid, because what happens when which it's what's happening and we need covid. Yeah, right, right, right. We need like life changing events that make these things happen. So so I say things to Koven because covid because, you know, I'm sure a lot of a lot of you guys watching could relate. If you're a team leader, Broecker, single agent, wherever you are.
[00:09:12] One of the things about real estate that we all have in common is that it's it's you're always on the go. You're always go, go, go. You got you've got to deal with things that are urgent and typically urgent always comes before important. And and for me, having the right message was very important. But I was just focusing on the urgent. So then it hit and then I'm like, oh my God, I'm busier than ever. But now that I'm home, you mean basically twenty four hours, like my days went from being from 5:00 in the morning to night at night. So now I had a little bit extra time to focus on these other things. So so look. And it's also important to to, to mention. It's important to surround yourself by the right people, by the right people, especially really with anything sales, marketing, productivity, admin, management, because we didn't go to real estate school to learn how to be great at all of these areas. So it's important to surround yourself by people that that that have those abilities. And when it comes to marketing, you really need a fresh brain. You need a fresh, creative brain. Because if you're on the go like I was and like I still am, but a little different now, your your creativity is is not fully there. So you need to be able to identify someone who is going to help you with that, come up with ideas, come up with ideas for right now and ideas for the future.
[00:10:52] So when when when we decided to go with one part 2.0, the first question we asked ourselves for one thing before you could go on the table, that's so important because I feel like a lot of highly successful, highly productive people, if they don't feel just slammed, like they can't even breathe with all this urgent stuff, they feel almost guilty that they're not doing enough. Right. Or what you need to do, you need to just ignore it, put it aside, because if not, you can't get on to that high level stuff, kind of like what you were saying anyways. Keep going for sure.
[00:11:28] I mean, look, I have so much to say about that, too, because it's really easy to confuse busyness with productivity. And that is the reality that most of us live in. Until you become consciously aware, you know, like if you don't become consciously aware that shit, I'm just busy. But busyness doesn't really translate into productivity and actual results. So it's very important to be conscious about that.
[00:11:59] But you going to operate days of after eight hours of being busy, like, man, I worked hard today. Right. But it doesn't always mean you're super effective.
[00:12:07] Correct. But that's why it's important that you have clear clarity. Is is the key. Clarity is the key of everything. Because if you're a team leader, if you're a team agent, if you're a broker, if you don't have a clear understanding of the highest and best use of your time, then, yeah, you're busy doing all the stuff that you shouldn't be doing. But then at the end of the day, did that really translate into what you're what you should be doing? So and that's a clarity that doesn't come overnight. That's a clarity that comes with time. And one thing also I've learned is that it's about making progress. Don't don't expect like an immediate like, oh, my God, I had a life changing event and now I'm different today than it was yesterday. It doesn't typically happen like that. It really happens over time. So what happened with us as far as deciding like how do we what do we do as far as our message and when we ask ourselves these questions that are really very basic, like who is our audience know? And we were when we were answering the questions, you know, obviously our audience, our buyers and sellers, but then talking about thinking about it from a brokerage and team perspective, our main audience, our agents, the main audience that as a brokerage and as a team leader, that I want to communicate with our agents, because when I decided to get out of production, it was hard for me because I truly find pleasure in helping a family buy a home.
[00:13:50] So it was hard for me to say, OK, yeah, I'm happy to stop being an agent. It was more like try to figure out how do I replace that that feeling? And I was able to replace it by realizing that if I stopped producing, I could focus on helping more agents that are then going to in turn, help more people. And at the same time, this is something I realized later on when my agents would write to me and say, Abel, you've changed my life. Once that happened, it was like, oh, my God, this is what I need to do. Like, you know, it's hard sometimes to say no to a past client or because sometimes I miss looking at beautiful homes, you know, and and watching people smile. So I'll take one or one or two deals a year. But the satisfaction of changing somebody's life and knowing that there's so much more to come, it's really I mean, to me, really, it was I was able to use it to replace the need to be an agent, so. When we were answering the questions of who is our audience, we wanted to also focus on how do we communicate with this audience? What is our message to them? Should our message be like most other companies? Oh, I'm so good at this.
[00:15:16] I'm so good at that. Look, I'm spending I have this transaction under contract. I have this for sale. Look, I closed and made all this money. It was it's not about that. Obviously, when it comes to communicating with someone is what is your problem? You know, what is your problem? And then here's your solution. And then here's who's going to basically solve that problem for you, which is us. And and on top of that, also being able to show, you know, the happy families. So for our agents, because their focus is buyers and sellers in our in our branding, which I'll show to you in just a moment. We focus on that. We focus on people. We focus on their smiles. We focus on telling about the story, the experience, like how did this happen? How did this go from being, let's say, a Zillow lead to a long to a long life relationship, because that's what typically ends up happening with our clients. So before we get into that, let me just go ahead and share with you.
[00:16:29] If you if you share, you can share one of your browsers on screen and then I'll I'll throw it up. So, OK. OK, I will add that so probably got. There we go from it. Let's go.
[00:16:48] You can see the president I did see the slide 10 slides, way more high tech.
[00:16:58] So I cannot see your face. So. But that's OK. I could hear you. All right.
[00:17:03] I mean it up. So you just keep on going.
[00:17:06] Cool. Cool. So when we decided to do the launch of one part 2.0, first of all, this was months in the making. And again, I did not do this by myself. This was literally a team effort, five of us, which is also, like I said before, it's important to surround yourself by the right people that are going to help you do the specifically what you're trying to do on that department. So this was definitely a group effort. So when we we had our agents, they knew that something was coming and we gave them a date. We said, look, on this day we're going to announce something. Something is going to change. So we didn't really give them everything. We just told them that something was going to change. And one of my goals to show you to show you guys this is so that if you're thinking that, you know what, I kind of want to, like, change things up, like feel free to use this as a point of reference and because it's all about how you break the news, the excitement, and then and then even more importantly is how do you follow through with it? So we'll talk about that. So what we did first when we were in the process of deciding, like, how do we transfer the message? What do we do about our company? Name a better company logo? I didn't want to completely change our brand because I felt like, you know what? We really have a pretty cool logo and a lot of people like it.
[00:18:40] And as expensive, it really is. Right.
[00:18:44] So, yeah. Yeah. I mean, changing a complete logo is, look, if it has to be done, it has to be done. But but what we did was instead of thinking about let's change it, we thought let's clean it up. Yeah. And then and this is how that happened. So I'll show you, this is one path 2.0, how it became 2.0. So what we wanted to do also while we did all of this, was we wanted to keep it simple. We didn't want to like make this into like an overcomplicated process. And and so that's why that was one of our main objectives. So this was our original logo. You know, these were the colors that we used. So then when we started doing was we started eliminating pieces. So as you could see, we change the color. Then we use just one color. Then we said, OK, what if we get rid of that little dot India? Then let's get let's get rid of the registered trademark, which, by the way, this name is registered trademark. So is our local. This one, if you love it, let me know. We're actually going to be expanding into other cities. If you want to be a part of this, then we eliminated that little line, then we eliminated. Something else, so then this was literally the presentation we did for our agents, so we did like a countdown three to this one. Yeah, and then I love it.
[00:20:17] That's awesome.
[00:20:19] Yeah, so we with the keyhole logo, it was the same one, we just we use it a little differently. So we use our logo in different ways. Now we use a little bit of a different blue color, which is the one you see there. Looks almost black, but it's actually blue. We use it like this. We use it like this. We use it sometimes to start moving.
[00:20:43] I mean, it's it seems to be moving to a more minimalist clean. Yes, it is. Yeah, I like it. Yeah, yeah.
[00:20:52] It was important for us to, again, keep it simple, but also open the door for us to be able to not just be recognized as the brokerage, the team that only works with median size homes, which are that's our bread and butter. But now we are more we're stepping into the luxury side of our business, of our local market. As you know, there's lots of luxury homes in Miami. So we wanted to position ourselves in a direction that allows us to have a look that that keeps it very minimalistic and and nice and simple. So that's how we basically user logo now. So as you could see, going back to to this logo, we didn't we didn't rebrand. We just clean things up. And when I when I saw what you already had a little bit. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And it was honestly like to me it was impressive to see how by just removing a couple of things, it's a totally different perception.
[00:22:04] So this is basically our new logo and we've changed everything up to our marketing. As far as printed materials, we have different versions of business cards and and our printed materials. We also do digital business cards. I think I feel it's very important to do digital business cards because let's say if you're if you are a team agent and you're scheduling an appointment and you know how realtors are right. Like most realtors suck. So it's like when you send send a message trying to schedule an appointment and then that other agent, a listing agent, is going to be like sometimes they ignore you. So what we recognized was that when we sent that digital business card with our picture on it, it kind of not no one breaks the ice. And number two, it made like our response from leasing agents was like it went through the roof because now because now it's like, oh, this person is a professional agent, you know, like this guy is not like that one agent that just got his license and doesn't know what he's doing. Oh, my God. Like, I don't even want to talk to this person now. It's like, oh, wow, I like this guy. He seems to be or girl seems to be somebody that knows what he's doing. So digital business cards are very important.
[00:23:20] Thanks. Also, email signatures are branding in our in our marketing with social media, which I'll show you I'll show it to you in just a moment. Listing presentations, listing presentations are very important when it comes to also making sure that they are for the right sector of the market. Your median size home listing presentation cannot be the one, the same one you use for your luxury type of home listing presentation. These are some of the marketing that we use for for marketing outside of the office. Then we also play with our logo. We play with our logo. We play with colors. It was important for us to also feel more real, more a little bit more casual, a little bit more accessible and not this like, oh, my God, this is this luxury brand or or this is brand that it's too cold. So it was important for us to use colors. Now, you know, this is a very cool and interesting concept when it comes to rebranding. In my opinion, it's not just about changing the look when it comes to rebranding or or just changing what you're doing. It also must come with a mindset change. So we came up with this concept of wow and wow, since for we are one.
[00:24:52] So internally our team, everybody knows that we are one. So part of our core values is collaboration. And that's been since day one, even since one path 1.0. So what this did was it just solidified that listen, guys, we are one we are here to obviously offer our clients the best possible experience, but we also need to provide each other with the best possible experience. And we do that by collaboration. We do that by really just the environment, like hanging out with each other, helping each other. If somebody has a question, everybody jumps to like to help each other answer those questions, scenarios, lessons learned and things like that where one home. So we also focus in our office. We've made changes in our office because, again, change doesn't just come from OK, I have a new logo. Change has to come from the core and the core. When it comes to a business, your core is your office. So your office needs to also be consistent with with the whatever changes you're making. We're family and that's another one of our core values. We don't just say it. We we we do it. And when it comes to family and, you know, in my opinion, it has to come from the leader.
[00:26:27] If you're a leader, if you are leading your company, your brokerage, your team, and you're going to preach family, you have to make them feel like your family. Because if you say family, but then you're you're you're rude and you're unprofessional or or you're just not there for them, then it's just you're contradicting yourself unconsciously.
[00:26:48] So. When it comes to family, it's important that, you know, that you you truly mean what you're saying. And also family is not just OK, yeah, we hang out when we're in the office. No, we we hang out with our own families, you know, like we we care for our our children, for our wives. Like, we want the best for them. And that's why really that's one of the reasons why we do what we do. Because if you're a father, if you're a mother, like you want to be able to provide the best life you can to your family, we're one human force. So, you know, when when it comes to growth, when it comes to your potential. Look, there's only so much I could do by myself. The way in which we're going to give ourselves the highest probability of making our dreams happen is if we do it together. And that's why collaboration, family trust are very important core values. And the agents need to understand that, look, I'm not looking to grow just for my best interests so that I could get rich and fat. I'm doing this so that we could all grow and we could all make our dreams happen. This is one of our agents. Where one perfect system, so the reason why we are also integrating this concept is because, look, the reality is about the life of a real estate agent is very difficult in the sense that it's very busy. You start early, you finish at night. So you have showings in between. So if you're hungry, what do you do? You end up passing by Wendy's, McDonald's. You eat a cheeseburger, you maybe drink a milkshake. No one's watching.
[00:28:35] So so what happens is that you're doing all of these you're making all of these changes around your business, but then you're not changing your inner self. Know, when it comes to the the the food that you're putting inside yourself. So, like in our office, we all have a very conscious effort where everybody focuses on working out. Everybody focuses on eating. Right. We're not perfect. And perfection is really not what we're seeking. But what we are seeking is, number one, the consciousness that this is important. And then and then, you know, encouraging each other basically to make it happen.
[00:29:19] The one thing I able not to take too much time, but I know a lot of our Sisu clients, one of their KPIs, they're their key performance indicators is exercise and or meditation. That's how I see that way more than I would have expected to, because by measuring that and showing that it actually means something. So anyway. Yeah, yeah, for sure.
[00:29:40] And I know that we're running out of time, so I'm going to make this that's why I'm just going through the slides. And obviously we focus on our clients, we focus on their experience because that's really that's everything to us, making sure that their dreams become a reality. So that's one of the other things that we focus on when it comes to the brand and the message that we share. We want to make sure that our clients see that the point of all this is to help them make their dreams happen. Now, at the same time, my brokerage is is a bit of a different model. So we have an independent brokerage. But in the independent side, I only focus on hiring agents that want to go from being a top producer, single agent to being a team, a team leader to go from being basically an operator to being a business owner. Because at the end of the day, that is the goal. The goal is to have more quality of life while maximizing your potential. So I'm not going to go over this right now. But basically what these colors mean are the different are the different groups in our intercompany.
[00:30:50] This is a work in progress, one that the university also, obviously through our marketing, we're working on different email campaigns. We have a one part commercial brand and one path luxury. So. This is I love this saying the future depends on what we do in the present, so that's why we decided to make that switch. And then also, by the way, guys, I encourage you all able Gilberte group, if you have Instagram at me, I'll follow you the same thing with our company. One path, let's see one path royalty on Instagram so that you can follow us. And then what we did when we launch One Path 2.0 is we separated, we separated one path 1.0. So as you could see, like the look is different here. And then when we launch one Path 2.0, we separated it all. And then all of this started when we launched One Path 2.0, everybody received this. Personally delivered to their home, so it was a box or or agent.
[00:31:57] I'm sorry, your clients or your agents or both?
[00:32:00] No, no. This is this is a welcome kit for our agents of. So our agents received this box with this letter. You can read it if you go to our Instagram account and with these goodies. So t mug and in a mask. This one. So so yeah. Again, it's about the experience. It's not just about and I can let me just get out of step screen. It's not just about the message and what you're saying. It's also about what you're actually doing. So we really wanted them to have a tangible something tangible that that made them feel like, oh my God, like this is this. I've never seen this before.
[00:32:47] I love it. Well, thanks for sharing all that. I'm sure that was that was an hour long or or longer, and we somehow did it in 30 minutes. I have one question I think everyone would be interested to know. Jeff's asking who put that box together for you?
[00:33:02] We did our marketing team, our marketing team that if if you want more information about that, we will be more than happy to show you how we designed it and what company we ordered it from.
[00:33:15] I think brand and culture are two things that are very intangible, very hard to drive. I think the way that you drive it and what I've learned from you is you just got to believe it and put a lot of love and care into it and then just go out and live it. Right. And it's something that it's a long play. It takes a lot of time, but over that time, it catches on some awesome stuff.
[00:33:38] We're going to move on to our next session. That is interesting. Yep. We'll keep those right. That you should post in the in the group, your massive Sisu dashboard that's in your lobby. It looks so clean. It's totally off brand, I think. All right. So.
