On this edition of the MovotoMic , Sophie and Patrick kick off the MovotoMic with an industry legend, Brad Inman. Brad is a renowned journalist, author, and entrepreneur who has had a remarkable career trajectory. He is best known for founding Inman News, the leading independent news publisher for the residential real estate industry. For more updates follow Movoto on Instagram @movotorealestate or download the Movoto app.Â
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Patrick Kearns: Hello and welcome to Movoto Mic, a new real estate podcast brought to you by movoto.com.
Patrick Kearns: My name is Patrick Kearns.
Patrick Kearns: I’m an ex-journalist and 10-year vet of the real estate industry who is currently working as Movoto’s head of communications here with me.
Patrick Kearns: Today is my associate, Sophie Brandeis. Sophie,
Sophie Brandeis: How are we doing today?
Patrick Kearns: I’m doing great, Patrick.
Sophie Brandeis: I’m excited to be here and I’m feeling great about our first podcast and our first guest.
Patrick Kearns: Yeah.
Patrick Kearns: So this is our inaugural show, the pilot episode.
Patrick Kearns: If you will, we are very excited to have a pretty esteemed member of the real estate industry.
Patrick Kearns: Sophie, why don’t you tee up our first guest for our first podcast here.
Sophie Brandeis: All right.
Sophie Brandeis: So today joining us on the Movoto Mic for the very first time we have Brad.
Sophie Brandeis: Inman Brad is a renowned journalist, author, and entrepreneur who has had a remarkable career trajectory.
Sophie Brandeis: He is best known for founding several media companies including Inman News, the leading independent news publisher for the residential real estate industry.
Sophie Brandeis: As the founder of Inman, Brad played a pivotal role in shaping the landscape of residential sales media and conferences.
Sophie Brandeis: Brad is a thought leader, a Trailblazer.
Sophie Brandeis: And his dedication to providing top-notch information and fostering innovation has earned him numerous awards and accolades throughout his career.
Sophie Brandeis: After decades of founding and scaling tech and media companies, Brad has set his sights on a new venture, longevity, media, Brad.
Patrick Kearns: Thank you so much for joining us.
Patrick Kearns: Welcome to the show.
Brad Inman: Good morning Patrick, you and I worked together for a long time.
Brad Inman: I, I credit a lot of my real estate knowledge to my time at Inman.
Brad Inman: I learned quite a bit.
Brad Inman: I like to joke now at these conferences and stuff.
Brad Inman: I was a bit of a hater and now maybe I’m a bit of a lover.
Brad Inman: I think that maybe the infectious energy that you bring to the industry has caught on.
Brad Inman: Finally to me in the conferences that you put on and sort of the, the empire you built, but I want to sort of take it way back, right?
Brad Inman: You had a career as a journalist.
Brad Inman: Why real estate?
Brad Inman: What was the interest in real estate?
Brad Inman: Why was that the beat you focused on?
Brad Inman: Why sort of build a career covering real estate and, and this focus on the real estate industry?
Brad Inman: Yeah, I kind of backed into it, Patrick.
Brad Inman: I was someone that cared a lot about housing and housing affordability.
Brad Inman: Early in my career, I was an activist and I fought the battle against redlining.
Brad Inman: Back when it was, you know, it’s a real problem today even I think.
Brad Inman: But back then it was a serious problem.
Brad Inman: And that led to me commenting and, you know, writing things and the San Francisco examiner saw some of my, my writing and they, they reached out to me and said, would I like to contribute a column?
Brad Inman: And so I started writing about affordable housing.
Brad Inman: I wrote about second units in your backyard.
Brad Inman: I wrote about section eight, I wrote about NIMBYs and then, that led to a career in print journalism, where I wrote for all kinds of newspapers, primarily on the west coast.
Brad Inman: And then my beat in the eighties became very much around the conflict and clash between developers and environmentalists.
Brad Inman: I was one who said, hey, we have to increase the supply of housing, which wasn’t very popular in California among certain constituencies, but didn’t put me in bed with developers because I’ve never compromised the integrity of what I call kind of classic journalism ethics.
Brad Inman: But in doing, in covering that, I found myself in the midst of controversy, which I’ve always done as a writer and an advocate.
Brad Inman: And so I kind of backed into it and then built a whole career around it.
Brad Inman: It’s funny that like the more things, the more things are different, the more they say the same, right?
Brad Inman: It feels like San Francisco.
Brad Inman: That’s still a very, very relevant, that sort of NIMBY.
Brad Inman: Yeah, it was the same issue today.
Brad Inman: Patrick as it was back then.
Brad Inman: I think the last newspaper column I wrote, was 20 years after the first one and I think it more or less followed the same lines.
Brad Inman: You know, I was credited with using the word NIMBY the first time in print.
Brad Inman: I, I really railed against this kind of inequity, you know, the money class homeowners who, who waved the banner of environmentalists but were denying affordable housing.
Brad Inman: I mean, this is now a global debate.
Brad Inman: I, I read a lot.
Brad Inman: I live in Europe most half the time and, and, you know, it’s the same debate there.
Brad Inman: It’s NIMBYs around the world, there’s like two clashes in the world.
Brad Inman: There’s, not in my backyard and there’s the, the immigrants and everybody else.
Brad Inman: And if you just reduced everything to that, maybe add in religion a few other things.
Brad Inman: And you can pretty much explain a lot of inequity and conflicts in the world.
Brad Inman: So I always love that debate.
Brad Inman: I always loved.
Brad Inman: And then I accidentally got into the industry B to B world, again, by accident.
Brad Inman: I went to my editor in 1995 and said, hey, there’s a scandal at the National Association of Realtors.
Brad Inman: Sounds familiar.
Brad Inman: Yeah, exactly.
Brad Inman: And, they had wasted $29 million and then the NAR was, you know, had a big bale around it.
Brad Inman: It, it didn’t tell its members anything.
Brad Inman: And my editor said no one cares, Brad, no one cares about the National Association of Realtors.
Brad Inman: We don’t even know what it is.
Brad Inman: So, no, I don’t want that article.
Brad Inman: So I, at the same time there was a guy from KQED which is a public radio station in San Francisco and he said, Brad put it on the internet.
Brad Inman: I said, how do I do that?
Brad Inman: So he showed me how to do it and probably one of the first blogs and I wrote it.
Brad Inman: And what was interesting, I was thinking of maybe there was a public audience.
Brad Inman: It wasn’t, it was realtors who felt disenfranchised by their trade group way back then.
Brad Inman: And interesting too, primarily Remax because they were more professional because they actually had to pay $1000 a month.
Brad Inman: So they had enough money to pay a grand.
Brad Inman: So they, they tend to be higher, more sophisticated and interesting.
Brad Inman: The other group was the buyer agents.
Brad Inman: Buyer agencies were nerdy, they were more kind of self-righteous.
Brad Inman: They were, you know, they felt strongly, I mean, everything has been brought up in the, you know, the last few years over the litigation, those buyer agents, they, you know, they were in attack, they’re on the internet.
Brad Inman: So suddenly I had, I had an audience and I suddenly had a business.
Brad Inman: And so, that’s how I got into this before, that I was always a consumer writer and I didn’t, you know, in fact, I just ran interestingly, something about these private realtor networks that are being formed, that alternative to the MLS.
Brad Inman: And I pulled up an old picture, that I had commissioned with the Examiner because I launched consumer shows back then because what was happening, you know, like stockbrokers when the guy riding the limo to work is getting advice from the guy taking the train.
Brad Inman: Suddenly, independent information.
Brad Inman: Like look at the birth of Bloomberg.
Brad Inman: And so I was part of that movement, the birth of independent real estate information that wasn’t compromised, it wasn’t advertorial and the public was hungry for it.
Brad Inman: So we did an event, a consumer event early on in my career with the examiner called the Home Buyers Fair and they were my partner and we’re expecting three or 400 people and we had 5000 people lined up around the block.
Brad Inman: And that ad you see there, the sleazy looking guy opening his trench coat with houses was the ad the examiner used which pissed off the real estate industry.
Brad Inman: It was the beginning of me pissing off the real estate industry and but the public came and drove and guess who followed.
Brad Inman: As soon as the public was there, the industry wanted to be next to the public.
Brad Inman: So that was a thriving business.
Brad Inman: I did all over the country.
Brad Inman: The Miami Herald, the San Diego Union, Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, the examiner and wound up selling that company a long time ago.
Brad Inman: I feel like it’s a rite of passage to write about a NAR scandal.
Brad Inman: I think the first story I wrote for Inman was when NAR rolled out a new logo that was very expensive and very not well received.
Brad Inman: And I was like, oh, this is a, this is a fiery audience.
Brad Inman: These people feel very strongly about things.
Brad Inman: So I love that.
Patrick Kearns: No, they do.
Patrick Kearns: So Brad, you just spoke about why real estate can we pivot a little bit and talk about Inman and where it started where it is now and sort of how you grew this multichannel brand and how you built it.
Brad Inman: Yeah, sure.
Brad Inman: And I should say the other thing that hit me, I love the real estate beat and I covered a lot of things.
Brad Inman: I covered business.
Brad Inman: I covered public policy.
Brad Inman: Mine was always kind of the nerdy, intellectual stuff, but I always went back to real estate because I realized that, ok, what do we do in life?
Brad Inman: We work, we play and we’re at home and home has a central role in our lives.
Brad Inman: Like no other thing like more than going to restaurants or, you know, working out or anything.
Brad Inman: It’s like, it’s where our families are Right.
Brad Inman: So I loved, I love the real estate beat.
Brad Inman: So on top of accidentally finding myself in this space, I also love the beat.
Brad Inman: And I still, to this day love, I’ve done a lot of things and, you know, away from real estate, but I can always easily come back to it.
Brad Inman: So I, you know, Inman was, a customer at a time, probably like your, your, podcast here.
Brad Inman: You know, you get a listener, you get two listeners, you get five listeners.
Brad Inman: You know, I don’t know how many of those people when we launched were reading us.
Brad Inman: But, soon after I realized, oh, I do have a business here, I now have readers and we have what’s called distribution.
Brad Inman: And I think your listeners know this, but in the media business there’s content and this distribution.
Brad Inman: You don’t, you don’t start a media.
Brad Inman: I mean, I’ve been involved in a lot of great ones, you know, a lot of niche media, you know, curbed and, and eater and racked and, you know, ebooks and all these crazy businesses all disruptive and you gotta have those two things.
Brad Inman: So suddenly I had an audience and, and then this scandal and I just kept, you know, it was a, it was a gift from God.
Brad Inman: I kept going and going and, and here’s an interesting tidbit.
Brad Inman: I don’t think I share too often.
Brad Inman: There was a high level, high level, high level person of the National Association of realtors who was reading me like everyone else at NAR and NAR was out to get me.
Brad Inman: In fact, there was an executive at the old realtor.com, a couple of them went to prison and on his desk it said Kill Inman and, and I wore that with a badge of honor.
Brad Inman: I mean, that’s, that’s journalist goals right there.
Patrick Kearns: Yeah.
Patrick Kearns: Yeah.
Brad Inman: So he, you know, they, they weren’t kind to me, but there was this one high level guy and he was a, until this day he was an anonymous background source who gave me all the inside dealings at NAR.
Brad Inman: And so we are constantly, constantly ahead of them.
Brad Inman: And so that helped build that audience.
Brad Inman: And then right away, I needed a better business model.
Brad Inman: I was syndicating content to websites.
Brad Inman: That was the beginning of a business.
Brad Inman: An idea that the, that Craig Newmark of Craigslist gave me that idea.
Brad Inman: But he, I, I did that and then I realized, we could do an event.
Brad Inman: I always loved events because I had done the consumer events with newspapers.
Brad Inman: And so we had an audience.
Brad Inman: So we took 50 people to the woods of Sonoma and that, a cold winter weekend talked about disruption, disintermediation.
Brad Inman: We talked about virtual walkthroughs.
Brad Inman: This is all in 1996 and when those 50 people were walking to their cars after that crazy week in the woods, in Sonoma a friend of mine who was there said Brad, I think there’s 1000 people like this that are into tech and innovation.
Brad Inman: And I think you could charge him $1000 a person.
Brad Inman: Well, I’m an entrepreneur.
Brad Inman: So give me an idea like that and we did an event at six months and I think we had 700 people and I think they paid us like $700.
Brad Inman: And so that’s how the event business and I only bring up the event business to the evolution of the company.
Brad Inman: If you’re going to get into the media business, you know, you gotta have a business model and events were always something I understand.
Brad Inman: And the beauty of events is you get all the funds up front, you get the registrations, the sponsors, you don’t let them exhibit unless they paid you and, you pay all your bills afterwards.
Brad Inman: So I, this is a bootstrap business, you know, starting with my personal credit card, but I instantly had a business model instantly profitable and that’s really hard to do.
Brad Inman: And I think in has been profitable every year since that launch.
Brad Inman: And, you know, that’s a rare thing to be able to, to say you’ve done.
Brad Inman: And, because I’ve raised a lot of venture money where you don’t have to be profitable and you’re, you know, you’re winging it and you’re trying to keep your burn rate down and you’re running out of money and I’ve been through that cycle, but this was a company that actually was profitable.
Brad Inman: So those are the roots.
Brad Inman: Now, what else?
Brad Inman: Unbelievable writers and editors, unbelievable business side.
Brad Inman: People like the CEO now of Inman Emily.
Brad Inman: , you know, I haven’t, I didn’t run in and for 15 years people thought I did but I didn’t, I was the owner.
Brad Inman: , and, you know, all these wonderful, great people, a friend of mine said the other day, they all went to Inman University one form or another.
Brad Inman: And you know, I just worked with really talented, fantastic people who each and every one some failed but, you know, had to fire a few.
Brad Inman: but they took us to the next level and and now it, yeah, it’s kind of amazing what’s going on there.
Brad Inman: It’s a beautiful franchise.
Brad Inman: I’m so so proud of.
Patrick Kearns: It’s interesting because obviously I had my own experiences working there and, and I, I feel that I went to in the university, right?
Patrick Kearns: I feel like I learned so much working there, right?
Patrick Kearns: I came up as a journalist during this like digital media boom when I was like in school, when I was learning to be a writer, I was looking up to the gawkers of the world and Deads Spin and Gothamist in New York City.
Patrick Kearns: And like, then I got to work with all of those people at a real estate trade publication which like would have surprised me a decade later.
Patrick Kearns: Right.
Patrick Kearns: But it really was that like a real estate trade publication was borrowing from some of the brightest minds in media.
Patrick Kearns: There’s so much talent on the market now.
Patrick Kearns: It’s like if you’re, if you’re building a media company, is that, is that the approach you have to safety, you have to look at all of the talent because we’re seeing, you know, 100 of the other places I’ve written for Vice, you know, Gawker was sold, they’re all plummeting now.
Patrick Kearns: I mean, is it, is it because they did utilize that talent in the best way?
Patrick Kearns: Are they spending money on stupid things?
Patrick Kearns: Are they not?
Patrick Kearns: So if he said building a multichannel brand enough, what is the, what is the failings here?
Patrick Kearns: Is it just that this, this boom time of digital media is over?
Brad Inman: Well, I just, I think you just nailed it and the two specific people are Lockhart Steele and Joss Albertson, who I was fortunate enough when Inman was in its formative days I saw and I think we were one of the first blogs, but there was kind of web 2.0 they called it the first generation of bloggers.
Brad Inman: And so I was, oh, is this a, is this a threat to him?
Brad Inman: And so I went around and met all of them.
Brad Inman: I bought many of them out to try to make sure we weren’t missing the boat.
Brad Inman: And I went to the Lower East side to meet with Lockhart Steele, who then was editing a, a country real estate magazine or house magazine.
Brad Inman: And he was doing this blog and he took me around, instantly liked him.
Brad Inman: And so I said, I want to buy you and he goes, oh, that’s really, he goes, you can invest in me.
Brad Inman: So I, I invested and became chairman and was part of that whole movement of those characters.
Brad Inman: And then, you know, The Twain it always meets again.
Brad Inman: I find in life that’s why I always tell young people always think a long term don’t burn a bridge because so I persuaded them to come and they took him into another level and what was different about them and some of these other buzzy ones that,, everyone thought was, you know, that cats me out, it was pretty simple.
Brad Inman: These guys were singularly focused on really quality content.
Brad Inman: They, they didn’t get struck by Hollywood.
Brad Inman: They didn’t get, they didn’t marry movie stars.
Brad Inman: They, they’re just media guys through and through and they really focused.
Brad Inman: I mean, Josh and Locker, in fact, they have a new venture now and kind of the younger luxury area called Found New York and Found L A.
Brad Inman: And I think we’re gonna go to London and Paris and a whole bunch of places and I couldn’t wait to write a check to invest in them because, you know, I think until I die, the last investment I’ll make would be with Locke and Josh or are they with me?
Brad Inman: And now they’re helping me on the side with my new stuff.
Patrick Kearns: , so how is that,, don’t get stars in your eyes or your head will blow up.
Brad Inman: My dad used to say, and I think sometimes in media, like, you know, whenever these guys, like,, you know, I remember I worked with Microsoft.
Brad Inman: I sold them a database for, it was a tiny fortune for me.
Brad Inman: It was like, oh my God.
Brad Inman: But I watched these nerds from, you know, Seattle get starstruck by Hollywood.
Brad Inman: And whenever that happens, people, you know, they get stars in their eyes and their heads blow up.
Brad Inman: So these people are real media people, they’re not, they’re not about all of that.
Brad Inman: You know, it’s not about celebrities, they’re grounded, the real deal.
Brad Inman: Yeah.
Brad Inman: To me they’re the real celebrities.
Brad Inman: You know, they’re the backbone of everything is credible about media that we don’t talk about enough.
Brad Inman: All we hear is all the bad stuff and there is a lot of bad stuff but there’s so many good journalists and good editors with traditional publications and new publications.
Brad Inman: And if they can just stick to some basic principles, you know, that we all I think, understand and try to cover all sides and try not to have an opinion and, you know, correct your mistakes and build your sources and you know, all of that.
Patrick Kearns: Speaking of great journalists, when I started working at movoto.com, a few months ago, I started my career reading Inman articles just so I can educate myself.
Patrick Kearns: It’s true to educate myself and to really have a good solid understanding of the industry I’m working in and I had the privilege a few weeks ago to attend your conference in New York City.
Patrick Kearns: So I just, I think the, the change from the 50 person week in the woods to the 1000 person conference in New York City is remarkable.
Patrick Kearns: My question to you is how have you noticed a change in the real estate industry as Inman has grown and changed over the years?
Brad Inman: Yeah, I think there are a couple things that took us to the, we were always different.
Brad Inman: We were completely out there deliberately trying to set us apart from the traditional real estate conferences.
Brad Inman: So let’s just take the stage when I got into this.
Brad Inman: And I said, oh, wow, we can disrupt this thing.
Brad Inman: Five white guys, 60 plus with ties and shirts and a podium.
Brad Inman: Basically the moderator, you know, giving the the speakers, I could use a crude comment, but it was all about the speakers, it was all about their egos.
Brad Inman: There was no controversy, there was no truth telling.
Brad Inman: It was just, you know, a manufactured kind of here who here’s who runs the industry and we started right away doing it completely differently from production values and how we presented the information.
Brad Inman: and really, I think, start building a community.
Brad Inman: But one of the decisive moments in this kind of new phase of Inman was around 2829 with the great recession when a lot of them and, and by the way, the old generation hated Inman, they boycotted us.
Brad Inman: There was a big national franchise that put something where you couldn’t receive email from Inman so that the realtors couldn’t read it.
Brad Inman: I’ve been boycotted, trashed, investigated, you know, and they didn’t like us at all.
Brad Inman: So we kept really appealing to the innovator.
Brad Inman: But what happened, a new generation of young brokers emerged after the great recession, you know, people like that, Wang and Mauricio, I mean, a whole generation and when they woke up and got into the industry, they looked around and they went NAR that’s not.
Brad Inman: And they looked here at Inman and went, oh, this is colorful and innovative.
Brad Inman: And so that suddenly we started skewing very young.
Brad Inman: We always had the entrepreneurs, but now we had these young up and coming emerging brokers who had, you know, from Zillow to Redfin to Compass and we became their home and their community, I think instead of NAR and that changed the complexion.
Brad Inman: But then I’d also give credit to my wife, ya, she’s French Moroccan and quite eccentric person.
Brad Inman: And she was by my side, the last 12 years and we took it another level and she said, look at your audience, Brad, it’s two thirds of women.
Brad Inman: Look at your audience is 20% gay.
Brad Inman: You know, you got to get these people on the stage and reverse it.
Brad Inman: And we always had men and women.
Brad Inman: But we just, and, and there was also others, Morgan Brown, he was pushing for women.
Brad Inman: Laura Monroe was pushing and, and so we made a whole scale effort 1516 years ago to diversify the audience reflector.
Brad Inman: And then we brought in this woman Katie at Inman and she went out and found these people in the community instead of going to the classic big shots, finding really new voices, new innovative ideas and started putting them on stage.
Brad Inman: And what that did is it changed the complexion of Inman and it was no ideological thing.
Brad Inman: It was just like, it’s very pragmatic business.
Brad Inman: It is the best thing we ever did because then Inman was able to forge the gap generationally, which is always hard between, you know, new ideas and new ways of thinking about everything in media and we reflected them and my view of media, if you don’t reflect the community and if you’re not inspired by what the community wants, he cares about, you’re probably gonna do shitty journalism.
Brad Inman: It’s, it’s back to the classic idea, you know, know your reader and write to your reader.
Brad Inman: Don’t write to your ego.
Brad Inman: Don’t write to your parents.
Brad Inman: Don’t write to your career.
Brad Inman: Don’t write to how you look and LinkedIn, you know, get over that, write to your reader and respect your reader.
Brad Inman: And as I jokingly say, I, I used to teach at Cal Berkeley often on a journalism school and the B school.
Brad Inman: And if I have a chance to go out to dinner with faculty at Cal Berkeley or seven realtors, it is a no brainer.
Brad Inman: I’d rather go out with seven realtors.
Brad Inman: because they’re a lot more fun.
Brad Inman: They’re a lot more interesting.
Brad Inman: They’re a lot more colorful.
Brad Inman: And that’s, I think another part of element in our value, an element of Inman and our values is we’re not about better than now.
Brad Inman: We’re not arrogant and we’re not elitist and we like to identify with our reader in our community.
Brad Inman: And that would be a lesson for anyone starting a media company.
Brad Inman: Get over yourself, get over talking about them.
Brad Inman: And someone said the other day, are you dumbing down the longevity enterprise?
Brad Inman: And I go, yeah, if that’s what it takes for the public to understand your ridiculous medical speak.
Brad Inman: That is confusing the public.
Brad Inman: Yeah.
Brad Inman: Absolutely.
Brad Inman: Well, dumb it down if you don’t like it, get off the stage, something you touched on a little bit.
Brad Inman: And I think it was maybe unique to my experiences with the real estate industry is like there’s not a strong sense of gatekeeping, right.
Brad Inman: People are really generous with their time and really generous with their knowledge.
Brad Inman: I think about the people that I work with.
Brad Inman: Even then when I was a journalist, the people that I work with now like Chris Heller, for example, always had the time for me, always said I can explain this thing to you in 20 minutes.
Brad Inman: I can, you know, and I see it a lot on stage is that been your experience with folks in the world industry, like when I covered hockey, for example, people did not want to let you in, right?
Brad Inman: They would talk over your head, they’d speak in platitudes.
Brad Inman: They would not get into the tactics of things.
Brad Inman: They would not be generous with their knowledge, but real estate has always felt really different no matter what somebody’s role is or somebody’s title, right?
Brad Inman: The CEO Robert Refin of Compass would spend the time to explain to me this is what the thing we’re going to do.
Brad Inman: This is why we’re going to do it and this is why we think it’s going to work.
Brad Inman: Has that been your experience?
Patrick Kearns: Yeah, absolutely.
Patrick Kearns: I think with one caveat though, but I agree with you Patrick.
Patrick Kearns: And it’s because it’s a pretty distributed leadership base.
Patrick Kearns: You know, there’s millions of realtors.
Patrick Kearns: It’s kind of unusual, right?
Patrick Kearns: I guess there’s millions of Uber drivers too, but here it’s quite different, I think.
Patrick Kearns: And so they understand marketing and promotion so they’ll take the time to talk to you because they see the value of that and they want to be in the press to, you know, to, to speak to or to expand their own networks.
Patrick Kearns: I would say the traditional CEO and Robert’s definitely an exception.
Patrick Kearns: you know, these posse and pr teams that are between you and them and the corporate speak.
Patrick Kearns: But other than that, yeah, they’re very accessible, very helpful.
Patrick Kearns: You know, they’re also, which I love, it’s, I’ve been at the wrong end of it, you know, wrong being.
Patrick Kearns: they speak their opinion and they’re very passionate and they really care about their industry.
Patrick Kearns: As I always say, these people don’t have a job when they wake up this morning, you and I do.
Patrick Kearns: but they don’t have someone giving them a regular paycheck twice a month.
Patrick Kearns: They don’t have health insurance.
Patrick Kearns: So they’re, they’re very passionate about their work and they’re very passionate about any threats to their industry and you know, we can rev them up and they can get very angry very quickly at us.
Patrick Kearns: And I think that’s always good for us.
Patrick Kearns: It’s good for our feedback.
Patrick Kearns: We don’t always bow to their, their mass sentiment, but we certainly listen to it very carefully.
Patrick Kearns: So it’s accessible, it’s opinionated and it’s, I think it’s a really marvelous industry in that way.
Brad Inman: So, having spent so many years in and around this industry, what advice can you give to aspiring entrepreneurs and people entering the real estate industry, whether that’s an agent, a proptech entrepreneur, someone starting a real estate media company, just general advice.
Patrick Kearns: Yeah, I mean, first of all, welcome.
Patrick Kearns: you know, it’s an open, the bar entry are very low, like the bar entry journalism, very low.
Patrick Kearns: You know, you can, you can start a newsletter and beehive tomorrow and you know, have maybe one or two readers, at least your mother and your grandmother and similar to real estate.
Patrick Kearns: You, you don’t need a license to, to be a journalist, unlike a doctor, a dentist, a massage therapist.
Patrick Kearns: you know, all the rest, I mean, you don’t, you know, you need a license, license but you don’t need much to enter the industry.
Patrick Kearns: So that’s the good news.
Patrick Kearns: The, the challenge is that there’s a lot of competition.
Brad Inman: And so how do you, well, I’ll just tell you what I did in my life.
Brad Inman: I just, I, I outworked everybody.
Brad Inman: I got up early, started earlier and I love my work.
Brad Inman: So it wasn’t like I was, I work later than everybody and did that my whole life.
Brad Inman: And that, you know, I have never read a self-help book in my life.
Brad Inman: I don’t intend to.
Brad Inman: People always ask me, do you recommend some self-help?
Brad Inman: I go, I have never read one.
Brad Inman: I probably should have but I didn’t because I think they’re all bullshit.
Brad Inman: I think most of those are written by people that never started anything.
Brad Inman: And,, so why would I read about what they have to say?
Brad Inman: I like other books, nonfiction about successful people and things.
Brad Inman: But,, but I just outwork everybody and that’s what good realtors tend to do and other people, tech start-ups,, you know, the other is just surround yourself.
Brad Inman: It’s the same old advice by, you know, really good, competent capable people.
Brad Inman: Every time I compromised on that, I didn’t do well.
Brad Inman: You know, we were talking about Josh and Locke, those are examples, but there’s so many good companies out there and they all have that ingredient.
Brad Inman: You know, that’s key if you’re an independent realtor, you know, have a community where you can go to and turn to and you can get advice.
Brad Inman: you know, the, the role of mentors, it kind of falls in that self-help bucket.
Brad Inman: I don’t really like, but I do know now looking back, we didn’t call them mentors.
Brad Inman: We didn’t formalize it.
Brad Inman: We didn’t have a Q and A for the mentors.
Brad Inman: We didn’t have a list to pick from.
Brad Inman: But I had five really unbelievable mentors in my life.
Brad Inman: And I picked up more later who influenced from an editor that taught me how to structure a story and put the lead on the top and the nut grab third and make it spicy and interesting and cut everything in half.
Brad Inman: You know, the whole verbal economics to a business development guy who was, who was kind of sleazy and not well regarded but taught me a lot about business to someone that told me how to present to a room full of publishers when I did an ebook company.
Brad Inman: And when someone would ask that hard question, I would go after them, you know, instead of listening.
Brad Inman: And I was next to this really great guy who was named Jared, he’s co-founder after he worked for me of Hotel Tonight, Jared Simon.
Brad Inman: And he would always say when that person would come in that big room and ask that really tough question that I’d get defensive and even aggressive.
Brad Inman: He would say that’s a great question and then he’d reach over and pinch my legs so hard so that I didn’t interject and participate in the conversation.
Brad Inman: You know, there are little things I learned, but I had, I had so many mentors, people that worked for me and people that I work for and then colleagues.
Brad Inman: and that helps.
Brad Inman: Now when people say I’m gonna go find one, you know, I’m gonna call Sherry Chris, which would be a good one.
Brad Inman: But I think you look around and you probably have someone that you’re mentor and you don’t even know it.
Brad Inman: They’re right there in front of you and you just don’t appreciate it.
Brad Inman: It’s like I always said, in all the business ads sometime you’re lucky in life where you get a swirl and that swirl is, you know, the whole ecosystem is aligned, the stars are aligned and in your middle of it, you don’t even appreciate it.
Brad Inman: And I always tell my team, the younger ones particularly I said this is one of those moments, enjoy this because it may never happen again.
Brad Inman: The rest of your life.
Brad Inman: I love that.
Patrick Kearns: I my, one of my pieces of advice for Sophie, you just mentioned Sherry Chris was find Sherry Chris and introduce yourself to her at Inman.
Patrick Kearns: That was like one of the, who should I meet?
Patrick Kearns: What should I do?
Patrick Kearns: Find Sherry Chris, introduce yourself to Sherry Chris.
Patrick Kearns: Like one of those people that’s just wonderful with their knowledge, your time and exceptionally kind.
Patrick Kearns: Yeah.
Patrick Kearns: And she’s one of those that gives more than you take, which, you know, unfortunately, a lot of people aren’t like that, but she’s one of those.
Patrick Kearns: Yeah.
Brad Inman: How about we end with some rapid fire questions?
Patrick Kearns: How do you feel about that?
Brad Inman: Yeah.
Brad Inman: Do it.
Patrick Kearns: So the only rules here are that you can’t think you just have to answer.
Patrick Kearns: OK.
Brad Inman: OK, Patrick, do you want to start us off?
Patrick Kearns: Sure.
Patrick Kearns: What’s your favorite story you’ve ever published?
Brad Inman: And was it by me next?
Patrick Kearns: OK.
Patrick Kearns: You could interview any famous real estate figure dead or alive on stage at the next Inman conference.
Patrick Kearns: Who are you interviewing?
Brad Inman: Definitely Gary Keller.
Patrick Kearns: I love it.
Patrick Kearns: Well, will it happen is the question.
Brad Inman: I don’t know.
Brad Inman: We invite him every time we, we had one epic interview that goes down in history.
Patrick Kearns: How was my, my first Inman conference was that a Gary Keller interview so legendary?
Brad Inman: Yeah.
Brad Inman: And it really was powerful because people were split 50/50.
Brad Inman: Some thought I was evil and others thought Gary was evil.
Brad Inman: So it tells you about kind of like everything in society.
Brad Inman: But yeah, that was epic.
Brad Inman: And I would, I would, the guy is just kind of amazing and he for me is a very challenging interview.
Brad Inman: A lot of these people are pretty easy to interview.
Brad Inman: And I don’t like to intimidate or bully, but I like to ask hard questions and, but I gave up the stage three times which you’re never supposed to do as an interviewer.
Brad Inman: One was to Gary Keller.
Brad Inman: He just kind of took command, one was to Barbara Corcoran who leaned over and said I met your wife which she oh anyway, it doesn’t matter.
Brad Inman: And the other one was Barry Diller, who you don’t ever take the mic away from him.
Brad Inman: So, and once they take the mic away, then there’s no one intervening and they can use your platform and your stage and your audience to say whatever they want.
Brad Inman: All three of them said brilliant stuff.
Brad Inman: So it didn’t matter.
Brad Inman: But those are just three anecdotes that of the hundreds and hundreds of people I’ve interviewed where I felt like,, 00, another one was Kara Swisher.
Brad Inman: She took the mic away from me.
Brad Inman: She said I dress like,, Barry Manilow.
Brad Inman: It was the first opening I interviewed her many times but she opened by saying, oh, you look like Barry Manilow.
Brad Inman: And then it became our stick where every time she came because I like to dress up.
Brad Inman: She would make some funny comment about how I was dressed.
Patrick Kearns: So there are four of them, I guess.
Patrick Kearns: What’s the angriest you’ve ever made a real estate executive or source in a story or an interview question?
Brad Inman: You don’t have to name names.
Patrick Kearns: But do you have an anecdote of somebody getting real mad at?
Brad Inman: You?
Patrick Kearns: Got so many Patrick, I, I, yeah, I have so many.
Brad Inman: I once was kind of, I was on the ed side.
Brad Inman: I really wasn’t on the business side.
Brad Inman: I’m an entrepreneur.
Brad Inman: So I, I love the business side, but I always had someone selling and, but often the biz side will say to the editorial team, come with us, we’re going to go talk to someone they need and they’re criticizing Inman and La la la.
Brad Inman: And I walked in this meeting.
Brad Inman: It was a big, big franchise.
Brad Inman: Well, it’s just tell it was cold banker and the executors are all there and you can just tell they didn’t really like me and, and I am controversy I make my own bed, right?
Brad Inman: If there’s bugs in it, I’m the one that got them out of the woods.
Brad Inman: And,, so they business side was saying we’d like to do this and this and when we need to ask editorial, they asked editorial and they said we need you to sign a piece of paper saying that or, or publicly say not to sign a piece but that you support the franchise business model.
Brad Inman: And it was about this awkward thing.
Brad Inman: Am I gonna say yes.
Brad Inman: And I kind of, you know, walked around it a little and said, well, you know, la, la la and, and I said, well, I, I don’t think I can, I’m not gonna go out here tomorrow and probably, oh, I support the franchise businessman.
Brad Inman: I don’t think I ever had an opinion about it.
Brad Inman: I ate a lot of mcdonald’s and that’s a franchise businessman.
Brad Inman: I never thought Franchising was bad.
Brad Inman: It was just a weird question but it was very hostile moment, you know, in that meeting, where,, I don’t know where they thought I didn’t or I think it was because I always supported the entrepreneurs because we always said it’s a big tenant Inman.
Brad Inman: And everybody’s welcome.
Brad Inman: And I think when you welcome back in the day, if you welcome the innovators, you were presumably against the traditional business model.
Brad Inman: And I, I don’t, I never woke up any day of my life against a traditional.
Brad Inman: I don’t think it entered my mind.
Brad Inman: So that guy was really mad at me before I walked in there and I think it proved his point.
Brad Inman: And,, that, you know, I wasn’t part of the, because there was an old, the old way it was and n, kind of wrote the script here is you had to be like you had to, like, sign up for the way things are, which is why the DOJ and the FTC and lawsuits.
Brad Inman: And that was the problem.
Brad Inman: You know, this, you want to call it a cabal, you want to call it collusion, you want to call it Cooperation, whatever you want to call it a good name or a bad name.
Brad Inman: It was that very idea.
Brad Inman: This is locked and loaded.
Brad Inman: No one can touch it and don’t mess with us.
Brad Inman: And if you mess with us, we’re going to boycott you.
Brad Inman: We’re gonna, you know, I’ve been boycotted so many times and every time we got a boycott publicly, our subscriptions increased, our readership increased because it meant what we were covering that.
Brad Inman: They didn’t like that, they were boycotting us.
Brad Inman: So, you know, you just have to defy your critics and sometimes, you know, rapid fire.
Brad Inman: That wasn’t very rapid fire.
Brad Inman: I’m apologizing.
Brad Inman: I let I let you talk.
Brad Inman: I think you’ve earned it.
Patrick Kearns: , in the last second here, plug the new venture, what’s going on?
Brad Inman: Talk a little bit about longevity.
Brad Inman: Media.
Brad Inman: Why should people pay attention?
Patrick Kearns: Well, I need to plug a bunch of them, found New York found, check them out.
Brad Inman: , I’m also involved in climate check, which is,, an enterprise that’s giving again, democratizing climate data giving to the public.
Brad Inman: The third one is longevity.
Brad Inman: I have everything I could possibly want in my life.
Brad Inman: I have a beautiful wife.
Brad Inman: I have wonderful kids.
Brad Inman: I have five grandchildren.
Brad Inman: I have a few nickels in the bank.
Brad Inman: And,, I, my whole quest is how do I live longer and evade the grim reaper.
Brad Inman: And in that process I realized, wow, here’s another industry, the elite, arrogant doctors, the PhDs on one end and the Charlatans and the crazies on the other end promising the fountain of youth and there’s the Inman Lane at anything I’ve ever done, you know, credible journalism.
Brad Inman: So what we start with an event we’re doing it March 15th 16th in Palm Beach.
Brad Inman: And I don’t need to promote anymore because it’s one of those, you know, the, this, as I tell the team, the stars are line gang.
Brad Inman: , we have almost 1000 regs.
Brad Inman: We can only handle 1000.
Brad Inman: We’re two weeks out.
Brad Inman: It’s going to be a home run the public, just like real estate.
Brad Inman: Back in 96 they needed an independent voice from the NAR and similarly here the public is starved for independent, credible information.
Brad Inman: We got all the best and the brightest coming like we always try to do and so check with me in March 16-17 because I have no clue how it’s going to go and what people are going to ask.
Brad Inman: But that’s my new venture.
Brad Inman: It’s called Live Long Summit.
Brad Inman: I have no doubt it’s going to be a success.
Brad Inman: It sounds awesome.
Patrick Kearns: You two are great.
Brad Inman: I love how you you look good.
Patrick Kearns: You, you, you, you’re good interviewers, you’re not intimidating and you let me talk.
Brad Inman: I love that.
Patrick Kearns: Thanks Brad.
Brad Inman: Well, you were super interesting.
Brad Inman: It was a pleasure to have you on and it was just so amazing to talk with you.
Patrick Kearns: I appreciate it.
