Momentum Episode 40:
How Automation Gives Real Estate Agents Their Time Back

What if real estate agents could stop fighting with spreadsheets and software and finally focus on serving their clients? Today, we're talking with Gabriel Mariash, founder of Top Hat Contracts, who used no-code tools and Jotform Enterprise to replace five different platforms and transform the entire contract and onboarding process for real estate teams. From automating approvals to simplifying compliance, Gabriel shows how the right no-code technology can turn hours of administrative work into minutes and give agents the freedom to run their business, not their busy work. Welcome to Momentum, a podcast by Jotform where we talk about the technology, productivity tips, insights, and best practices that help us move forward in business and in life. Let's get started.

Three, two, one.

Maintaining momentum.

Hi, Gabe. Welcome to the show. It's so great to have you on. I'm really looking forward to this conversation and diving into all of the nitty-gritty details of the real estate business, and specifically your company, Top Hat Contracts.

Hey, Patrick. It's great to be here. I'm really excited to talk about everything. I've been in the real estate industry for a little over six years now, which for some folks doesn't sound like a long time, but in that time I've written more contracts than most people see in their careers. Especially during COVID, I wrote multiple thousands of contracts a year, and there was no simplified system to get it going. So I started a company and found Jotform to be a pretty helpful tool in facilitating pretty much everything I did leading up to writing the contracts.

Right on. Were you a real estate agent before that?

Yes. I started as an agent in 2018 after I bought my house and thought, "Wow, that was really cool and easy." It seemed easy at the time. It wasn't actually easy behind the scenes, but I had a buddy who said, "Hey, we're looking for someone to join our team. We're a regional leader. Come aboard and we'll bring you on." So I became a real estate agent and really enjoyed it. I did that until COVID started slowing things down, as everybody experienced. That shifted me more into being around the house, as we all did. In the industry, there's a role called a transaction coordinator. So I took on that role and started writing contracts for a large team, and then for individuals outside the team in the same brokerage. It just sort of evolved from there. Over the years, I've written thousands and thousands of contracts.

The big challenge was always getting all the information and making sure it was accurate for all the parties involved. When we're talking about something with a lot of bullet points, it's natural to misspeak or turn two bullet points around. In the industry, that can be a big no-no. Creating a recorded path and being able to customize everything on the fly sort of brought me to Jotform in the first place. It was between Jotform and Google Sheets, and Jotform offered a lot more flexibility in making it a much more user-positive experience. Google Sheets was more about capturing the information you need and getting it out there. Jotform seemed more focused on making it nice, getting the information, and making the user experience the focus rather than the data. I found that to be a really positive experience.

I started rolling with it, and people were saying, "How do you do this?" Then someone would ask, "Do you think we could build something like this?" I'd build it and they'd never use it, but there was satisfaction in having it as a tool in their tool belt. A lot of agents told me, "I tell clients I can do this even though they never need me to." It's nice to be able to say, "Here it is." That flexibility and the ability to say, "Can we do this? Yeah, we probably can," really kept me with Jotform. When you used Jotform, it still said jotform.com. I started a company for the transaction coordinator work and wanted my company name there. I talked to Jotform, and they said, "We have this enterprise user platform." It's just grown from there.

Good on you. You must have had a great real estate agent, because I feel like the sign of a great agent is making it feel like it was easy.

Yes, I did. We had a really positive experience, and I thought, "That was so great. Let me go into the industry." It's a very challenging industry.

Yeah, I could imagine. It seems like there's a lot you have to deal with behind the scenes and so many things you have to coordinate to make everything flow and work properly.

Definitely. Real estate agents are taught how to pass the real estate exam, which has nothing to do with doing the real work of a real estate sale. Imagine getting a driver's license and never having gotten in a car. The concept is wild.

So, what I discovered was the building blocks I had put into my Jotforms were also turning into a bit of a training template.

Mhm.

Someone who knew nothing about driving a car could get in and see a checklist of things to do. Instead of driving a car, it was selling a home or writing a contract. That was an eye-opening moment: people were going to use this as an education tool as well. We could explore that.

Yeah, that's a whole different avenue I didn't even expect. That's pretty cool.

Jotform said, "Hey, we build stuff for education," which is way more than these folks wanted. They meant school stuff. But that was really cool. Every time I'm looking for some sort of advanced feature, Jotform says, "Oh, we did that."

Yeah. With AI, I don't know what they're going to do next. Well, I know what they did: Enterprise 2.0. They're like, "Hey, check it out."

Yeah, yeah. It just came out.

Yeah, yesterday. Exactly. This has been a very busy Jotform week for me these past two weeks. I met with a tech expert, who connected me with another person, and now I'm going to be learning about selling enterprise seats.

Oh, okay.

I really think Jotform—I just love Jotform. It's funny. I can't speak highly enough about them.

So, you joined for the reseller program?

I'm about to. I'm going to discover what that's about. I have my own website, and now my company is about to go public—launch, or open launch. I plan to have a resource there because one evolution of my company was going from doing transaction coordinator work and using Jotform for that to setting up Jotform for other people to do it the way they were already doing it.

Mhm.

One of the big barriers to use was that successful folks, particularly those who need bigger resources, don't want to mess with their system because it's so successful. They'd say, "Oh, that sounds great. I can see where that would be great. No, thanks." I'd ask, "Well, what do you mean? You just said that would be great and you would like it, but you don't want it." I workshopped it with a couple of people, including my wife, and realized these folks don't need to change anything because it's working. The real estate industry is very paper-and-pencil. People literally carry around notebooks, and realtors walk in with paper and write notes and paperwork. I was saying, "You don't need to do that anymore. You can have everything on your phone in an app, and you can get data verified by your clients so you don't make a mistake." Everyone says, "Oh, I need to do that." I was at an event where everyone in the office had access to the software or tech I put together, and they all said, "I know who you are. I just don't use you." I realized I need to be more proactive about getting to them. No one should have to call me.

Yeah.

I'm a vendor at this point.

It's hard to make that change, especially in something as delicate as real estate, where people are apprehensive about it. But I feel like everybody is eventually going to have to go that direction, whether they like it or not.

Yeah, you're kind of leading the charge.

To that end, I built an electronic transaction coordinator. It's a separate system, very plug-and-play tech, through a company called Claris, an Apple plug-and-play building platform. I know nothing about programming, but I have a team that does amazing work. The other side of my company is Jotform, with all the forms and everything. Then I have this electronic transaction coordinator we're finishing up, which will handle transactions the way folks are already doing them, just online. I think that's going to be one of my big selling points. The software is separate from Jotform, but Jotform will feed into it. When I build forms, I'm building results that can be loaded into my system, and my programmers are ready for my Jotforms to be transferred over. I don't want to pay anyone to build these forms. I can do that with Jotform, but I can't build software.

It's nice how easily they connect, though. That was pretty cool.

Yeah.

That's a great segue into the main thing I wanted to talk to you about today. Coming from a no-programming background and using no-code tools, how would you define no-code to somebody who's unfamiliar with the term?

I like to use the example of Legos. We're going to put together the wall that you want, and I have all the Lego blocks at my disposal.

Mhm.

One of those blocks is a simple form answer, short answer, or long answer. These are all plug-and-play tools. Everybody can build a wall with multiple holes; that's your choice. A lot of people operate with a weird amount of liability, but I think that's due to a lack of knowledge and a lack of available tools to fill those gaps. One big thing is that a list of details going into a contract is generally taken over the phone or in an in-person conversation. Then you put those details into your contract, and the client has to read 30 pages and make sure everything you discussed was correct.

Mhm.

That's a tough spot for both parties. Ninety-nine percent of the time there are no problems; it's just that one percent. Jotform forms allowed me to say, "Hey, let's look at what we originally thought. Here's when you submitted this form, and it went back to you with the details. You looked them over and said, 'These are perfect,' and yet that was still wrong." People make mistakes. There's insurance for it. Generally speaking, no one has a problem that ruins their career, at least not in my experience, thank God. That would be tragic. A lot of times, what people don't know saves them. You discover something and think, "That's liability on me now? How do I stop that?" It's an interesting line between the services real estate agents have to offer, the services they're supposed to provide, and the way they're supposed to do it. I think back to one of my first mentors. I had two sales going off at the same time. He said, "I bet you feel like you're on cloud nine." I said, "I do. I'm getting two commissions at once. This is amazing." I was fresh in the industry, and these were leads I brought in, so I didn't even have to pay them out. He asked, "What are you going to do tomorrow?" I said, "I don't know, go back to calling people." He said, "Exactly. You don't have any business lined up. If you keep doing that, you're going to fail." It felt like success, but the trick of the industry is there is no success path.

Yeah.

There's nothing you can follow that ensures you're on track. That's unique to the real estate industry, but also to any industry where every person is their own boss.

Yeah.

Very few people selling homes are directly employed as W-2 employees by the brokerage. They're 1099ers, which allows that whole commission structure to work. It's still a bit of a wild, wild west industry.

Yeah. You mentioned it earlier, but I wanted to go back to why you think some people are apprehensive about switching things over and going to a no-code or digital solution, away from paper.

For active realtors specifically, it's time. Real estate agents have a ton of tech thrown at them, from client management programs to marketing programs, video programs, home tours, and more. They get constant emails like many people do, but realtors are particularly susceptible because they don't have anyone telling them, "This is garbage." They're constantly being hit with, "Try this, try this, try this," and if it works, great, you're successful. As the tech evolves, companies like Zillow and Realtor.com basically say to agents, "You want the people interested in the property you're listing to talk to you? Well, you have to pay us." You understand they're putting effort into getting people to their website, but then they ask an absurd amount, and you think, "That's not fair." They say, "Fine, we'll sell it to someone else." That's a tough moment. The tech involved in getting people to give you information is a whole service you have to deal with. Then you say, "Why don't you build something that saves time on the other stuff?" That sounds great, but success breeds success in this industry, and that means you're busy, physically walking indoors with people a lot of the time.

Mhm.

What, do you stand there on a home tour and write up a form? No, you need an assistant for that, or someone like my company who comes in and says, "Let's talk about what you do. I'll shadow you and build the form while you're doing your work."

Yeah.

I literally had an agent tell me, "I want you to walk around with me and make my questions into a form." We did that. He told the client, "I'm implementing some new tech." They thought it was really cool, and I said, "Pretend I'm not here," and recorded everything.

Yeah.

That was a lot of fun. I like to build with purpose. When I started, I'd say, "Let's just build something random today," and I was building a bunch of garbage. I felt like I was wasting my time. I'd show people something, and they'd say, "What? That's neat." Finally, I started asking people, "What's some information you're going to get today? What type of information are you capturing during your meeting?" Then I'd text them that evening: "Check out this form that you can fill out when you get in your car afterward, so you don't have to stop at the client's or anything." They'd say, "Oh my gosh, that's so cool." They see it as simple—and it is simple to do—but it's complex to master efficiently. If I'm a realtor, I can spend two hours trying to build a form for work I'm already doing, or spend two hours trying to get new clients. What's going to win? Bringing in money. Eventually, you get to the point where you have a lot of clients and need someone to help. That helper can start working on those forms. That's how I started working under someone. I got tired of answering the phone all the time and said, "Let me just shoot you a form for that." Then I have the information and can play music, pet my dogs, and work. I don't have to be quiet and focused just to get the information. It really changed the dynamic of working from home for me, which was nice. A lot of people just aren't able to prioritize the time to do it.

Yeah, that makes so much sense. What would you say a typical workflow looks like for an agent or a brokerage using traditional tools?

Traditionally, the agent is either on a team or by themselves, and their actual process varies from person to person. It's a personable industry. They generally get a new client and foster that client until they're close to being able to purchase, because there's nothing worse than going into your dream home and hearing, "Oh, you can't afford that. Sorry." Agents try to help buyers realize their actual buying power, which is a hard moment. Thankfully, that's for the lender to deal with. The agent gets an idea of it right away, but usually doesn't say anything. They'll say, "Let's connect with a lender." Outside of a cash purchase, that's different, but most people don't do that. The joke is that the realtor sells the dream and the lender sells the reality. I might tell you there's a program to get in there, and your lender says, "There isn't. You're not getting it. This is your budget."

Yeah.

Depending on the buyer's situation, a lot of people can say, "I want to choose this as my maximum," versus being told, "This is your maximum."

Yep.

A lot of times it depends on age, the amount of money they've saved, and their current job position. It's cool that the market is shifting to accommodate more independent workers. It used to be that if you were working as a 1099, you needed a good, solid history to get a lender to say, "Yeah, let's trust this." Now there are special programs lenders can use to say, "We're in good shape."

Yeah.

That's really cool.

Yeah, that is cool. I didn't even know that, actually.

It's nice. That's a relatively new feature because they started seeing 1099s everywhere and thought, "These people have tons of money. We want them to buy a house." It's not the worst thing in the world, but that's what it looks like. The agent fosters that situation. Depending on the agent, they might meet in person. I always liked talking in person and getting that dynamic going. I didn't care if they hadn't talked to a lender. I'd say, "Let's go tour a house today. I don't know if you can afford it. It's on the market, nobody's living there. Let's check it out. It's in the neighborhood you like. Let's talk."

Yeah.

A lot of people get distracted on the phone. When you're in person in an empty house, we're talking real estate now.

The agent does their magic in the moment, whether it's phone calls or something else, and fosters that relationship as much as possible or as much as needed. Some clients say, "Cool, we'll call you when we want to see other houses." Some say, "We're going to talk to 65 other people." In my county, most buyers interview five agents before making a selection, which is very weird. Most places, it's the first person they meet. If you happen to get that appointment because you paid for it through Zillow, awesome. Or your team sent you out there, perfect. You're generally not going to have a problem working with that person moving forward because you've already got that relationship going. But that's not always the case. Once they've found the perfect house, this is where I come in. There's a ton of tech leading up to this point, a huge suite of tools that are way more advanced than most agents understand for fostering client relationships. The CRM market is huge, and there are some really cool players doing things I like to borrow and build into Jotform, like a repeating workflow.

Because they have the tools.

That's where my company, forms, or data come in. You have about 72 pieces of information you need to finish a contract that's ready to be submitted to another party. Getting that information into the computer usually involves the agent talking on the phone or emailing back and forth with their client, or an admin doing the work, depending on the team size or workflow. Then that gets put in the contract. The contract is mailed to the client through a signing service. They look at the contract, read all those details, and sign. Then two weeks later they come back with a million questions, and you're like, "But the time to do that was back when we..."

It's okay. The realtor's job is also to go over the bulk of everything in there. Agents do it in various ways. I used to ask my clients, "Do you want to meet and walk through everything, or do you want to hit me with questions?" Only two people ever said, "Let's walk through the entire contract." I said, "Sure," and we'd grab a coffee and do that. Most people say, "I can read," then send questions about things that don't make sense, are repetitive, or contradictory. That's my favorite. There are a lot of things in the forms that contradict themselves. That's where I started needing an efficient source to get all that information. Jotform's little tools for things like start date, finish date, and names really came in. Now it has transformed this contract data into data tables.

Jumping into the nitty-gritty, what was the original problem you were trying to solve when you started using Jotform? Did you start on Enterprise, or did you start as a free user?

Basically, I wanted to make sure the data I was putting into contracts was what the agent wanted. I was a licensed realtor and could write contracts. When a mistake happens, who's the first person they're going to call? The person who wrote it. I'd say, "No, you told me 10/7. I put 10/7. You meant 11:07? You didn't say that." There was enough back and forth that I thought, "Okay, this is crazy." So I started emailing them, "Just to summarize our facts, here's what we just talked about." Having to write that up every time was a real pain. I wondered if there was something out there. Someone mentioned plug-and-play form sites, so I Googled it.

And there came Jotform. I thought, "What is this? Oh, this is pretty cool." I built a few forms and right away I was using it. It was really easy. I graduated high school in '02, so the internet was around, but I wasn't focused on tech. A lot of my friends were; I grew up in Silicon Valley, but I knew nothing about programming. Here I was thinking, "I built a form and it looks like a real thing on the internet." It had its own web link and all this stuff. People were blown away and said, "You're the IT guy." I said, "I'm not an IT guy." I understand technology, but I can't troubleshoot it. Then I'd run into a wall, and they'd say, "This is kind of what it looks like you're experiencing. As an Enterprise user, we could build that feature." I thought, "Excuse me, what do you mean?" That led me away from the cheap and useful accounts. I never hit my maximums except for one or two months, but the unlimited factor was cool. I was deleting things to make sure I had enough space, and going unlimited meant I could just keep it all. Being able to reference the information people gave me was a huge benefit.

Yeah, someone could say, "I said this," and you can say, "Actually, you didn't. Here's what it says." Or they might say, "That was my mistake."

Mhm.

That was a very helpful tool that kept me on Jotform. Then agents started asking for information about contracts. I was playing around in reports one day and, because I was capturing property ZIP codes, I managed to create a report of how many transactions were written in each ZIP code.

Wow.

I sent that to a team leader, and he said, "Oh my God, this literally defines my return on investment in Zillow and Realtor.com, because I was purchasing them all. I need you to email me this every month." I wondered if I could do that, and there were Jotform reports. I thought, "Sweet." Being able to manipulate the data in contracts never seemed important at first, but when you're looking at avenues of income, it's helpful to see which contracts resulted from a particular purchase. You can't really look at phone calls or even new clients. I could get a new client on a platform today, and they might not buy for five years or three years. I'll foster them, but the other ZIP code I paid for has people buying all the time. I'm writing contracts over there every day.

Mhm.

So I should focus more purchases there. It became a really cool tool. Not only can I make sure you're keeping track of your data, but you can manipulate it to get a higher return on investment. That's when a real estate agent's eyes generally glaze over. They're like, "Huh?" No one told them to worry about this stuff.

Yeah.

No one said, "You're your own business." Generally, there's an office full of people doing all this work. As a realtor, you're flying on your own. Giving these people business tools was a unique feature. People would say, "Wow, that's really neat." I'd explain how it applies to their business, and they'd say, "Wow, that actually does seem helpful."

Definitely a sink-or-swim industry, that's for sure.

Yeah, very much so. There's a two-year recession rate of 60 or 70 percent; we lose them. Some people get their license because they have a certain sale or two. If you live in my county and grew up here—which I did not—we're a very wealthy county. There are parts where no home is under a million dollars. You sell one or two of those homes and make $60,000 to $80,000 that year. You don't even have to be good; you just have to know someone. Then people say, "I don't know anyone buying houses anymore. I'm going to get a different job. I'm spending a lot more money." It costs at least three to five grand a year to be a realtor.

I'm rearranging my company goal so I can slot in as a software vendor to brokerages. That lets Jotform be the front end of the transaction and my software be the back end. Jotform allows me to offer a full-picture service: "You've got all this other tech, but you have this big gap right here. Using my software, you can ensure your new agents have everything on time. If they didn't, there's a written record of where they messed up, and you can sit down and talk about it. You could have been sued or lost this contract." People don't realize something as simple as being late with a deposit can mean the seller could claim it and collect against you if it's a large enough amount. There are many real estate contracts that aren't technically active because of deposits, but realistically it doesn't hit a wall because it rolls forward and everything works. Agents smooth it over, but sometimes the deposit doesn't come in, and that kills the deal. Then the client usually drops you as an agent, as they should, because you didn't do your job right.

Yeah, yeah.

It's wild. The irony is the person who gets in trouble is the listing agent, not the person who didn't make their client do the right thing. It's the other person.

Yeah.

Mhm.

It's why I love them.

Speaking of those software tools, I was reading through your case study, and you said you replaced five different programs using Jotform?

Yeah. We were using three real-estate-specific software tools, plus emails and text messaging. I'm not even counting calls. We were old-schooling it. The tools out there aren't really designed for the contract side, but you could use them to write a note on the file and tag someone in. That note would have all the details I was capturing in my Jotform instead. Logging into these things, getting to the file, and finding the note was impossible. You can't do that on your phone five minutes after a tour; you need a computer. I said, "This just collects it on a table. Here it is, here's your table, and here's a little app for you." Those systems hit a wall when you had your client. They were designed for other things, and you could use them for the rest, but not as intended.

Yeah. That was why I said, "Forget emailing me; text me." People would call and ask, "Can I fill out the form?" I'd say, "Yeah, you're driving. I'll type it up on my computer and send it to you once we've spoken." Getting information back and forth and knowing where to look was difficult. Was it in the CRM or the contract system? It's not a contract yet, so don't put it in the contract system. Don't put it in the CRM because it's not about getting your client. People are also hesitant to open up access to everybody because these are private clients, often friends and family they've worked with for years. A lot of platforms charge by the user. Enterprise comes with five seats, which is a similar concept. Most platforms charge extra for anyone other than the agent to use them. I can build something that anybody can use, or put a password on it, make it invite-only, or whatever. You don't have to tell someone they can't use a form because it costs too much. In building my own software, I said there can be up to eight to twelve users on every file at no extra cost, specifically because of that.

Wow. Is that what you're using now for your CRM, your own software, or are you using Jotform for that?

I built a simple CRM in Jotform.

Okay.

I'm a white-label company. Right now I have three clients that I don't need to market to because we basically have exclusivity. I'm not theoretically using a CRM. I have a huge pile of business cards from people I've met, and at some point I'm going to reach out. I probably wouldn't use Jotform for that because it doesn't have the auto-mailers and everything.

Mhm.

I could probably build a workflow to send an email if they haven't responded, but I could also plug them into the CRM and it would do that for me.

Yeah.

What I'm using Jotform for internally is forms for the company. Even though I'm the only person in my company right now, I'm constantly reminded that I'll have staff and they'll have to do things. Every time I wonder how to put something together, I build a Jotform to capture the information. I usually can. Now with Jotform AI, I play a little game where I workshop the form in ChatGPT, ask it to write JSON for it, give that to Jotform's AI, and it spits out my form. It's going really well.

Yeah.

It's a really neat workaround for me having to build much. I go in and clean it up, but it does a pretty good job.

Yeah, yeah. I think that's the way you're supposed to do it now.

That's kind of the way that—

Admittedly, you workshop it over there and then bring it over here.

ChatGPT once asked me, because I have this whole project of forms I want to build, "Do you want to make a JSON?" I literally said, "What is a JSON?" I had no clue. That's how little programming I still know. This was a few months ago.

Yeah, yeah.

I've never had to learn programming. At one point I thought about it, but with Jotform I didn't have to.

Yeah.

With the team of programmers, I looked into exploring education in Claris because it's free, just like Jotform. But it was a lot. I was going to build a little test app, and it took me a month and a half just to add the print option in a menu. I thought, "What the heck?" I can't do this. I decided I wasn't going to do it anymore; it was too much. It's possible to get fast at that kind of stuff, but I don't have the patience. I'm not going to be there.

I did the Jotform education programs, and those were helpful. Even as a relatively experienced builder, they'd mention a fancy feature or something, and I'd think, "I've never looked into that before. Oh, that's how you do that one thing." The whole thing wasn't necessarily targeted toward advanced users, but there's always some advanced feature that pops out.

Yeah.

That was cool. It was nice to get those features on my own time and at my own pace, with videos. I'm especially unique because I use Jotform for my company, but most of my Jotform products are for other people's businesses.

Mhm.

A lot of times when I talked to case workers or case studies to fix or troubleshoot something, they'd ask, "Who in your department?" I'd say, "It's someone completely outside my business." It was unique because I'm basically capturing data for others. I don't need most of this data. I'll keep it for records and legal purposes, but I don't need to access it daily or build it so I can conveniently pull it up on my phone unless there's a problem. The only time I get involved is when there's an issue. I got a call one day at four in the afternoon saying, "My client didn't get the copy of the form he signed." I pulled up the Jotform web version on my phone and looked at it. I said, "I see here—no, no, no, there's a mistype in their email." Thankfully, it wasn't a program problem. It was human error. There's only so much I can do.

I feel like that's what I hear a lot: many of the things you're using Jotform for are just in case.

Just in case.

Yeah. I have to make sure all that stuff is backed up, especially contracts. It's important to have a legal way of looking back in time and saying, "No, wait, we did this." It's recorded, written, emailed, and back and forth. Here you see.

Yeah.

So, yeah.

Continuing with the way you're using Jotform, what would you say are some of the most impactful workflows you've built?

To make the contract process a little easier?

Probably the best one is buyer agency. There's a regulation that you can't show a home or walk in the door until you've signed paperwork acknowledging that we're doing this legally.

Mhm.

You represent me and all that good stuff. There were a lot of lawsuits about buyer representation, commissions, and all that a few years ago, which was in the news. It's pretty much shaken out to being exactly the same as before, just a trip. Now people are a little more upfront about it. Buyer's agents used to say, "I work for free," but in reality, the only person paying is your client. Just because the money isn't going directly from them to you doesn't mean they're not paying for you. The goal was to make it clearer, but they just made it the same and had you sign in another spot. Now there are people who won't review the paperwork before you get there, especially at low-cost properties or with investors. They don't want to sign this allegiance to you until they know you're going to show up. So I built something where they can sign it right there in person at the door. "You want me to open this door? I need you to sign on my phone." I just workshopped how to make that a smoother process, and how they can sign on their own device, too. It's a neat feature, but more complex, so I don't know if I'll deploy it. In-person signing of agency documents is a big one. The second big one is having a written record for your clients to approve.

You know, that's not something most agents do. The written record usually starts with the contract.

Mhm.

Instead, I've broken out the contract terms to make them clear: contract start date, contract finish date. You don't have to look at paragraph three, section 2A, to find the start date. It's right there in an email. Having that transparency is one of the top features.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's huge. Can you share a before-and-after example of where automation had a dramatic impact? What were you using before, with all the different software tools and ways of getting information, versus now, where you've automated a lot of that process?

One of the biggest things is having a fixed schedule. Before, it was almost like a 24/7 opportunity to contact me.

Mhm.

Now, with automation, I can route it to someone willing to work on Sunday at 10 p.m., or whoever needs to.

That routing automation is a really big process and relieves a lot of stress for my clients. A lot of realtors answer their phone whenever it rings; they don't have a choice. Now they know, "I can send that over to whoever it's supposed to be." It gives them back their time, which a lot of people want. That's why they're in the industry: to get their personal time back and have control of it. This gives them that time chunk back.

Mhm.

Yeah. One other question related to that: how do you stay compliant with all the regulations? How do you stay on top of that kind of stuff?

I continue to train as if I were an active agent. I go to updated contract regulations and things like that, and I stay on top of it. I also have a partner who helps me. She's not a partner in the company, but she works on the state boards. Anytime I have a real compliance question about whether something is allowed, I'll text her with the scenario and ask what she thinks. She'll say, "You can't do this," or, "This has to be covered, but otherwise you're fine." She jokes that sometimes she's sitting in meetings and someone says something, and she thinks, "Man, I would love to talk about your company." She's ready to offer a solution, but as an advisor on the board, she can't say, "Hey, you can use this company." The company isn't vetted through the board. She's got her board hat on and says, "There may be a solution out there that you can..." Part of that is that I'm not ahead of people until I have my electronic transaction coordinator in place. Once I have both sides, she'll put me in meetings with the board and say, "Here's what I've done. Here's how it can be adjusted to each client's needs." Whenever new compliance comes out, you can tell me and I'll adjust it. As a full, closed-off company, I can do that, and on the transaction side you have all this stuff as well. Jotforms alone wouldn't be enough to get in there and manage half your transaction.

Yeah.

Well, I guess that's a good place to end it. I can't thank you enough for coming on the show. Any parting words of wisdom for anybody considering a no-code option or automating their processes, who's in a similar situation to where you were before?

Definitely. I'd say start small. Just like anything, pick one thing and do it multiple times. The first time you build it, it won't be perfect. If you sat down to build a birdhouse, unless you've built them before, it's going to have rough edges. But it's still a birdhouse; a bird will still go to it. The agent will still use it, and your client will still use it. Don't be afraid of tech you haven't experienced yet. Also, test it out yourself. We all know what we're looking to experience for our clients. You're not looking for a no-code solution just for the heck of it; you're trying to do something. Imagine you're your client, as you should, and do it for yourself. See how it goes. When you say, "I'm using this new technology, it's Jotform," they'll see that in the email or web link from you. It's really cool; it does this, and all you have to do is this. Just try it out. If you're building a new feature, try it out, then delete or archive it so you don't lose your data. But really, just build it. Pick one and do it, and then do it again.

Yeah, solid advice.

Thank you so much for coming on the show. I really appreciate it. There were a lot of great nuggets of wisdom in there. If anybody in the Baltimore area needs a contract, reach out to Top Hat Contracts.

Absolutely. Top Hat will help you. If you're a licensed agent or involved in the industry in any way—TC, admin—I build for everybody. It's not specific to a single role, which is cool.

Perfect. Right on. Well, thank you again, Gabe.

Absolutely. Thanks, Patrick. Have a great one.

You too.