Peter Morris & Kathy Viard: How They Built a 1,800-Agent Brokerage Without Losing Their Culture

In this episode of Real Estate Unscripted™, Darryl Davis sits down with Peter Morris and Kathy Viard, co-owners of Signature Premier Properties, for a candid and deeply personal conversation about leadership, growth, and what it really takes to build a brokerage that lasts.

Founded in 2007 at the height of the housing crisis, Signature Premier didn’t start with a grand plan — it started with resilience, relationships, and a willingness to adapt. Today, the company has grown to over 1,800 agents across 23 offices on Long Island — all while maintaining a boutique, community-driven culture.

Peter shares how his background in construction and navigating one of the toughest markets shaped the foundation of the business, while Kathy opens up about the influence of her mother and the belief that “people need to know you care” — a principle that now defines the company’s culture.

Together, they reveal what most brokerages get wrong about growth, why culture is everything, and how their agents showed up for them in their most difficult moments.

This isn’t a polished success story — it’s the real story behind building something that lasts.

Transcript

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Some companies are built in easy markets. Others are built when things are uncertain, and that's where the foundation really matters. Peter Morris and Kathy Beard are the co-owners of Signature Premier Properties, one of Long Island's fastest growing real estate firms. But their story didn't start at the top. Peter came into real estate through construction, spending decades bringing homes to life, and developing a deep understanding of what it takes to build something that lasts. In 2007, during one of the toughest markets in recent history, he took that experience and launched signature not as a traditional brokerage, but as something more flexible, more community focused, and built to adapt. I learned from my mother early on that it, people need to know you care. And we and, and I think if you asked our agents, they let you know we care. Kathy's Path runs just as deep real estate has always been part of her life. Learning the business alongside her mother and growing into a leader known for building culture connection and a true sense of family within the company. She's also the driving force behind Signature Cares. Extending that impact far beyond transactions and into the communities they serve Together. They've built more than a successful brokerage. They've built a company grounded in relationships, resilience, and a belief that real estate at its core is about people finding home. In this episode, Kathy and Peter share what it takes to grow a business through challenging markets. How they've created a culture that attracts and retains agents, and why staying connected to your community is still the most powerful advantage in real estate. Let's dive into today's episode.

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Okay, are we live now? We are live. Alright. Hello folks. Welcome to another, uh, real Estate, unscripted with yours truly. And today we've got some, we got, uh, two incredible people that act as one company. Kathy Ra. Am I, Kathy, how do you say your last name? Sorry. I screw it up. Vard. Okay. And then Peter Morris, um, from Long Island, New York. A signature Premier Properties. I wanna give you guys just a, by the way, Peter and, and Kathy, thanks for being on this with us. Thank you for having us. Thanks for having us. We normally don't do things like this. Well, our comfort zone. I feel honored. Well, you guys look great. So, so you're off to a good start. And I'm just gonna add one thing to everybody. So we have, uh, two groups of people on this call. We have, um, brokers, managers, leaders of, of the industry, but we all, I also know that we have some agents on the call. So what I wanna say to the agents. Is that, and I say this on every one of these particular podcasts, is that you are a business within the business. And so what you're gonna hear from Kathy and Peter, some good business principles, and you should listen through this conversation as your own business owner and how can you adapt some of what they're sharing in your business? Okay? Now, Kathy and Peter are really powerful people and, and I'll tell you why. Because they, and, and please Kath, both of you, correct me if any of my stuff is wrong. Founded in 2007 in a small house in Huntington Village, Peter Morris launched the height of the housing crisis. Did I get that right? Pete Peter, is that right? Yeah, that's correct. What happened? That's, that's kind of cute. So you're in the house. Launching the worst time, worst time of the, alright, so then you joined Kathy as a co-owner, bringing the second generation real estate background. 'cause your mom was in real estate for 35 years. Uh, you grew from one agent to over 1800 agents, 23 offices spanning, uh, NASA Suffolk. Uh, along with, uh, you've got this independent non franchise model, which, you know, when you think about everybody just to grow, uh, from, from that, from 2017, 1800 agents, 23 offices, not as a franchise. That's powerful. Um, recognized by real trends as, uh, top brokerage, uh, for sides in 2023 Signature cares, uh, community division, supporting little, an uh, shell animal rescue, close to my heart. And my wife's St. Jude's Children Hospital, Ronald McDonald House and Peter. I'm, I'm worried about what I'm gonna say now or, or ask because you have a degree in psychology from Syracuse University. So now I feel like you're gonna be studying me every frigging moment here and, uh, I better be on my best behavior. All right. That degree was to get by college. Get through college. 'cause it was easy. It was easy. Oh, is that what it was? It was an easy degree. It was an easy degree. That's hysterical. Alright, so my first question for you guys is that you two are best friends and became business partners and, you know, that can be really sticky for people, um, when doing that. So how did you guys, was there ever a time where you were, you know, where it really tested the friendship or tested the business relationship? Uh, not really. No. No friendship. It's always been friendship first. Yes. We've said from day one, friendship first. And listen, most partnerships don't work. I've had partners in the past where it didn't work, but with Kathy, we've, we've always gotten along great. I mean, it's not like she hasn't been mad at me from time to time, but I don't, oh, that's really, you wanna hear one really good story. The only time I truly was mad at. I would love to hear, I'd actually pay for that when Bini Bini. Oh yeah, she was pissed. I was not, that's not a nice word. But the, um, Brian Bini had, I, I'm trained by Bini since forever. And he had, he was coming to New York and he knew that we were here and had a lot of people coming. So he had a private party for us. So we took our whole, I closed, we closed the whole company. I was like, you're closing the company down. Really? He did not wanna come. I was like, you're coming with us. And we went, we brought our attorneys, we brought everybody, our admin, our staff, everybody went into New York City. Um, we went to a two day webinar, a two day seminar. We were about an hour in my a DD started kicking in. He starts sitting in his chair. I'm like, I know you, dude. Sit down and listen. He is like, we're gonna go to Nobu for lunch. And I'm like, no, we're not. I'm not going to Nobu. We're gonna go to the cafeteria with the staff. And so then he starts going, you, you, you. And they all went, they went to Nobu and I did not, the se after lunch, the seminar goes on and he didn't come back. And I can remember texting him like, please don't embarrass me. They're having a private party for us. Can I tell him the real truth? We went on a bar crawl. He went on a bar crawl. Really? Oh right. Gets better. So now we're in our private party upstairs with the affinis and it's like, it's wow that Brian Baffini was having a party for us. Just saying, nice. Yeah. And um, and I'm like, okay, now I'm gonna have to apologize for him. 'cause you know, so, and then he comes in doing the wall crawl because they'd been at bark crawling. But he showed up. He showed up, and then he took everybody home and they didn't come back the next day. And I was mad. And I, I remember going in and saying that if we're not gonna do it right, we're not gonna do this. Now you're a big believer. And the couple admins and agents I brought with me, they're like, Kathy's gonna be mad. I'm like, she'll be fine. She'll be, she was mad as hell. That is the only time. But I will. And you can tell America today that you believe in Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. We have our own Danny Trainer here, Anthony Perotta. He's amazing. Nice. Very nice. Well be careful that you don't promote graffiti too much while you're talking to Darryl Davis because I'm gonna drive over to the office and smack you. Alright, so now you launch. So Darryll, come. Come on over. Have a big party for us and I'll get everybody. Oh, okay. So I gotta. You hear that, Jules? We gotta, we gotta pay, we gotta pay the big party for signature pay for play over here with, it's a pay for play. It's a pay Peter. I see. All right. So now let me time in our history that I was really, really angry. I, I, I don't really, we have a great friendship. Friendship first. We don't really, yeah. So let's go back to that as far as a partnership, because what you said, um, Peter is so true, is that, uh, uh, partnerships, you know, when you have a strong, uh, person leading, um, you know, it's hard sometimes for that person to share the spotlight or share the responsibilities or share anything. So yeah, partnerships really, um, are hit and miss. So what would you say the secret sauce in your partnership? Is it the friendship that, that keeps the partnership working so well? I think it's the friendship and the respect. Respect. I would say respect. I mean, Kathy does. Most of the work she does. Yeah, we do it together, but she does more the day-to-day and, you know, manages manages the managers. Um, so she takes 90% of stuff off my plate, which I'm so appreciative, but we're really, we are really both very hands-on. Mm-hmm. But I, I think the reason, like, I would never do this without Pete ever. If, if it were ever to come to that, I wouldn't be doing this. It's a together thing. We're in it together. Hmm. Awesome. Very great. Um, 2007. So, I mean, people that don't know, uh, especially some of the younger agents, that's when real estate just went in the toilet. Uh, 2000 6, 7 8 was really bad. Um, reverse, uh, property values were going down. Um, how did you guys deal with that? Like what, what was that like? Did that help you in some way or did it make it harder some way? And how did you get through that? It helped. Uh, I think it helped and it hurt both. It was a very stressful time. You know, my main income was building houses and I had a partner and he saw the writing on the wall. He's like, Pete, the bubble's gonna burst and I don't want to be set free. So I took over the construction company. I didn't want to hear it. I said, I thought it was gonna keep going and going. And, uh, he was right. And I got stuck with a lot of inventory and I had to get out. But I was always smart enough to know the market's a function of price. So I never held on, I dropped my prices, I took my hit, I started signature because I guess it was a whim 'cause I never really thought it would become anything. But I figured out if land was so hard to come by back then, that I wanted agents out there looking for lots for me, and I would give 'em the resale. And I had a lot of leads from all these houses I was building that I was able to give to the agents. So. And I had a lot of friends in the business, so I was able to start it list some of my own stuff that I found myself to save money because there was no money in the jobs because of the recession. And one next thing you know, a couple agents came over, then it was five, then it was 10, then it was 15. And really, he was so respected in the industry. We built a lot together before we were partners in signature. But you were respected. Everybody liked you. You were fair. You were honest. It was a, it was a recipe for success. It was a recipe for success. In all fairness. It was like a fraternity. It was like a little bit of a cult. I heard that until, uh. Until Kathy came in and made it respectable. It wasn't. It was so, so, so, actually, so it sounds like what you did was, so, because you were into the building and that just got hit because of the, the market, you say you, so you went to opening up an office, not with a commitment to building a big brand like you have now, but maybe it was even help your building to save some of the expenses, have agents finding property for you. So that was really the impetus. Yeah, to save on brokerage. I always gave, he still does. I, whoever found me, the listing, the land, I always gave the listing back. Okay. I still do it when I build, even if it's somebody from Douglas Elliman, I'll give it to Douglas Elliman. I don't care. That's always been my, that's the recipe. That's always been the recipe. Somebody finds you a lot, you give 'em the resale, but I also found a lot of my own land and I always kept my real estate license so. When you're losing money on houses and you got a half a million dollar house, you know, 20,000 is, could be a lot money. All the, all the profit in the job. So Got it. Interest. So interesting. A lot of my own stuff and um, I wanted agents out there really looking for deals for me. But you also were able to give agents the listings that you Yeah, I was able to give 'em the resales, which brought some agents, which brought the early nucleus over to Signature and I was able to give 'em a lot of buyer leads. Got it. Alright. I'm gonna jump to a different question 'cause I try to follow my heart when I have these conversations. And how is it, how does it feel for you guys personally, um, to have 1800 agents now? I mean, to go from a totally different model than when you decided to open up in 2007 and now seeing this huge blessing that you have. Um, how do you feel about that? It still takes my breath away that it's a fact. It's hard to believe. Hard to believe. It's hard to believe. It's hard to believe. When you say we have 23 offices, it's like. Wow, that's ama like. Yeah, it's hard to believe. 'cause we still will always, I personally think of us as a mom and pop. We'll remain a mom and pop and we're gonna keep that boutique mom and pop. I don't mean the way that sounds, but the boutique. I wanna be a boutique brokerage. I, we may grow, but we're not gonna change. I think most agents love working for a boutique brokerage. They just feel that. At some point they need to grow. Where a lot of the boutique, smaller companies don't have the tools or they got competing brokers, but they like that culture. So we've tried to take that culture and mix it with us not competing and having the tools of the big boys. Yeah, I think that's good. Fine. That's brilliant what you just said. So, so the, the, one of the pillars of your culture is that boutique feeling with the agents and connecting, they feel connected to you on a personal level and they feel connected to the, to the family that you've created. Is, is, I hope so. You know, I learned from my mother early on that it, people need to know you care. And we, and I think if you asked our agents, they let you know, we care. We care. We wanna know the spouses, we wanna know their kids. We wanna know when. You know, someone does something amazing. We put out a monthly newsletter, and in the back of it, we just put all the exciting things that have happened amongst the family who had a baby, who got a puppy, who got married, what, whatever it may be. Who, who, Pete's daughter recently became a, a veterinarian. So like that kind of stuff. Keeps it personal. Hmm. Listen, it, it is challenging. Like you said, there's 1800 agents. We've, we've heard the whispers. Yeah. You're getting too big. You're losing, it's not, you're losing your culture. It's not like it used to be, but it's hard because we still want to grow. We want to be number one, but. We try. I was gonna say, we like hell to keep it what it is. We're around two nights a week. We're around probably two nights a week with our agents. You know, if you don't get together with them, next thing you know you're losing 'em. Yeah. And it's important. It's important for us to see them, feel them, touch 'em, love them. Well, I'll tell you, I mean, what you're doing with this interview is a perfect example because I know that there's probably, uh, agents from your company watching this. And you said at the top of this, that this is the first time you've done something like this. 'cause this is outta your comfort zone. So that's you being congruent with your culture. Let me ask you, what has this done for you personally? Like how, what ha so, um, ha having a company of this size, how has that be benefited you, your life? Like how has your personal lives gotten fulfilled? I think for both of us, I can speak for pe our kids work here now. Or, you know, we have six daughters and Pete has three. I have three. Three of mine are here and two of his are here. And something kind of amazing to get to see your kid grow and shine and, and, and get to witness it firsthand and be part of it and help them. And yeah, I, um, personally we have, I have no worries at all about the future now because I see what our kids are capable of Yeah. And what they're doing, and they're gonna take this place to the next level. Yeah. I think that was one of our smartest decisions. Everyone always says, was it good or was it bad? But, you know, I I, I came on this morning, I told you I could barely get the zoom on. I'm not techy, but, but we knew where we were weak. And they're bringing that next, you know, they're bringing the next important stuff to the table. So what it's given me is the gift of time with my kids and my extended family. Yeah. And they're good. They know what we don't know. They know social media, they know video, they know technology and they chat. I still have an old a OL address and write a notebook. You have a OL, uh, that's cute. And the, and the, and the next generation, whether it's our, our personal children or even the younger agents, challenge us on the regular to be better and to get the next thing and, and keep us. And, and it's not all about our kids. We, no, I don't. We're good. We're good at recognizing talent and I think we have the best staff. Oh, gotcha. On Earth. Yes. I mean, our management team is second to none, and they're fantastic. That's one thing. Talent where I could give us credit for is we're good at surrounding ourselves. We're very good people, actually. We're smart. We, we, we, we surround ourselves with people that are smarter than us. Quite honestly, our team's better than we are every day of the week. It's awesome. I hope everybody's taking notes here, man. 'cause there's a lot of pearls of wisdom. I don't wanna waste any time summarizing what I'm hearing because I, I wanna keep going with hearing the pearls come out of their mouth. This is really great stuff. You guys need to do this more often. This is powerful. Um, so, um, alright, so how do you guys deal with, so running a company together? Uh, you don't always agree, I would think on some major decision. We do. We, we, well, but Florida, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, let, let's put it this way. If I made all the decisions, we would be a bigger company than we are, but we'd probably be broke. She reins me in, okay. Like, I want to do everything. And she's like, wait, Pete, take, take your foot off the pedal. Let's sleep on that. That's, and let's sleep on that. And I, you know, when we did Florida. Yeah, tell this story because I'm not, I'm not gonna lie, I'm not gonna lie. Tell the story because we, when we were bantering in the beginning, no one heard that. So tell 'em about Florida and the mistake and the ownership in that mistake. That was powerful. Well, everybody tries to put the spin that, you know, we did well in Florida, we had 60 agents, we did 70 million a year and only two years. There's all the positive spins you could put on it, but at the end of the day, it was an epic failure. We lost money. We took away from New York. Nobody knew who the hell we were down there. And thank God for Mike Pap and Keys, because he, he got us out of there and we learned, we got, and he, and we learned. But listen, I'm like glad we did it. I am. I'd rather, I'd rather, uh, try and fail than never have tried it all. Mm. And it was exciting. We had fun. We had fun. Listen, we were, we had a mass migration going from New York to Florida. We must have had a dozen agents that moved to Florida to the Sarasota, A area, and they ended up at Compass and Douglas Elliman and I'd call 'em, I'd say if we had an office there, would you have stated signature? They're like, of course. Yeah. So we opened and they left those companies and they came back to us. And we thought we'd be able to build around them, but it was, it's challenging to go into another state doing it part-time. It was, and, and, and it was important to us that, you know, this was our baby. We had to take care of this, you know, New York. But I do believe in our defense, it was right on the cusp of when Florida was starting to te like it wasn't the perfect storm. We, if we were down there full time, we would've been fine. And listen, we've made great relationships. We, we have a relationship with Kai's Realty right now where we're referring a lot of business back and forth to one another, and we're making money there. So, you know, money we lost will probably creep back over the long run. Yeah. And, and it just meeting Mike, Mike Papis that owns Kai's Learn, we learned so much from him. So it was not really a mistake. It wasn't profitable, but it wasn't a mistake because it was a learning experience. You're right to to, I mean, Mike is such a brilliant and nice guy. Um, so he just got us into the Realty Alliance where we're learning a lot and stuff we would've never done. Uh, that, so, yeah, so there's usually opportunities even when it's not the one that you set out to go for the goal. Um, so that's awesome. We're having another disagreement right now. Disagreement right now. What, what, what is that? We do not disagree. I think he's crazy, but there's a lot of times I thought you were crazy. Share what? Thi this is a great, i, I, this I'm, no, our agents don't even know this. Should we even share it then? Yes, let's share. It takes me a little time when Pete comes up with his insanity ideas, but when he initially told me this part of me was like, hell yeah, you're gonna benefit from it. But, well, I just have an idea that, well, our headquarters here, some of our offices are hopping, they're full of energy, they're full of people, everybody's in the office, and we don't have any, even have a room, any room to bring on another agent. But here in East Northport, we have four, 4,000 square feet downstairs. If I see three people at a time, it's a lot. For some reason, this office doesn't get a lot of traffic. Okay, so I want to take half of the office and I wanna open up Signature Wellness. Pilates is hot, yoga is hot. Solid core is hot. Red light red light is hot, cryo is hot. There's a big wellness craze going on in this country. And I wanna open up Signature Wellness, and I want it to be either free or very cheap for signature agents and give our agents something that nobody else has. We already have the staff to do it. Yeah. I think it'll be a recruiting bonanza, because if someone does a deal with a signature agent, we can send them a thank you card with a note giving them a free 30 day pass for Pilates. They'll come to the office, they'll meet Kathy, they'll meet me. I just, I just, I got this idea in my head and I, I can't shake it. Yeah. Yeah. And Kathy, I'm assuming that you think this is not a good idea. Well, it's growing on me. 'cause like what? Listen, we're both salespeople. Eventually. You talk long and we could sell the Brooklyn Bridge. He's selling it to me. But, but we're both into Pilates right now, so if I could go downstairs and do Pilates every afternoon, I'm in. Well, you know what I think is absolutely make money. Uh, what I think is absolutely hysterical is that, that Kathy. Would push back on this when she was the one that was just doing pickleball before this interview in the back parking lot of the, oh, that was my idea too. Yeah, when he put that court in, I, I wasn't mad, but I was like, dude, you are crazy. Like, but yeah, we use it like I would never play Pickle if I didn't have it, right. Yes. I played this morning and it brings the agents together. They come down, they use the courts, we flip them, flip some burgers. It keeps the culture. Yeah. I'm with Peter on this one. Kathy, I'm sorry. Sounds like winner. I'm in, I'm in. Tell me about your mom. So has your mom helped in any way, uh, whether it was, uh, her being a model for you, Kathy, you know, being that she, for people didn't hear, she was in real estate for 35 years, did she contribute in any way, uh, either before or during the opening of the company? Well, unfortunately, I lost my mom very young, but she, oh, I'm sorry. Okay. That's okay. But she absolutely shaped, shaped myself as a realtor and this company. Okay. She's, she touches all over this company. Um, the one thing I learned from my mom is that relationships matter. You know, people get to know you care. And longevity in this industry is, is doing the right thing and being kind and, and letting people know you really care. Whether it's selling a house or in now my case, my agents knowing I love them. Awesome. Not your wallet. I always say to pe we, if you, I tell my own children, if you sell with your heart and not your wallet, you'll have success. Oh, I love that. Julie. Write that down. Um, Peter, you, you described your vision earlier, uh, well both of you did is community focus, independent boutique. And, um, so how, and we, we touched upon this already, but how. Because that's usually a brokerage would pick one of those two words. They, they wouldn't do both. So how, how have you been able to maintain that with growing to 1800 agents, that community focus independent, uh, boutique field? Not as easy as it used to be, but yeah, like I said before, it's a challenge, but we never stop trying. Like we are just always trying to bring everybody together and it's about the right people. It's about the right people. It's about, you know, not just hiring anybody with a pulse. It's about being able to get, have the stomach to lose a top producer if they're a cancer. You know, which, which, excuse me. Which was a lesson we learned the hard way. You know, it took us years to realize that one bad apple can spoil the whole bunch. Right. Is that what they say? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Uh, we, we, we make mistakes every day. We do. And if we've put someone on the team or in the company that's not the right fit. 'cause our culture is our, is important. 'cause listen, happy people sell more houses. Right. If you get somebody negative, that negativity will spread quickly. Yeah. Like cancer. Yeah. And we try to stop it. So from a, from a logistics standpoint, from a business thinking, how do you determine. You know, so you're at 23 offices now. Has there been a model where, how you've grown like, like there's a strategy like office number 24? I kind of, we, it's, I wanna giggle when you say that because we've never had a strategy. We had, we never had a plan, a really good story. When we first started, we were probably together about six months. And someone said to me, well, what's your business plan? And I remember going back to Pete and being like, do we have a business plan? Are we supposed to have one think? I mean, my degrees are in teaching. Do we have a business plan? We don't. We had like 10, 10 offices. We'd be like, no more offices. We have way too much brick and mortar. The future of this industry might not be so much brick and mortar, uhhuh. And then next thing you know, something falls in our lap. Mom and Pop wants to be acquired and it's in a good spot and it's a good deal. We love the people and we like the people and we jump on it and that's, it just falls in our lap. So when I used to sell, I used to tell my clients that houses find homes or houses find their people, right? You can look at a hundred houses, but you know the houses gonna embrace you. And again, for us, our offices have found us. Hmm. We've never said we have to go. We, yeah, we went north, south Shore, east, west, you know. Well, Rosalyn was a pan plan. Rosalyn would just, we're probably the only one. Right? Yeah. And then East Notebook, as you built, we, we want, we want to break into more of the luxury market now. And we've doing, we're working on that and Roslyn is hopefully our key to do it. And it's, and listen, it, it really is shaping up to be amazing. We have a lot of good people coming. Great manager, beautiful office, great team. You know, I'm really kind of dumbfounded now with your answer, because I'm thinking, I'm thinking you're not the first e every, every, every econom uh, professor that would teach business for college kids, like they'd have to throw their book away. You're, you're saying, no, we didn't have a plan. It just fell on a lap and dah. Which, you know, it's really cool and it's probably, you know, what, what you said Kathy about that the office has found you, it's probably that culture thing, going back to that culture thing that when you have a clear culture, like you guys obviously do, that speaks for itself and it permeates into the industry and people see that. They feel it, they hear it, and that's why they come to you probably. Yeah, which is a good point because like, like. Like, um, Merrick, they found us. They found us. They felt their culture. You know, we had a small mom and Pop gym, Pooley and, and, uh, Charlie and Kathy owned that company. It was select a home back then. And they found us, and this is a fun story. They found us. We went out for a cup of coffee at the diner. We, we, after for 30 minutes, we stood up, shook hands and we bought their company. No due diligence. We just knew they were good people and we knew that this was meant to be. Now Merrick is killing it. It's a great office and we still have all three of them and we love 'em to death. Back in the day we used to have the, uh, baseball field from field, the movie Field of Dreams in our office. And underneath it it said if you build it, they will come. And that was always our I love it. I love it. And you know, I love what you just said to Kathy about picking the right people. Um, just to turn that internally a little bit, that in my company, whenever we've. Try to fill a position, like we have the position first and then we try to find the person to fill it. It's never worked for my company. We always wind up firing that person. But when we find somebody that is our culture, like we love this person, this car, like we'll create a position just because we want that person with us. You wanna set them up for success. The same here. So we're moving people all the time because you wanna set people up for success. Mm. We say you can't put a round peg in a a square hole. Yeah. Right. You gotta find, you know. Awesome. Okay, let me, well, so you just threw that playbook, uh, question out the window all, so lemme see if there's any other new questions here. Um, okay, we got that one. The industry go through. Oh. So how are you guys? Yes. Oh my gosh. So the industry, um, has gone through some really crazy times, right? So the NAR settlement. Uh, the whole com commission, transparency, tech disruption, and now just today, um, rad, which is the MLS in Illinois is now going national, which, um, with Compass putting a hundred thousand agents into that. I don't know if you guys heard that yet, because it just came out this morning, but I heard this morning. Yeah. So, um, in any event, so there's a, whenever there's these major disruptions, whether it's, uh, NAR in a lawsuit or the clear cooperation policy, any of that stuff, um, how has that affected you guys, if anyway? That's a good question. I mean, the, the whole nar settlement, we got hit hard. We got screwed. We had, we weren't protected, but at the same time, a lot of good came out. A lot of good came out of it. I mean, our agents had our back, like you've never seen. We, we said to our agents. Before we said it, they said it. They said it. I mean, our two biggest expenses are a holiday party and our yearly trip to Montauk together, they're probably like four or 500 grand. And our agents actually said to us, why don't, why don't you skip it? How can next year, how can we help? How can we help? So we took that away from them to help soften the blow. And they were like, how can we, they were like, how can we help more? And, and it was, it blew our mind. There. There are simply no words. There are simply no words for how wonderful our agents were to us at our lowest, when we were scared. Um, they, they were take a little bit of a, everybody, they, the ideas that were coming were so kind and generous and they suggested we take away the Christmas party. They suggested we give up Montauk. And when we had to deliver that, that, that was a smart decision for us. We sweated that out. We were like, oh God, I, you know, I hope they're not upset. And the love, what an abundance of love. Okay. So did you, uh, uh, like so when the settlement happened, you guys had to like start cutting checks and deal with that. Did you communicate at any level with the company? The agents like, all right, you know, we have a bit of a challenge. Here's what's happening in the industry. Here's how it's affecting us. Pete writes a state of the union, you know, we sit down and we talk about what's going on. We keep, we're very transparent. I think the agents love that. We, um, we send out a, a pretty regular email to them that says, this is the good, the bad, the ugly. This is how we screwed up. And yeah. Yeah. We communi we are very, very transparent. We're good at communicating with them. Yeah. And we're open books. We don't, we don't hold anything back from them. There's nothing very little we do that they don't know. This is, this is, I, you know, I'm, I'm learning it. You know, it's interesting, like I've, I, I know you guys through the agents and, um, that are also our coaching members, and of course Kathy and I have talked, talked a few times, but this interview here is, is blowing me away because I didn't know just how. Awesome of culture that you guys have. And, um, you know, if I were, I still have some more questions and we're gonna open up to other people in just a minute. Hey, Tony Danino is on the, on this. What's up Tony? Tony to Tony is to, Tony is one of the reason why I know Tony is because Tony Richards. What's that? I was just telling Pete Tony's one of your originals, I imagine. He is. Exactly. He is one of the, the very first class that I did in 1993, Tony Dino was in that class. Annette Mina. Anyway, there's that first core group of power agents and Tony's one of them. And, uh, so anyway, I'm so glad he's here. Um, but, um, what I was gonna say is that I'm just really impressed with, with, with what you guys have created and if I were to put a, uh, I'm not ready to put a pin in it, but if I were like, if there was a secret ingredient. To a company being successful, like just one. What I'm hearing yours is, is the culture of caring and love for your, your, your agents. And because that's what I've heard throughout this whole interview is because that you really care about them and developing them and their, like family is why all of these blessings come to you, why your offices are attracted to you, why agents are attracted. Um, so I wanna make sure everybody gets that. Um, from a business standpoint, I have this question. When it, without talking specifically about fees and splits, how do you d do you have to, do you even have to address or deal like compete with other brokerages based on dollars and cents? Um, or do you have certain things that you do as incentives for people? We have a traditional model here. Okay. Um, there's a lot of newer models out there that. It's hard to compete. It's getting harder. We, we honestly, we can't compete if an agent doesn't need any tools and doesn't want brick and mortar and doesn't want management, we're not the righting support, we're not the right place for them. Yeah, okay. So you don't, you don't bend your, your model, like your model is your model and if it doesn't fit for somebody, it doesn't fit our models a model based on agent's production. Okay. Got it. Got it. Okay, good. Alright, super. Um, listen, gang, here's what I wanna do is, because this has been so awesome so far, is I want you to, um, uh, we have very good turnout as well, gang. What I'd like you to do is to go over to the q and a. So I'm talking to the, our audience now and, um. Let's see, where is the q and a? Of course, I can't, I can never find it further that they click on more. Now they changed it. Also, Annette and, uh, Marty are in the audience as well. I don't know if you saw that. Oh no, I didn't see Annette Mina's on the call too. Yeah. And Marty, Marty Sorrentino. I'm watching this, this, these are, these are, we're friends week here. These, these are, these are my peeps. I know they're your peeps too, but these are my peeps. These are, these are my favorite Power ages. Um, for all different reasons. Okay. This is awesome. So again, what I'd like you to do is on the q and a, um, I like you to start to write your question if you haven't done that already. So don't write it in the chat. Okay. Yeah. It's like a reunion, Paul. I agree. Um, and so gang, if you can, um, if you can look at the q and a, find that on the, uh, on the zoom and write your question. We don't have a lot of, uh, questions right now. We just have from Jeff. Uh, which we'll get to in a second, but I wanna make sure, so to help you guys think of your questions, I mean, you've got two great leaders here, and so I want you to think of a question that you would want, you know, if you were sitting across from, you know, Einstein or, or any successful person, you would not have a que the truth. You wouldn't, you would not not have a question. Like if you were in front of somebody that was so successful, what they do, you would co, I would hope you would come up with a question because the opportunity that's given to you. So you have that opportunity right now with Peter and Kathy. So generate a question for yourself that you think might help you in your business. And I'm glad, uh, to see now some of you're taking my coaching. Julie, I'll let you read the first question. Go. Perfect. But could you, I don't think we covered this in the beginning, quite like you usually do. Okay. Um, and have the agents look at this through a leadership lens as well, because they are all running their I, I did, Julie, I did say that, but I'll reit No, it's okay. I'll reiterate it again, but thank you because we did have some people coming late. If you're an agent on this call, you are a business within the business and you should take off your real estate salesperson hat and put on your real estate business owner hat and think of a question that you can ask these leaders. You know, they brought out something very powerful that Mike Pappas, uh, from the Kai Company in Florida, who has incredible success. You know, they learned from that relationship and they walked away with it better leaders themselves. So this is your opportunity to do the same that we're giving you. Alright, go Jules. Perfect. Thank you. Jeff asks, if you're comfortable sharing with your scale today, having grown from a boutique brokerage to 1800 agents as an independent, have you been courted by companies like Compass, Berkshire Hathaway, um, for example to buy you? And what has ultimately kept you committed to staying independent? It's a great question. Yeah. We've been approached. We've been approached several a lot of times. Yeah. There was a time where we thought, ho about it, maybe. Yeah. You know, when Compass came into town, we weren't used to losing agents and they came in and they took a lot of top producers that were very close personal friends of ours. And that was very new to us. We had not, and we weren't used to it. And it was very disheartening and we. We were like, maybe it's time. And we thought about it, but, uh, we rolled up our sleeves, worked hard, it wasn't time, and went and got the, she team went and got the team recruited like animals, and, uh, never took a step back. Volume was, and, and it's more about a weak moment than ever really putting thought into that process. We were just so vulnerable at that moment because we were devastated. It was just, it was so new to us, we were so hurt, you know? And that was a weak moment. Wow. What a great acknowledgement and honest answer. Let me, uh, I, I'm curious now, what is, how did Compass do that? What was, how did they get friends of yours and producers? What, what would you attribute that to? They wrote a check. Big check. Yeah. They bought the agents. I get it. Okay. They bought the agents, listen, nothing against Compass. They're doing good things and they have a very good brand and they have very good technology. So, you know, they seem to be doing a lot. Right. A check's very motivating also. Sure. Okay. Which they're not doing anymore. Yeah. But at that point it was re we understood it was respected. It was kind of more like, yeah, it was just shocking. Just shocking. Mm. Okay. Got it. Go ahead Jules. Perfect. Thank you. Carol says, do you think the independent companies are going to be next? I don't know what she means by that. Do you, uh, does she maybe mean that the smaller, are the smaller companies gonna survive in the market today? Yeah. Well let's go in that direction, Carol. So we're gonna interpret your question. If it's wrong, then just rewrite the question. So, yeah, go ahead Kathy. Answer it that way. I do believe it's hard for a smaller company today 'cause we know what it costs to do business. The cost of running a business have gone insane. Like everything buy a gallon of milk, the price has gone crazy. Uh, it's hard to, I can speak firsthand. I was a small mom and pop. I had 45 agents and when Pete was opening signature, I was closing mine. Yeah. Let me ask it. Mom and pops, it's tough in the mom and pops because. Tools, splits are higher than they used to be. Splits have gone up. Um, and tools are expensive. Yeah. And it's hard, hard for them to get the tools for the agents to succeed. Yeah. Um, listen, if we had to do anything differently, we probably wouldn't have so much brick and mortar. Right now we have a lot of offices in a very small geographical area. Marian, I just throw a question pop up. Excuse me. That said, not everybody went to Compass. And you're right. And thank you to everybody. We were gonna end this with this. Thank you, thank you, thank you to everybody who's loyal, who were loyal to us and are loyal to us, and don't think we don't know it and acknowledge it that don't think a lot of our agents, a lot of our agents turned down some very good offers and Oh gosh, very loyal to us. We're, again, we're blessed. I keep saying that. I've said it 10 times this morning already. We are two of the most blessed people you've ever met in your life because we're blessed to call this company our family, and people are just so kind and generous and. What's part of their family? Let, so let me ask you if, I'm trying to think what a broker would ask you, uh, especially an independent broker, uh, boutique office. What would you say if you were given advice to that one? They, they were thinking about opening up their own office one first time. What minimum agents should they, number of agents should they shoot for based on average revenue that might come from an agent? Where do you think it becomes, starts to become profitable? 40 50 agents? That's a very good question, and I'm not sure the answer. I know it took us a long time to make money. I mean, I, we, I didn't make money till Kathy came on board. We weren't, I had probably 150 agents and was probably breaking even. Wow. I mean, we're doing very, we're doing very well now, but, um, it's, it's tough for the, for the smaller brokerages, so they have to go out and sell themselves. And then you get in the issue where, you know, a lot of agents feel like my broker's competing with me, so that that's it, extra hard for 'em. Mm-hmm. And that's why there's been so many smaller agencies that have, that have been acquired. Right. At the same time, we love ambition and you know, we have agents that have gone on their own. We are lucky to live here, go on their own. We had over South go on their own and they're doing very well, they're doing great, and they're building something that's gonna be worth something one day. So we understand it and we respect it from both ends. So we, we respect it. Yeah. We feel that every agent should be their own brand. They should have, they should be a brand under our brand. If they go interview with another big company, that company's gonna try to convince them that they're gonna do more business because of their brand. But the truth is, is that, um. People hire the agent, not the company. Amen. They come to us because they want a good culture, a good environment. Somebody who's got their, somebody with tools, somebody that you know is gonna give them support. The signature name's not gonna get them the listing. I'm sorry, I wish I believe that, but I didn't. But like over South, they built their brand lucky to live here. They built their brand under signature. So when they were decided to have the ambition and make the leap to go on their own, they were ready, had a launch and we understood it. They had a launching pad. Yeah. Yeah. Peter, I, that's exactly when agents come to me and they say, what should I look for in a brokerage? I say the exact same thing that you just said, that it's, you're not going to a brokerage to make more money. That's your job. You go to a brokerage, you choose the brokerage based on how the broker makes you feel. Because if you don't buy into the company and the culture of the company, it's hard for you to sell that to a FSBO or to a list, to a homeowner when you're sitting across from them. So you have to feel good about your choice that you love the company you're at. So, um, and good energy breeds energy, right? Yes. When you're around like-minded people who wanna be successful and want you to be success. Success happens, magic happens. I do believe you're a, B, c Realty and nobody's ever heard of you. It's an another objection. You have to overcome. Overcome, and you have to be a much better salesman to get the listing, but a salesperson can. But if it's Daniel Gale, it's element, it's us, it's Compass, it's Hannah, it's realty. If it, if it's a known name, it's up to the agent. Yep. I agree. I will say one other thing I wanna highlight too, because you said, uh, KA um, uh, Peter, and, and we'll go back to the questions in a second, but, um, you, you said that you had 150 people and you were profitable until Kathy came on board and, and there's something else that's, that I've learned in the dynamics with the two of you as a winning formula is, um. Is the, the balance between like one holds the other one back and the other one maybe sees the vision. So there's that balance, that yin yang, like I experienced that in my life with, you know, true, uh, uh, my membership, my coaching wasn't profitable until Julie came on board. And, and my wife is, she's my coner 'cause I always wanna do a million things and she's always the director of, wait a second. Yeah. And, and, and it's valuable to have that, that um, that other person, that's not a yes person. Right. So, um, awesome. Alright, Jules, gotta go to the next question. We have that recorded by the way. I'm just kidding. No rules. She's gonna ask for a bigger cut. Son of a gun. Go ahead. Um, Abraham says, how are you balancing rapid growth with maintaining quality and reputation? Great question again. Great question again, how are we met quality of our agents? You mean keeping our agents happy? Is that what that question's about? No, I think it's, um, it's the, um, you know, I guess I, I guess what Abram's asking is that, I think we might have already answered it, but, so yeah. When you're growing as a business, all of a sudden you get consumed with the business, the money, the revenue, the bottom line, and you, it pulls you away from the culture, which that hasn't happened with you. And so he's asking, how do you do that? How do you grow? It's a challenge. It's a challenge, but we never stop trying. That's why, listen, most of the people that work, most of our best friends are within the company. So when we go out for drinks with our agents or. We call it date night. Really? Yeah. We do it every week. Every Wednesday night we date our own. Pete and I date our own company. We take two or three agents, uh, offices out, and we spend two hours with them. We go out for a cocktail and an appetizer, and it's just to keep the culture, to keep true to who we are, to, you know, see, feel, touch, as I keep saying. And we enjoy it. Yeah. But you know, it, it is challenging as you get bigger. Charity. We lose agents now. We never used to lose agents, but, but thank God. But usually they come back, thank God. Um, but you know, we do a lot of charity work. We didn't touch on that. How we keep our culture is that we keep bringing our agents together to do good for the community. Mm-hmm. Yesterday we did a walk for autism awareness. It was a beautiful day. Everybody got together. And then Pete and I made a donation to a local autism autistic school, chil a school for autistic children. Um, we do a lot. What do we have coming up? Oh, oh, I mean, we're doing a fishing charter in May, talent show. We're ta we're doing a talent show. We're renting out all of adventure land for signature agents and their families. We have our Montauk annual trip coming. Uh, our calendar's full. We've got October's breast cancer awareness. We've got a couple events coming for that. But by pulling the agents together constantly, we're building deep bonds with them, you know, and I, and we invite the agents to an event. We just, the children come too. So yesterday there were kids at the walk. So it's just a, that's why, that's another reason why I wanna open up Signature Wellness. It's gonna bring everybody together. I'm sold. Okay. I knew that was gonna come back around. I knew it, it may come up one more time before this is over, Jules. Um, I, I wanna, I want to add to, uh, to this question with Abraham. My observation Abraham, uh, in this conversation and even in my own culture, is that I think how it's easy to keep the balance in growth and not staying away from, or straying away from your culture, is that when you are crystal clear what your culture is and what you're committed to, when you start to stray, you'll notice it. It'll pull you back like the Florida deal as an example. Yes. Like when you saw that Florida was robbing your time from your family here on Long Island, it was evident to you and that pulled you back. So I, I think that's, uh, that would be the answer as well. All right. Sometimes you get burnt and you stray a little bit, but that's why we have one another. Yep. Got it. And got, and the agents keep us accountable. They'll, they'll call us out and I love that They'll say, Hey, you used to do this, or, why didn't you do this? And we'll tell them why. You know, that didn't happen because, and most of it falls on our managers who are amazing, amazing. Let, let's our managers, there are none better. Period. I, I do wanna just note then we'll get back to the questions, is the power of the community and the service in the charities, like in all of the really top. Brilliant. Like Mike Pappas, you know, brokers that we've talked to, they that you, they have that in common carpenter. Yeah. You know, so many of, of you, all of the, the top tier of, of leadership you give back and that's such a core foundation for your, your culture. Do you have two minutes for a quick story on philanthropy story? Yeah, absolutely. Alright, so this is called unscripted. This unscripted back when signature was in its early days, and I probably prefer animals over people to be honest, but back in the early days I was looking for land and there was a no kill shelter called Little Shelter in Huntington. Okay? And I'm working on the tax map and I see that they got two separately deeded lots. So I'm looking for land, I go knock on the door and I say, you know, you have any interest in selling these lots? They had no interest. And I said, well, what are you doing with it? They said, nothing. I go, why don't you make it a run for the animals? They go, we would like to, but we don't even have the money in the budget to properly feed them. You know, we're always looking for donations. So I said, what if we did it? They go, what do you mean? I go, we'll, make it a run. Didn't promote it. It was just something that was out of the kindness of our hearts, that I was building a house nearby. I took the excavator, we cleared the lots, took the excavator, pulled the storm, sent an email out to the agents. What we were doing. They all came in droves and helped clean up the land. Great fences. We finished it, we sod it. We did agility equipment for the animals. Crazy, and said, here you go. I've never, they were so touched by what we did, grateful that they reached out to News 12, the Long Island and all these different news outlets, and said what the small company in Huntington did for them. Holy shit. Next thing you know, our phone's ringing and we probably got 10 agents that from other companies that wanted to join the company that did the doggy park, homeowners calling us. They wanted list. We got, we got listings from it. And that's when we, real philanthropy used to bother me because it used, I used to think it was very selfserving like you didn't even know what the cause was. They made it all about them. But I've changed my way of thinking because the more money we raise, the more good we do in the world, and the more it comes back tenfold. Mm-hmm. We did a 22 day pushup challenge for veterans. We raised $130,000, but at the same time for 22 days. We were doing pushups in different locations. We were dominating social media and like the recognition it gave us in the community and people joining our company, school districts, you didn't, I mean, school districts were calling us to talk about suicide prevention. We were in school districts. We had, um, veterans coming down with their purple hearts showing children what a Purple heart was. We had people bringing service animal. It snowballed. And I have, it's really important that I give you props because both of those two things, I thought he was crazy. The night he called me, he, you were sitting at a bar in Cold Spring Harbor eating your dinner at the bar and you're like, we're gonna do a pushup challenge. So I was like, no, we're not. You know, it was great. The doggy pocket. I'm like, please. But this, this time with the pushup challenge was a little different. I said, this time we're gonna promote this. And when we got those purple hearts and every councilman wants a picture with a Purple Heart vet, right? And the last day of the pushup challenge, we probably had 2,500 people doing pushups on the golf course, on the golf course and WOW club. And we raised a ton of money and did a lot of good. And it came back tenfold. So philanthropy, you know, it, it is just a win-win. But it, but it's important to too, it allows our agents to feel like they're part of something bigger than themselves. They're able to join together when agents are standing next to each other, making, assembling, um, Easter baskets. We do Easter baskets, we do backpacks, putting together an Easter basket basket for a child who would not have an Easter basket unless we got together and donated it. And we don't just do it. The agents are so involved, they donate the candy, we buy the baskets, we put it together. You know, we bought a box truck a couple years ago just to move all of our donations. So it's, it's, it's really a god-given blessing. And I, and I wanna just highlight, um, for people listening to this, I think where it works. What you just shared is when it's not about what's in it for you, the money that you may make from it, like it's a strategy. It's just something that is the right thing to do for humanity. And I That's good. I think when that's the real reason you're doing it is why the tenfold works, right? Yeah. Stuff that's only a few of them. Yeah. We, we've uh, we've done some amazing things. Remember the wildfires in Australia? Yeah. Shipping stuff. All, you know, doing everything we can do. Yeah. We're, we're always trying to help. It's important to us to give back. You know what, we're all very blessed. Awesome. Awesome. All right, Jules, next question. I thank you, Abraham for. Um, Janet, fast forward, where do you see your company in five years? Do you have an idea of what that would look like? That's a problem for the next generation. No, that's the next generation team. It's not, it's not In five years. I hope we're sitting right in, in five years. We're number one on Long Island. That I can promise. No, that's, that's a one year away thing. Maybe two, five years away. Maybe getting close. Maybe we're getting close. Yeah. I love these two. Um, Craig, what third party marketing systems platforms do you recommend, particularly direct mail CRM to allow independents to compete with national? Right. We have to giggle at that because Yeah, that's a question for our daughters. Yeah. And our marketing department or the managers. I know we use every door direct. What was the question again? It what, you know, basically what, what kind of tech do you use? Um, he, they said about marketing or, but they also brought up CRM. Like what CRM do you encourage the agency? Agency? So our, our, our tech platform is Bold Trail. It used to be KV Core. It used to be BoomTown, right? It used to be BoomTown. We've had all of them and now we're at Bold Trail. It just keeps growing. Um, there, there's not a tool. We don't have that, you know, we have everything we need, but we're not that we're, we are. I told you I couldn't even turn on the computer this morning. It's not, I stay in my lane when we go on a recruiting, our appointment, our pitch, like I said earlier, always where the tools of big boys, the tools of a Douglas Elliman, the tools of a Daniel Gale. Tools of Compass with the culture of a mom and pop, and we feel that's what agents like. Got it. Original question. We're blessed because we've always been an age agent focused company. So everything good at Signature, especially from day one, whether it was the color pen we used or the tech platform an agent will bring to us, or one of the staff member will say, Hey, you guys need, so we're very agent focused. The agents tell us what we need and we act on it. Most of all, most of everything we have has come from our agents. Yeah. You know, I, I have no idea what the hell I was doing back in the day. It all came from the agent. We still, we still really have enough clue what we're doing, but we show up every day. Awesome. I, I think that kind of answers Abraham's other question and Annette's question. How are you attracting agents? From other companies and, and recruiting top agents. So yeah, the culture, right? Yeah. It's the culture. Yeah. All right guys. And, uh, listen, I'll answer that question again. Yes, it's the culture, but it's also our agents. Our agents are our soldiers. They love what they've got. They love who they are, and they love who we are. And they go out and they share the word. That's how a lot of people come to us. Agents will refer the outside agent to us. We'll have a cup of coffee and it starts a conversation. And now some people now, now, you know, because this interview is not just New York, it's all over the us. So, so we have agents, like now they're asking, are you in New Jersey? Are you in Pennsylvania? Are you in California? So, um, gang, this there only in, uh, New York, long Island. Long Island, actually not New York, long Island. So it's a very specific niche market. Um, and, uh, no, no plans to go off of Long Island. Yeah. Yet? Yeah. 'cause Peter's still not giving up on Florida in his brain. All right, next question. Jill. Won't be my eyes. Yes. Is, I love it. Anita's a broker herself. Um, she would like to start a brand with her daughter who is a new realtor. What would you suggest? So this is a, this is, this is Premo pop. So you got a mother Yeah. Wanting to open up with her daughter. So what would you say to her? Okay. So who, kudos to you for that. Because I was a mother, daughter's teen. It was the best chapter of my whole career. And now my daughters are selling and there's nothing more satisfying than watching them succeed. Aw. Starting up. Brand. I would be true to yourself. Be true to you. Do who be you. Don't try to be anybody you're not. That's the answer. Got it. And work for a brokerage that's gonna let you create your own brand with your daughter. So when you're ready to make that move and go on your own, that you'll already be way ahead of the game. Got it. All right. Cool. We, that has the tool. We have four bro, four graphic artists on, on staff, and they're fabulous with brands and logos. And they'll sit, they'll sit with an agent. They're, you know, we're again blessed. The, um, I'm, I'm gonna add to that too, is that, um. You have to be clear, we've all heard this expression that you have to be, you know, know your why and blah, blah, blah. Um, but it's more than that. What I'm gonna say is that whenever you're starting anything new, a brokerage or any business, the hardest is really in the beginning because there is the pressure of the money and the finances and wanting to make the money to pay the bills and then, but not have it be about the money, having it be about the customer. And so there's this conflict that you have to manage. And the way to get past that is to be clear about what you're committed to, what your passion is. Um, when you're clear about that, like we can see with Peter and Kathy that they're very agent centric, that that's who their customers are. And um, and so when you have a passion that it'll help you deal with when it's stormy out, when the bills are not getting paid, because you're still focused on your passion, what you're committed to. Um. What's that, Kath? Well, you have to believe in yourself first. Yes, absolutely. And your vision. Believe in yourself and your vision. Uh uh. Go ahead, Jules. Next one. I love it. A will that says, do you think that it is okay not to have a large number of agents? Do you think that's limiting, or should you stay in the sphere that you can handle? For us to not have a large number of agents. I have trouble hearing the question. Yeah, yeah. Okay, I'll, I'll read it. Do you think it's okay to not have a large number of agents or do you think that that's limiting, like as a broker, should you be committed to having a big company and having a lot of agents Oh, no. Be true to you. I think you gotta be true to you. You got whatever your expectations are. Everybody has different goals in life. You know, we never woke up and said, give us 1800 agents. It just, it happens the way it was supposed to happen. We were happy when we were, we were really happy when we were, yeah, we were really happy when we, and for PE I was really, I had a very small company and we were very happy. Um, I think that the right people find the right people, but there's no right or wrong answer to that. Do you? Good. Love it. Okay. So that's it on the questions that we have and we're coming to the end. So I've got some rapid, that was pretty easy. I was getting worried there. Yeah. Nobody asked us if we're married. Oh, they did. We had a lot of that in the, a lot of that in the chat. Are you married? No, but everyone thinks we are now. They tell us we're starting to look alike now too, so it's all good. Somebody asked if you were brother and sister because you look, I get that too. That's too, and, and, and are you both married to other people? I am married to somebody else in. You're engaged. Close. Yeah. Close. Yeah. All right, good. Good luck, Peter. All right. Um, okay, so rapid fire questions. Um, one early habit that made the biggest difference in your career. For me, getting a co, a business coach, early habit. Um, just trying to surround myself with the best people. Got it. Very good. One leader, one leadership belief. You each had to unlearn. For me, it's, you can't do it. Your can't do everything yourself. You gotta ask for help. I don't even consider myself a leader. I just consider myself part of the team to be honest. Okay. Very good. Great answer. Your favorite book. Oh, that's easy for me. Can't Hurt Me by David Goggin. Great book. You should all read it. I can't lie, I haven't read a book since I'm like 15. All right. And you had to, I read the cliff notes. Yeah. Peter, that's great. Alright then. Favorite, favorite movie? Oh, that's easy in real estate. Glenn, Gary Glen Ross. Okay. A Star is Born, but the Gaga version. Remember the Glen Garry lead? Yeah. You still do that very well. We laugh about that all the time. Did you see that they had on Broadway for a limited time? Glen Garry, Glen Ross. Did you get to see? Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah. Yeah. It was limited. I got to see that. Yeah. All right. Uh, favorite expression. I know. Can I say yours? Yeah. Yours is, uh, right. No ripe. No, no Green. Green. Green and, and growing or ripe and rotting. And pizza's. Don't worry. It's gonna be okay. Everything's gonna be fine. It's gonna be fine. What was, what was Kathy's? Uh, green and growing or ripe and rott. Ooh, keep grow and keep training. Keep learning, keep. Are you gonna rot? You know what, I feel like now this is like, remember that old, uh, game show where the spouse knew what the other one would say and they'd be in a separate room like you guys are really, that's what we'll do in the, that's what we're having a talent show. Maybe we'll do that. Yeah. Signature's got talent. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. You everybody was listening. It's gonna be a great night. It's at Mel Kay's. I think it's on the 29th. I'm not sure they're gonna yell at me. Um, and, and if we're doing, we're really doing a fundraiser for Angela's house, which is absolutely one of the most beautiful charities we have. Or, um. Pauses be from another company, come watch us get roasted. But that's what we're gonna do. They'll give us questions and we'll answer how the other, I'm not, I'm not gonna, yeah, we got it. We'll do it. Go ahead. Awesome. Awesome. Alright. Well listen, I'm gonna let you guys go so you can, um, you know, take care of your family. Is there anything that you would like to end with, um, before we call this? Uh, yes. I, I just read at the bottom. I got the date wrong. It's May 27th at six o'clock at Mulch East. Come. It'll be a great night. Thank God for you. We expect to end with this is, we never do this. It's way out of our comfort zone. We know we should do more video to get ourselves out there, but you know, you have a nice following and we want to thank you for thinking of us and, and above and all that. All the years you've helped me and guided me and reached out and cared. You're the best. Oh, that's very nice, Kathy. Thank you. And, and it was, it was, uh, it was an honor to meet you, Peter, and spend this time with you guys. Um, so I remember back when I was 21 working at Coach, there was, you did a lot for Coach back then, right? Yeah, yeah. I did a lot of training for them back in the day. Actually, I remember being trained at 21 Darl. Yeah. Alright. Yeah, we met at Coach and we've been friends since. Did you have anything to do back in the day with sweat hawks or no? Yes. Yeah, I, we did Sweat Hogs back in the day of Coach. Yeah. So actually, uh, the interesting story is that yes, I was a sweat hog trainer back in the day that, that taught me how to train agents. That was the best thing. I, I did. Uh, the guy for people don't know his name was Floyd Wickman, who was the creator of Sweat Hogs. And, and I learned the difference between speaking and training 'cause they're totally different skill sets. So, so that made me a great trainer. Um, and um, but the person who also worked there, uh, was none other than, um, my, uh, my president Julie Escobar, who's on the call with us. She used to also, that's how we met. And, um, her husband at the time, ed Escobar, was the vice president or president of the company at the time. So. Oh. Anyway, just a little inside there. We were both, we were both very, very young. Right. We green when we were working there. So yeah, we've known each other for 40 years. Yeah. All right. Well listen, thank you to everybody who took the time to join us today. We appreciate. Yeah, I see the names coming across. I know, it's wild. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. So gang, before we actually hang up here, keep doing what you're doing there. I appre, I usually like to do that at the end. I almost forgot. So, uh, if you got any value from this conversation, could you throw some love to the, to our, uh, interviewees and just thank them. I appreciate the hearts that you guys are giving, but even just the comments is awesome. Thanks Catherine and thanks Camilia. So, um, yeah, because we saved this chat and we'd like to send it to the client as well, so, um, awesome. You got your daughter in there, Alexa. That's Pete's go Dad. Go dad. Well, and I can, as these are rolling in. I wanna say to you both that yes, you should do more of this, uh, these interviews simply because you were so good at it and, um, it'll make a difference in people's lives. So thank you for sharing a piece of you and, and what works about your business and, and, and your company. So it was awesome. So thank you so very much. Alright so much. We really appreciate it. You alright. I know we'll be bumping into each other fellow long islanders soon. So have a great weekend. All right. Bye everybody. Bye-bye.