Speaker 1: 0:30

So my name is Richard Bridges. I predominantly work in the real estate industry, but I kind of have a number of hats that I wear. My during the day job is I work for Samson Properties, which is the largest real estate brokerage in the DMV. We have 6,000 agents and I'm their director of agent development. So I focus on coaching agents who are trying to elevate their business and their experience. I run our education and training departments. I help on the recruiting team, I oversee our tech department because we have some in-house tech trainers, and then, other than that, I also help with our in-house partners and adoption with those partners, with our agents.

Speaker 1: 1:07

So that's kind of the day job. And then on the side, I've been a real estate broker for 20 years, licensed in DC, maryland and Virginia. So every now and then I get to dabble because I have had clients that I've been working with for the better part of 20 years. So really most of my business is just word of mouth. I only try to take on one or two clients at a time just because I do have that full-time commitment during the day and that's more, just to keep the skills sharp. And I enjoy selling real estate but also love helping and supporting agents sell more real estate.

Speaker 2: 1:32

Yeah, that's awesome. You sound like a really busy guy. How do you balance the two?

Speaker 1: 1:37

Scheduling is super key. I've definitely had to learn that lesson the hard way over the years, but having been doing it for a long time, I just live and die by my schedule. I would probably forget my kids' birthdays if they weren't in my schedule. If I stopped long enough to think about it, I would obviously know their birthdays. But if I looked at my schedule and the next day I had nothing on it and I didn't see that alert on there. I would just be completely oblivious because days just blend together.

Speaker 1: 2:01

So for me, I definitely live by the schedule and then I'm really big, just with boundaries. So if I am, you know my my day job, if it's, you know, nine to five and I'm there after 5m. I really try to pivot and that's either I'm working with clientele that are looking to either buy or sell or relocate, or I'm with my family. So it's really important to me because I have four kids, a wife, a dog, and I want to make sure that they feel like they're my priority, because they are yeah, that's wonderful.

Speaker 2: 2:28

On that note, would you mind giving our listeners any tips that you have, because you sound like you're really good at it with scheduling. How are you doing that? Is this on a calendar? Are you writing it down on a piece of paper? What kind of tips could you give?

Speaker 1: 2:40

Yeah, so for me, I am big with tasks and checklists and with my Google Calendar. So my Google Calendar, I have some automations so you can use things like Calendly or SetSchedule. Some systems some are free, some have expenses where you can give people the ability to schedule with you, but within the boundaries of what works best for you. And I find that really, really successful, especially in today's day and age when, if I want to go to the doctor, they'll go oh, here's our scheduling link. Find the time that's most convenient for you, but, more importantly, what's most convenient for us, right, because they build in the blocks and what works for them. So a lot of times, by making it seem like you have more choice, in reality you're just letting people work within what works best for you. So for me, that would be one thing Try to automate as much as you can where you're driving people to something that looks like they have the freedom to schedule at a convenient time for you but is also convenient. Well, it's convenient for them, but also convenient for you.

Speaker 2: 3:39

Yeah, I love it. Thank you, and then could you give me a little bit of a backstory about yourself and your history with your work, career and everything, and how you got into real estate.

Speaker 1: 3:43

Sure, so I got into real estate right out of high school. So I am 38 years old. I've been in the business for 20 years. I tell people my dad tricked me. So I am second generation real estate broker. I'm a son of a broker, so you can just I'm an SOB, yeah. And so I knew all I knew about real estate was the boring stuff.

Speaker 1: 4:02

So growing up, because my dad owned his own real estate brokerage, you know, I would go and sit at home inspections and I wasn't allowed to touch anything or do anything and it was the most boring thing. I would go to closings and I'd sit in the closing and there's nothing to do, and he'd be like don't touch anything, don't say anything, don't even let people know that you're there, right, and it was brutal. So if you had told me when I was younger that one day I was going to be a great big old real estate agent, I would tell you that that sounds horrible. So my dad tricked me because at the time, like my senior summer, I was climbing trees for an arborist. So, like at 18, he was like teaching me how to climb trees and cut them down and whatever.

Speaker 1: 4:41

And my dad was also a paramedic. So he was a full-time paramedic for Fairfax County and he ran his own real estate brokerage, because when you're a firefighter you only work like nine days a month. So he was able to do both full-time. And so, because of my dad's history being a first responder, he had seen a lot of accidents and he didn't love the idea of his 18-year-old son climbing trees. So he basically made me an offer I couldn't refuse. I was young enough and dumb enough to not know. But he put a number at the you know ahead of what I would make hourly compared to what I was making at the arborist and it was kind of a no-bra it. I like to help people.

Speaker 1: 5:09

I like the people part of real estate more than anything, and I like the problem solving, so there can be some very complicated deals. I pride myself on really trying to work on transactions that are a little bit harder, like if somebody's like oh, there's nothing we can do for you. Those are the ones that I tend to find myself drawn towards. Probably would make my life a lot easier if I was just like I want to work on these slam dunk multi-million dollar listings and list them and sell in a weekend. But for me that's just. That isn't as fun. I don't really genuinely feel like I'm serving people at a deep, meaningful level, and that's more important for me.

Speaker 1: 5:47

But going back to when my dad tricked me, he said you know, get in the business. So I got in the business and then he was just said you know, since you didn't go to college, you need to invest kind of that same amount of time. You would have been getting a degree in mastering real estate. So it was classes and seminars and conferences and I spent tens of thousands of dollars over the first years in the business reading every book that I could, going to all the conferences, learning as much as I could, because I was 18, 19, 20 years old and the people I was working with were, in some instances, two, three, four times my age, so I'd go and sit in their house and they'd be like I've been alive. I could be your grandfather. There's no way you know more about real estate than me, and so the challenge was I had to know more about real estate than them, and so there was a big learning curve for me, and that's probably one of the best things I did was just learn everything that I could.

Speaker 2: 6:39

And even to this day I don't know everything. I don't even know close to everything, so I just try to learn and yeah, and with that background is that kind of where?

Speaker 1: 6:42

that led you with coaching like new real estate agents. Yeah, so I realized, after selling at a pretty high level myself, I had a team. There was a small team. I was selling personally between 80 and 100 units a year. I was making seven figures. So I was earning a lot of income, but my life was pretty chaotic and I was pretty miserable, and so I needed to make a shift.

Speaker 1: 7:00

So in 2015, which was my best year in sales I pivoted into a senior leadership role at a local brokerage. They're actually a national brokerage, but I had a local branch. I became the managing broker there and I really found that I loved interfacing with the agents, helping them troubleshoot their own issues with their businesses, with their clients, with whatever was impeding them from progress, and that turned into, over probably five or six years of being in leadership, I created my own coaching business and from 2019 to 2023, I actually full-time. All I did was entrepreneurial coaching, predominantly in the real estate space. Wow, and then that led me to the position I'm with at Samson. That opportunity came along and it was great, because the thing that I've always been passionate about is helping as many as I can, and I was fairly limited in me doing it on my own. So when a 6,000-person brokerage came along, that's adding 100 agents a month and I got a chance to help and serve at a big, meaningful way it was. It was a no brainer.

Speaker 2: 8:05

That is awesome. I want to touch on that a little bit more. How are you, like, what are the strategies that you're using to help these new agents come into the, to the industry, and, like, what are some things that you teach them? I'm curious.

Speaker 1: 8:15

Yeah, absolutely. So you know, I would love to say there's a magic pill, and anyone who says there is one is lying to you. The failure rate in residential real estate is very high. You know, 15% of all agents who get their license make it to year five, so it's an 85% fail rate. The reality is the 15% that make it.

Speaker 1: 8:29

They come in, they're very intentional, they're very organized in that they have a goal. They show up, they treat it like a job as an independent contractor, which is what a real estate agent is. There's no one there to tell you when to wake up, what to do, how often to do it. There's no one there. So it takes a lot of initiative. But, more importantly, I would say the key characteristics that define someone who's successful in this business is consistency and persistence. Right, I will consistently show up every day and treat my job like a nine to five, because in reality, that's the way you're going to get results. And when things are hard, I'm going to keep doing it. Yeah, even if I'm not seeing the results immediately, because sometimes what we do today doesn't pay dividends for six months. Yes, it's an investment.

Speaker 1: 9:06

The best investments are long-term investments right, so we got to do today what we're hoping to pay off in 6, 12, 18, 24 months, so so on. So, for me, what I'm typically looking for in someone who's going to be successful is they're not afraid put themselves out there, they're not afraid to ask questions and to seek to understand, and they're definitely not afraid to do right, to just show up and take advantage and do the do the hard things, because it's hard to put yourself out there.

Speaker 2: 9:28

And it sounds like you definitely got to have accountability, like you said, like you got to treat it like a nine to five job. So if you don't, you're setting yourself up for failure.

Speaker 1: 9:36

Absolutely the hardest person to manage is yourself sometimes right, but that's why I think we have managers With all the technology and all the things over all the years disrupting all of these different industries. The one thing that's been consistent across all of them is managers right.

Speaker 1: 9:53

Managers are there. Managers are there because of accountability, because accountability is what's required in order to get results. That consistency right, that's managed consistency when we're doing it ourselves. Not everybody has that instinctually. So, figuring out a way to find that or have someone else who's going to hold you accountable, honestly, that's what a coach is. It's just somebody that's going to be there who can kind of give you a perspective that's not your own, because sometimes, when a problem is this close, you can't see all the opportunity beyond it. So a coach, sometimes their perspective is the thing that's beneficial, but more often than not it's the accountability Just saying, hey, what did you do the last week? Oh, you didn't get it done. No, interesting, tell me more about that.

Speaker 2: 10:28

You know figuring it out right about that. Speaking of technology, what have been some game changers for you guys in your industry, both in real estate and with Samson?

Speaker 1: 10:40

So I'd definitely say the thing that's really kind of most recently is AI. Like AI is, I know a lot of people are intimidated and scared by it. I think that it will do a lot of good in the sense that it can replace a lot of busy work that people aren't naturally very gifted at. So both in the real estate space, ai is super helpful. Like, for instance, I can say all right, I want to have a marketing campaign to reach out to everybody that's in my sphere, who knows that I sell real estate? Who's sorry?

Speaker 1: 11:11

I just touched that who works with me, who has worked with me in the past, and I just want to stay top of mind, but without coming across as too salesy. Like I could type that prompt into ChatGPT and say give me a 12 month plan to touch these people, the script what the topic should be and make sure it's not too salesy. And if it comes back and it's too salesy, I can go less salesy, right, and it'll adjust it. That is awesome, right? It takes a lot of that heavy lifting thinking because we only have a certain amount of bandwidth every day that we go into the day with and at a certain point we're just no good. Our brain is mush. Chat to UPG is never going to be mush, right, it's just there. It's only as good as the prompts you give it. But if you dig a little bit deeper it can do some of the heavy lifting for you. So AI is huge.

Speaker 1: 11:47

Other things is mostly just around organizing, like I was talking about earlier, scheduling and having those automations where they can integrate. That's obviously super helpful. Any system that can make you more efficient and prevent there being places where people can fall through the gaps, whether it may be following up with a client, whether it may be following up with an agent who might want to learn more about Samson Properties, Things that will help to stay top of mind. Those things, I think, are really the biggest game changers. And, other than that, their technology is wonderful, but it's only going to go to a certain point.

Speaker 1: 12:16

At the end of the day, people do business with people that they know, like and trust, so it's still sales is still kneecap to kneecap. You can win the business online and then meet them in person and it can cost you the business. So you still got to be able to sell. People still got to like you, they got to trust you, they got to know you. So I would say technology is great as a resource to help be more efficient. However, it isn't going to replace just good, old-fashioned kneecap-to-kneecap Ford, right that's right Family occupation, recreation, dreams.

Speaker 2: 12:43

And as far as marketing goes, what are you doing to get the word out there about what you're doing with your services, with real estate?

Speaker 1: 12:50

Nothing. I love the honesty. Yeah, I'll be totally honest. Well, the problem is there's two things. One, I've done it at a really high level in the past and I did all kinds of different marketing things A lot of social media, a lot of direct mail, client events, did open houses, email drip campaigns, e-blasts, running ads, pay-per-click YouTube, like all the different things that you can do. We definitely tried. I threw money at it and that's great, because at that time that was the only revenue generator for me in my business. So I was trying to get as much as I could.

Speaker 1: 13:23

Now, because real estate is something that I don't want to say part-time, because it is part of what I do every single day, but it is something where I only work with a small group of people at any given time, because I am a firm believer that if they can't get 110% of my best effort, I'm not going to try to do it. I'm not going to force something and then fail. I've done it enough, so I know what my limits are. So for me, I haven't very fortunate, I haven't needed to do a lot of direct marketing to generate those referrals. Some of it is just when I'm working with somebody I just say, hey, if this has been beneficial to you, I'd love to meet other people. You think I could help the same way, and just by being vulnerable and asking for that help, I haven't really needed to do much marketing, which is probably terrible.

Speaker 1: 14:04

Don't take my advice. You probably should market. I'm sure I would have more opportunities to help people if I did. I just get a little bit like that's my own little anxiety. I don't want to over-promise and under-deliver.

Speaker 2: 14:16

Yes, I got it.

Speaker 1: 14:16

But for Samson, I mean we have a full marketing team, a recruiting team we use like email drips. We do lunch and learns where we do these, like really nice, expensive lunches where people can come and get a free meal at Ruth's, chris or Morton's or some like high end nice restaurant. Learn about the company without any strings attached, right, they can just come find out and we have a lot of success with that. I do one-to-ones so people can schedule on demand for calls or virtual meetings or you know all kinds of different things. And so we're, we're, we're, we're covering the gamut text messages, direct email campaigns, social media ads, own websites, landing pages, you know, whatever you do. And I don't have to do a lot of that, which is great. I just get to show up and I get to basically talk and look pretty, I don't know.

Speaker 2: 14:59

Look pretty. I love it. That's the dream right there. Try to be. And then let's see how do you build and maintain relationships with clients and other professionals in the real estate industry? I know you just said lunch and learn, but what about with clients?

Speaker 1: 15:14

So past clients. A lot of it is just connection. I know that there's a time like I was talking about earlier. There's like a lot of systems that can help automate. You know whether you're sending out like a monthly newsletter to keep them informed on the real estate industry, what's going on with you, what's going on with the market. It could be social media, where they're just getting to experience your life and what's going on, and every now and then you throw in an anecdote about real estate, just to be top of mind. I remember he does also sell real estate in addition to being just an awesome human being, and so those little things can be very, very subtle and easy reminders, but I think sometimes it's the one-to-one organic outreach. For me, this is going to be controversial. I literally hate it when it's your birthday and everyone sends you a happy birthday on Facebook. Why literally hate it when it's your birthday and everyone sends you a happy birthday on Facebook? Why I hate it? Because it seems disingenuous.

Speaker 2: 16:04

Oh.

Speaker 1: 16:05

How many people just go like HBD. Exclamation mark.

Speaker 1: 16:08

Okay, true, there's very little thought about it To me. I want your birthday to be a little bit special. I'm going to at least send you a text message. Yeah, I'm going to open it up and I'm going to send a different message to every different person on their birthday. I'm going to make it personal to them. I'm going to tell them, you know something like hey, I heard it's your birthday. All right, a little birdie told me it's your birthday today. You know, I don't know if anybody's been reaching out to wish you a happy birthday, but I hope best one yet.

Speaker 1: 16:35

Oh, that personal touch yeah absolutely, or, like you know, the next time you're in my area I'd love to take you to lunch to celebrate your birthday, even if this is a few weeks from now. I'm sure you're busy today, that's okay. I want to make sure that you know that I appreciate you being alive.

Speaker 2: 16:48

You know, whatever it is, Absolutely.

Speaker 1: 16:50

You know there's nothing real estate related about it, but people will remember you and if you're good at your job like if you take the time to be good at your job people will associate me with being a good real estate agent, if they had a good experience with me. I don't know, I'm not the best agent, but if I work really hard and they have a good experience, I don't have to do a lot of follow-up, selling for those referrals, just reminding them that I exist every now and then, and a lot of times they go hand in hand. Oh, richard, he's also a real estate broker. He can help my friends and family. Just hearing from me is enough to get the job done.

Speaker 2: 17:20

You're so passionate about this.

Speaker 1: 17:21

I love it Well mostly this is me just talking to other agents about these same things too, and sometimes, if you feel good about what you're going to do, you do it. So that's like a big thing with motivation. I don't think motivation will get Correct and that's where the persistency comes in, but I think also just being excited about what you get to do every day, that you wake up alive and that you get an opportunity to experience your life in whatever way you want, that's a privilege.

Speaker 2: 17:50

So try to make the best of it every day. Yeah, love it. And then what's the most unexpected thing you've learned about yourself since starting in real estate?

Speaker 1: 18:02

I, I am a salesperson and it's been 20 years of this exploration, of understanding that I work in a sales field, but I hate sales. It's wild, it is a little bit wild. I think there's more agents, more people in sales like this than there are actually. Though, because I've started to ask and I find out. Why do business owners struggle to ask for help? Why do business owners struggle to ask for help? Like I meet somebody and I do a great job for them and I burn like the midnight oil and I deliver way beyond what they put a possibly ever expected for me, and I won't simply just go. If you wouldn't mind, if you know someone else that I might be able to help, would you mind recommending me? Like that's a hard thing to do and I think it's a lot because people are afraid to sell, but we're in sales, right, like we're in sales.

Speaker 1: 18:48

So, for me, I realized that I just I'm not naturally a salesperson. I've had to reframe to the point where it's really I'm helping people. I'm not selling them anything, I'm here to help. So you know, by asking those questions, it's an opportunity to serve. Right, I can serve at a higher level, I can serve more people and I can give more people a positive experience and something that can be a very stressful transition. So that's probably one of the first things I think of is that I'm just not a great salesperson, but I try to be really, really, really good at my job so that I don't have to worry as much about it About it?

Speaker 2: 19:20

yeah, putting in that work on the other end, right? Sure, I love it. What do you like to do in your free time? I know you're doing work with Samson, you're doing your real estate stuff and you like to set boundaries. When you set those boundaries, what is it that you like to do?

Speaker 1: 19:34

So I love spending time with my family. My wife and I we like try to do a date night once a week, or twice a week if we can.

Speaker 2: 19:44

So, like last week, we went dancing for the first time.

Speaker 1: 19:45

What kind of music, jazz or something. So it was like a new intro dance class that we did. So it was like we didn't really get a pick. It was like 30 minutes. So we did a waltz and then we did some swing Cute, which was kind of fun, yeah, yeah. So we liked it, so we might sign up to do that. Some cooking classes we signed up for. We did a.

Speaker 1: 20:12

There's here what was it called, I can't remember. It's a forge, lawless Forge, lawless Forge hashtag. Whatever. Lawless Forge. They're. Over in Sterling they have this forge. You go in and you can make knives. They gave you a horseshoe and we turned a horseshoe into an actual steak knife. Okay, that is pretty cool. It was so cool. So just those kind of things. I'm at a point in my life where I'm really excited about new experiences. I want to try new things, I want to go to places and I want to share those experiences with the people I love. So my kids like real estate. I started having kids very young, so I have a 20 year old, a 19 year old, an 18 year old and a 16 year old.

Speaker 2: 20:39

I feel like those could be your siblings. You look so young.

Speaker 1: 20:41

I'm 38. So you guys can do the math. But I definitely had kids young and it's been exciting because now that they're older and they have personalities and they have interests and they have lives, I'm getting to experience a lot of these things for the first time for me, but also for the first time with them, and that's super-duper fun. Other than that, selfishly for hobbies, I play paintball. I used to play competitively, now I just do scenario games. I spend an enormous amount of money on paintball guns. I love paintball. I'm going on a paintball trip in May with my cousin, who I love so much. So paintball is a ton of fun.

Speaker 1: 21:15

And then I coach wrestling. So I wrestled in high school, middle school, elementary, middle and high school. Would have wrestled in college, but I got hurt and that's actually how I ended up in real estate fun fact. But now I coach. And that's actually how I ended up in real estate. Fun fact. But now I coach. I've been coaching high school wrestling for the last two or three years. This weekend, actually, our kids are going to be at States. It's the end of the wrestling season, so very excited for them. And you know, it's just, it's sport coaching versus entrepreneurial coaching, but it still kind of scratches that itch and I love helping the kids.

Speaker 2: 21:42

It sounds like you really do like to like be a leader and just help others. It really just sounds like that because you're like coaching here, coaching there, coaching, wrestling, coaching. Real estate agents always just try to help the next person be the next best, whatever they want to be.

Speaker 1: 21:57

Yeah, you know, it's interesting that you bring that up, because I don't actually like consider myself a leader per se. Like um, I love to serve and I think that a lot of leaders don't consider themselves leaders. But I think that they have that in common that they just are passionate about serving other people. There's like a book I can't remember who read, but they had like the five levels of leadership. You know, a leader is somebody who has the position of being a leader right, like I made you the boss in your position and title, you know, but you don't have buy-in. And then, like the second tier, leader is somebody who is a leader and is followed right, people choose to follow them. And then tier three, leader is somebody that has been elevated as a leader and identified as somebody who can even, like, give insight on being a leader. And then tier four maybe there's just four tiers. And then tier four is a leader who creates other leaders right and so, but it all comes back to like what you're able to do and helping other people achieve their goals.

Speaker 1: 22:49

My favorite life quote in the world it's in my email signature, it's in my text messages is Zig Ziglar If you help enough, people get what they want. In life, you'll never have to worry about what you want, and that's what I try to do. Live my life that way every day.

Speaker 2: 22:59

Practice what you are preaching on your email. I don't always get it sometimes, but we get back up and we just try to do our best. Try to. I want to ask how do you stay motivated and inspired in your work as a real estate agent and what keeps you passionate about the industry?

Speaker 1: 23:16

The people? Yeah, for sure It'd have to be the people, because if it's the things, if you're like it's the houses or it's the industry or it's the market or those things, those things can change and they're not really in your control. Same thing with people. People can change and not in your control. But I think by investing the time in those relationships that's what makes it most appealing to me.

Speaker 1: 23:36

I've always looked at other industries and been like how cool would it be to be a surgeon, or how cool would it be to be a pilot, or how cool would it be to be an attorney that works with big corporations on like meaningful legislation or litigation? That's always been cool stuff. But in real estate we get to work with all those people because they all need to buy and sell homes. So for me it's always been the people. Like it's just I didn't go do those exact things, I just did this job where I get to meet all those people and I've met some of the most fascinating human beings who have gotten to tell me about cool stuff that they've gotten to do in their lives and it's just so neat Like that to me is fascinating. I enjoy that more than selling, more than the homes. More than anything else, it's just being curious about people and their experiences and it's kind of fun.

Speaker 2: 24:19

I love that, and is there anything that I have not touched on that perhaps you would like to share? Whether it's about yourself, paintball, your industry, anything at all, you have the floor.

Speaker 1: 24:30

Um no, I, I, I mean, I just appreciate the opportunity to be here today. Um I, this was very cool, thank you for you know, reaching out and letting me have a platform and and to talk. Um I, I definitely enjoy what I do. I'm super fortunate. I love the organization I work for with Samson. If you're an agent and you're deciding where you want to go with your career or what you want to do I mean we are the fastest growing real estate company. We're the largest real estate company in the DMV for a reason. So I'd be remiss not to make a little plug, for if you want to find out why, we'd love to talk to you Again, I'm a terrible salesperson, so all I'm going to do is give you the facts and, if it makes sense, maybe you come over.

Speaker 2: 25:13

If not great.

Speaker 1: 25:14

There's other real estate. There's other great real estate brokerages out there. I'm just very partial to Samson, so that's a really cool thing, Like I'm very excited to be a part of that organization, and I wouldn't be on the recruiting team if I wasn't like passionate about what they do and being able to benefit agents. And then the other side of it is just like you know. My advice would be always be challenging yourself to be the best version of yourself, right, Like every day. Don't ever be content with the status quo. If you really want to do meaningful things in your life, continue to learn from people doing meaningful things in their lives. If you do that and you continue to pursue that and you're never just content with the status quo, I think that's when exceptional people do exceptional things.

Speaker 2: 25:57

Yes, you gave so many good quotes in there Zig Ziglar and now this one exceptional people. Usually my last question is like do you have anything that inspires you? But you just told me that it was your email, the Zig Ziglar one, the inspirational quote. Let's see. Do you have any goals? It's still early on in 2025. Any goals that you've set for yourself that maybe you want to share?

Speaker 1: 26:19

For me. I wanted to help 15 families either buy or sell a home. I probably am well on track for that, so I'm excited. If somebody wanted to talk to me about it, I would definitely not turn them away.

Speaker 2: 26:31

Yeah, you heard it here first, y'all.

Speaker 1: 26:33

For me, a big thing is I want to have close to 50% on my conversion for recruiting appointments. So if I meet with somebody, 50% of the time that person is going to go. Yes, I'd like to. I'd like to become a Samson agent. I'd like to be part of the Sam fam, Sam fam Hashtag, Sam fam yes, our Samson family Hashtag. I love it. Yep hashtag, Sam fam. So that's important to me. I don't want to focus more on how many. I think that that will kind of take care of itself. For me, it's having conversations where I'm clearly communicating the value of the company I'm so passionate about and I think that if, for every two people I talk to, one person sees that value and wants to be part of our organization, I think that that would be a good performance metric for me. So I'd like that to be it.

Speaker 2: 27:21

Beautiful. And last thing, for real this time. Where can people find you if they're hearing and they're like, wow, I want this guy to coach me, I want him to bring me into the real estate game.

Speaker 1: 27:29

Sure. So if you're interested in Samson, the best resources join Samsoncom. Everything's on there In terms of like what we provide, what we offer. If they want to schedule a one-to-one, if they want to come have a free lunch at one of our amazing Lunch and Learn events, does some of them, so you can't go wrong. They all are phenomenal. So, whether you get me or not, you're not leaving out For sure.

Speaker 1: 27:55

Yeah, you're in great hands. I would probably say, out of the four of us, I'm fourth in terms of proficiency, so I'm just going to try to get better. But that's right, you're in the right room if the people are ahead of you. Right, that's right, you're in the right room if the people are ahead of you. You don't want to be the smartest person in the room and, in terms of real estate, the easiest way probably email or text a message directly. I have a website. I don't even know what the website is off the top of my head, because it's one of my company-provided websites.

Speaker 1: 28:26

So I would just say if you Google Richard Bridges, realtor or broker, all that comes up you will come up. Yeah, I've made sure that my SEO is good, so you'll be able to find me that way. Or you can find me online. I'm on Facebook. You can search my name On Instagram. I'm at realtor, underscore rich. I don't use Instagram that much though, to be honest, so email probably works best. So, richard at buildwithbridgescom.

Speaker 2: 28:44

Awesome.