Protecting Clients Money = More Listings w/ Chris Sauerzopf

In a listing presentation, a Realtor needs to win the trust of the seller. Trust that you as the real estate agent are the one who can not only do what the sellers want done, but who will take the best care of the seller. Trust that the Realtor can protect the sellers from any threats.

When a Realtor can show the seller a potential pitfall or problem, in this case wire fraud, but then offer up a solution to it, and demonstrate to the seller that you provide them that solution, they'll trust you. They'll trust you because no other Realtor will show up to a listing presentation and bring up the chance that the seller could get their money stolen at the very end.

Luckily a new technology solution exists to eliminate wire fraud in our industry, and protect not only our clients money, but the liability to ourselves and our companies. 

Chris Sauerzopf is the CEO of Safewire

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:00

On this episode, you'll not only learn how to stand out head and shoulders above the rest in a listing presentation by doing and providing what others don't, but you'll also learn how now there's a solution to protect your client's money. We're talking with Chris Sauershoff, the CEO of SafeWire.

SPEAKER_02 0:18

The massive aged podcast. We need generation tips and strategies to give you more leads and sell more gold.

SPEAKER_00 0:26

I love to buy houses. I like to sell houses.

SPEAKER_02 0:31

Wait a minute. Leads away. I've had better. Am I gonna get attention now? Here's your host, Dustin Brohm.

SPEAKER_01 0:44

What is up, everybody? Welcome to episode 151 of the Massive Agent Podcast. I am your host, Dustin Brohm. We have an awesome conversation today with Chris Saurzoff, the CEO of Safewire. He's been on the show before. We've talked about Safewire. Um, but Safewire, now that it is launched, now that it's been used, uh, I think I believe he said tens of thousands of times in transactions, it is it is now actively, or we we now actually have a solution to prevent wire fraud. And we're gonna, you're gonna learn today how you can use that to protect your client's money, but also to get more listings by by educating sellers on the dangers of wire fraud. Okay. No one else is doing this. No one else is doing this in a listing presentation because we want it to be all, you know, rainbows and puppy dogs and you know, kumbaya. But if you bring up potential pitfalls, potential problems or issues that could happen, and then show a solution that you can provide them, you're gonna stand out above the rest and you're gonna learn exactly how that's done. So this is a great educational episode about a problem that we face as an industry as an industry, the solution that currently exists, how we can use it, and then how you can leverage that solution in your listing presentations to get more listings. So awesome, awesome episode. I really enjoyed it. Um, if you are new to the show, welcome. You are you're in for a treat. Because I uh, man, this is a this is an audio train wreck. So you're in for a treat. Uh, I am your host, Dustin Brohm. I am the founder, uh, sorry, the co-founder. Sorry, Phil. Didn't mean to not give Phil his his due uh attention there. No, I'm the co-founder of the Industry Syndicate Real Estate Podcast Network. I am a national speaker on all things real estate marketing, lead generation podcasting, and social media marketing. I am a realtor myself in Salt Lake City, Utah, and the founder of the Massive Agent Society, our one agent per market lead gen training and coaching program where we teach you how to use Facebook ads. You give you the Facebook ads that you should run today and show you how to use them to start bringing in leads consistently over time and build a system so that you can put your lead gen on autopilot and start closing deals on autopilot too. And by the way, guys, this is your last chance. This is the last call to claim a market after November 15th, which is Sunday, Sunday. Yeah, Sunday, November 15th. After Sunday, November 15th, you will no longer be able to claim a market exclusively. So if you've been on the fence, if you're if you're like, oh, I I just haven't joined for whatever reason, if you want to be able to claim a market, make sure you do that right now. Right now. Unfortunately, some of you guys will hear this after November 15th. Sorry, you could still join, but you'll um you'll no longer be able to claim the market uh as the only member in it. Um it just we we grew past that. There's uh you know, it created some other issues. It's great for for those that have claimed their market, but um for long-term sustainability of the program, we needed to make the change. So there we go. You guys have a few days from when this comes out. Uh MassiveAgentSociety.com, claim your market. If you're after November 15th, um there'll be no market exclusivity anymore, except for those who already have claimed their markets. Those markets are still sold out. Those will be sold out. You will not be able to join the society if there's a member in your market. But if there's not, you know, then you can still join. And it's all about the information, anyways. It's all about getting the info, implementing it, and getting a crap load of leads consistently over time, converting them using our system, and uh closing a bunch of transactions. Doesn't sound too bad, does it? Lastly, before we get into it, um just on a personal note, something I'm super proud of and excited about. So when you guys hear this, um I will be a day or two away from finishing 75 hard. Um, my wife and I, we did it together, which I highly advise if you guys like do it with a spouse. It's been such an amazing opportunity um to do it with my spouse. It made it so much easier and more enjoyable when we're both holding each other accountable. And, you know, it it's it's hard when one person's trying to be healthy and exercise and eat really well and the other isn't. Uh and usually it was me who was not, you know, not the the best um at supporting my wife and what she was trying to do. Uh when you're both on the same page, it just it man, it makes things so much easier and and more enjoyable. So that's been great. I've lost a bunch of weight. I didn't set out to lose weight, I set out to just get in better shape, but I've burned a shitload of body fat. I'll post some before and after photos. It's crazy. I weigh less than uh I I don't think I've weighed this little since I was like 20. Okay. Um when I came out of high school, I was weighing like 145, 150. Um, I went up to almost 200 at one point, and now I'm I'm down into the the mid-160s, and it's just uh like I'm losing body fat like crazy, feel amazing, so much more energy, natural energy. Uh, I've been more productive, and I'd say the biggest thing that I've gotten from 75 Hard is more mental toughness and confidence. It's definitely a physical thing because you're doing two workouts a day, one of them is outdoors, um, and there's nutrition involved, of course, but just sticking with it every single day for 75 straight days and doing all the stuff, you know, reading 10 pages and uh all of that, it's uh it builds character, it builds your uh that muscle in your head. It really does. So I can I underestimated how much more confident I would become by doing this program. If you guys, even if you don't know what it is, but if you guys have heard of 75 Hard, I cannot recommend it enough. It is it's been incredible, but this is not the end for me. This is the beginning for me. This is the beginning for my wife and I. We're uh we've now created new habits, we've created a new lifestyle, we've created uh a new way to live that's sustainable long term. And no, I'm not gonna do two workouts a day, every day, you know, forever. But um, you know, certain habits we picked up are now habits forever. And so uh could not be more excited. I'm just uh I I'm just um proud to have finished it. Proud to have finished it. So um, yeah, 75 hard is complete. I might move on to the next phase, which is called phase one, which they actually add some more stuff onto it. Um I'm not sure. I'm not sure. But I actually spoke with uh with somebody with one of my industry friends yesterday. Some of you guys know him. Uh he's he's in the Kansas City area, and we were talking about, hey, what if we were able to like what if we could do a 75 hard type of program specifically for real estate agents that that also brought in some marketing stuff where they had to do certain things towards their marketing and towards their branding, change things up a little bit here or there. But um, you know, it we're working on a cool idea. Um, I don't know if it's worth pursuing, but uh there's there's some serious potential there because I cannot tell you the not just the physical transformation that I've seen over the last two and a half months, but the mental one too. So if you guys have thought about doing 75 hard or maybe you started and didn't finish for whatever reason, get back on the horse. Try it again and just stick to it and decide that you will not stop. Um, it's an amazing feeling at the end. So 75 Hard is complete, or it will be when when you hear this. So all right, guys, let's uh let's jump into this interview with Chris Saurzoff, the CEO of SafeWire. Uh, really, this was an awesome episode. I I'm just so curious about everything and and I love his passion for solving the problem of people getting their down payments stolen, their earnest money stolen, their the proceeds from their sales stolen. He has a Chris has a real passion for solving this, and he's built the platform to do it through technology. It's absolutely incredible. So let's hear from Chris Saurzoff, the CEO of SafeWire. What's up, guys? I'm here with Chris Sauershoff, the CEO of SafeWire, one of my favorite companies in our industry right now, just because of the impact that I think they can really have in solving problems, solving problems not just for us as real estate pros, but for consumers in a very big way. And that's wire fraud and that's stolen funds. And um, you know, if we can't have uh integrity in our transactions, you know, we can't have transactions. We can't have nice things. So SafeWire is uh, you know, I think they're doing some really, really cool stuff to completely eliminate uh any chance of wire fraud for those of that that are using the platform. So, Chris, welcome back onto the Massive Agent Podcast for the second time. How's it going?

SPEAKER_00 9:59

Great, Dustin. I appreciate you having me.

SPEAKER_01 10:01

Absolutely, absolutely. Well, since you were here last, some things have changed. You guys have launched your your platform and you know it's being adopted, it's being used. Um, it looks really freaking cool. And and so I want to obviously hear more about Safewire and how it works and what agents need to know, uh, and you know what they need to be communicating to their clients. But um there's also this like why SafeWire even exists, you know. Um, why don't we start there for a second? Why why did you create SafeWire? What's the problem to begin with?

SPEAKER_00 10:39

Well, yeah, so great, great question. I'll tell you the the honest reason why we started SafeWire is because this problem scares the crap out of me. Uh, you know, I I'm a title company owner, been in this space over 11 years, and this happened to someone uh and who messaged me back in 2016 who had just lost his entire life savings to a real estate wire fraud case. And it scared the crap out of me to think that one of our people could be having a bad day and send hundreds of thousands of dollars to the wrong place and our business could be over. And so it really took me down this path of figuring out what's actually happening, who's doing it, and how do we stop it.

SPEAKER_01 11:29

Right. Yeah, the when you really think about the problem and how like and it doesn't it usually happen after everyone thinks it's over. Like, you know, we we we think we've already scored the touchdown, we we're in the end zone, you know, transactions over, sale is closed. Isn't that really when this happens?

SPEAKER_00 11:47

Well, here's here's what's scary is that it can literally happen anytime within the transaction. So from the time a property is listed for sale, think about what happens. All of that information is being disseminated on these portals online. And and you know, now fraudsters know because of Zillow or Realtor.com or the or your brokerage website that there's a home for sale, there's a property, there's a seller, there's a real estate agent, there's I mean, the the problem begins at the listing, and it can happen to your right. It can happen all the way through closing funding and even after the transaction, where someone is realizing that that money is not in their account and is looking around saying, What just happened?

SPEAKER_01 12:35

Yeah, that that is uh terrifying. I mean, I've I know that I've read stories, some of some of which you've told me about, of real estate agents that had their email hacked or spoofed or whatever. And you know, they were sued because just by their security being lackluster, um, or you know, using Yahoo mail or something as a as an agent, which come on now, um they were they were the weak link and let let the uh perpetrator, the the fraudster into the transaction. And you know, a lot of times the liability falls on the agent or the broker, right?

SPEAKER_00 13:12

Yeah, well, think think about it, right? Like if and when this stuff happens, which last year happened over 12 about 12,000 times, so happening about a thousand times a month.

SPEAKER_01 13:23

Um nationwide?

SPEAKER_00 13:25

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 13:26

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_00 13:27

So think about what happens is that everybody's getting sued, regardless of who's to blame, because an attorney gets a hold of the case, and anyone who's collectible is getting pulled into litigation. That's just, you know, that's that's that's what happens. But then secondly, like let's say you're actually uh one of the reasons that it happened. Let's say that you you generally generally one of two ways this is happening. You somehow have received uh fraudulent wire instructions or fraudulent information from a title partner or so, whatever, hand forward that along to a client, you now have facilitated the fraud. And so your negligent, your ENO carrier, we have this idea that these ENO carriers and cyber policy carriers are just gonna back us no matter what. Well, that's not the case. If you facilitate this happening and it happens on your watch, your ENO carrier is gonna tell you that you're negligent. And the courts have found that agents who facilitate this kind of stuff, obviously always unwillingly, unwittingly, are negligent up to 85% of the loss. So if you're talking about something that happened for half a million dollars, which happens, you could be on the hook for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

SPEAKER_01 14:49

Yeah, that's uh that's terrifying.

SPEAKER_00 14:52

So that's that's one thing that's happening where there's a just a lot of really poor practices in the space between title companies and real estate agents, and people are trying to get things to close, and and they're it's happening at the end of the transaction, and there's always a sense of urgency and emotion tied to this. That's that's one way it's happening. The other way it's happening is uh your agents can uh have, like, as you mentioned, unsafe email practices. And if they're successfully fished, I guess uh our industry from title companies, agents, brokers, mortgage professionals, we're all a target currently. We're being targeted by a sophisticated group of international criminals, primarily based out of Western Africa, that are working now with partners in India and Pakistan who do these phishing scams on us. So they're trying to get your uh your email address and your password. And if they can get in get your email address and your passwords per se Netflix, your Netflix account or your Apple ID account or whatever, then there's a chance that you're using that to actually get into your real email account. And once they're in that agent's real email account, they uh just watch. They wait and they watch, and they're just trying to see who the players are. They're trying to see who your title partner is, they're trying to see who your clients are. And then they go in. And so this is anyone that's listening to this, is something you can do in addition to making sure that you have a strong password that's only used for that email account and to have multi-factor authentication turn on your email. In addition to those two things, you should check your uh settings in your email forwarding. So, what they do is they go into your email forwarding, every email account has forwarding settings. And so, what I can do is if Dustin, if I was in your email account, I can go in, I can see that all right, you're working with Chris at World Class Title on this transaction. I'm gonna set up a forwarding rule in your email that any email that comes from at worldclass title.com, that domain, I'm gonna mark it as red and I'm gonna move it into an RSS feeds folder that you're never gonna look at. So you're never gonna see the emails coming from your title company unless they want you to see the email coming from your title company. And I'm gonna do the same thing with your clients, with your, let's say you're representing the buyers. Any email that comes in from your buyer, I'm gonna do the same thing. I'm gonna mark it as red, I'm gonna move it into a folder you're not gonna see. And then I, as Dustin, pretending I'm you, I'm gonna be the one communicating back and forth with both parties, facilitating, uh facilitating the information that I want to be sent and received, sending wrong wire instructions, sending fraudulent closing disclosures, all kinds of stuff.

SPEAKER_01 17:47

So these are not just idiots. These are not uh dopes, they're sophisticated. They know what they're doing.

SPEAKER_00 17:54

Yeah, well, I think there's um like a general sense that so the folks behind this are the same folks that have behind these been behind these email scams for the last 20, 25 years, where you know you have this long-distance cousin, relative, uncle in Africa that has a million dollars of your money that you know that you send them 5,000, they'll send you a million dollars. Like it's the same people, but now they're working with groups uh in other parts of the world to do the technology with the fishing scams. So there's a they're they're becoming more and more sophisticated. Um, there's still red flags, like they still, you know, there's still ways to to catch up, catch some of these things that don't seem right or sound right, but they're getting better and they're getting better and they're getting better.

SPEAKER_01 18:44

And did you say that there's 1,200 of these happening a month or 12,000?

SPEAKER_00 18:48

There were 12,000 last year.

SPEAKER_01 18:50

Last year, okay.

SPEAKER_00 18:51

Last year, over over 221 million dollars reported to the FBI. There's more than that. That's only what gets reported. But now, right now with COVID, it will be worse because the phishing scam, phishing attempts since March are up 350%, according to um PC magazine. So anytime there's a natural disaster, fraud always goes up. But now you have a global disaster where everybody just can't do anything other than sit around on their computers. And so these attempts have gone up. And I guess is uh we'll see that successful fraud has gone up next year, too.

SPEAKER_01 19:28

Crazy. Um, I mean, I I've heard that since COVID happened and people are everyone's online much more than they were before. Um, sex trafficking's gone up, child trafficking, like all like all the the the worst stuff ever that was happening online, it's just like gas was porn on it, uh poured on it. And uh, and so that doesn't surprise me at all. Um, is there data on like where is the majority of the wire fraud in a real estate transaction coming from? Like or or what's um how how is it getting in? Or is there a certain part of the transaction that it happens in most? Um talk about that?

SPEAKER_00 20:09

Well, I haven't seen any breakdown of like what percentage is happening, um, you know, at which part of the transaction. What it seems like is when the problem began, a lot of the focus and emphasis was on the title company. And title companies have gotten better. Now it doesn't mean it still doesn't happen, but title companies have gotten better at securing their part of the transaction, though I still see a lot of unsecured wire instructions going around from title companies. I still see, I just saw a week ago a title company had just sent the seller proceeds to the to a fake account. So it still is happening, but it's not as rampant on that end. What we're seeing a lot now is buyers and buyers, buyers being really vulnerable because they're just it's not their fault, they're just ignorant to the process. They don't know you know who's going to be sending them what at any time. And so that's um something that seems to be happening more and more. I mean, even Barbara Corcoran got hit earlier this year for almost $400,000, you know. So, like probably arguably, probably the most well-known real estate agent in the business got hit for $400K earlier this year. If it can get her, it can get it can get anyone. And I think generally, this is what I found, Dustin, recently. I've been thinking a lot about this as like, how do you get people who have never been in a car accident to wear seatbelts? Right. Like when we were growing up as kids on the T T V commercials, you had the crash test dummies. Remember those commercials? Like they were trying to in in inject in people the sense of of uh urgency or the sense of Importance to be safe and secured in a car. And now, you know, they've changed the laws and they've they've you can't get in a car without putting your seatbelt on anymore. But we're trying to have those same conversations with this problem because how do I how can I convince you as an agent who you this has never happened to you and you don't know anybody it's happened to? How can I convince you that it's real and that you're you you and your clients are vulnerable to this?

SPEAKER_01 22:27

Right. That's a good point. And you know, it I think that this is just human nature, and I forget what it's called, but when um when or uh I think it's normalcy bias, like because it hasn't happened to us, we're like, well, it's not going to, you know, I that happens to other people, you know, chances are it won't happen to me because it hasn't. And so we just keep doing what we've always done. And uh man, it it it is it's scary because a real estate agent or a brokerage or a title company or a mortgage company or whoever in the transaction, if they are held liable um for negligence, I mean, they could be out of business and you know, the right person shaming them on social media in some viral post that you know half a million people share ruins their name forever.

SPEAKER_00 23:15

It's devastating. It's devastating, it's devastating to their them professionally, but it's also devastating personally. Like it really, it really is unnerving when these things can these things happen. And and you know, I get it. Like I don't I don't really want to be sitting here talking about this today. Like I'd much rather, you know, I'd much rather be talking about how we grow our businesses together, create better consumer experiences. Like I don't want to be talking about the fact that we're vulnerable to having our careers disappear like that with one mistake. But, you know, the reality is it's here, it's here and it's real. I had a conversation with an agent who um I've known a long time. I've known over 10 years. And when I had a license, I had my license with this agent. She she's a great agent. Like when I think about really good real estate agents, I think of her. She's really solid. But she's also one of these agents that has the you know at ao l.com account. She doesn't necessarily take a lot of precaution in the technology she's using and how she's doing some things. And I talked to her and she said, you know, I don't know anybody this has happened to. This isn't happened to me. I'm really not worried about it. Why, why do you care so much about this? And it's a great question. Like that's what we're up against. And I said to her, you know, I I that's a great question. The reason that I'm so passionate about this is because it scares the hell out of me. You know, we have a business here, we have people whose livelihoods depend upon what we do. We have families. And and we we, if we can't protect consumers in the largest financial decision they're gonna make in their lives, they're gonna lose faith and trust in all of what we do. And we're gonna allow ourselves to be disrupted by the by the true technology companies coming into the space because they will have secured ways to do this that we don't we don't have today.

SPEAKER_01 25:18

Absolutely. Uh that's the advantage that Silicon Valley and Wall Street have when they're not industry insiders, is they can they can look at a problem and think of, okay, here's how we should solve it, rather than, well, here's how it's always been done. Right. And and so they have a huge advantage in that in that way.

SPEAKER_00 25:36

And that's our vulnerability. Our vulnerability is our segment segmentation, our segmentation of data and how we communicate is not secured. And how we how we communicate that segmented data is that that's our vulnerability, and that's where they're getting us.

SPEAKER_01 25:51

Yes. Um I mean, and thank God you are thinking about this and caring about this. Somebody has to, because if they didn't, it would never be solved. And, you know, this is one of the reasons I respect you so much, is you, you know, you decided, hey, I'm gonna be the one. Like I raised my hand, I'm going to tackle this problem. We're going to um, you know, fix it through technology. And uh, and that's what you guys are doing. And so um, I want to talk about the solution then. I mean, so for anyone who has not heard our first episode together or they're just hearing about SafeWire for the first time, bring us up to speed. What is SafeWire? How does it work? How is it going to solve the problem that we just discussed?

SPEAKER_00 26:30

Sure. So Safewire exists to uh, you know, ensure every real estate transaction is free from wire fraud. And when we first launched the product in 2017, we were selling it to title companies. That title companies could use Safewire to authenticate that they knew who they were sending to, they money to, they knew where they were sending that money to, they knew what account that that money was going to go into. We authenticated all that on the seller side. And then for the buyer side, we have a secured way to send wire instructions that leaves the agent out of that entire process. So we're not allowing the agent to be compromised. So what though we we've realized, and we've kind of talked about this, is it's not just enough to protect the title companies. We we can't just protect the end of the transaction because if if your buyer has been compromised before they get to me at the title company, I can't protect them. Right. So what we've been working on and have uh repositioned and relaunched is how do we get our technology to the as close to the front of the transaction as possible? And so we've moved Safewire, still works for title companies, still works as a standalone product. Um, we've been doing that now for the last three years, but now how do we take create more versatility within the product that it could be deployed through the when there's a new listing, or it could be deployed at the contract. So it could it could be part of your contract flow. Um, and so we can secure everything we can get to buyers and sellers before the fraudsters can get to the buyers and sellers. And then once we collect that information, we then will send it securely along the way to the trusted parties in the transaction. We'll send it to the title partner in the transaction. And then the title partner agrees to use that information we collected to fund the transaction, and we'll wrap the whole thing up in a warranty that the consumer can pay for at closing.

SPEAKER_01 28:29

Nice to protect their funds up to a million dollars. Okay. Talk about that a little more because that's uh ultimately they're able to get wire fraud insurance through you guys.

SPEAKER_00 28:38

Uh, we don't call it insurance as a warranty product, kind of like a home warranty product. But yeah, essentially it's um it's it's peace of mind for the largest financial decision most of them are gonna have in their lives, right? And so we we know the technology works, we believe in the technology, but if everything if it was uh nothing is ever 100%, if it was banks wouldn't be spending billions and billions of dollars a year to protect against this. So we uh have not had, we've our technology has been incredibly solid, we've had no incurrences of loss, but just to stand behind that, we do have the warranty that the consumer can can uh choose to again pay for at closing. Uh we have real estate agents who come to us and they say, well, we want to pay for that on behalf of our seller because we see that as a value add to what we're bringing to the transaction. And we ultimately we don't mind them doing that, obviously. We don't we don't care. Um, it's priced at basically priced at 50 cents per thousand. So on a $200,000 sale, it would be $100 to protect their proceeds. Um for buyers, it's a little different uh what we're doing with buyers, where buyers we're extending that offering to uh when we do earnest money earnest money. So if a buyer comes in and they we can protect their earnest money transaction and do all that with the technology to keep that safe, then we can extend that coverage to the buyer. Uh, and that's how we're that's how we're doing that.

SPEAKER_01 30:08

Okay. Um I I don't want to ask too much about like, you know, how it works because honestly, I don't need to know how electricity works. I just want to know that when I flip that switch, the light turns on, you know, and that it works. I know that when I use Venmo, when I use PayPal, and you know, they verify my bank account through plaid or whatever the hell, um, that just works and it seems to be secure. So cool. Um, you know, I don't think we need to go into the inner workings of Safewire, but um I just it is there anything else out there like this? Like it educate me a little bit on um on how unique this solution is because first off, I've never actually heard anybody at any major level at all it talk about wire fraud in any meaningful way, let alone tackle a solution. Like it are there competitors? Is this the only solution out there?

SPEAKER_00 30:59

Like well, so one of the reasons why there's the market is relatively new is because it's new. I mean, the problem is really only cropped up the last four or five years. So it is a fairly new problem to the industry. There are competitors out there, there are some folks in the space, but what I found is that our competitors are may have are making the same mistake that we made when we first rolled the product out. And it wasn't really a mistake at the time, it just is where the problem lied, and now the problem is different, it's evolved. Most of the people that are in the space are really only protecting their segment of the transaction. So title companies are protecting title companies, there's products for title companies, there's product for mortgage companies, there's really not much for brokerages and agents. So I see the opportunity to be able to offer a solution across the segmentation. So safe wire can be used from the beginning all the way through to the end, and that's really the opportunity. It's not just enough for me to say, well, we're just going to protect title companies. Well, great, but now we've left the whole front part of the transaction vulnerable. We've left all of these buyers vulnerable. It's just not good enough. And so that's I think that's and that's but it's hard. And so that's one of the challenges, is uh and how we've repositioned the product the last eight months is moving it to this space. Uh, I don't know how many folks are gonna be able to do that. Um I ultimately see what we're doing as a way for the traditional real estate industry to move to a more secured tool that they can use to continue to be relevant. Um, and I don't mean it like in a harsh way, I just mean it like when I look at companies like Open Door, for example, who's moving into this discount brokerage model along with iBuying, but they're also becoming their own brokerage, they're building out secured platforms from search all the way through to uh searching for homes, to making offers with their agents, to working with their mortgage product, working with their title product. And they're building all the technology to be streamlined in one ecosystem that's secured. It's just secured because they can, because they're building the whole technology stack from start to finish. So that is what the industry is going to be competing against, right? That's what you at EXP, me at World Class Title, that's what we're competing against as a traditional real estate industry, is how do the communications, how do we make those more secure when I'm working with you? Our consumers know that that process is going to be completely safe and secured from the listing all the way through to the closing. And so I the way I see it is I think that the industry is going to have to move towards some type of technology like this that can be customizable to all of our different processes, but ultimately it all has to work together in a way that's going to have to compete against these new players coming on the scene.

SPEAKER_01 34:08

I'm glad you mentioned that for perspective, because you're right. Um, and we don't think about that that much that much. We just look at well, open door or Zillow or whoever, like, you know, they're trying to put us out of business. Well, how? You know, what does that look like? And you just described what potentially that looks like is they're just creating their own end-to-end ecosystem for a transaction. And yeah, they can, when they're creating that ecosystem, they can do it in a safe, secure way. But we as agents that have this vendor and this partner and this, and we use this lender over here, and blah, and it's all crazy, like that's not a secure thing. So I'm glad that you mentioned that. Now we see where Safewire fits into the mix and how we can, all of us who have that um traditional real estate transaction ecosystem can just reach over and grab Safewire and say, hey, wrap your arms around us, keep us safe. I like that.

SPEAKER_00 35:04

Um that's very much how I see this space moving in the next five to ten years. I I'm just to be clear, like I'm very much pro-agent. I'm very much like I the consumer and the data around the consumer says overwhelmingly they want a trusted real estate professional in their transaction. But I also uh see that this potentially becomes, if it isn't already, a reported billion dollar a year problem for our industry. And if I'm open door, the first thing I start doing is running TV commercials telling consumers that their money isn't safe in traditional real estate transactions, but open doors is because of the reasons we just talked. And like that's that's a compelling case.

SPEAKER_01 35:50

It would be absolutely. I mean, and that's that's accurate, you know, it is accurate, it's gonna get worse.

SPEAKER_00 35:57

Hopefully, they don't listen to your this podcast and they hear that because I haven't heard them at this point yet, but it's coming.

SPEAKER_01 36:05

The dirty secret is nobody listens to this podcast. Good, we're good. I just you know, I just make it seem like it so that I can feel better about myself. Um, yeah, it man, it's it's really interesting to see why you're building SafeWire and how it's starting to get a foothold in the industry um, you know, from the beginning. It's it's cool. And I'm gonna stick my neck up here or my neck out, and I'm gonna advocate. Like, I, as a real estate agent, we who do we care about, right? Like we're we're we are hired by a buyer or a seller to represent them and their interests. That means protecting their money and their information. Yeah, you know, like I can't imagine the feeling, like it's hard enough when you have a client that has a home that they fall in love with and then they don't win, they don't win the the bidding war, they don't get their house. That sucks. I can't imagine having to make a call and say, oh, uh that 200k in proceeds from the home that we just thought we sold, yeah, it's gone. I can't imagine. So this is so beyond needed. And um I'm I'm glad that it exists. So any agent, I I think at this point we've sold everybody. You know, the the three and a half people who are listening, that they're like, that they're like, okay, cool, like I get it, it's a problem. Safe wire sounds cool. How do they then get it? How how can an agent or anybody listening, how can they use SafeWire to make sure that their transactions are safe if they want to pay for it themselves? And I think that's genius, just the way a listing agent may cover staging, or we we pay for a home warranty. Um and and let me say this too: how many agents tack on bullshit transaction fees that are only there to reduce their own fees, um, but you won't pay a hundred bucks or two hundred bucks to uh you know assure uh transactions free from wire fraud for your clients, which means more business for you in the long run, create better reviews. Um it just takes a different way of looking at it. Um home warranties are just seen as gotta have them. Transaction fees, sure, this is just part of the process. So sign here and then I don't have to pay 300 bucks more in fees. I don't see why this isn't considered standard, also. And I I think it could be. I think it could be.

SPEAKER_00 38:32

I think that's our that's our hope.

SPEAKER_01 38:34

Yeah, yeah, me too. So if anyone wants to use it and bring it into their transaction and protect their clients, how do they do that? How does it all work?

SPEAKER_00 38:43

Uh so we generally will partner with the broker. So we partner with the broker and then it so an agent can can make the case to their broker as to why this generally is would would be a good thing for their business. Um, because the broker ultimately owns the data, right? The broker owns who can do what with their data. So we we can work with individual agents, though generally the broker is the one that has to say so. Um there's no cost for them to do it, uh, the broker or the agent. The we can do it through uh uh a data integration with their listing or at the contract level. So there's a couple ways where we would have to, again, that's that's a conversation with the the the broker to get them up and going, not a big deal. Uh there's some education, some training we bring into the to the experience for the brokerage, for their agents, uh, what the experience looks like. And the good news is it's really simple for the consumer. It only takes two to three minutes for a seller and less than that for a buyer. So the experience in of itself is really, we've really locked that in uh well. And the the thing that slows it down a little bit from the brokerage side is we have to have these conversations with their title partners. And so ideally, the broker says to the two or three title companies their brokerage is mainly using that we want to do this and here's why, and we want you to be part of this. Um, most title companies say, yeah, that's cool, let's do it. Or if they drag their feet or they're slow to move or don't want to do it, then you know you have other partners that have stepped up and they want to grow their business securely together. So that's generally the process is we we want to bring in their title partners to make sure that the transaction is secure from the beginning to the end. We can't, again, we just can't just do that with just the brokerage or just the title company. And that is harder. It's harder to do it where you have to bring in more people to the table. Um, but ultimately we'll get there. It's just a little slower than if we were just going and giving a product away to title companies or just going and giving a product away to brokerages. There's really no downside to them. We're helping them secure their business and secure de-risk their their transactions and their and their model. And we, you know, just in full transparency, we make our money through the optional warranty. And the warranty is optional for the consumer. Uh but we but about 60% of them do choose it because they want that peace of mind.

SPEAKER_01 41:13

Interesting. Okay, cool. So SafeWire is free to use. It's if they want that added assurance, um that's that's where that there is a cost.

SPEAKER_00 41:24

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 41:25

That's cool. Um, and and it's also, I think that's a great thing that as far as the clients are concerned, as far as the consumer is concerned, it's easy for them to use. They don't see all the, you know, having to set it up with the broker and communicate with the title company and and integrate it into the system. They don't see that. If it's easy for them, that's great. That makes it easy for us as agents to to recommend it to them. It's like, here, go here, click this, bing, bing, boom, right?

SPEAKER_00 41:51

Yeah, we have we we try to the best way to introduce it for the agent to the consumer is at the listing presentation. So we have a uh a disclosure that goes into the listing presentation that basically says wire fraud is real, it's a problem, safe wire is our solution, and we have the the seller can acknowledge whether or not they want to do it. Uh, if they don't want to do it, then the broker at least has some more documentation that says, you know, our agent or our uh seller declined the additional protection. So if there is a loss that happens, the broker has one more piece of of you know protection that they've they've had this disclosure in the packet. But for the agent, it's a way to have this conversation that says we're really forward thinking around this problem. We really are uh making sure that we're taking your uh transaction and its security incredibly seriously, and this is what we're doing. Because the last thing we want is for the consumer to get an invitation from Safewire and then call the real estate agent up and say, Hey, is this fraud? You know, we want them to have that conversation at the listing appointment. And so the agent knows, and once the agent has been through that experience once or twice, you know, they get it. It's not, it's it's a value add to what they're doing.

SPEAKER_01 43:11

Uh yeah, listing presentation or um listing agents should absolutely want to bring this up in a listing presentation because what are we doing in listing presentations? We're showing the seller why we're the best choice for them and their needs and how that works and what we offer them, what we can do for them. And so if you show them, hey, here's a potential issue. So first off, you're educating. Here's a here's an issue, here's what the issue looks like, and here's our solution, here's what we do about it. It's super freaking easy for you. Bing, bang, boom. Uh, now they're gonna look at you and be like, wow, the other three agents that we interviewed didn't even mention this issue. Why didn't they mention this issue? What the hell? Right. So so now you stand out as uh as someone who's really looking out for their best interest because you brought up a potential negative, a potential Potential problem, but you had a solution. And I love this. I think, Chris, you know, I'm I'm a marketing guy. Like I just think about marketing and you know how to best present ourselves with clients. Uh, just by doing this, I think that can help agents close a lot more listings.

SPEAKER_00 44:15

Agreed. And and and generally, Dustin, they're all mentioning like the brokerages generally, as a policy, all have lists how have wire fraud disclosures. Like they all say, wire fraud is this problem. Don't do anything dumb, like here it is. But they but it's just uh just a disclosure.

SPEAKER_01 44:32

It's like here here, this is a problem. We don't have a solution, but here's a problem.

SPEAKER_00 44:35

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:37

Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 44:38

But they're having the conversations, they just don't have the solution.

SPEAKER_01 44:41

Yes. Yes. Yeah. Um it gets me excited when there's something new that can do some real good and has real potential to make an impact. And you know, it's a win-win-win-win-win. It uh, you know, if it helps agents get more listings, uh, I mean, that's huge. In a listing presentation, your goal is to get them to trust you enough to trust that you are the right choice. And this is a great additional thing to add into your listing presentation to say, here's what we'll do for you. If you list with me and my company, here's what we're gonna do. And then they go interview three others and they don't even mention wire fraud, and they're like, what the hell? They didn't mention wire fraud. So um is this I don't know if you can even talk about this. So tell me to shut up if if needs be. Like, is this being used? Are there agents and brokerages out there right now using SafeWire? Is it being adopted? Is it out in the wild?

SPEAKER_00 45:39

Yeah, so we've had title companies using the product now for a few years. Um we are just like literally, we're just we've just recently repositioned the product from the end to the beginning. So the technology, uh we have the the the listing integrations, the data feed integrations built. We're we have launched, we launched um a few weeks ago with our first brokerage out of uh Ohio and Michigan Key Realty. So they have about 1,100 agents. Um we're deploying with them. We have um, you know, we're we're just ramping up our marketing and sales outbounds. So we have uh we're building out our pipeline, we have brokerages coming online, we have more title partners coming online. So, like literally right now in real time, um, we're redeploying all of it. And so uh I'm really bullish on I think the market is uh needing this type of uh solution. I think you're right. I think there's a value add here. There's a there's a just a lot of wins in this for, you know, while this problem is happening and while it's it creates so much vulnerability for so many of us, there's a lot of wins to adopting more secure practices along for the consumer and creating better consumer experiences. So I'm very bullish in the direction in the path things are moving. I agree with you. I think that within five years, this or something like this is going to be on every real estate transaction. Uh, I don't think we're gonna have a choice. I think the the problem and our competitors are going to drive us towards having more secured ways of how we do things. And we need, my belief is that we need we need to build technology that empowers real estate agents to create better consumer experiences, to be safer, to be more secure. It certainly isn't to to to uh uh it's really how do we empower agents to create better consumer experiences and what we're building and deploying? And that's that's ultimately what we're our mission is and what we're trying to do.

SPEAKER_01 47:40

This is exciting, man. Um, it's is it safe to say that um you know it's not an unproven technology, right? Like you're using it, it's being used, it's now just a matter of adoption and and getting getting it used in the transaction, right?

SPEAKER_00 47:56

Yeah, we've had tens of thousands of transactions through our product without any concurrence, without any incurrence of fraud loss. Wow, okay. I feel really, really good about uh the product and the technology and the process. I haven't seen one successful fraud transaction happen that this wouldn't have prevented. So um, you know, I feel really good about it.

SPEAKER_01 48:18

It's um say that again. That's a big deal.

SPEAKER_00 48:22

I I haven't seen so of all the fraud, and you know, we see a new fraud case every week or that we read about that I'm reading about online or reading about somewhere, and I have yet to see one that's happened that this wouldn't have prevented.

SPEAKER_01 48:36

Wow, that is that's cool, man. Um when you and I had lunch together at Inman Connect in New York, uh, I think January 2018-ish. Um this was before Safewire, but I remember uh, you know, you talking about the problem that we face as an industry, it dominated the conversation and you had some real passion for it. And so it's cool to see fast forward that you've actually done something about it. You've actually, you know, like you've devoted your life to it. And um, and that's cool. So um congrats on that. I I'm really excited to see what SafeWire does. Um, I I could not be a bigger fan, you know. I've I've seen a little bit of the you know, the mobile app or the the mobile version of you know how a consumer actually uses it, and it's super fast and slick. So um, I mean I wish you the best. It's I think this is needed.

SPEAKER_00 49:30

Well, I appreciate you. And um yeah, it's uh again, I I'd rather not have passionate about this problem, but I right I generally think that um, you know, I really if we can't keep consumers safe, who will, right? And I think, you know, really at the end of the day, what we're talking about is this problem exists because we're now all connected through the internet. And like it or not, this is the reality. And you know, we're dealing with global financial inequality in a lot of cases, and people find ways to take what they don't have. And that's what ultimately we're up against. And um, you know, it's it's a really complicated, complex problem. I don't see us uh getting away from it anytime soon. I do think it will get worse before it gets better, and and ultimately, I I just want to keep consumers and I want to keep our the good people in this business um doing what they love to do, and and that's what we're trying to trying to make happen.

SPEAKER_01 50:30

Yeah, uh, and I agree. I do not think it's gonna just magically get better. I mean, just changing your email signature, that's nice, but that that's not like you know, most people don't read the email signatures, you know what I mean? Um, and if it's worked 12,000 times over the last year just in our country, that means it's working. It's and so that's going to attract more of these fraudsters. Um, they're like, hey, there's huge money there, so let's do more of it. Um yeah, I I I agree, man. So thanks for coming on, talking about SafeWire. Thanks for building Safewire. Um let's wrap it up with the action steps here. So anyone listening, they're like, God damn it, I need my I need my sellers, I need my buyers to use SafeWire. What do they do?

SPEAKER_00 51:19

So uh Safewire.com, they can and they can reach out to me directly, Chris at Safewire.com. You know, if if we can um have a conversation with that agent with the broker, get you get you up and going, and uh, we'd love to have the opportunity.

SPEAKER_01 51:34

Awesome. Chris, nice work, my friend. Thanks for coming on the show.

SPEAKER_00 51:39

Yeah, thanks so much.

SPEAKER_01 51:40

Absolutely. All right, guys. Look, do the work to get SafeWire on board with your broker. Okay, introduce your broker to uh to Safewire. Okay, so that's what you need to do. You if you guys want to use SafeWire, if you want to have access to it, because it's not it's because of our complex real estate transactions, it's not as easy as like going to sign up for life lock, right? Where you just do it on the website and boom. It's not that simple yet. So you've got to get your broker involved, and they have to, you know, bring the partners in the transaction into the fold. So what you can do personally is send this episode to your broker. Okay, have your broker listen to this episode. Um, the broker owner, your broker, whoever, but whoever is leading you at your brokerage, um, run this thing up the flagpole, send them this episode, let them hear what SafeWire does, send them to SafeWire's website and uh you know, try to get the ball rolling because um this is it. I I believe this is the solution to finally put an end to wire fraud, which is absolutely devastating, not just for those who lose their money, but for the agents, title people, lenders, you know, other vendors in the transaction who through negligence or just um laziness, I guess, um, you know, unwittingly cause this stuff to happen. And then they become liable and their careers are in jeopardy because of it. So let's put an end to it, guys. The solution exists. Um, we just have to get SafeWire adopted. Guys, thank you so much for listening. I appreciate it. Make sure you go over to Massive Agents Society.com, claim your market by the 15th. If it's past the 15th, you can still join and everything. You know, you still get access to all the good stuff. Um, and also our our brand new Massive Agent Daily app on the social coach platform, our social media, what to post on social app, that is available now. Go to massiveagentdaily.com to see how that works. We're super excited about that. We keep getting comments from or I keep getting messages from people using it, and they're like, holy crap, I've never had this many comments before ever. That that's a general consensus. They're like, wow, I had no idea that posting that stupid thing would get me this many comments and this many people talking to me again. Um, that was the whole point, guys. If you start posting the right things on social media, guess what? People start to see you in their news feeds again, and then they start to remember you when they need to buy or sell. Amazing things happen when you just do the right things on social media. You can do it yourself, or we'll tell you what to do, make it easy, take all the guesswork out, stop worrying about what to post, stop trying to stop taking so much time trying to figure it out. We'll we'll tell you. We'll send you a notification every day and say, here, post this. But you need the MassiveAgent Daily app, MassiveAgent Daily.com. Thank you guys so much. Go sell some homes, go close some loans, have a great freaking weekend. I'll see you guys next week, but I think that's a good thing.