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"it's not about the sale. It's about, I need to be here. I need to be part of this community. And then the actual sale portion becomes secondary, which becomes much more fulfilling for both parties.
Key Takeaways
- ◆Donnie transitioned 125 agents from being salespeople to brokerage owners and the most common failure in the first 90 days was change management, top producers who ran like machines as agents suddenly felt overwhelmed by decisions about brand, operations, and leadership responsibilities they weren't used to carrying.
- ◆Energy Realty splits tools into need-to-haves and nice-to-haves, the company provides the essential infrastructure (fast payments, contract review in five to ten minutes, compliance support) and lets agents choose their own marketing bells and whistles instead of dumping a confusing stack of tech on them every month.
- ◆When Donnie worked with buyers and sellers, he skipped the structural walk-through and sat at the dining table or on the patio asking questions like 'What do your family dinners look like?' and 'What's the next chapter you want to create?', uncovering whether they cared about an open kitchen or whether their grandkids wanted to play tennis on grass courts like Wimbledon instead of Chicago hardtop.
- ◆Donnie carried two cell phones in the early smartphone era because he refused to let fires pull his attention away from clients, he says if he'd had better efficiency tools to handle the noise behind the scenes, he could have closed more deals and delivered better experiences by being 110 percent dialed in during every client meeting.
- ◆Top producers are capturing larger and larger market share because they use automation to stay present with clients, while junior agents struggle to break through, Donnie's response is personalized consultation instead of handing everyone the same toolbox, because a one-size-fits-all tech drop doesn't work for both groups.
- ◆The Asian division project started with twelve University of Miami students from mainland China doing a summer research assignment on Fisher Island, Donnie learned what mattered to that culture, how they approached business, and why they chose Miami over traditional Asian-American markets like Vancouver and San Francisco, which led to plans for a 21,000-unit Chinatown development that fell apart when the 90-year-old seller passed away before signing.
- ◆Energy Realty is betting that mega-mergers like Compass Anywhere's 300,000-agent empire create a sea of sameness where local agents lose their voice, the company's mission is to restore the boutique experience where agents focus on their subdivision, their church community, and their kids' soccer team instead of corporate noise and monthly tech drops that nobody adopts.
Full transcript
Show
Chad
Welcome back to Process Over Pressure, the podcast for founders, operators, and builders who are in the trenches doing the real work. I'm your host, Chad Paris of Stonefly Consulting Group. And every episode I sit down with someone who has built something worth talking about. Not the highlight reels, not the flashy, the real version, the full journey, the wins, the failures, and the grit that got them through. Today's guest. has 30 plus years in luxury real estate. He ran one of the most prestigious brokerages on Fisher Island, 214 acres, one of the most exclusive zip codes For over two decades, he helped pioneer boutique brogesses as a service across the state of Florida, mentoring 125 agents to open their own shop. And now he's taking on a new chapter as managing director. of brokerage services at Energy Realty, a 2024 startup making a serious bet that the industry is ready for something different. His name is Donnie Pingaro And I'll tell you right now, this conversation is one I've been looking forward to. Donnie, welcome to the show.
Donnie Pingaro
Thanks, Chad. Thanks for having me and thanks for the kind intro there.
Chad
Yeah, absolutely. I know you and I, we met and talked a little bit on the pre podcast and how to get a chance to know each other. And I always admire that beautiful scenery. He's in, he's in a beautiful area. So I get to see the, I think he told me he was going down with his daughter for a hang out on the beach a little bit at the end of the day. So I was like, I was jealous. I was like, man, that's the way you end the day right there.
Donnie Pingaro
soon.
Donnie Pingaro
Absolutely.
Chad
So Donnie, 30 years in real estate, Fisher Island, Asia, now energy. I mean, you could have retired on Amelia Island and just played golf for the rest of your life. What, what pulled you back in?
Donnie Pingaro
Yeah, great question. It's been a great run. I think most of us when we come out of high school, college, grad school, you you never know where the journey takes you. And that's part of the fun. It's part of the turbulence of life, you know, but it's kind of getting through those things. What pulled me back in and to your point, I actually did intend to retire in the spring of 2025. So about a year ago this time, I put in my resignation at Dyside. I've been putting in six really proud years and really happy and fulfilled of what we did together as we pioneered Florida and the East Coast together. And as you mentioned, we helped 125 plus really deserving, amazing real estate agents to transform from being a salesperson to owning a brokerage. But I just felt that my time had come and it was time for me to kind of step back and like I said, play a more golf, do a little more surfing. the good news about being in any industry, quite a long time is you build a lot of friends, you build a great network. And everybody knew how happy and fulfilled I was at my previous role. So no one was approaching me with new opportunities because they didn't want to waste their time or be offensive, what have you. Once the word got out in the street that I was retiring, everybody's like, well, hold on a second, you know. So I had the great fortune from one of my previous colleagues to be introduced to Peter and Aaron Noble, the founders of Energy Realty. amazing business folks who have been there, done that. They've already helped be an integral part of scaling two very large national brokerages. They also had that pivot point and said, you know what, there's something lacking in our industry. There's something that's not being offered to really deserving real estate agents, teams, and independent brokerages. And with technology advances and with a really good leadership team, this could be an exciting kind of adventure to try to pull this off to do boutique as a service. on a national real estate strength basis. So it was really quick. It was just one of those connections that just happened very quickly. And literally the next day we were on the phone together and said, this makes sense. And I'd love to talk about how I could be a part of building this brokerage with you and being a strategic guide and force to really accomplish what we think could happen. And here we are a year later, we've built the brokerage. It's happening.
Donnie Pingaro
Transacting every single day. We're rounding off year two for looking even bigger growth and awareness.
Chad
You know, that's great. know, lot of people, when they, when they start a business or they're in business, you know, there's kind of, I think of it like two avenues, right? There's, there's, can get into the avenue like everybody else does it. And, and, and brokerage can be broad. I mean, it can be really, really broad, right? But you've always seemed to, and maybe, maybe you can kind of relate to this a little bit and maybe tell why, uh, you've always kind of geared toward the, the more, uh, you know, I mean, when you think about Fisher Island, it's a smaller area. It's a narrow.
Donnie Pingaro
Yes. Yes.
Chad
You're not broad. mean, you're very narrow in what you do and how you approach it. And a lot of people are scared of that, right? You you kind of use a theory, the bigger, the bigger the pond, the better the fish, but you're really, you're really more of that narrow. Why did you choose that? I mean, it kind of seems like that's your niche. mean, that's what you've always done. And so building something, you know, that's a, that's takes a get out there on the limb a little bit to do that.
Donnie Pingaro
Yeah, great, great call out. think in retrospect, I don't know if anybody like puts that on their whiteboard and says, want to, you know, do more with lots. I want to work in really narrow confined spaces that don't have a lot of, you know, plan Bs. But I think certain entrepreneurs, myself included, thrive in the challenge of that. In the fact that, you know, there is a gap here, there is a service that's needed. There is something that could be built here to
Chad
Absolutely. Yeah.
Donnie Pingaro
handle this task, but you gotta be greedy. You gotta do, again, more with less. And the fruits are pretty rewarding in my mind. So I've always been very comfortable being uncomfortable. I've always been very more excited to build something rather than go to a safe corporate route of patch out a lot of mistakes other corporate people had made in the past. So that's kind of what drives me and excites me day to day.
Chad
Yeah, I admire that. You know, I think that says a lot about you as a person really, because, you know, you're not always trying to look for the easy road. I mean, you're really looking for, you know, you like the challenge and, know, for people that are listening to maybe their entrepreneurs are looking to get into stuff that, know, not always the easy road is the best road. You got to really find what your passion is, right? It's all about your passion and your heart and the gift that you've been given to be able to, to lean into that gift and go that avenue that you, that you That's your calling. That's what you're good at, right?
Donnie Pingaro
Yeah, I mentor a lot of folks at this stage of my career and I always, the word obsession had a bad stigma, but in my mind, I think it's just a positive attribute. And I really lean back into that to a lot of people I speak to saying, think to be on the upper echelon of success, it's easy to be average, right? And to be just good, but to really be great and excellent in your craft, whatever that is, I think you need a healthy level of obsession. if you... I would say, I would argue it's probably impossible to be obsessed with something to that level in a healthy way if you're not passionate about it, right? So again, there's a cause and effector. If you find something that's passionate, then you've got the ability and the wherewithal to be obsessed about it to some level. You've got a better chance of really doing something really cool and really at an excellent level, opposed to just try to drive down Main Street day to day on your career.
Chad
Yeah. True.
Chad
Yeah, absolutely. mean, listen, anytime you're an entrepreneur or you're a business owner, there are scary times, right? Everybody can be scared of, know, do I do this or am I going to look back and say, you you've lost your mind. Why would you do this? I experienced that. I'm a new business owner myself. And so I get it. it's, you know, it's scary, but you know, I think for people that are out there that are listening is like, if you don't ever try to put yourself out there, you're never going to know.
Donnie Pingaro
movie. Sure.
Chad
And, and, and if you're passionate enough about something in your heart, that's burning, go do it. Life's too short. Get out there and do that. Right. Go, go for it. so, so one thing, you know, when you and I were talking, which I thought was very interesting, you've been in the, in the Miami market. He was in that, that area. Very, very, competitive market, right. Very, and Miami's changed several, you know, over the years it's changed, but
Donnie Pingaro
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Donnie Pingaro
Super.
Chad
But one thing I think you was telling me that you kind of started the first like Asian division, here in Miami. And so, you know, here again, maybe you could tell a little bit about that. Like that's, that's, that's coming into Miami, creating something that is not existent and saying, you know what? I can do this. And so, so talk a little bit about, about that and, kind of how you, you, how that came about and how you did that.
Donnie Pingaro
Yeah, it's one of the more refreshing and interesting chapters of my career. So again, I was 20 plus years into my journey on Fisher Island. It was hard work, but it was easy, if that makes sense at that juncture. Miami is a very turbulent market with a very aggressive competitive nature. But being on a private island, having the moat, to speak, definitely helped. you know, help my stability of my business and just kind of keep on escalating. So that was really good. I didn't realize I was kind of getting a little burnt out honestly, but I guess in retrospect I was and one of my clients on Fisher on had an idea and I met him at Island Market and he says, hey, Donnie, I got an idea. I want to build a Chinatown in Miami. And I'm like, I'm like, dude, like there's, there's no Chinese people in Miami. Like, what are you talking about? And he's like, no, no, no, no, just, you know, listen to me in any way. we. Finished our breakfast and I respected him and I was intrigued. So we, brought on, um, 12 university in Miami, um, foreign national students from mainland China. came to fish on every day for the entire summer. gave them a research project. This is 2012, 13, 14. This is pre AI and everything. So this was, this was research, right? You know, they had the, you know, so got to get to know them, got to know what made them tick, why they decided to come from, leave their home 7,000 miles to come to get.
Chad
Wow. Yeah, this is... Yeah.
Donnie Pingaro
college experience at University of Miami, what culture that meant. And from that, we realized that the business opportunity was just immense. The Asian influx of capital into North America was flowing. It was hitting a lot of the more traditional Asian American or Canadian Asian markets, such as Vancouver, Seattle, San Francisco, even New York and Boston. And we realized on the map, you look at it, Miami was the last great North American city that did not have an Asian city or Chinatown. So that got us into that mode of thinking like, what could this look like? Let's start planning it. Let's start doing some site allocation. We actually did have a handshake on a 210 parcel piece of land in Miami. Everything was good. We were talking with the government. We were talking with different develop, you know, the planning boards. So we had plans to build 21,000 condos, two office towers, hotel, high-end luxury, a casino, the whole deal. And
Chad
Yeah.
Donnie Pingaro
you know, unfortunately, this de Seller was close to 90 in age, had some legacy kind of seller remorse issues and still wanted to make the deal, but never would sign the deal. And through that period, he, you know, age takes over at some point of all of our lives at almost 90, he unfortunately passed away naturally. And his sons had different ideas of what to do with the parcel. So it fell apart, but that got me into a different world of looking in terms of
Chad
Mm.
Donnie Pingaro
how a different culture approaches business, what matters to them, how they desire to be serviced. And it got me on the plane a ton in a lot of Asian American cities, Canadian American cities, and mainland China with my teammates doing a lot of instant translation of presentations and bringing some really great people over to Miami and showing them what the promise was and. Again, a lot of folks had invested some really nice of their equity into our Sunshine State and done very, very well because of our introductions. So it's been a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun doing that.
Chad
Yeah, that's really cool. You know, we, we sometimes think about, you know, it's very easy to get into your own little world or where you live and who you are. And that's a big world out there. And there's a lot of different cultures and in our country. And, know, if you've anyone who's ever been in Miami, it's, is a, you know, there's a lot of different cultures there. And, it's, it's, you know, it's, it's. You take the good in the bad, right? But it's great to see, you know, you being able to, to do that and. And really learn about their culture and what works and what does it work and how to get the interest there. So I think that I thought that story was really cool. was kind of, you're a guy that does a deep thinking, a lot of research and you don't just do it. I think you mentioned like we didn't have AI back then. This is like real research. You have to get down in the weeds and really figure it out. So I think that's really cool.
Donnie Pingaro
No.
Donnie Pingaro
But at some point you got to make the commitment and take a chance. got to, as an entrepreneur, you can't be afraid to break things, you know, and be confident that, you you're going to have the wherewithal to, you know, prepare things that are broken along the way. And again, I think that's something that you either enjoy about the business process or you don't. And the folks who don't, there's lots of opportunities, you know, in corporate life for them. That's why entrepreneurs are entrepreneurs.
Chad
You do. Yeah. Yeah.
Chad
Yeah, you know, it's right. And that kind of leads me right into my kind of my next question I was going to ask you is, you've, you've had a 125, uh, agents that you've kind of, I guess, mentor and started their own brokerage and kind of stepped out there. What, what is something in, cause I'm a firm believer in we learn from our mistakes. Like I think those are great. I think the mistakes are better sometimes than the wins because it helps us mold and get better. So what, what is, you know,
Donnie Pingaro
to
Chad
125 people, you have to open their own brokerage. You kind of help them with that. What was one of the most common themes that maybe went wrong in that business in the first 90 days that you saw? It's like a, you maybe it's one or it's two, but I'd like to, I'd like to kind of point a couple of those out that, you know, first 90 days, it's normal, happens.
Donnie Pingaro
Yeah, no. I think it just comes down to change management first and foremost. Right. I mean, no one lets change management. You know, if they start putting your groceries in a different aisle in your local supermarket, that'll get you frustrated. You rent a car and you don't know where the radio, you know, it's the same car kind of thing. And when you go from being in real estate, being a top producing agent, like you're kind of a machine. You're doing a lot of
Chad
Yeah.
Chad
That's true.
Donnie Pingaro
transactions, you know, we always kind of kid around that there's a lot of part timers in real estate and a part timer may do one or two deals a year. They get stressed on a contract, you know, and a top agent, that's a Tuesday afternoon writing a contract, right? It's very methodical to business. When you take that business mindset in motion and you put them in an entrepreneurial seat and they have a lot of other things that you need to start thinking about. Although in our platform, we took care of lot of the things that really mattered. but were kind of boring and they didn't need to be focused upon. It did create some kinds of distress at times where someone just felt overwhelmed in terms of the decisions that needed to be made, because now I'm the boss, this is my brand, et cetera. So that was the most common thing. And we would prepare as much as possible the mindset prior to that, saying, okay, you're about to make a big announcement. We're here for you. Understand this may be uncomfortable. And the most important thing,
Chad
Yeah.
Chad
Yeah.
Donnie Pingaro
when you're in any kind of public facing service industry is, it's kind of like never let them see a sweat, right? We're all gonna have good days and bad days, but that doesn't matter to your buyer or seller. They want the best Chad they can ever get on that day. Whether you're a great day, know, the highs and lows are not what's important to them. It's what's important to them that day. So that's the biggest thing that was a hurdle to kind of set expectations properly, identify sooner than later.
Chad
Yeah.
Chad
Try it.
Chad
Yeah.
Donnie Pingaro
by being very over the communicative, you know, to say, hey Chad, are you having a good day? I see a lot of good things in your transactions. Are you know, is this too much, too little to be ahead of the curve? But there were definitely some conversations where you had to some people off the edge.
Chad
Yeah. mean, you, you, you make a great point. You think about, know, when you're, you said it best, like, Hey, when you're in the day and you're, you're an agent, you're just, you're, if you're a good agent, you're clucking along. Like you almost, I don't want to say put it on autopilot. That's not by any means you're working very hard, but you're good at what you do. And you're just kind of that process is down, leaving that now moving over into that being the brokerage and kind of being your show comes with its own. set of responsibilities and challenges that you have to do. And it's that mindset, right? I think that's the thing is it's a mindset. It's a mindset change and how you approach the day.
Chad
think we pause on Donnie here.
Chad
There he is.
Donnie Pingaro
You're back, yeah, you froze on me. You started missing, you made a point, and then I lost you, sorry.
Chad
No, no problem. what I was saying was, is like, you had mentioned this when you're, when you're an agent, you're not, not being, I wouldn't say autopilot. That's not the right word, but you kind of, you kind of got the system down, even the good ages, like you had mentioned, right? You're kind of rolling through that. And then all of a now you're the brokerage and it comes with its own set of challenges and, and, and dealing with that. And, know, I think for, for people that are, that are listening out there and want to know like the real world, because You know, one of the things we want to be in this show is we talk a lot about process over pressure. And what I find is, is that the pressure gets to people because the process is broken down. And I think you and I see a lot of like on that is, is defining that process. and, and even on the good or the bad days, you got to stay, stick to that process. That's the key, right?
Donnie Pingaro
Yeah, I think consistency and being very honest in terms of where someone is in the cycle, you know, of building something. Again, in real estate, when you're a top agent, I would say it was a transactional machine, right? There's not a lot of really thought about growth or deviation of brand awareness. You're just trying to do deals. When you transfer over to be an entrepreneur, open up brokerage, different responsibilities, different things to consider. And again.
Chad
Yeah.
Donnie Pingaro
Once you get in the rhythm, you're good. But until you get there, it can be a little rocky and it's really just about, you know, having that open communication to whoever your platform or your mentor is to kind of walk you through that it's okay to have a bad day. Let's get to the next best one. That'll be tomorrow. So that's really what it comes down to.
Chad
That's great. So, so here we are, 2024, you put on your, your young hat again and said, energy, energy, energy, realty, here we go. I'm going to, I'm going to probably didn't need to probably don't have to, but you, know, you, you jump back in. So, you know, how's it going? How's it been this year? The first year of 2024 is kind of now you're about to go, you're in 2026.
Donnie Pingaro
Yeah.
Chad
Talk about it. Give me a give me the good and let's talk about the bad. It's got to be a bad
Chad
Can you hear me?
Donnie Pingaro
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, you cut out a little bit there, but you're back now.
Chad
I said, this energy 20, it's energy realty. Here it is 2024. You're back in now. You're starting something new. So maybe tell me, tell me something good about it that's going on or what y'all are doing right now. And, and, and then let's talk about maybe a bad that you've experienced. It's like, Oh man, we get, is new. This is something different than it was 20, 20, 30 years ago.
Donnie Pingaro
Yeah, to me, the good is it's really about the why, the DNA of why energy was built. You know, it's more of a mission driven organization. You know, again, recognizing what all our senior leadership who have all been there done that, to just transact and do real estate, it's fairly simplistic. It's a very important task for consumers. But the actual structure of it is pretty simplistic. How the industry has changed. the differentiation of lack of support to really help agents grow to be very predictable in terms of how they're going to have transactional success or transactional growth is really lacking because we're in a world right now of mega mergers in the real estate industry where, you we just had one this year where Compass Anywhere is now a 300 plus thousand agent entity. It's on a sort of scale. So, very exciting on one part because they're bringing some different kind of ideas to the industry and different resources that can bring things to the next level. But when you talk about how those 300,000 agents, how does that become a sea of sameness? OK, so a lot of good things, but there's a lot of agents there that's just not going to work for them in terms of how they want to. Again, real estate is very local business. It's location, location, location.
Chad
Mm-hmm.
Chad
Yeah.
Chad
Yeah.
Donnie Pingaro
So at Energy Realty, we just felt there was a gap in the industry where that boutique level of support that used to be very paramount in the business, that everybody kind of knew your name, everybody kind of had a more personalized awareness of what matters in your particular subdivision or community, opposed to the one across town or a different state for that matter. How can we bring that to a larger level of agents who say, you know what, I'm not super concerned with what's happening on the corporate level. I really care about building my community. I want to service my neighbors. I want to service my future neighbors. The folks I go to church with, kids play soccer team with things of that nature. That's the heart of a realtor. And that's been kind of like easing away. So energy realty really is designed to be built to serve as that agent, that team or that independent broker who says, you know what? I know I can do more. I would like to have a better predictable path of success and growth.
Chad
Yeah.
Donnie Pingaro
And for me, that matters in a personalized way, not having just corporate big box of resources and goodies, having a new tech drop on me every single month, super helpful, but it's very confusing to a lot of the agents. So that's kind of the good thing of what we're doing. And again, our year one in terms of the conversations we're having and seeing that it is working for the agents have taken that leap of faith saying, I like the idea, let's give it a shot. That's fun. That's very fulfilling.
Chad
Yeah.
Donnie Pingaro
They're not so good like everything else. There's a lot of noise in every industry. You know what I mean? So again, we've been very methodical in terms of how we're building the brokerage. The foundation has been set over year one. Now year two is about awareness. So again, it's like everything when you're building something from scratch. Would you like it sooner than later? Absolutely. Would we like to have a little better penetration? For sure. Again, but we're comfortable in terms of the speed of our scaling. And we know now that again, our foundation set.
Chad
Yeah.
Donnie Pingaro
It really works very well for the folks who want to join us. Now it's getting that word out there to identify more folks who say, hey, I'm doing a great job. I'm selling a lot of homes, but I feel like I do it in a better way with a better package of resources and a partnership. Let's have a conversation. So that's kind of where we're at with that in those two sides of the coin.
Chad
Yeah, no, that's great. And I think, you you make, you make some great points and we, we have to understand the good, right? And what we're trying to do. And I just listened to you and some of the things, you know, it does appear that a lot of murders are happening. Real estate's becoming more, you know, one. Yeah. And, and I know for me, one of the things that I enjoy the most is, having an agent, you know, that is local, that,
Donnie Pingaro
It's all good. Yeah. Yeah.
Chad
that's in my area that I feel connected to, because you have to go through some personal conversations about where you are when you're talking about moving into a home. It's not just transactional. There's a personal element because you have an idea of what you want in a home. I guess what I'm trying to say is we're letting that agent really into our world as an individual. And you, well, I mean, you should, if you're really trying to do that. you know, what I hear you saying is, is that's where you're taken to the next level is really that personable relationship and that boutique experience. I think that's, I think you're right. think, I think the industry is missing that. And I think that's, you know, really admirable that y'all are doing that and trying to bring that experience back to people.
Donnie Pingaro
Hopefully, yeah. Yeah, great.
Donnie Pingaro
Yeah, now it's essential in the real estate world. When I was transactional, I used to pride myself in really just asking probing questions and letting my buyers or roam. If I was a seller, I'd say, walk me through your home. Tell me what matters to you. What's the most exciting thing about your home? What's the thing you learned that you didn't like as much about the home? You know, because there's certain things you may not know what that sunrise looks like or feels like or smells like, right? That they're gonna know they can alert you. And the same when I would work with buyers, I would like to, you again, you would talk about the actual structure, the dynamics of a condo or a home. What was more important to me was sitting on the patio or sitting at a dining table in a prospective home. And I'd be like, hey Chad, walk me through, what is your family dinners look like? What's most important to you? To understand is it having an open kitchen, is that in a closed kitchen? We would go around different parts of the island and come talk about their family. What's the next best thing they're looking to create in their legacy? my grandkids are just taking up tennis. Fantastic. Have they played on grass courts before? No, we don't have grass courts in Chicago, Illinois. Well, we do here. Let me show you what they look like here. Let's talk about what this could look like of.
Chad
Yeah.
Donnie Pingaro
offering this to your grandchildren in this wonderful stage of their life. They've got this passion about this new sport to play on a service that's usually reserved for people like playing in Wimbledon, right? So it would be really kind of that understanding what would really drive them and why. And then it's not about the sale. It's about, I need to be here. I need to be part of this community. And then the actual sale portion becomes secondary, which becomes much more fulfilling for both parties.
Chad
That's cool.
Chad
Yeah.
Chad
Yeah, that's really good. So Donnie, one of the things I wanted to ask you is, we've talked a lot about kind of where you guys are, what you've been. What is, for agents out there right now, for the business or the industry, what is an area that's still a little clunky for those guys? There's a lot of talk with AI coming out and there is, mean, coming out, it is here, right? AI is here. But what are some clunkiness that are still, maybe it's not just necessarily in with you, but that you see that's out there in general, that maybe some businesses are using AI to help with that or, you know, kind of bringing it into their real estate agent to kind of, you know, their agency to try to help a little bit with the clunkiness.
Donnie Pingaro
Yeah, absolutely. So in terms of real estate in general, there's two parts of the clunkiness in my mind. One is just there's a tremendous amount of policy reshaping, which it's confusing to the public, it's confusing to the agent. So again, you're getting away from the heart of why this community matters and why I want to take my family to the next story that way. That's something we can navigate together just with better training from our state brokers, but it's a lot, it's much more frequent than it's ever been. the other part, which has again, been very clunky in our industry is a lot of the larger legacy brokerages or brokerages are being consolidated are just constantly leading with technology and the technology on the, on the whiteboard when you're in strategic rooms sounds really good. But again, at the end of the day, a person who is transacting, who's trying to focus on their community, the people and what's happening there, it becomes too much.
Chad
Hmm.
Chad
Yeah.
Donnie Pingaro
And what's happening consistently is a lot of really great quality tools are just not being adopted. So an agent may have this whole toolbox of great new technology and widgets and things they could use. And they've just said, yeah, I have no interest in learning more. I'm overwhelmed and I just want to sell houses. So that's really been a big problem in our industry as a whole. We at Energy approached it little different way. We like to say, you know, there's the need to haves and the nice to haves, right? So we provide all the need to haves for agents to conduct proper business, do it efficiently, get paid on time, need to have. The nice to have things are more marketing, they're the bells and whistles. We give them, you know, the autonomy to kind of explore and give them consultation as to what we see is working and not working.
Chad
Yeah. Yeah.
Donnie Pingaro
focusing our time and our resources on the kind of boring things behind the scenes, right? So those are things that kind of are exciting for us as we build the brokerage that are not going to necessarily confuse and be kind of clutter to the agents as a whole, but they're seeing much better efficiency in terms of getting paid the same day, getting their contracts reviewed and approved within five or 10 minutes. If they have a complex question, the support team or someone who would answer that will give them
Chad
Yeah.
Donnie Pingaro
much more comprehensive answers quicker and in different mediums. Everybody hears and absorbs things differently. So instead of a quick phone call, they may go, hey Chad, would you like to have an audio clip of what we just explained so you have it for resource? Would you like a video clip? know, certain topics, the resources we have will do that in a very efficient, very sharp manner. And again, it brings speed, accuracy, but again, it really personalizes how someone absorbs that information.
Chad
Yeah.
Donnie Pingaro
And then when they take that back onto the street with their co-agent or their consumer, they're more confident. And when you're in sales, confidence is everything. If you're unconfident, people will notice that and it's not gonna work. But if you're confident, that's really gonna help you close more deals and bring better satisfaction.
Chad
Yeah. Yeah, you know, think that's...
Chad
in just a second.
Chad
You there? Yeah, we're having some glitches. I'm sorry about that. But we'll edit it out. You know, I think what you said was so true. And I tell people all the time, they ask this question, you AI is something that I do with my service that I do is automation. And I get this question all the time. And I think you probably said it better than anybody I've talked to is when you think about AI or you think about these tools, let's just call it tools, resources, whatever.
Donnie Pingaro
No worries.
Chad
There's a lot of people that's in this mode of let's just bring it all in and they just have all kinds of different widgets and tools and things like that. And it almost becomes like you don't even remember what you have. And I think that's the wrong approach because I am a, while I do AI automation processes, I'm a strong component of human element. am, am, probably, probably people will look at me like, you know, okay, you said you do AI automation, but then you talk about human element.
Donnie Pingaro
you
Chad
because I think the human element goes, I think they pair very well together if you do it right. And so I always look at, like I tell people all the time, when you think about AI, think about it a way to take away, you're in your day and there's things that you're really good at and you enjoy doing, and that's that human part of it, but you have these things that keep pulling you away that you have to do that's like, gosh, I got to go sit down now and do this for two hours. I'd rather be doing this. That's a great place to do automation because if we can figure out a way to do that, to give you more time to do the human and pro-achievement with each other and do that. That's a win. That's a great place. In my opinion, that's just, it's just somebody pitching that to say, I think that's the best place to think about it. That's a great place to start. And it helps you to be efficient. mean, you said that we want to be more efficient in our day and spend that more time where we can sit around that table and have that conversation with a homeowner. not that, cause there's, cause look, Any business you have, there's busy work. You got to go back and do busy work. If we can, if we can tighten that up and give you more time in front of people, then I think that's a win. Right.
Donnie Pingaro
Yeah.
Donnie Pingaro
No, absolutely. specifically in real estate, to be present when you're with your buyer or seller is so, so important. And again, I've been doing this long time. I remember when cell phones first came out, smartphones first came out, they could do one aspect at a time. So I was one of the first dudes who carried two cell phones because I wanted to be able to talk on the phone and do something with my other phone. You know, when you're in that mode and you're, again, you're addressing things, you're not being present to your client in a moment, right? Because you're putting out fires, you don't have the efficiency you need to give them the proper focus and time. And you know, what I always say, it's like, I was busy running the brokerage, I was busy being with the client. If I could have taken that noise away from me, right?
Chad
That's right.
Donnie Pingaro
and then much more efficient because there was different resources and different tools. And every time I was with Chad, for that half hour, 40 minute, hour and a half, I would just dialed in and catch that one little glimmer thing that mattered to you instead of being distracted about my second cell phone. How many more transactions would I have done? How much better would that experience have been for my buyers and sellers? So again, you do the best you can with the resources at a particular time, but that's where it's an exciting time when I talk to agents today. I'm like, listen, you know, when you are with your, you know, your, your clients, you should be 110 % dialed in. Like there's so many more efficiency tools that are out there to take care of those things, which are super necessary to do, but not in that moment. And the agents that are doing that are thriving. And that's what we're seeing is the agents across the board that are top producers are getting larger and larger market share. Why is that? It's because they're providing better and better service and experience for their clients and you're telling their buddy and their friend, hey, you got to use Chad. You got to use Donnie because they are dialed in and they're going to give you better service than anybody else out there. Consequently, in our industry, it makes it harder and harder for a junior agent to get ahead.
Chad
more time. That's right.
Chad
Yeah.
Donnie Pingaro
They're not getting the advance. So we're seeing a larger market share from the top agents and we're seeing a decreasing market share from the part-timers or the junior agents. It's again, how do you kind of address both sides of that to give someone who's, know, really dedicated and really deserving to have that opportunity to grow in the industry. So again, that's also fun of what we're doing today to be consultative on a personalized basis because giving them one box of tools is not going to be sufficient for both parts of that industry.
Chad
Yeah.
Chad
No, I mean, it's, it's, it's, you know, we've, we, the word mentor has been thrown around for years and years and years, and everybody loves that word. If you, if you're in business and I've been an executive, you have, if you're an executive, the word mentor is like the favorite catch word. But I always, I always laugh because everybody uses the word, but they don't understand what the meaning behind mentor is. And that's not necessarily this older person telling you how to do the business. It's more of where are you, you know, it's more, it's more questions that you're probing that, that. mentee that you're asking, what is it that you're dealing with to be able to, cause sometimes they don't know. Sometimes they have no clue where they're falling short. Like they don't know. That's why they're junior. They don't know. and so, so, you know, I think that's, that's good that you're doing that because you know, even in what I work with clients and stuff on is I try to really get them to focus on that individual. I think it's important because every, every junior rep, every young person, every new person coming in is totally different. They're, they're just different.
Donnie Pingaro
So yeah.
Chad
And so you have to really know where they're at and what they're struggling, what they're really good at, what they're not really good at and find a way to, you know, help map. It's really, it's really about mapping, mapping them to where they are, to where they want to be and getting them on that right. You know, think about like an interstate system. You want them on the right traveling road versus going all these other different routes. And, that's the key of a mentor, right? That's what your job should be. But we miss that a lot of times.
Donnie Pingaro
Yeah. Right.
Donnie Pingaro
I like that. I'm going to use that with the interstate. be like, I'm going to say, I'm going be your GPS. I'm going to, I'm going to, yeah, I like that.
Chad
That's it. I tell people like, be the GPS. You're right. Like help them guide them to where they go. mean, when you get in a car, you're going to punch in where you're going to go. It's going to tell you how to get there. And you want to be able to help guide them in that way. Well, so we're kind of getting toward the end of our time here. You know, what I'd love to do is, is people that are out there that are in your area that may be looking.
Donnie Pingaro
Yeah. Yep.
Chad
for something different, an opportunity to work with an agent that's more about helping people and listening and being attentive to them in the moment. How would they reach you? How do they get in touch with Energy Realty? What's the best way? What website? How would they, if they're listening like, I want to talk to this guy. How would they do that?
Donnie Pingaro
Yeah, our website is pretty easy. It's energyrealti.realti. That's going to give you the broad-based kind of platform and kind of our basic tenants and kind of things of that nature. But again, I still, I love being in the weeds. I love having the personal conversations. I'm big on LinkedIn. So feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn. DM me. I was on, you heard our conversation from Chad's part past here, but Donnie, D-O-N-N-I-E, Pingaro. on LinkedIn, reach out, love to have that conversation. Just hear where you're at in your industry, in your career trajectory and see if there's an opportunity to do something a little better, a little smarter together.
Chad
Absolutely. Well, Donnie, it has been a true pleasure to learn about you and learn a little bit about your experience, what you've been through and then kind of what you guys are doing. And again, I'm Chad Paris with Stonefly Consulting. This is Process Over Pressure. Thank you for joining in and look forward to seeing you next time. Thanks. No, that was great. Thank you. How did you feel? Did it flow well for you? You think you got some? Love to hear you.
Donnie Pingaro
Yeah, I think we had good nuggets here. was a couple, I'm not sure if it your side or my side. One of us goes, froze two or three times, but that's going to happen. So.
Chad
Yeah. Yeah, I did. we'll, we'll, I'll edit those out and fix it. But now I really appreciate you, you, you know, you hopping on and this has been great. It's been fun. If, if there's, I don't know, I know we talked a little bit about the processes and procedures and things like that. If I always tell people, you know, what I'm going to do is I'm going to get this raw footage to you. I'll email it to you.
Donnie Pingaro
Yeah.
Donnie Pingaro
Okay. Perfect.
Chad
And then you can use it in your marketing if you would like or whatever. And then when it goes live, I'll let you know. Love for you to like it, share it. And then if there's something that you're in your brain, you're thinking like, hey, you know, there's no cost here. But if you're like, man, we could use some help on some of this, some of the clunkiness. Love to do a discovery call. You'll probably get an email from me, you know, just following up, but would love to listen to if y'all having any issues or anything that I can help.
Donnie Pingaro
Okay. Absolutely. Yeah.
Chad
love to help you. don't know if you've got anything pressing right now that you're dealing with that you could use some assistance on, but if you do, I'd love to hear about it.
Donnie Pingaro
Yeah, nothing that's that's that's eminent right now. We just we're beta testing a solution for document review, which is going to be using an AI tool that's been pretty it's been a big gap in the industry as a whole. There's been a lot of tech tech companies have been kind of looking for the best solution. But I'm sure we'll be we're launching our marketing as a service beta right now in April. And as we do that, and that's just long story short, it's cleaning agents data and then kind of helping them autopilot a lot of their marketing they would be doing on their own anyway, but they still have ability to kind of review it, approve it and share it as good as agents can be. The machine will do a better job and more crisp and more consistent. That's the kind of goal. And the idea is everybody's got a sphere of influence. Everybody's got a past book of business. There are greatest resource for the next lead generation. Real estate's become a lot of agents are leaning onto paid leads and it's becoming more expensive and a lower and lower return. So we're kind of zigging, we're everybody's zagging to dive into how to kind of resource their existing leads. So as that materializes, I'll probably have more kind of a head scratchers that I'd love to share with you and kind of see if there's a collaboration there.
Chad
Mm-hmm.
Chad
Yeah.
Chad
Yeah, absolutely. Anything that you're, you know, it always happens. You could be tomorrow, some people are finding some clunkiness that are happening or even, even situations like you're talking about. Happy to, you know, again, just the way I work is, is this a phone call and talk about the problems you're dealing. I'll give you some solutions. No obligation.
Donnie Pingaro
Yeah.
Donnie Pingaro
Mm-hmm.
Chad
And if you like the solutions, always like to give it in very layman terms back to you so you can see exactly what we would do to resolve that problem. Because I think I find it, being an executive, I used to have people call me and they would say, okay, what's your problems? And I would tell them, and then they would give me something that was completely not accurate to what I needed. And so I'm trying to do a different approach where it's more of you tell me your problem, I'll send you a map and then you look at it and say, yep, this is dead on or how do we need to change that? This is not right or whatever. Uh, before we ever talk about the cost and how to do this and all that, I always like to get you and your team to say, if this map right here is spot owned what we want, then we can talk about a lot of executed. just, I like that. think it feels better for you. It makes you feel like you're getting something that you're asking for and not just trying to sell you on something. Cause if I can't do it, I'm going look at you and say, I can't be done. But that's how my approach is. It's very relaxed. It's very calm. don't want to, I'm not going to hound you to death, but I'm, I'm more of a, want to listen and hear where your problems are and then give you some solutions to look over and you decide whether this addresses that situation or it doesn't totally up to you. No cost at all. So, if you, even if you have something that you're already dealing with, you're like, Hey, would you put your eyes on this Chad? Happy to do that. Don't cost you anything. I'll give you my version of it or my thoughts on it.
Donnie Pingaro
Okay.
Chad
You can review it, look at it, be just a simple, tell me what's going on. And I'll give you a simple, this is what I see. that's the way I do that for people like you that have come on my podcast. No cost. It's my service to you to give another set of eyes. I'd rather earn your trust than try to sell you something. So, well, Donnie, thank you so much for being on and I will be sending you an email. Thank you. You too. Bye bye.
Donnie Pingaro
There, love that, love that. Good.
Donnie Pingaro
Okay, thank you, Chad. Have a wonderful day. Appreciate it.
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