by G. Sax, Head of Communications, RESO
We recently caught up with Jack Miller, CEO and President of T3 Sixty, to ask Three Questions about leadership, the cost of less accuracy and whether or not Austin, Texas, is still weird. Enjoy!
Q1: There seems to be an inflection point happening with real estate leadership for the first time in 20-plus years. Through your day-to-day work, you are particularly invested in brokerage and technology leadership. It is also evident that this is a personal passion of yours. What is your current takeaway on real estate leadership, how did this become a career path and where do data standards fit into the leadership picture?
Jack: We’re seeing more leaders from nontraditional real estate backgrounds. A lot of organizations are being built by people with different backgrounds and tech skills.
For the post-world-war era, most real estate would be characterized as a mom-and-pop business. Over the last three decades, we’ve seen a transition from a local service industry to a more grown-up corporate industry with backgrounds from Wall Street, technology and big-bank mortgage lending becoming more common.
This is even in evidence with T3 Sixty’s Founder and Executive Chairman, Stefan Swanepoel, who started his real estate career coming from construction engineering in South Africa, bringing an entirely different background into the industry.
That means that people leading some of the largest companies have a different perspective on operations and cost structures. You would not create a brokerage business today like you did 25 years ago. In those days, you would open a storefront, get successful, add stores and grow regionally. More leaders today have a national mindset.
We’re going to have more big players, but that doesn’t mean we won’t see smaller, highly effective companies as well. Entrepreneurs want to take advantage of scale and new ways of doing business. These entrepreneurs are taking advantage of AI and technology to be able to achieve the same scale as established large businesses.
There are a few reasons why I’m into this industry. I have a strongly held personal belief that real estate is the path to wealth in this country. It’s the path to community, from ownership to investment and the stability of the American public.
This feeling has kind of matured like a fine wine as I’ve gotten older. I believe it’s the bedrock of the health of our republic, and there is a lot of work there that the real estate industry can help with.
My background is in embedded systems design – microchips, motherboards and really interesting technical work I did in the 1990s. I discovered that I like people and working in a people-first industry. I was working long hours at a start-up in 2001, and I decided that I wanted my next gig to be sales- and people-focused – a different kind of problem solving than technical.
So I went to work for Gary Keller for his little real estate start-up as employee number 28. Real estate is such an entrepreneurial industry that attracts all walks of life, from savvy business people with MBAs to those with a high school education and a whole lot of sales hustle.
That’s just fun. People are endlessly fascinating and surprising in this industry. There are so many people doing cool things. Everyone has a personal experience, and this ties back to my philosophy of the republic.
As for standards, like what RESO supplies, they are supremely important and necessary for the future of the industry. We can’t grow at scale without standards. I have run into so many interesting entrepreneurs that couldn’t scale because of lack of standards. Their idea was great, but having to spend five million dollars on backend infrastructure meant the idea was dead on arrival.
There is probably some great innovation we will see because of an evolving standards environment. I’ve been in my career long enough to know that standardized data went from impossible to substantially improved in our industry and can be further perfected.
The opportunity cost of not having standards is immense. When you underfund the public good, the industry good and the infrastructure, you don’t get the benefits as quickly. You’re likely going to have to do something really extensive, because you didn’t fund a standardized base properly. That’s not leadership, and we can do better.
Q2: RESO and T3 Sixty are both in the business of counting. Specifically, we have a standard called the Unique Organization Identifier (UOI), and you keep track of organizations as part of the Real Estate Almanac. You also report on industry changes with Real Estate News, the Swanepoel Trends Report and the Swanepoel Power 200. From listings to sales to sides to square feet, counting is fundamental to our industry, yet it has become more complex to count things like how many MLSs there are, how many subscribers they have and a truthful tally of days on market. What’s going on?
Jack: The litigious environment has made it more difficult to have accurate information, but there is a cost to not having good information about the industry. If we don’t know who’s who in the zoo, it makes industry executives less knowledgeable, less capable and less strategic. It makes creating opportunities harder when the market goes dark.
That’s the price that we pay for what I think is this idea that you are going to hide from litigation for not being part of a list. Listen, if attorneys want to find you, they’re going to find you.
It’s short-sighted to just try to hide. So I don’t think that laying low is an effective strategy. What you pay for the loss of industry reputation is higher than maybe what you’re aware of. Ultimately, it’s not a good trade-off. People should be recognized for who they are in your market. If we’re all hiding, what are we getting done? And by the way, you’re not hiding very well.
RESO: So you’re feeling this, too?
Jack: Yes. We moved to publishing MLS subscriber, association member and broker participant counts in tiers, which at least lets us do aggregate analysis. So there are compromises that we had to make. It’s not good for the industry.
Brokers have to make similar concessions. Trading in recruiting and marketing recognition for anonymity with the idea that they can hide from litigation prevents them from talking about added sales and head count.
Q3: Austin, Texas, is the seat of the state government; contains a major national university and sports power; claims the headquarters of Tesla, Dell and Oracle; has been one of the fastest-growing cities and skylines in the U.S. during the 21st century, and lost the indie edges on the annual South by Southwest (SXSW) conference a long time ago.You went to the University of Texas in Austin, and you currently live in Austin. A popular term for that city is “Keep Austin Weird.” From an insider’s perspective, is Austin still weird, or is that an overplayed moniker?
Jack: Austin is where Texas creatives go for arts, music and more. You can still go out on a Tuesday night on 6th Street in downtown and find something fun and different to do. The core of “weird” is still there. There are just a lot more people around, bringing the advantages of a larger city.
Texans want to live life on their own terms. We want to be left alone and do our thing.
In my own way, I’ve done this. I’ve been making art with people in my life for 30+ years – from Burning Man to theater productions and extensive art installations. Austin is still weird if you’re talking to the right people.
I have a life well outside of real estate. I’ve been part of it my whole life, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
RESO: I have two quick follow-ups to that last question. Have you ever met any famously pro-Austin people like Matthew McConaughey or Richard Linklater?
Jack: My brother delivered a pizza to McConaughey when he was famously playing bongo drums. Matthew has a strong presence at Austin FC soccer matches and at University of Texas sporting events, so I’ve seen him around but have never sat and chatted with him.
RESO: Finally, are you weird?
Jack: Talk to me sometime about my non-real estate life, and you will find out!
Three Questions is a lighthearted interview series that features real estate industry professionals, their businesses and how they interact with real estate standards.
