Episode 44: Interview with Allan Dalton

Scott Williams: Sweet Home Santa Barbara, where the skies are so blue. Sweet Home Santa Barbara, what’s worked for me can work for you.

Jonathan Robinson: Well, welcome back friends to Sweet Home Santa Barbara. I’m your co-host, Jonathan Robinson. I’m with my friend, co-host, and Realtor® Scott Williams and I’m excited today, Scott, because we have what I’ll call a big shot. Somebody who’s done a lot of stuff, Allan Dalton. He has a fascinating history. He’s a recently retired senior vice president for research and development at Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices. He’s a former CEO of realtor.com, I’m sure to ask him about that. He’s a former president and co-owner of a 60-office East Coast real estate brokerage, and he spent many years owning and managing real estate offices and last but not least, he’s a former Boston Celtic draft choice. So he has done a lot of things in his life. He lives in Fairfield, Connecticut, and welcome to Sweet Home Santa Barbara, Allan.

Allan Dalton: Thank you very much, John, for inviting me as well as Scott, and thank you for that very generous and overly kind introduction. Great to be here.

Jonathan Robinson: Well, I’ll start with a question. You know a lot about real estate and real estate agents. How does one pick a good real estate agent?

Allan Dalton: You know that’s very important, it may appear on the surface to be an overly simplistic question or exercise, but amazingly it’s oftentimes overlooked and not sufficiently focused upon by many consumers and potential clients because there’s a lingering perception out there that there really isn’t that much of a difference between real estate professionals, that they’re somewhat commoditized in what they do because everyone does open houses, MLS, so forth and so on. But there’s a profound difference. So to answer the question, how do you go about that process of selection? Number one, you’ve got to make sure that you are meeting somebody that you’re going to be comfortable with because a real estate lifestyle process and ultimate transaction is a protracted process. It’s not just going in and buying a stock or buying an automobile.

There’s a companionship component that is inevitable in these relationships and so you want to make sure that to the best of your ability, you can judge, is this somebody that we’re going to be comfortable being with if I’m a buyer, driving around seeing properties, or if I’m a home seller, being in constant rapport, having constant rapport where the next thing is to make sure that they’re very committed to the business. Sometimes we have realtors, Jonathan, that they’ll go to a function and somebody will say, ”Hey, Bob, what do you do?” And Bob will say, ”Well, I’m in real estate, but I used to be an engineer. Well, I’m in real estate, but I used to be with UPS.” It’s like somebody saying, ”I’d like you to meet my wife Alice, and here’s my ex-wife, Betty” because what they’re basically manifesting is that they’re not all in what they do, they haven’t arrived at what everyone talks about in terms of, of the why.

So you’ve got to make sure that somebody lives and breathes and one way that you’ll be able to determine that when you ask them questions like, what makes our property different? What makes our neighborhood different? How are we going to point out what’s different about the communities? In fact, the number one agent in the entire global network with Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices just happens to be in Santa Barbara, Crystal Clark, and I actually interviewed her once, and I said, Crystal, what makes you different? And I’ll never forget her answer, Jonathan. She says, Allan, I never focus on what makes me different. I always focus on what makes the properties that I represent different or the buyers that I’m working for, what they’re looking for that’s going to be different. She says I don’t compete against other agents in Santa Barbara County as much as the properties that I represent compete against other homes.

I don’t compete against other agents as much as Santa Barbara competes against Hidden Hills, Calabasas, Laguna Beach, and so forth and so on. I love that answer because it puts the focus on what’s really important, and that is the client and so an answer like that is very revealing and then you want to make sure that, again, somebody has the right skills, the right community knowledge and so forth and so on. But you’ve got to be comfortable with them and then also, credentials are important. I wrote a book, in fact, on real estate influence and the overwhelming determinant by most behaviorists in terms of how somebody achieves influence is either through domination or through prestige. Well, we have to leave domination off the table, okay, because we’re not looking to dominate anybody in the real estate industry. But there’s a corollary between prestige and credentials and so there’s a lot of credentials in the industry and it behooves home sellers to ask the agent, what are your credentials? What are your professional credentials? So that’s maybe too comprehensive an answer, but that’s the way I would encourage people to approach that and obviously, looking at their track record, which is their credentials and their results.

Jonathan Robinson: Great answer. Scott.

Scott Williams: Well, you mentioned Berkshire Hathaway. I’m glad to work for Berkshire Hathaway, but when people are selecting a real estate agent, they’re also choosing a brand. How much difference does it make to that brand?

Allan Dalton: Well, first of all, that’s very difficult to quantify. Like, for example, I’ve read that people are overwhelmingly influenced by brands. If you took a pair of sneakers and with the same pair of sneakers, attach the name LeBron James, the value goes up. Santa Barbara is a brand. Newport Beach is a brand, California is a brand. But it’s very tough to forensically assess exactly and precisely and to be able to quantify its value. But I believe it has a tremendous amount of value, especially in upskill markets. There are certain brands and Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices would be one, yet not the only one that seems to be very congruent with upskill lifestyles. Although our CEO Christy Budnick, my former CEO now that I’ve retired, is one to always point out that Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices is a for everyone brand because it’s considered an aspirational brand.

So it not only hopefully defines the lifestyle or brings value to the perception of the lifestyle or gives it an imprimatur, if you will. But it also speaks to buyers who want to elevate their lifestyle and maybe develop a network, but it also is a brand for everybody. First-time buyers, renters, even though it has an elevated and venerated pedigree, that’s not what real estate is or should be about. So, brands are important, but let’s keep in mind people don’t land at the Santa Barbara Private Airport or LAX and say this to their partner. Let’s go to Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices. Hey, have you seen their patios? Hey, how about those re-max kitchens? How about the Keller Williams family rooms? And so where every real estate company and brand is a conduit to shared inventory, it’s just that the brand basically suggests something to the people who want to be associated with and so I have found that the Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices brand attracts very committed, elevated people who are drawn to the culture and the mission statement of trust, integrity, stability, and longevity, and also the leadership and in the case of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices, and I’m only going to share this because you’ve told me you invite people from other brands and brokerages because I don’t want this to be unduly subjective here, but at the Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices brand, not only do we have Christy Budnick, a phenomenal leader, but Gino Blefari is our chairman, and he was identified by a major real estate publication as the number one leader in the industry at California, Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices, California Properties. Martha Mosier, who’s also an attorney as the CEO has brought in a level of sophistication and organizational acumen that you don’t find in many brokerages. So obviously I’m subjective, your audience should take that into consideration with everything that I say. But I am extremely impressed with the caliber of individuals, both real estate agents, managers, and CEOs that have been drawn to the brand and what it represents, even though to some it may be ethereal, it seems to speak to a certain type of professional.

Jonathan Robinson: Okay. Well said. Another question I have, you were the head of realtor.com and I assume you know a lot about marketing and real estate. What can you say that might be useful to our audience that maybe they’re not that aware of or some helpful tips around marketing, whether you’re buying or selling a house?

Allan Dalton: Well, would you have me answer this more from the consumer perspective or the industry what agents should be aware of?

Jonathan Robinson: Your choice. Scott, what do you think?

Scott Williams: Let’s do this for the consumer.

Allan Dalton: Okay. Well, the consumer is not responsible for the marketing of their property. The agent is, and everything comes with somebody has to, there’s a wonderful plaque. I’m sure that you gentlemen have seen it somewhere along the line. Watch your thoughts, because your thoughts lead to your words. Your words lead to your actions, behavior, character, and your destiny and I’m also reminded of something that Confucius said, all wisdom begins by properly naming things. I’m also mindful of what Shakespeare said in Hamlet, suit the action to the words and the words to the action. The real estate industry was latent, coming and becoming marketing centric. When I got my real estate license in Boston years ago, it said real estate salesperson. So, until 30 or 40 years ago, or even 50 years ago, the word marketing really wasn’t a co-celeb.

People saw themselves as salespeople. In fact, in the TV show, the Mad Men, I don’t think they ever even used the word marketing because marketing also suggests research development and so the definition of marketing that I love is that marketing means first determining the unmet needs of the marketplace, and then creating goods and services to effectively respond to those needs. Therefore, if you’re not doing research if you’re not doing studies, and I understand Jonathan, I think I was told by Scott that you’re a psychologist and well, my daughter’s a clinical psychologist as well, went to Princeton and we talk about this all the time, just how people don’t appreciate how much metrics and data is associated with psychology, and the same with marketing and so if you don’t have an understanding of buyer preferences, trending data, what people are looking for, okay, then you can’t properly meet their unmet needs.

So I always recommend, and what I have been able to do during the days when I was with Berkshire Hathaway HomeService and not just their consultant, now, is that definition of marketing, Jonathan drove everything I did. I used to write a circle and I said, okay, let me identify all the unmet needs in the marketplace. Well, some people are moving up. Well, what’s the solution to that? So I created the move-up system. Some people are downsizing. So I worked and created with Wendy Duran, our marketing guru at Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices, downsizing with distinction, downsizing by design. So it was content that was congruent with the unmet needs so you could educate people and provide them services or solutions. The industry for too long was obsessed at the micro level. Everything was interpersonal. So yes, they gravitated to things like disc and my brakes, someone’s a D, someone’s an I, if somebody leans forward, you lean forward.

If somebody crossed their arms, you cross your arms. But that’s at the bottom of the level. That’s after people have come through the funnel, if you will and that’s an inelegant term that is used in the industry to describe the process. So I don’t want your consumer audience to be off-put by that because the consumer first decides we want to move, we’re looking to buy, we’re looking at the sell. So the real estate industry very seldom is stimulative to cause that need to be discovered. So then when I was CEO of realtor.com, 99% of the consumers who came to the website clicked on find a home, only 1% clicked on find a realtor, and they were realtors. So what that means is that on the buying side, the buyer first determines they’re looking to move, they know what area they’re interested in, they go looking for properties, and then they find the buyer.

But the industry hasn’t been engaged enough in terms of the contemplative and strategic process. In fact, in 2008, when we had a worldwide fiscal calamity that was precipitated by underperforming mortgages on properties that people couldn’t afford, almost every other stakeholder to our real estate transaction was eviscerated, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mack, Countrywide Mortgage back then, Bonnie Frank, okay, the politicians. There wasn’t one voice that was in opposition to the real estate industry. Now, somebody may take that’s a good signal but it just showed how feckless the industry was in terms of being the cause of the inspiration for why people are going to buy and sell and so the real estate agent usually comes in after somebody has announced. That’s why over the years, you’ve probably seen ads. When you are ready to buy or sell a home, give me a call. Until then, don’t bother me.

But the great realtors like Crystal, like Joe, like Scott and others, okay, they’re involved throughout the entire life process but they only can stay involved if they’re meeting unmet needs. People are looking to remodel. They’re deciding whether they should move or improve. So in order to do that, that requires a marketing mentality. So in other words, it’s evolving from just being a sales psychologist and please don’t take offense to us borrowing your term there in the industry, Jonathan. It’s evolving from somebody being, they’ll say I’m a psychologist. It’s the psychology of sales to the sociology of marketing, segments of the marketplace, people moving up, people downsizing. If somebody’s going to address these unmet needs, it requires content, it requires services, and it requires solutions. Unfortunately, and I’ll leave it at this, on this question, if somebody were tonight to go to a bookstore and ask to go to the real estate section, almost all of the books on real estate don’t come from the industry because the industry has been too much transactionally oriented and not enough relationally oriented in terms of the entire continuum because now the average homeowner lives 12 to 13 years in the home, and realtors know they’re not going to sustain these relationships, okay, just by sending out pumpkins and refrigerator magnets and according to NAR, 90% of homeowners say they’re going to go back to their agent, but only 13% of them do. But the great agents, the Crystals, the Joes, the Scotts, it’s the absolute reverse because they’re providing value, service, remodeling ideas, content, market updates.

Jonathan Robinson: Yeah. Great answer. Scott.

Scott Williams; Well, we, as real estate agents rely on the multiple listing service to sort of the lifeblood of what we do. The public doesn’t always quite understand quite what that is. Any comments on the multiple listing service?

Allan Dalton: Well, first of all, the multiple listing service has been a blessing to both buyers and sellers because it operated in a sense, almost a little bit like a stock market. So if somebody wants to sell their stock, their stock goes on the entire market that competes for that commodity, and in real estate, if you didn’t have the MLS, the buys would not have access to essentially every property for sale and the homeowners wouldn’t have the range, reach, and influence that is required to not just sell their home, but to create competition for it, and to leverage the laws of supply and demand and so the MLS, and by the way, and then as you introduced me as the former CEO of realtor.com, there wouldn’t exist a realtor.com and there wouldn’t have existed at Zillow because we took MLS feeds from 840 MLS at realtor.com, which meant that somebody could be having breakfast in Brussels, go to Google and see every property in Santa Barbara, Montecito, Westlake Village, Thousand Oaks in seconds with multiple photos. So that all evolved out of the importance of the MLS.

Jonathan Robinson: You’ve been in the business a long time, Allan. Where have you seen change and where do you think the change is moving to? What are the trends?

Allan Dalton: Well, the first change is like, everything is technology and technology has been great because I don’t want to add to my resume because you’ve already been overly generous, but the one thing I’m very proud of is I’ve always been called the ultimate real estate consumerist and so from the consumer perspective, technology allowed properties to be exposed, as I just covered, and buyers complete access. But it also meant that realtors and brokers had to expand their marketing because 40, 50 years ago, 99% of the people called on an ad in the newspaper or walked into an office, and properties really weren’t being represented because they were commoditized. There would be four bedrooms, two and a half-bath, colonial and cul-de-sac, which could describe 50 properties in the marketplace without pictures, without more narration, without contextual information on neighborhoods, schools, crime reports, pedestrian reports, and so forth, and so on.

So the agents, first of all, had to make sure that their properties were properly presented online, basically staged online. The other thing is now because the consumer was going to be influenced, there’s a big thought out there about SEO, Search Engine Optimization, but realtors know that they can never win the search engine optimization battle in terms of attracting clients. I coined the term seek engine optimization and there’s technology out there. One example is Chart Digital, where they basically use in-app marketing where they can geo-fence a community, and the agent can send a link, for example, on how to downsize, how to move up. They can, if somebody deems, do you know what a great feeder market of these towns? They can send out information to everybody’s cell phone with links to that information.

Allan Dalton: So what it has meant is that agents have had to become much more sophisticated with social media, with marketing, and basically that’s been transformational because before there was no way to attract buyers from all over the world instantaneously. Now there is, and there was no way to basically use technology through Facebook and Instagram then, and TikTok and all of these social media platforms and so that has been the greatest change is that, and the agents who are adept at both online and offline marketing and networking, but still, a few years ago was the last time I visited the statistic, but something like 75% of homeowners when they look to sell their home, bring in somebody they already know, like, and trust and so relationships communally, going back to Crystal again she is prodigious in terms of her support of the community, her charitable work, okay?

Which is who she is. It’s not done for exploitive reasons, it’s done because she’s got that type of heart. But the top agents, they’re great people. They’re in the community, they’re of the community but they still have had to make changes. In fact, the dean of the Stanford University Business School, I brought him in once to speak to our people. He said that every company and every agent has to compete in two ways. First for a positional advantage, and then for a corresponding capabilities advantage. He liked a positional advantage to McDonald’s. They’ve got ubiquitous worldwide locations, immense brand equity, top of top-of-mind share but if they don’t develop a corresponding capabilities advantage, a drive-through window, or a more nutritional menu, their positional advantage will recede. The greatest agents both build their personal brand, they leverage their company’s brand, but they’re always developing if there’s a period where there’s short sales, if there’s foreclosures, if there’s a need for doing remodeling, okay? They’re so engaged in the marketplace and the agents that have been able to adapt and make these changes continue to flourish. The agents who years ago just depended upon their farm area or sending out mailings or whatever, they’re struggling.

Jonathan Robinson: Yeah. Scott.

Scott Williams: Well, this sort of begs the question of success in real estate, and you’ve pointed towards realtors who have certain characteristics as being most successful in real estate. So maybe you’ve sort of answered that question. Anything else you want to say about what it takes to be successful in real estate?

Allan Dalton: Yeah. In terms of being successful, first of all, somebody has to have passion. They have to have passion because it’s like the old example. There was a speaker out of the northwest, his name was Lou Tos, 40 or 50 years ago, and I was around then in the business, and Lou used to talk about the reticular activating network, which wasn’t his invention. He was just referencing something that obviously he had studied and I always give the example, a person who’s really in the business, I know you’ve got a soccer team and professional soccer team in Santa Barbara. They can go to the soccer team and they can sit in section 21, and somebody in section 25 may just be whispering I think we’re going to move and they hear it, was the agent who’s not completely all in.

Somebody can be sitting next to them and say, we’re going to move. They don’t hear it and so a lot of people are in real estate, but real estate’s not in them and so it takes somebody who is all in because real estate is the easiest business to get into, but it’s the most difficult to be successful at. A lot of agents don’t last more than two or three years. When I was CEO of realtor.com, there were 1,000,400 realtors and 400,000 didn’t have one listing in a year. It’s an enormously difficult business, okay? But we do have the 80/20, 80/15, 85/15 law. The top producers do exponentially more business because they do business planning. A lot of them have a great coach. They’re more strategic. They work on their skills. They understand the difference between service and skills. Skill is the cake service is the frosting on the cake.

They understand the difference between personal service and home services, which is why the name of the brain is Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices I could go to urgent care, for example, and I could get great personal service, but if they can’t do an MRI or they can’t operate, they can’t provide as much service as a hospital. A doctor’s more valuable when he or she is at the hospital and so realtors have to be involved in the whole lifespan of the consumer, create a real estate ecosystem so when people are thinking in three years, should we move or improve? They bring them in. If people need to put in a kitchen, they bring them in to say, what type of kitchen is going to be the most valuable at three resale levels? These are the people who go so beyond the transaction, so beyond serving the community and that’s why the success is so lopsided.

Jonathan Robinson: That makes sense. I like your big-picture view of all these matters. I’m wondering in the big picture, what do you see might happen in real estate in the next year or the next five years?

Allan Dalton: Well, what’s happening, when you think the big picture that allows me to really speak at the very macro level and that is the fact that within much of the world witness the information ads, there’s the democratization of information, the word disruption, the best definition I’ve come across as I heard at an event once, that the disruption takes place when something no longer makes sense when something no longer has value. So, there’ll always be tremendous pressure on all professions to make sure that their value is understood and appreciated and so what we have right now is that our institutions are under attack. I think in the 50s, something like 80% of people trusted institutions, now it’s 19 or 20%. Some people became familiar with something called blockchain and crypto. These are populous democratization movements because a lot of people felt that the transactions were too expensive. Okay?

That’s why homeownership rates came down. It kept a lot of people out of the market and the same with crypto. A lot of people were unbanked, didn’t have access to capital, and so these are the socioeconomic movements that contextualize everything within parenthetically any industry, in any profession. So what’s happening in real estate, is there’s a movement where people want to make sure that it’s very clear what the value is to both the seller individually and to buyers individually. So there’ll be more pressure, which is good because the industry, I think, welcomes that. Okay? In fact, I think that that bodes well for the industry because the stronger that people understand there’s representation on both sides, the more value is on either side. It’s not like a coach that wants the game to end in the tie and the more that that is understood and appreciated, I think that that will actually increase the value of the industry. But at the same time, there’ll be more challenges and more people will become more circumspect in terms of what am I actually getting for the fees that I have negotiated, and again, all fees are negotiable, as we always know and I always point out anytime I’m anywhere.

Jonathan Robinson: Any last question for you, Scott, that you’d like to ask?

Scott Williams: Well, let’s see. I think that there was a planning system that you created. What is that?

Allan Dalton: Well, I have a copy of it here. It’s called the Real Estate and Lifestyle Planning Guide and here’s the premise behind this. People, consumers, and clients typically have one doctor, one attorney, one psychologist, Jonathan. Okay? And they have oftentimes five or six real estate friends that they consider and there’s a reason for that and here are some of the reasons. The real estate industry for too long has been obsessed with the wrong words because again, thoughts lead to words. Most realtors have been taught that they should treat their business like a business. I think that’s misguided thinking because they should treat it like a practice and that’s not a distinction without a difference. It’s profoundly different because a business has customers, and a professional practice has clients. So, Home Depot has customers, Costco has customers, but a financial planner has clients.

So a company should be treated like a business, but real estate professionals, they’re in a profession, they should treat their business also like a practice. But if they’re going to be a practice, one of the analogies would be financial planners. Well, imagine if I said to either one of you or anyone in your audience, and the incredible area of Santa Barbara I love to be your financial planner, but just so you know, Scott, I don’t do any financial planning. Agents for years have been saying, I want to be your agent for life. We have a concept at Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices called The Forever Agents. So, our agents want to be their forever agents But how can you be a forever agent if you don’t have a plan? And so, I created, along with Christy, Gino, and Wendy, we created the Real Estate and Lifestyle Planning Guide.

It’s a self-help guide because oftentimes I ask myself this question when I conceived of this, what percentage of consumers at some point in that time have ever regretted not owning enough real estate? Essentially everybody. What percentage have ever been encouraged by their real estate agent to develop a real estate plan that they could work with them? Basically, no one. That represents the single greatest unmet need and because there wasn’t this planning process, what seeped into the industry and metastasized over 50 years with this dreaded expression? You’re familiar with it, Scott. You’ve heard it your whole career. Oh, I’ve got to do a better job of t keeping in touch with my past clients. Well, if somebody’s your past client, what does that make you? It makes you their past agent. So who suffers? The homeowner doesn’t buy or sell when they should. They do the wrong type of home improvement, okay, because they decorate their home instead of merchandising it. Okay? The agent is not as successful and there’s this real estate roulette, and there’s no permanence. I actually own the URL real estate trusted advisor, but there’s no opportunity to provide real estate trusted advice over a 30 or 40-year period because there has to be something to codify the relationship that we are operating as you’re my client. Whereas the industry only considers the word client as it defines a transaction. So, if somebody after a transaction is a past client, that means that before the transaction, there are a prospect and so realtors are safe. They’re ones, there’s twos, they’re huts, they’re warms, they’re colds. See there’s another term in real estate called the sphere of influence. But most people haven’t researched what a sphere of influence actually means.

The sphere is a cylinder shape where every object around the perimeter is in equal distance from the center. So, if somebody just has a geographical farm or a database and not a client base, everybody in that population is not equidistant in terms of value because they’re not a client and then an influence means the ability to shape and alter people’s behavior. So, we use terms very loosely, inconveniently, but they also undermine the need to really create clients for life to be able to memorialize and codify. Whereas people should be your clients, Scott, even if they’ve never bought or sold a home from you, yet, they should be Crystal’s clients because they should be basically being educated and counseled and the amazing thing about real estate is real estate agents do all this for free. There are no billable hours. The meter is not running, okay?

They have all this knowledge and advice, and it’s only called upon at the transaction level and at the bottom of the funnel. So that’s why the real estate planning guide it’s a flip book. It’s offline, it’s online. We had in June, real estate National Planning Month and that’s also why we have people take the Forever Agent. When I say we, I’m not speaking on behalf of Berkshire Hathaway Home Service anymore, I only consult with them. But that’s why there’s the Forever Agent pledge, which I introduced while I was an employee there. We’ve had about 20,000 agents stand up and take the pledge of trust, integrity, stability, and longevity, and it means the world to them, but then they have to be able to execute it. If I’m going to be a forever agent, I just can’t wait until you have a need. I’m going to be in constant touch with you.

Jonathan Robinson: So, Allan how do you think AI, artificial intelligence is going to influence the industry?

Allan Dalton: Well, in a few minutes, I’m not going to even begin to scratch the surface because there are university semesters for two or three months just on that subject alone. It’s so transformative. But from a real estate perspective, I would say this, when it comes to marketing homes, especially, I suggest that agents say to home sellers and be able to provide home sellers with a three-dimensional lifestyle-stirring narrative. You want to be able to tap into the experiential knowledge of the agents, okay? You want to be able to tap into artificial intelligence ChatGPT, Abad, okay, because you want to be able to understand algorithmically some of the most compelling ways to tell stories and to offer narratives. But the third dimension is you’ve got to tap into the experiential knowledge of the homeowner. See, that’s something that can never be replicated. ChatGTP can never speak on behalf and with the authenticity of somebody saying, here’s what it has been like for us living in this home for 15 or 20 years. So that’s an indispensable component in the same way that ChatGPT won’t be able to give depositions or interview people on the street at a crime scene and so that means that agents have to go from listing presentations to marketing proposals that are collaborative, that have to view the homeowner as the co-author of the lifestyle story and it’s going to be three dimensional, the agent, artificial intelligence, and the homeowner.

Jonathan Robinson: Good answer. That’s been very inspiring to hear you, Allan, and your perspective. You have so much experience. Now you’re going to be in consulting. How can people get ahold of you?

Allan Dalton: Well, for now, the easiest way for people to get ahold of me is I’ll give my cell phone number. I lived in Westlake Village for years. In fact, I’ve got to say this, I’ve got to talk about my love for the Santa Barbara region. We lived in Westlake Village, my wife and I, and our daughter was in a terrible accident and paralyzed for 20 years, and then when she passed away, the next week, we came up to Santa Barbara and spent two weeks because we wanted to find the most spiritual, soulful, and that’s always been my impression and respect for Santa Barbara, is that it’s a community with a soul. It’s eclectic. It’s a nautical masterpiece, okay? It’s a natural wonder. The people are so great and it’s so eclectic. Ah, it’s universities, entrepreneurs and so I’m only explaining this because my text number is 805.

Okay? Because I’ve kept that. I’ve kept that because I live in Fairfield, Connecticut, and I know if somebody’s calling me there, they’re trying to sell me something. Okay? So, I kept that exchange, but anyone could text me. It’s 8053388796. But with this understanding, I’m only at this point in time in my consulting business, only coaching and consulting for Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices agents. That could change in the future. If I’m not valued enough, then I’ll have to paint on a larger canvas. I’ll have to go macro. But hopefully, I’ll be able to stay within the brand.

Jonathan Robinson: You’ve certainly been macro. Scott, how can people get a hold of you?

Scott Williams: scottwilliams.com and fascinating discussion, Allan. I really appreciate all the perspectives you have on a large playing field, and Scott, you’ve always been an incredible real estate agent for me and all the people you serve, and I hope our listeners have gained great value from another episode of Sweet Home Santa Barbara.

Allan Dalton: You’re the best. It is been a privilege.

Scott Williams: Thank you for listening. Please subscribe to our podcast on your favorite app. If you know someone preparing to sell their home, please tell them about the podcast. Visit scottwilliams.com to contact me and download the two free e-booklets. “Is my House Saleable Now?” and “How Not to Buy a Money Pit?” Thank you for listening.