Limitless with Kyle Matthews - Mentorship, Mindset, and Monumental Success

Welcome to Limitless, the podcast that allows us to dive deep into some of the most successful minds in business and the stories that help shape their careers and lives. I'm your host, Aaron Zucker, and on this show we take advantage of my Rolodex of commercial real estate, franchising and private equity

relationships that are exceeding the dreams and expectations of the common mind. So whether you are established in a successful career or just getting started, I have complete conviction that you'll gain some value from listening with us on today's episode. Let's get started. I've had the opportunity to meet with some incredibly successful people in my life, summer disruptors, world changers, and as a result, some of that time spent has been with billionaires and other well known names in

their field of work. I've had a lot of time to think about the statement I'm about to make about today's guest since getting the chance to sit down with him in late 2023 in the Matthews real Estate. Investment Services headquarters in Nashville. Kyle Matthews is perhaps the most committed person I've ever met to living in their idealistic mindset. I'm not sure if I've ever or will ever meet anyone who is as determined to go after what

they want and to set the table. Saying that out loud isn't easy for me because I may not have achieved everything that I want to in this life yet, but I've always taken a tremendous amount of pride in going after what I want and having a determined and disciplined mindset. If you have any iota of doubt that this may be the case, here's some facts to help set the table. Kyle started Matthews in 2015. He has never taken on debt.

Today, his brokerage company that he started with a dozen people or so in 2015 has 26 offices. They've done $54 billion in transactions. They have nearly 1000 people working there. As of the recent recording. You don't get there without a borderline unicorn mindset, one of dedication, commitment, persistence, perseverance, and a thirst for excellence that is so uncommon it's almost impossible to believe when you hear what he's done. With all that in mind, I couldn't be

any more excited to kick off our relaunch of Limitless with Kyle Matthews. As our first guest. His mindset, execution and great stories along the way are for your listening in my conversation right now. I am so flattered and honored to have the one and only Kyle Matthews join the podcast. Kyle, how are you? I'm doing good. No thanks for coming to Nashville. I appreciate you making the trip? I'm glad

you mentioned that. Usually I go wherever our guests go, and this is without a doubt the best scenery that I've had the opportunity to interview someone in. For those who are unfamiliar, I'm gonna go ahead and give you a plug, like, 1 minute in. I appreciate it. For those who are unfamiliar, Kyle recently came out with a podcast. Correct, called the Matthews Mentality

podcast. It's awesome. I've had the opportunity to listen to a few episodes, and I'm here in his Nashville headquarters office here in the studio, getting to leverage their wonderful technology and everything that you guys have, which is first class all the way. So, for those who haven't had the opportunity to subscribe to that podcast yet, do so. Boom. There you go. You're welcome. You can slip me the jack of. The wants you to say, follow me on social media. What do I got? Kyle?

Matthewsceo. I'll matthewsceo. On all platforms. On all platforms. I don't have a TikTok, do I? I have a TikTok. Jesus. Come on, dog. We don't post on it. We don't post on it. All right. The Chinese are listening. They're going to start influencing my behavior. Watch out. I'm just playing. Yeah, for now. So, Kyle, thanks again for joining me after the sidetrack there and hearing about your podcast. Let's jump right into it. So, tell us about your background. Where did you grow up? What

was the family dynamic like? I grew up in multiple places. So my dad, my father, who I'm very, very close with, he played professional football, not a traditional career path. He played football for 19 years in the NFL. His name's Clay Matthews junior. My grandfather, Clay Matthews Sr. Also played in the NFL, but that's a different story. So my dad, he played 19 years. Most of his career was spent with the Cleveland Browns. So, um, if.

If you could follow me here. I would live in Cleveland, Ohio, from August to about December 31, every year. The perfect place to be in the winter. Well, you know what? I actually really did. I loved Cleveland. I. It's incredibly close to my heart. I love the city. We have an office in Cleveland. I get up there whenever I can between the months of May

and September. Understandably so. But, yeah, we would get out before the bad weather really hit, which, you know, January through March can be pretty brutal. But. But, um, I would be in Cleveland, Ohio, because that's where my dad worked for the Browns. And, uh, during the season, during the football season. And then as soon as their season was over. Generally speaking, we would leave, um, around New Year's and head back to Los Angeles,

which is where my mom was from. My dad went to school out there. A lot of my dad's family was out there at the time. They met in college at USC out in Southern California. And so I would move every six months. Every six months till I was about 17. And so most of the time I was going back to the same school. But there was, I think, seven or eight times I went to a new school. So does that count as most of the time then, if you change school seven or

eight? Yeah, yeah. You know, it's. You know, sometimes it would be going to a new school just because, like, you're elevating grades, and sometimes it would because we're. We're going to a new market. But, um, he played for the Browns till 90. I think it was 78 to 93. And then his last three or four years in the league, he played for the Atlanta Falcons. So in, you know, I, from zero to twelve or 13, I was in Cleveland in, during the season. And then from 13

to about 16 and a half, 17, I was in Atlanta. So when people ask, where did I grow up? It's a little bit more nuanced than a lot of people's answers. Where I said, Cleveland, La. Atlanta kind of depends on who I'm talking to. But I very much valued and appreciated and took, from a cultural sense, aspects of all three of those places, because they are very different, especially back then, very different nowadays through social media. I think a lot of the cultures are kind of

blending a little closer together. But, um. But, yeah, that was, uh, that was my childhood. I moved a lot. Uh, my dad played football. I had an older sister, Jennifer, who I'm very close with, and three younger brothers, Brian, Clay and Casey. And so there were five of us, uh, within eight years. It was a chaotic house. My mom, Leslie, uh, basically did her best to keep us from killing each other, keep us alive.

Yeah. You know, my dad was around, surprisingly a lot because even though, you know, football is a tough sport, they they, you know, back then especially, they didn't work, you know, five months out of the year. And so my mom and dad both were around a lot. And I just had. I had a very idyllic childhood. Wonderful parents. They did a phenomenal job in raising us, you know, kind of from a mentality standpoint and self agency, self accountability, handling

your. Handling your business, and, you know, doing the best we can to treat people how other. How you would want others to treat you sure? So just to recap and make sure I understood. Cause there's a lot to keep up with the kids. So you were the second of five. I am the second oldest boy. Yeah, it was girl, boy, boy, boy, boy. So, really tough of my sister. And she's tougher than most men, and she certainly knows more football than almost

everybody. Yeah, apparently. Yeah. So football obviously runs pretty deep in your family. Yeah, yeah, it does. There's something to be said for those who aren't really into sports or really into football. Getting to the NFL can be done somewhat on talent. Certainly

takes hard work. What is most impressive to me and what you were able to witness firsthand, though he played 19 years, you think about, especially in a modern day society where LeBron James is known to invest, I think it's a million dollars a year into his body or something like that. Obviously, if I had to take a wild guess, I bet your dad didn't do that. No, but I mean, talk to me.

Talk to the listeners a little bit about what it was like to witness somebody going through, putting his body through that, and maintaining the discipline to remain in the league that long. Cause that's. That's a pretty cool opportunity to witness. As a child, you know, you are correct. I'm not gonna say, but it just. It was a little different era back then. I don't.

I will. I don't think anyone's gonna argue that. That athletes, whether it was football, basketball, baseball, anything, soccer, they didn't take care of themselves the way they do now. Um, it's not the science it is today. Back then, you might have one or two guys who watch what they ate,

but generally speaking, it was like, hey, don't show up hungover to the game. You know, it was just a different world early in my dad's career, and I remember this, after the last game, most players had u hauls attached to their car. Cause at the end of the game, they drove back to their town. They actually lived. In the off season, they went back to their

job. Job. Cause they weren't making the money they are today now, because there's so much wealth that can be created as a professional athlete, you are your own business, and your body is your business, and you got to take it serious. And so the answer to your question there, it was very unique. My dad was a very serious player, especially for the time. He definitely was focused on eating well, and he worked and he trained very hard,

and he worked out. So, yeah, undoubtedly, he approached his profession as football, as his business, and he was a very serious guy. He never got in trouble, always was reliable team captain forever type guy. But. Or. And there's certainly a lot of genetics and luck in that he just. And everyone in my family, genetically speaking, are just so blessed from an injury perspective and, like, from, obviously, athleticism, but, like, we just haven't had the

injuries, whether, you know, I have two brothers who play in the league. I have four cousins who play in the league. I got my uncle, my grandfather, my dad. There's a lot of matthews, you know, um, and we really have never had, knock on wood, ever a major injury. My dad never had knee injuries or, you know, he broke his arm once or broke his ankle, but, like, just very fortunate, very blessed. Um, certainly taking care of yourself

reduces the. The probability of injury, but a lot of it was just being a smart player and knowing, you know, how to tackle, how to take a fall, those things. But then just, you know, we just been so fortunate and so lucky as a. As a family. And. And speaking towards watching my dad prepare is. Is, um. You know, he. He could do a certain play a thousand times, and just. It didn't. He was

just blessed not to be injured. And then the next guy shows up in the first time, somebody rolls into his knee or ankle and snaps in that and back, especially back then. That's the end of it now with surgery and rehab and all that. I mean, a lot of times, people come back stronger, but. But in the seventies, eighties, nineties, um, many people, that was the end of your career. My dad plays, I think, to this day, still the most games in NFL history at linebacker. Wow. I think it's

278. I could be wrong. My uncle Bruce, the most games in NFL history for offense alignment. So I. I want to say again, 293. I think I. I was giving an interview recently, and I said the wrong number. One of my cousins fact checked me on a text message, so that's kind. Of her Thanksgiving dinner. I want to make sure I get it right. Uncle Bruce, 293 games, maybe between my dad and my uncle, each over 300 when you include playoff games. And so.

Yeah, just so, just so fortunate. Again, that's. That's their success. I played football in college, and we could talk about that, but, you know, I'm very. I'm very proud of their accomplishments. I am the luckiest guy in the world to have been the biggest cheerleader and biggest fan for them, whether it was as a son, as a brother, as a cousin, as a nephew. But it's not a huge part of my life at this point. I don't watch football. A lot of people are shocked to hear that. I try and record the Se

games, but they come on late. I got a lot of kids. I get tired. It's great to talk about, and it was a blessing to be a witness to their success, but that's not my life. Sure. Yeah. And we're definitely gonna get into how your life took it. A little bit of a different path, for sure. So you grew up in a house with five kids. I mean, I'm just thinking the grocery bill had to be insane. It was like there's probably boars flying. All over the place. Credit to my parents.

I never thought we were poor, but certainly never thought we were rich. And athletes didn't make what they do today. But I have no doubt that my dad was doing pretty well relative to. But we grew up in Cleveland. We grew up on a little cul de sac, Evergreen lakes in Strongsville, Ohio, in a 2100 square foot house. I slept in the basement, and it wasn't a room in the basement, it was just a basement. All my brothers shared a room. My sister shared a room until she got older. And I don't know

if I should probably ask them. I don't know if they did that on purpose to, like, convince us, but I think that's just how my mom and dad were, is they're just very salt of the earth, frugal people, you know, even if they had money, they certainly didn't show it. Same with. We moved to Georgia, we didn't move to bucket, we moved to Lilburn in a middle class neighborhood on Megan Daniel, 13579 Megan Daniel Drive, in a georgian brick home and very nice home. But again, it wasn't behind

gates, it didn't have giant acreage. We were just like everyone else. And same in Los Angeles. We lived out in the canadian valley, Negoro Hills, and again, a beautiful home, great idyllic childhood, like, you know, cul de sac, leave it to beaver type feel. But they always did a great job, you know, from, you know, you had brought up the grocery bills. But just in kind of taking the topic to finances and wealth, I just never, ever once

thought of myself or our family as rich again. I didn't think we were poor, I just thought we were just like everyone else, which, looking back with your dad in the NFL and likely, you know, financially, probably earning more compensation than the next guy's dad, they did a great job in not leading us down a path where, you know, it became an expectation. Sure. And I don't care who you are, I don't care how much money you have. Five kids is expensive. It is.

I got four and that's expensive. So five. Yes, I believe you. So how are you? And I wouldn't back to steering away from the finances for a second, but talking about just four boys, and it sounds like your sister is right there in the weeds, obviously. I'm sure your dad was somewhat playful throwing you guys around. I'm sure the house was nuts. It was nuts. It was a YMCA, because. YMCA. The reason I say that is it was the community house. And this really was the culture. My dad was great,

of course, but credit to my mom. Cause at the end of the day, she was the CEO of the house pretty much at every given time, let alone any given time. Each of us had our close, if not best friend over the house. So generally there were eight to 15 kids in the house. And there was the Matthews house was known as that house. And after school, I remember multiple times, we'd have friends show up and they'd say, hey,

is Kyle here? Is Clay here? Is Casey here? And my mom would be like, no, they're at practice and they're like, oh, okay, well, then I'll just stay here until they get back. And my mom was like, okay, cool, you know, and she'd make them sandwiches and, you know, go in the backyard, go shoot some hoops or as we got a little older, go, you know, play halo or something, some video game. But. But it was. It was a very loud. It was very chaotic house, but it was a very fun. It was a very fun place to

be. How were you as a student? Not great. And why do you think that was? I was just kind of a. That's just like a slap dick dude. I was like, that's the quote, Zach. We got to remember the quote that we want to introduce this podcast is, I was just a slap dick dude. Yeah, well, yeah, I got that word from coach Nick hold our linebackers coach at the NFL, who, if anybody, was just kind of being lazy and not really going full speed or using every

ounce of ability. That was the. That was the word. And it just stuck. So, yeah, I'm just going to repeat what my parents have told me. And obviously they think I'm super special, so they just. They felt that I was a very talented young man mentally in terms of ability to excel at school, but I didn't apply myself. So I was always a's and B's. I mean, I certainly got good grades, but there was frustration in my house that they couldn't get me to lock in and activate.

And it's one of the interesting things in terms of having the Matthews mentality podcast. I always ask, is it nature, is it nurture? Were you always this driven? Or was it something that was activated later? And mine was activated in college. My drive, my ambition, my seriousness, my focus? But no. In elementary, junior high, I think most teachers would say, kyle, very bright, picked up things very naturally, but I always did just enough to get good

grades. But looking back, if I had applied myself, I'd like to think I could have really, really excelled. But I always did enough to get by as a kid. Yeah, it's funny, I always liked asking that question. I was actually the exact same way. I'd like to think I made a's and b's, but I'd made some c's. I believed in report card diversification is what I like to say. Always. And it's very common with entrepreneurs that they ended up as sort of

mediocre students. Cause they wanted to. They didn't wanna break the law. Like, they didn't wanna fail out of school or anything, but they also. They wanted to have sort of this drive and purpose towards something that, like, was tangible and meant something to them. I'm sure. Yeah. I think, look, it comes down to incentive. And I

didn't. I didn't recognize the value or benefit to me to going that extra mile to get a straight a. I didn't at the time, I wasn't mature enough to see further out as to why getting great grades may get you into a great school and a great school could lead to a great job, career opportunity. I wasn't. I wasn't that mature. You know, my incentive was get good enough grades to make sure your

parents weren't mad at you. That was it. And as soon as I had that, I would take my foot off the gas and I. My incentive, my value was spending time with my friends outside playing sports, skateboarding, basketball, football, baseball. And so again, as it relates to school, I would do just enough to get some a's, some B A's and math and science and all that battle to get a b in like English, right? That's just how my brain was wired. But other than that, as soon as I

had that, I was out. I didn't see the value in going an extra mile at school. I lacked the incentive. Not that it isn't there, it is. It just. I didn't see it. Sure. Understandably so. Which. It's funny cause you said something that was ironic to the normal people. As I use air quotes, you say you said something about getting great grades to go to a great school or what have you. You ended up going to a great school. Anyway, I did talk to

us a. Little bit about that. USC, University of Southern California. But again, you know, in all fairness, the only reason I got into that school was cause I played football. And so I'm sure there's a lot of, you know, mouth breathing students who don't want to hear that, but that's how it goes. And the better the football team goes, the better the donations, and the better donations, the better the professors, the better the schools,

the better education, the better for you, so support your team. Right? Yeah, no, I went there to play football. That was, you know, I did extremely well in my sat. I'm a naturally good test taker. I don't really study for tests. I just, you know, I've always been blessed with kind of a photographic memory in that sense. And so, you know, smoke DSAT had more than good enough grades to get in, and all I had to do

was effectively qualify. And I was. I was well beyond that. Again, I wasn't a bad student at all, and I was fortunate to get invited down to SC and play, and that was. That was an incredible experience. Talk to us about that experience. And, I mean, college in general, not just. Not just football. Well, my college experience was football. I didn't, you know, I'm just. Just to kind of get out there with it. I didn't have a college experience in

what I understand a traditional sense. I wasn't in a fraternity. I was there for football first and education second. It was kind of the joke at USC. Cause USC's symbol is putting two fingers up and v for victory. Like, it's kind of like the peace symbol. And when Pete Carroll joined you all, you mess around like, hey, you know, education's first, football second. And he'd switch up the numbers if you're. You got to watch it

on the video. But he would hold up two fingers. He'd say, education's first year, but, sorry, Pete, but he'd. I was, you know, I was football, and I'll walk you through that schedule. But going down there was. Was something else again, that would. That was the wake up call. It was up until I went down there athletically, physically, even mentally at school. Like, I just. I just coasted off. Just my natural

athleticism or gifts or whatever you want to call it. I never, you know, I do a little workout for football study a little bit for school and high school, but I didn't need to. Again, it got back to, you know, I didn't see the value I was doing. Okay, let's put it just off what I was just. I had, naturally. And then when I went down to Sc, it was, you know, again, a very, very rude wake up call is the. Put it lightly. I meant physically. I got smashed. And

we had. This was old school. And so this is how you get old, you know, back in the day. But back in the day, they had three a days. What year is this? This is 2000. Okay. I graduated high school in spring of 2000 and went to fall camp. It's August in LA. It was in Irvine in 2000. The coach at the time was a guy, Paul Hackett. He only. He was there just my freshman year. He got fired. We weren't very good my freshman year. And then Pete came in and. I'll talk about that in a second. But we had

three days. We would have practice at 711 and three in full pads and almost entirely hitting. And. Cause I was the new freshman, and I was just not strong enough, not fast enough at the time, I would, you know, I'd have to do the scout team. I'd have to be, you know, the. The ball carrier on the tackling drills. And it was physically very brutal on my body and more so it was mentally very tough on my mind. And in those first couple weeks, I meant not a second went by where I

was like, what am I doing? I don't want to be here. I should quit. This is too hard. It's not worth it. You know? And I had a decision to make in that moment. And again, you know, credit to my parents and this specifically my dad, I remember many, many times, like, it just was understood in our family, like, you just can never quit once you start something, so be careful what you commit to. But once you commit to something, you are not allowed to quit, not in our family.

And it was almost. I don't think he ever said these words verbatim, but if you quit, like, don't come home. Right? And so, since quitting wasn't an option, and because, as I've said before, if. If you quit something, what does that make you? It makes you a quitter. And a quitter, when I grew up, was a. Was worse than a four letter word. You could call me a four letter word, and I would take less offense than if you call me a quitter. Nowadays, young people,

you know, they. It's almost like they've eliminated the word quitting because it hurts their feelings. It's like, no, you fucking quit, dude. Like, you just quit. Like, you're quitting. You didn't get, you didn't find success in this profession. You didn't find success at your college program. You didn't find success making your high school team. And so you're quitting. You're a quitter. That's it. That's what's

up. Like, that's who you are. And if you quit one thing, it makes it easier to quit a second thing, which makes it easier to quit a third thing. And then you just are a quitter, and you're going to quit everything. You're going to quit your career, you're going to quit your marriage, you're going to quit parenting. You're going to quit your friendships. You're going to quit anything that becomes inconvenient was how I viewed it or how I view it now, for sure.

And I didn't want to be a quitter. So I was like, all right, I have to find a way through this. I have to find a way first to survive, and then I have to find a way, ideally one day, to not just take hits, but to give hits and to deliver hits. And it was in those first couple weeks at Irvine camp, three a days, full pads, just getting smashed by dudes that are three inches taller, 50

pounds heavier, more muscle. And I just. I just. Early on, I said, okay, the way I'm going to survive is, like, tenacity and mentality. Like, I just have to out work. I have to out hustle. I have to outrun. I have to out hit. I have to out fight. I have to out scratch, claw, whatever you want to call it. Like, tenacity. I just have to be more tenacious. Cause I am not as big as these guys. I'm not as

fast as these guys. I'll work on that. And I did. And eventually I got bigger than a lot of them, or I got faster than a lot of not. Not enough of them, you know, because ultimately, I. I never was able to start and certainly not go to the NFL. But compare who I was as a senior at SC versus who I was as a freshman. I think I was six foot, 175, you know, decent speed, but, like, it was not good. By my senior year, I was 6162, like, 220. And I jacked and,

you know, smashing people. It was a lot different experience when you start being the hammer and not the nail. And so, again, early on, I made that decision. I'm not going to quit. I'm going to push through. And that that ultimately started the four year journey. My college journey was very much, you know, when I think college, I think of football. I don't think of the school. I don't think of the academics. I don't think of the students I met, you know, and the relationships that I built

that became my business partners. I don't have any of that. Right. I have football. And so a lot of my framing about college is the experience at playing at USC and my own individual journey from, you know, going from a boy to a man and going from, as I said, a slap dick to a savage. You know, it was all done down there, and it was all responding to the change in my environment and learning at first, how to survive, and then eventually start delivering hits, physically,

literally, and metaphorically. There you go. And there's obviously some serious carryover to what you're up to now, which we will get into. You did just to talk about the sidebar of college. You did have to go to class. You did have to study something. What did you choose to major in, and how did you arrive to that? Yeah, you know, I wanted to do business like my dad. I had. If I had to guess, and again, don't quote me on this. I'm pretty sure around a 3.0

heading into, like, my junior year. I'm gonna cut you off for a second. You said, I want to do business like your dad. He had a business degree. Oh, got it, got it, got it. Okay. So, you know, it's. I looked up to my dad. I still look up to my dad, and he went to USC and played football and got a business degree. And I said, well, I'm gonna go to USC and play football and get a business degree. Probably couldn't even

tell you what that meant, a business degree. But, yeah, I want to say I had roughly a 3.0. But USC's got a great school, the Marshall School of business, and I applied, and I did not get in, so that's that. Still hold a grudge against the school? Still bitter about it. Good. Still won't donate any money to the Marshall school until, you know, they make amends and give me, like, some honorary degree. We'll start the movement today. There you go. You heard it here

first. Yeah. Fucking Marshall school. Yeah. How you like me now, dog? That's right. You know, I got. Come on, let's do it. Rip the band aid off. No, no, no. I got a lot of Marshall school students who work for me. Yeah, you do. That's right. So, anyway, I really am. I really wish I could articulate to everybody listening out there the face that Kyle had describing this last 30 seconds. Still pissed about it. I'm, like, backing away from the. If

it was. If you guys could still hear me, the microphone. I feel like he's about to run through the door, and I'm, like, gonna get out of the way here. I love my school. I love my college. I love my team. You just don't like a certain college within the university, that's all. You know, it's not them. It's me. I got my own issues. I'm sure they're great people. It's not them. It's me. Right? They did you a favor.

They did me a great favor. So I went and I majored in, actually, again, I got into business, if you want to call brokerage and real estate business, it certainly falls under that umbrella. But I got into a degree that I was actually much more passionate, interested. It was international relations. I have always been obsessed with world events, historical world events, geopolitical events, geopolitics, what's going on in the world

outside the United States in addition to what's going on inside. And I majored in international relations. I loved it. And actually, my GPA went up after I chose that majority. I actually liked going to class. I liked listening. I liked learning again, it's just the way God made me. I was wired to. Nobody taught me this. Nobody told me this. I just, I found international relations fascinating. And so classic entrepreneur path, by the way. Yeah.

Like, when I, when I started taking classes about business in college, and when I discovered that I wanted to be an entrepreneur, like, all of a sudden went all in on it, and you found something you're passionate about. Turns out, you know, I don't like the word passion because it gets abused. So I call it enthusiasm. I said, find something you're enthusiastic about, something that creates excitement to where it doesn't feel like work. Right. It doesn't feel like, oh, I have to be

here. I get to be here. And that if I'm going to give unsolicited advice, that would be true about your relationships. Find people that you're excited to be around and not like, oh, I have to be around. That's true about your work and your career choice in your field, or perhaps the lifestyle your field can create. Find something that creates enthusiasm to where it's not torture to get up and do it

right. And so it wasn't. I actually didn't necessarily, like the business classes I took, you know, my sophomore, like the econ classes and the business 101, it was a little less stimulating than the IR international relations classes, where I had created enthusiasm within me, and I found myself sitting in the front row taking notes, the things that I never had ever done previously. And I, you know, I think I did okay there. And I, you know, I graduated, I got my degree, and ultimately was

provided an opportunity to go into an IR related field. And I had that opportunity. I had the opportunity to become a coach in the NFL, and then I had the opportunity to get into real estate. But wait, we can't do the 32nd. Skip over on this. You got to tell. There's a little bit more logistics here. So you are wrapping up at SC. You've come to the conclusion that you're not going to the NFL, and you decided. Yeah.

That was concluded on the first day of pads, the third practice my freshman year, when I saw a guy named Troy Polamalu hit someone in a line drill, and just the speed and the sound and the flash, and I didn't really know Troy. I meant, he is one year ahead of me, and I didn't know him, and he wasn't a high recruit, so he wasn't necessarily a name I had heard of. And I just like, who was that? They're like, that's Troy Polamalu. I was like, what

position does he play? He's like, he plays your position, you know, safety. So I was like, well, okay. You know, there we go. Right? And so when you see a guy like Troy play and you compare it, and I got bigger and I got faster, and eventually, in my opinion, established myself as a productive teammate, you just. It's not a. Hopefully, it doesn't come across as, like, a pessimistic. There's no acceptance of, like, there's no giving up or failure. I worked my. My ass off

every day I was there until my last day. But there is a recognition that there are levels to every game, in this case, football. And while I was. I say this humbly, I think I was very high level. There are levels above where I was, and that is what the NFL is. And so I was looking back, I have so much gratitude to coach Carroll, all my coaches, all my teammates. I would do it a thousand times over again, even though I

didn't play very. Even though I didn't go to the NFL, which was ultimately, you know, I think it's everyone's dream, but it was the best experience of my life. It shaped who I am as a man, certainly it toughened me up mentally and physically, which I certainly needed, and ultimately, in my opinion, put me in a position to be very successful in the field. I ultimately chose real estate because of what I went through and how I needed to respond to survive down there

and ultimately thrive. The lessons within that apply to any career, especially career like brokerage. Sure. Very common theme that we brought up, that we've brought up historically on this podcast, obviously holds true with you, a lot of former athletes. There's a lot of translatable skillset mindset that comes into our business today, and you obviously are a quintessential example of that. So you finished at SC, you know, or you're

finishing up at SC. How did you decide to do what you did next, and what was it exactly? Yeah, we finished up, you know, my senior year, we won the national championship. And so in many ways, that it was a perfect culmination, like, I think I. Is this the Texas. This was the. No, no, no, this was. We didn't. Unfortunately, we didn't win that game. Yeah, no, this was two years before we played Michigan to the Rose bowl, and this was my last

game. And then the next year, I had graduated, we played Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl, I believe, and smashed them. And so we won our second. And then the third year, we were going for the three peat. That's right. And that's when Vin Cheung did his thing, you know, and it was a. My brother Clay played in that game, so I was there, and it was. It was tough, but. But, you know, credit to them, it is what it is, and so hopefully we'll get back there.

Similar face Kyle made when describing his animosity towards the business school. You know, it's, you know, certain things you don't get over, so that's okay. Just don't bring them up. No, it was a great game. We should have won that, but it was their night, and that's why they play the game, you know, and they won it, and they deserve it. And I hope the Texas fans are happy with the only national championship they have. There

you go. Well put. All right, we gotta get back to Kyle's career, or else he's gonna go on another tangent. So what happens next, Kyle? What'd you do after school? Yeah, so I recognized the. As awesome as football was and all the life lessons and everything, when you look at my resume, it was pretty light. So I had a professor in international relations, Jerry Bender, who is very, very kind guy, and took a liking to me in the

sense, like, I think he understood that I was serious about it. And through him, and talking through another relation, I got set up at a think tank the summer after I graduated to go do an internship for about two and a half months in Washington, DC, at what was a place called the Prague Institute. And just to kind of test out the IR waters, but also just buff up my resume, you know, because, again, even most of my summers at USC were spent working out. It's like they say,

oh, these are voluntary workouts. Yeah, they're only voluntary if you never want to play. Like I'm telling you right now, it's. It's. It's not voluntary. It's not. If you want to play, you have to be there every day, five days a week throughout your entire summer. Which, again, that was fine. I wasn't a victim, but certainly there wasn't. It didn't exactly set you up for a career at Iowa. No, no. Or

anything, for that matter. I had a cool internship one summer at MGM with a guy, Derek McClay, I knew, and that was cool. We did, you know, we did data input during the day, but we did get to go to the after parties, which was. Which was wild. For those who don't know, MGM is an agency out. Yeah, they made movies, and that was a cool experience, but it wasn't. Having been there, I was like, okay, I definitely don't want to be in the entertainment industry, for all the reasons you can imagine.

I really liked real estate. I didn't know much about it. My dad owns, like, a couple, like, really small apartment buildings. But I remember going to the buildings as a kid and thinking it was really one of the coolest things ever, that somebody lives in a unit in a building you own, and every month they have to pay you rent. Right. And it's a lot more complicated. That takes tremendous capital to start

acquiring. But I thought that was the coolest idea. So I always had this real estate thing in the back of my head, but I wanted to explore the IR pursuit. I went out, I did the internship. It was really interesting, but it wasn't necessarily, you know, I looked at a lot of people in that industry and more the academic, and, you know, I just didn't. I didn't want to be them when I grew up, if that makes

sense, you know? And I had met some real estate people through USC, and again, it's all optics, right? And real estate people. Real estate professionals are some of the best salespeople in the world. So it's like, you know, they're always selling, but they always looked like they had it all figured out. Great hair, nice, nice suits, like, especially. In LA, I would imagine. Especially in LA and Orange county specifically. And I was like, man, those guys look cool. Like,

I want to be that. So at the end of that internship, I came back to LA because I was in DC, and I said, I want to get into real estate. And there was an alumni I had met at one of the events who's like, hey, my neighbor's in real estate. This guy wasn't, and I'll put you in touch with him. I went and I met with this friend of his, and he owned a lot of units in multifamily. Dave Hoskins at Anchor Pacific, I believe, was a company. He's still around. I still talk to

him about once a year, and very grateful for the direction he provided. I went and met with him and talked about real estate, and he kind of asked the question, do you know anything about real estate? I said, not really. He's like, do you have any money? I said, no, I think I had, like, $700. And he said, does anyone in your family own, like, is a real estate professional? He said, no. He's like, all right, well, if you want to get into real estate, but you have no background, no knowledge, and

no support network, like, you should really look into brokerage. It sounds funny, but he's like, that is the path now. He's like, you know, I'm not a broker. I was never a broker. But it's incredibly hard. I know that, and it's really tough, and it takes a while to get going. But if you can make it, that is the way. Because, again, I didn't have that real estate finance degree from the Marshall school. Right? That's where the value of the right school and the right

degree matter in terms of opening doors into a career. Yeah, Blackstone's not calling. Blackstone doesn't care that you played safety. No, they do not care, or at least didn't at the time. And I, again, they're hiring skill sets, not mindsets. I had a killer mindset. Right? If someone's hiring a mindset, then I'm your guy. But they're hiring skill sets. Most real estate developers are hiring skill sets. Most real estate brokerages

are hiring skill sets. I interviewed. So anyway, Dave got me a interview with the top agents that he worked with, like he was a buyer and seller. So he called the top brokers at the big companies, said, hey, there's this young kid, ex player at SC he wants to get into real estate. Will you interview him as a favor? And they all said yes. And I'm very grateful for that. So I interviewed with Sean Daisy at CBRE, Joe Vargas at Cushman Wakefield.

And then I interviewed with a guy, Jonathan Weiss or actually Greg Harris at Marcus and Millichap. So those are three big agents. And I think they were agents at the time. Maybe they're executives now. I don't know what most of those guys are doing, but my dad basically said, look, you gotta take the first job that's offered to you. And he's looking at it as a concerned parent. Right? Yeah. You know, concern more like, just don't come home. Don't

think you're like, you don't think you're coming back here. Like, you are a guest. You are not. You know, it's like you're eight. It's 22. You're like, you're gone. Like, I did my job out of the nest. Right? I know that's not necessarily the culture today, but that was certainly the culture in my family. And so I took him seriously. I was like, I gotta take the first job. So I interviewed with Greg Harris at Marcus Millichap. He actually walked me down the hall

to the hiring manager, Jonathan Weiss, JW. And they were the first people to call. And he called me and he's like, hey, Kyle, this is Jonathan Weiss at Marcus Amilla. Chap wanted to offer you a position in the senior office of Marcus Millichap. I said, I'm in. I didn't actually know what commission was. I didn't know anything. I just said, I'm in. What year is this? This is 2004. Got it. So, yeah, Jonathan Weiss was the first to hire me. I don't think I ever got a call back

from CB or Cushman. And so I definitely remember their names. I remember them very, very clearly in my mind. And so the face I get to witness, indescribable, you know, so I'm still kicking their ass. And, yeah, great guys, but never got a callback is what it is. And Marcus Millichap called me. I have tremendous gratitude to Jonathan Weiss, to Greg Harris, to Marcus. And they gave me an opportunity, and

that's how I got into brokerage. Love it. Okay, so you're in the encino office at Marcus and Millichap working directly with Jonathan Weiss or like, what? No, Greg Harris, who still is one of, if not the top agent at Marcus, certainly in multifamily. And I see him in Manhattan beach when I'm back in Manhattan Beach, I always give him a big hug. I don't think he was bringing people onto the team. So anyway, Jonathan Weiss was the hiring manager, and he ran the office. And so

he hired me. And, you know, a story I've told and is the first day he said, hey, our Monday sales meeting is at 830. So, you know, get there before that. I didn't know what that meant in terms of how much before, so I just stuck to my football schedule, right. I woke up at 445, showered, got on the road at 510, and I got to the office about 535, and I sat there for almost 2 hours outside because I didn't have a key card. And luckily this isn't Wisconsin in December, but 536, 637 and then about

730. The first guy showed up and said, today is my first day. He's like, all right, I'll let you in. And, yeah, so I showed up two, two and a half hours early, and I was sitting there and I didn't know anything about real estate. I didn't know anything about brokerage. I didn't have much money. I had no skills. I just had, you know, a will, I had a, I had a mindset that whatever it took, I was gonna do it. And, you know, just like I had that moment down at Se where I said, look, I can't

quit. I'm not gonna quit, because then I'd be a quitter. So I'm just gonna have to figure this out. And whatever it takes, I'll do it. Doesn't matter. Physically, mentally, emotionally, like, I'll power through. I had that same conversation with myself that first day, sitting outside that office because in a different way, you know, not so much the physical harm, but it was scary. It was like I didn't know anyone there. I didn't, no one I knew was in

brokerage or real estate or the encino office. It was, I was, you know, again, metaphorically alone. And I just said, I have to, I have to figure it out. So what happens next? Eventually I figured it out, but it was very slow. So I. We want to hear the slow part. Yeah, it's, um, I, I basically kept my football schedule. I got to the office every day at 545, and I would stay till about 839 o'clock at night. And that, that happened for about, that went on for about 15 years. So I'll, I'll

talk about that. But just that first year, year and a half, I didn't know anything about real estate. I didn't know, I didn't know how to underwrite real estate, because, again, I didn't have skill sets to underwrite, because I didn't have a real estate finance degree. I didn't know the terms of real estate. What is a cap rate? What is irr, what are debt spreads? Because I could tell you the weakness of COVID two versus cover three and cloud corners

and all that, because my family's profession is football. But we didn't sit around the table talking about, you know, leverage and debt constants. What the fed's gonna do. Yeah, what the fed's gonna do. Those are conversations I have with my kid almost every. My children, almost every night, because I want them to be prepared. But. But I had a lot of other skills that I learned from my dinner table that in many ways were more valuable, but I didn't have that. I didn't have the

real estate practical skills. So it was a very, very, very slow and painful process getting into brokerage. It took me 17 months to close a deal. 17 months. So you've done a really good job of telling us how little you knew when you walked in. And I say that with a smile on my face for those listening. No, this is a real thing. I did not know anything. What did you do all day? You were there at 530? Yeah. No, no, I'll walk you through. So I got there 5545 on average,

depending on LA traffic. I still lived in south central, you know, near USC, because I had an apartment for $450 that was built in 1921. Got it. So you can imagine the quality. But I didn't want to give up the apartment. It was cheap. And I would drive from just outside USC campus in south central to Encina, which was about 35, 45 minutes without traffic. And there was never traffic when I was driving, because it was super early and super late, and

the car stereo in my truck was stolen. In college, it was a tough area, and I didn't have money to put it in, so I didn't have a stereo, and there was no ipod, so I just drove in silence. I'm starting to realize, Zach, I'm sounding like a psycho, but I just didn't have the money. Respectfully. I'd get in at 545, and the first 15 minutes, I'd get the coffee, I'd go on ESPN. If I was playing fantasy football, I'd just dick around for 15 minutes. But at 06:00 I'd have

a hard start. So from six to seven, the first hour, I had a minimum of five new properties or context research. So, like, five, five, five properties a day keeps the doctor away was like every day. Because again, and even to this day, almost every company that's not Matthews does not have a centralized database. Okay? They don't, they don't have a giant CRM filled with every property and every contact that's more or less correctly researched. That's

just not how these companies are set up. The reason is most of the public companies were founded minimum 50 years ago. You know, I think technically, JLL, you could trace back to like the LaSalle company in the 1780s if

you really go through all the m and a that's happened. And they have so many multimillion dollar producers that just work off their own little sheets that for the culture to change within a company and get all these seniors to buy in, like, they're just not going to do it because they don't have the incentive because they're doing so well. So, yeah, systemically different. It is totally different. So. But again, Marcus and Millichaps also like that. I think they're still like that. Again,

it's been a while since I've been there, so I don't want to comment. I'm not an expert, but every agent works off their own list. So I had to. There's no database provided. It's not like I get to the company, they go, okay, here's, here's a million contacts. But, you know, within your submarket, here's the three or 4000, you'll work. It doesn't work like that. So day one, I have zero contacts and you just, you just have to start

researching it yourself, which is insanely inefficient and redundant. It's a. Again, I'm defending them in terms of why it's such an archaic structure and why they haven't been able to get agents to adopt to the new way. At Matthews, it's totally different. All right? We have one system and it is massive. I think it's 1.3 million contacts, last I checked. Because when we started it, it was after the cloud based technology revolution. Most of our agents are born and raised. So

it's like, hey, this is how we do it. And it's all they've ever known and so they see the value in having it. But for me, I had to start from scratch and build my own list. And so from six to seven, every day I'm researching five contacts, then from seven to nine, I'm generally, you know, replying to emails, but generally underwriting. I had to do all of my own bovs and not just the underwriting and pricing and picking comps. That's brokerage, right? You always should do

that. You're like putting aerials together. Oh, no. Yeah. I am building the production book. I am photoshopping. I am picking the fonts. I am deciding what color the COVID of the Bov will. I am deciding, you know, inefficient, but with. No, but you didn't have resources. There are no resources. It is a do it yourself company. I had to pay for training. I had to think. I had to pay two 3000. I had to pay to be trained. I had to. So my first day I showed

up, there was no computer. You have to buy your own computer. Like, it was a lot. It was. Again, I still think that's how it is in a lot of places. But again, I can't comment today. I just can tell you what it was like in 2004, and that's a long time ago. That's 20 years ago or 19 years ago. This is how it was and this is how it was for everybody. And I think this is how it is for a lot of people at companies. Again, not Matthews. But

you asked a question about my schedule. So six to seven research. Seven to nine was Bov or Om production. If I earned a listing and I wasn't getting any listings, I was just. Going to say, that sounds great and all, but the first, it took you 18 months to close the deal. So from six to seven, research, and again, early on, right away, you're starting to present bovs. Most of them are what we call free pizzas. They're not very well qualified, but you're like, I gotta pitch, I

gotta pitch. So you're like basically calling people like, let me pitch on your deal. But from nine to six, I have a word for now, RPA revenue producing activity. Generally speaking, that's calling, meeting, pitching or executing business. You've been hired from 09:00 to 06:00 I didn't have a term for it at that time, but generally is what I called sales activities. I want to caveat execution for a second because we talk all the time at Zig and I'm often solicited

advice on how to be successful, whatever. I don't know why they come to me, but occasionally the advice that I've gotten from other people who actually are incredibly successful are saying basically, you know, and I'm just artic relaying that message over again. I want to talk about the execution portion. Making a red line to an LOi to me during. From nine to six

is not executing on the business plan. When I, when execution on the business that you've been hired for, that is calling potential buyers of a list, creating. More demand, generating additional lois or offers so that after six you can do the red line. After six, you can create the offer summary and provide recommendations and guidance. Before 09:00 a.m. You can do those things. But nine to six, it is generating future business and executing on existing and not necessarily in that order.

Generally they're both important. But yeah, if you've been hired to sell or lease space or originate debt, yeah, that from 09:00 to 06:00 you should be going out and doing more of that. I'll answer the question about my daily schedule. My boy Zach just reminded me. And we'll put it on Twitter or something. It's already on there. So I created cheese dick lion is the million dollar schedule. Cause like, when I was a new agent, I was like, I wanna make a million bucks. And so I created this million

dollar schedule. I'll put it out there. If it's not out there, we'll repost it. But it's basically, it's on your Instagram, which Kyle's a great follow on Instagram. I share your stuff a lot. I don't know if you know that or not. I do not know, but now I knew. Now you know. That's great. The schedule's awesome. I think you posted something recently. You had handwritten schedule from the archives. There you go. So I'll go to the Instagram or Twitter, maybe we'll repost

it. When you put this out there, this interview, we'll reshare it again. And I broke it down effectively into 15 minutes blocks. But if it was, sometimes it would say like, okay, nine to twelve this. And so what I would do is I would really protect my time from a

cold calling perspective. And even when I got meetings, I would really push hard to have breakfast meetings because I recognize, look, if I could do a breakfast meeting at 630 or seven, and then I could be out of there, 8830, and then I could still get to the office at 09:00 I could rip. I always had a standard like 100 cold calls a day, minimum. So generally I was 500 cold calls a week. Uh, and I

could talk about that and why. It's just if I, if I lunch, if I didn't have a lunch meeting, I would really work hard to eat lunch in my desk. Now, nowadays, people have Uber eats and doordash. And so back in the day, there were like two restaurants that delivered right. And so. And one was like chinese food and one was something else.

And neither great. And I would eat differently, certainly, but, um. And then, you know, from 01:00 to 06:00 it'd be back on the phones and I would always be making calls, doing the best I could to create a somewhat decent interest generator, keep them on the phone to keep them from hanging up. And the purpose of the call is to set a meeting. And then in the meeting, I would go dive further, deeper into who they are as owners, what their

motivation was, and see if their properties aligned with that. It just. My first year or two years, I just was so bad at interest generators. I didn't have credibility. I didn't ask good questions, I wasn't a great listener. Half of what they said, I didn't even understand the language. Right. So when you didn't understand what they said, what would you do? Fake it till you make it and then Google the shit out of that? Yeah. I mean, there was no. Would

you give that advice today? Well, my advice is go to a company that has like an actual structured mentorship program. Matthews, baby, I'm plugging this company. But no, that wasn't how it was. And again, I think that's still the case. A lot of times is it was just kind of a figure, figure it out. The senior guys were locked away in their office. It was like, hey, let me know when you have a motivated seller. If not, don't bother me. And it's not a good way. But that's how it was. And

so I just figured it out. And for me, I didn't have mentor, I didn't have someone who I could call and say, hey, explain this definition. Like somebody said this. What does that mean? Or teach me how to do this. So I self taught and had to google a lot. And again, a lot of it was through making mistakes, certainly just going and pitching a deal and saying, hey, mister and misses owner, I think your property is

worth 5.4 million. And they basically just chew me up and look, someone just presented the Bov before you this morning at 6.9. And like, you, you'd miss this, then this and this. And yeah, you missed like three of the tenants rent. Yeah. And you did, you know, you overpriced it, you don't know what you're doing. And then eventually, like, I just had to learn those hard lessons, right? And, you know, I learned through failure. And I failed more than anyone could ever fail. I failed on more

cold calls than anyone in the history brokerage. I failed on more bovs and pitches than anyone in the history brokerage. I failed on more listings. I'm convinced that anyone. But I learn, you know, I just unfortunately had to learn through failure. And I failed a lot. But again, I wasn't going to quit. And eventually I closed, I closed my first deal 1718 months in, and I made like eight grand. And then six months later closed another deal and made like nine grand.

And then it was the 23rd month I closed two deals and one was like a $40,000 paycheck. One was 50. And that's when I was like, okay, I think I'm going to. I think I'm going to be okay. Sure. So did I answer your question? I think so. I don't even remember what it was. Something about, like, what is your day set up? Oh, yes, the schedule did. You absolutely did. Yeah. So just let me, let me put a bow on that is at about 6630, especially if I was, you know, hitting 01:05, 110, 110 calls, you

know, again, the purpose of the call is to set a meeting. My job wasn't to make cold calls. My job was to meet clients, ask good questions, and if the opportunity exists where through my skills and effort and knowledge, I can improve their situation, convince them that I'm able to do that. But to get there and to get that pitch opportunity, you got to get the meeting. And to get the meeting, you got to make the call. That's how I looked at it. My job was like, it wasn't

like, oh, like my job's to make 500 cold calls. Just, that's what I had to do. When I understood my ratio, I approached things very, I try and take art and distill it to science. So I, you know, very much ratio driven. So I knew that if I made 500 calls based on the quality of research I'd done, on average, I'm going to get a hold. And they did. Cell phones weren't really in vogue at the time, so you're calling people either at their house or their office. So the hit rate was much lower than

it probably is today. So a good database, a scrub database, a vetted database is going to be at the time, about six to one. You make six calls, you talk to one person. Now it should be lower because most people are working off their cell. You could even text them half the time. So I knew if I made 500 calls, I talked to 80 people. And I knew based on my ratios those first couple years, they weren't great. It was very inefficient. But if I talked to 80 people, I could usually set about four

meetings. And I knew that from those four meetings, on average, I could generate a pitch opportunity about one and a half times. And I knew that if I pitched, you know, let's just say there's 50 weeks in work, weeks in the year, and I pitched one and a half that. 75 pitches, bovs, broker opinions, value proposals, whatever you want to call it. If I pitched 75 early on. Cause I was bad, I was gonna win one out of ten. But I'd win about seven and a half listings over the next twelve

months. And if I could sell about 75 to six, I was going to make 100, 5200 grand and I'd survive. And then over time, as I got better at the job, my ratios would get better, they would bend upwards. The call to contact was generally pretty consistent. Maybe over time, my database got vetted. So instead of six to one, it was five to one. But then instead of four meetings, get one and a half, I'd have four meetings get two and a half. Bovs,

instead of pitching ten deals to get one listing, I'd pitch six deals. Then it was five, then it was four, then it was three, then it was like I was winning half the deals I was pitching. And in theory, a lot of people further into their career would say, great, now I don't have to make so many cold calls. But I was just. It was just my DNA is. I kept up a high volume of calls for years, but my ratios got better because my skills improved. And that's

ultimately when I took off down the road. Okay, multiple questions. First of all, thank you for breaking that all down. Love how you did it to where. We very much approach that science at Matthews, because, again, like, you know, as a founder, a lot of how this company operates is just kind of based on my philosophies of what I learned and really based on my failures. And just, I always tell people my number one job is as often as possible, is have you learn from my failures so you don't have

to fail as many times as I did. If you do, I'm testament that you could fail a million times and still go on to achieve incredible success in the business. But if I'm doing my job correctly, you can learn through mine, so it will accelerate your success. There you go. Deep. I love the wisdom there. So you metricized. If you can't track it, you can't. You don't know what you're doing. You're just getting in a car, going on a road

trip, and hoping to end up somewhere, which makes no sense. It sounds like you did a really good job at the beginning of your career knowing what that data looked like. Where did you get that mentality from? Not necessarily. That's the wrong word. Where did you get that philosophy from of tracking? Like, was there a mentor or mentors at Marcus that sort of steered you in that direction? Again, it was just

really two things. Number one, I think if you just, again, look, getting back to my schooling, if you look at the subjects I did better in, or I had, as I call it, more enthusiasm for science, math, I've always enjoyed approaching something in life, especially a problem or a challenge or an opportunity from a more scientific. Like, let me break it down into data. You know, facts don't care about people's feelings. Like, how do I make this based on facts and then approach it,

like, again, scientifically through a methodology? And so I think I always had that lean. And then again, my hiring manager credit to Jonathan Weiss, he introduced me to the concept of ratios. Like, that wasn't something I created. He's like, hey, well, you know, you can. One of the things you should want to do is track ratio. I think he told everybody this. I was just perhaps one of the few, if

only, who, like, made it religion and said, oh, like, this is the key. And I'm going to just dive into this approach towards business, and I'm going to approach at least from a. Because again, as a football player, most of your time isn't on the field. Most of the time is watching film and watching film looking backwards. Like, how did you do, why did you do the plays you made? Well, why did they turn out good? The plays that didn't go well, why

did they turn out bad? So I looked at ratios as, like, in brokerage. It's like we're watching film. We're looking back and saying, okay, what worked, what didn't and why? And so I kind of approached it and like, okay, well, this is the film I need to track this. And the way I tracked it, I just had a call sheet and I just, every time I made a call, I had a dash. Every time I spoke to someone, I made an x. And every time

I set a meeting, I made a circle. And I just, at the end of the week, I'd plug it into some simple excel sheet I built, you know, because, again, that's not provided. Most 99% of people weren't doing this. Everybody knew what ratios are, but I said, almost everyone, they're just flying blind. And that's why most people don't make it. It was, it was, it was just something that spoke to me and so yeah, the answer to your question is Jonathan Weiss certainly told me about it and certainly

coached me and walked me through what it was and why it was important. And then I just, I just latched onto that ratio approach and more scientific approach towards improving myself as a real estate broker and advisor. Gotcha. Okay, great. So you eventually I'm going to use air quotes, but you somewhat figured it out, right? You had some success after 1824 months. What happens next in your great financial crisis? Yeah. So where are we in timing? We're

at, we're so, you know, started 2004, didn't make money. 20 04 20 05 20 06 started to make a little cash, you know, a couple hundred grand. 2007, I had my best year like you know, made again at the time which great. Today I think I made three $400,000. I was like man I am rolling like this is what I was born to do. Everything's going to be great. Two people said that in 2007, a. Lot of people said that, myself included. And then the world

changed. You know, I think the first thing was like countrywide went down and then the investment bank started and just bad economic and news. After bad news came out and deals started blowing up, lenders started pulling out, buyers started pulling out of deals and you know, fast forward 2008, my income went down. 2009, it really, it was probably 50%, 40, 50% of what it was pre GFC 2009.

But I looked at a couple ways first, you know, if in 2009 I'm just picking a number, if I made 150 grand, first of all, I was like, I made $150,000. Like this is incredible. You know, I remember when I got into brokerage I said to myself I can make 200 grand a year. Like I'm set right. And you know, we as humans always move the goalposts but, and so I'd already moved the goalposts but there was certainly that legacy mindset like, you know, 150 grand, like this is a blessing.

And most of my friends who at brokerage are out of, they're gone. They've all quit. It's too hard. There's no deals. And I think velocity declined like 85, 90%, right. So if Im down 50 and the market is down 85 to 90, Im taking market share. And I know this isnt going to last forever. It certainly felt like it at the time, but at some point the market would come back like normalcy would return, liquidity and capital would enter back in the markets, buyers would come

back, but id get to take that market share with me. And so I really never had the despair a lot of people had. First of all, again, I was fortunate enough to more than pay my bills. You know, I was frustrated. I was working. Candidly, it was almost like in the great financial. I was working harder than my first year. Cause it was just so difficult. And I knew something bad was happening. I didn't really know what, but like, it was impossible not to know. Like, man, this

is really hard. And you saw everybody quitting, even senior guys quitting and retiring, and nobody want to be in brokerage. The office I was in, you know, again, approximate, right, 90 brokers pre GFC. I think we got down to 25, 30. Just empty cubes everywhere. The only guys over there were in the office and I was like one of ten guys in the cubes and eight of them were, you know, zombies and they weren't going to make it. And they were just kind of

staying busy. And it was me and one other guy, right? It was me and a guy, Dave Harrington, who did multifamily, I did retail. And Dave and I chose to sit right across from each other because like, we were like we're the only ones making calls. Let's just push each other. And we worked through it together. We had our own separate businesses. Dave's now president of Matthews. And we just kept battling. And then 2011 was still pretty tough. In 2012, the market, 2011, there were

signs of life. 2012, it came back, the deal started to come back, but the brokers don't come back. And so I always say if you use a gearing ratio for the industry and that in a normal market, for every ten transaction, there's one professional in the business. Like in a crazy market, it may go down to five to one and it's really tough. But like right now it might be two to one. It was really hard.

There's a lot of agents because 2021 was so great and there's not a lot of deals because there's such a bid ass gap because of where debt and capital has gone in terms of expense and how expensive it's become. But eventually the brokers all quit and the deals come back. But it's usually three, four, five years before the, the new crop of brokers come back. The old ones don't come back. That's time to make hay. That's time to make hay. And the

new ones who come back, they're younger, they're behind you. They don't know as much. And so in a market like today, it's just parallel to the great financial crisis. Like, you just got to keep. You gotta, you gotta hang in there. You gotta keep just making those calls, setting meetings, presenting your value proposition, providing good advice, providing good market intel to

owners. You look, pursuing business, asking for business. Like, if you see an opportunity to improve someone's situation, make that recommendation, provide that guidance. But, yeah, we're all going to. Everyone's going to make less money in a tough market. But it's these tough markets that set up the gold rush that always comes after, because, again, the deals come back, but the agents don't love that. So you're at Marcus from 2004. You are sitting across from Dave and the

GFR at 2009 iSh. How long were you at Marcus, and what happens next? Yeah, I was there. 2004 was when I started, and I think I was there till the end of 2012. And, you know, it was just time. And my, how would I say this? My business had grown a lot, and not every relationship was meant to last forever. I wanted it to. You know, I had one girlfriend who became my wife, you know, so I have, like, one girlfriend my whole life. I was like, I'm gonna have one job my whole life.

I'm a very. I consider myself a very good teammate. And it just. My business, as it grew, became slightly misaligned with the business plan of that company. And that's okay. They've gone on to achieve tremendous success. After I left, they had a big IPo. They super valuable. And so I had no judgment, no hard feelings. And after I left, I did okay, too. It was time, for me, it was just about alignment of interest, specifically support and

investing in business and things like that. And their business model just was different. And it was a great place for me to start my career. And I have a tremendous gratitude to the company. Most of the leadership that was there when I was there is gone, but I'm still super close with so many of them, including the CEO, John Karen, who was there when I was there. Jonathan Weiss, I still talk to once or twice a year, the top agents. I'm very close with. Most of the

new leadership, I don't. I don't know them as well, but. And I'm sure the company's changed. I just. I can't really comment on that because I haven't been there in so long, but it was a great place for me to begin my career. But as my career grew, I started investing a lot of capital back into my business.

Like, again, most people think business, you think a big company, whether it's ten people, 100 people, 1000 people, and one of the best things a company can do is reinvest proceeds back in the business, building new systems, new technologies, M and a, hiring more people, better people, just proving everything. I looked at myself as a business because by definition I think I was. So as I started to make a lot of money 2011 1213, I was like, well, I'm going to invest a lot of

this back in my business. So investments for me were throwing big client events to where I could build personal relationships, branding, postcards, websites. Because we didn't even have a website. I didn't even have a. They didn't, we didn't even get headshots, right. I had to, I had to do my own headshot with a gray sheet in my living room and a camera I had that I got for Christmas. Like this is love, this. Yeah, this

is the world at the time. And a big investment for me was as I was built as my business and the amount of deals I was working on was growing. I found myself getting sucked into like sausage making, right? Creating bovs, creating oms and going to the company and saying, hey, I need support. Like, I need people to do this for me. Like, well that's not what we do is like, you

can hire someone. So then I had to hire and that, that's fine. Like again, I'm, I'm full speed, I like to be a good teammate and I don't mind spending the money. It is what it is again, investing in my business. And that helped, but then my business grew even more. Then I had to hire more people

and my business grew more, I'd have more. But then once you have a per, you know, an assistant or two assistants or two assistants and an analyst and you have quote unquote in brokerage, a team, then as the team lead, as the, as the top broker, I was managing these people. You know, I was basically like a manager and executive. And it all gets back to rpas. Like I want to 90 95% of my time, I want to be focused on rpas. I want to be calling, meeting, pitching or

executing. I should not be as an agent, photoshopping, coordinating ground area photography, negotiating with constant content, constant contact or mailchimp on how much the email blast is going to cost, negotiating with Apto, all these things that are coming back, my head of like how much am I paying each month for my CRM, like, not to mention the actual financial expense of that, which, you know, I don't want to spend money right, I will, but I prefer someone else do it. It was

the time, and then it was like, okay, well, hires. I'm going to hire staff. I'm going to hire assistants to do that. And then all of a sudden, you find yourself, okay, you're not physically doing the packaging, but now you're managing people. You're talking about, what is your maternity policy? What is your. How many sick days? How many PTO days? What if someone gets in a car accident on the way to take a photo of a property that you sent them? Are you liable? Are they part of your insurance?

Like, crazy things that you never would think about? But now you're like, I'm this business, and I have one assistant, two assistants, three assistants. I have an analyst, I have this person, I have that person. And you're basically like, this small company. And again, then it's like going to the bigger company that you're actually at. That in my head was like, supposed to provide this and say, hey, will you guys provide this? No. Will you pay for it? Not

really. It's like, well, you might as well. Keep the whole share of the fee, then, in order to fund those things. Yeah. If that's your only option. That's not your only option. There are other places that have a different. A different program. They have a different view, they have a different approach. And so that, again, I'm trying to say this as diplomatically as possible. It just was time. It was time. I have tremendous gratitude to the company that hired me to

start. Hopefully, I expressed that gratitude in the way I worked every day that I was there and how positive I was about the company in the financial performance. Hopefully, they feel like they got a million percent return on their investment. No pun intended, multiple. And it was just time. I ended up going to Colliers International. They had effectively no retail platform. They had effectively no productive retail agents. And I just felt like it would provide

me a wider. Because, again, I was just like, well, I'm running, effectively my own business. Then I might as well go to a company where I run my own business. And it was between them and a JLL, which was the total opposite. It was like, here's what you do is widgetize deployment. Here's what you do. And I was like, well, that's not really what I do. And they're like, well, we want you to focus on class a retail 50 million and up. I was like, well, most of my deals,

I think my average deal says $10 million. You know, it's like, well, we want you to change that and do this. And I was like, well, I don't think they really understand. What I do call yours was more, hey, just come over here. Do whatever you want. Clearly you know what you're doing. I meant, within the context of our policies, do whatever you want. And that was ultimately where I

went. And I was there for two years and three months. Well, I guess without your ability to speak diplomatically, by the way, has been outstanding. But what made you leave colliers and what happens? Well, I've been. I. This. I can, you know, it's not a diplomatic thing. There was no hard feelings. It was. They. They were going. They went public. And in 2013, I think I was there, my first year there, I was their number one agent in

the west, I want to say. And then 2004, that was their number one agent, I want to say globally, I know it's certainly in the Americas, I want to say globally out of, you know, 5000 agents. So it's doing very well. For context, what. What type of volume are we talking about? Just in terms of commissions, that's well north of eight. Eight figures? Yeah. Okay.

It's pretty good. It was great. Again, I'm the luckiest guy in the world. You know, I, to this day, still say if I can make 200 grand, I got it made. Now. My. The amount of kids and shit I have, you know, I got to make more. But I still live a very lean life. Relative, relatively speaking. But, yeah, just. Just lucky. Yeah, I work hard, but there's a lot of people who work hard. I just blessed. Blessed in

timing. The things that. And I'll get back to your question. The things that, at the moment feel terrible in many ways, are the absolute best things that ever happened to you. We were talking about the great financial crisis and going through it, I never got to. Victim mentality. That's a really dangerous place to be. And no one should ever allow themselves to mentally become a victim. Amen to that. You can be victim again. I'm just talking white collar professionals in America, like, you're not

victims, right? You could be victimized. Your boss could screw you on a promotion or some client could dick you over on a deal. But, like, to be a victim is a mental choice that you must choose every day. Like, it's not my fault. It's my mentor, it's my product type. It's my company, it's the market. It's like just you.

There are things that can influence the journey. There are people and periods of time within an industry that can accelerate or delay arrival at the destination that you define successes to be, whether that's a number, whether that's a title, whether that's just a status in life, but everything, professionally speaking, at least in an industry like commercial real estate, is 100% your control. The

final outcome. And I am not only convinced of that, I will argue that as a fact, and I will battle for as long as it takes to win that argument with anyone who believes that it is luck and it's based on if you have the right company or right mentor, right product type, all accelerators, people and things can augment and accelerate your success. But it's up to you. It's up to you, the individual. There's self agency in this business, but I am

so blessed and so fortunate. If you just look at the arc of my career in terms of timing, and people would say, oh, like, you got screwed your 1st 18 months. Like, you're in the worst product type in the worst market. No mentorship, no this, no that. I was like, yeah, but that actually forced me to learn everything. Cause I didn't have anyone, so I actually had to learn it. Iron sharpens iron like the fodder. The hotter the fire, the

stronger the steel. And that fire was hot on me for a minute, and I just got harder because of it. And then it's like, oh, the great financial crisis. I can't believe you had to go through. I was like, that was the best thing ever. It eliminated 90% of my competitors. Sucked when I went through it. But there's no way I could have ever got to where I got to if that didn't happen. There's a. Here's like a chinese

parable. I don't want to get too far off a tangent, and I'm going to do the best I can to remember it, so forgive me if I butcher it. There's this chinese farmer and his son, and all of a sudden this horse comes out of the field and they're able to get it, and it's a free horse. And their neighbor is like, oh, my God, you're so lucky you got this horse that just came up to you. It's the ultimate gift. And the chinese farmer goes, see?

And the neighbor's like, what are you talking about? Like, this is. This is a blessing. We'll see. Then all of a sudden, you know, the horse, you know, the next day, it goes crazy. It kicks his son, it breaks his shoulder really badly and runs away. And the neighbor comes back and says, oh, my God, this is terrible. This is such a tragedy. What happened. Your son, he's like, he's really physically injured. He's like, yeah, we'll see. We'll see

if it's terrible. And he's like, what do you mean this is bad? He's like, yeah, we'll see. Then the next day, the government comes through town, and they're raising an army to go fight some terrible battle, and they need all able bodied men. And because his son's not able bodied, because the horse kicked him, he's spared service. And the neighbor comes back, oh, my God, what a blessing. You're so lucky that your son's not being sent off to die. He goes, yeah, we'll see.

The story is basically whatever's happening to you, no matter how good or no matter how bad, it may not be as good or as bad as you think. Time will tell. We shall see. And so the great financial crisis. Oh, my God, this is so terrible. I can't believe you have to go through this. And it's like, yeah, we'll see. Because at the time, it's like, this is bad. But that actually ultimately created the window. So, anyway, getting back to. I always loved. No, it's okay. I like getting back

to slap dicks, to chinese folktales. This is good. It's great. This will be a well, well receive podcasts, right? It gets back to. You had asked in terms of production at Colliers, very blessed. I mean, look, the truth is I had and have to this

day, I'm not even brokering anymore. So I don't even call them clients. They were clients, but they're like genuine friends that I. Real relationships I built in the industry over years of executing and then just spending time together and realizing that it's not just business that bonds me and certain people. It's something much more meaningful and deeper, regardless of whether we're doing deals anymore or not. But I also had incredible

teammates. And that gets back to USC, you know, shoot, I was a low man on the totem pole, playing with. I played with three Heisman trophy winners. Carson Palmer, Matt Leinart, Reggie Bush, and those are the names most people know. But I had Troy Polamalu and those guys. But I had so many incredible teammates, and not just players, but. But human beings and people that I learned from, and hopefully they learn from me. You got to listen to Pete

Carroll talk every day. Got to listen to Pete Carroll, you know, got to listen to coach O'Jeron. You know, he was. Coach O was at SC my entire time there and learned a lot from him. As well. A lot. I learned a lot about how to be tough, man. That's a tough dude. And so I had great teammates in real estate, and I have great teammates. And if. If I got one skill, if I may, it's picking great teammates and ultimately surrounding myself with people who are much

more talented and better than I am. And I met. That's my skill. And I had, you know, when I started, about seven or eight years into my career, I decided to take on mentees. As you know, I almost. I was. It wasn't something I actually wanted to do. It was like my younger brothers had these friends who want to get into real estate, and I kept saying, no, no, no. And then finally, it just. I was

like, okay, I'll begrudgingly take you on. And I had very high standards, and they met them, and they've gone on to achieve great things within the industry, and many are still here at Matthews, but I just have great teammates and people who are willing to listen, you know, listen and follow and allow me to coach and lead them. And hopefully, they would say that they got the better end of the deal. But I'm convinced I got

the better end of the deal. And I think that's a great relationship, is where both people in a partnership, whatever type of partner, whether it's husband and wife, business partner, best friends, like you looking like, no, I got the. I got the best end of this deal. Right. And so that's really what I. Yeah, I work hard. Yes. I try and learn and

occasionally come up with a decent idea, but. But most of it is just being surrounded by great teammates and, uh, people who, in many ways, in almost every way, do things better than I do. Right. There are people at Matthews who are better on the phone than I am. There are people at Matthews are better pitching. There are people at Matthews are better putting packaging together. There are people at Matthews better than running teams. I like to, you know, think I can add a little bit to

each of those, but it's just great teammates. So, back to your question. I'm their number one agent. Things are going great. They come to me and say, hey, we're going to go public. As part of that, we're buying a bunch of these little boutiques around the country and in markets that we don't have coverage. And something to the effect, I'm going to summarize here. Exclusive market coverage rights is kind of a thing in bigger public companies where my understanding is, if I'm an

agent, I'm just going to take a company like a JLL or CB. And I'm in LA, but a client says, hey, I have a deal in Phoenix and I want you to sell it. If there's someone in that market who's phenomenal and talented, I'm going to bring them in regardless. So, like, that's, that's what's best for the client. But sometimes there wouldn't be someone in the market more so in my product type. In retail, especially on the single tenant at lease side, it, it's more of a bondable product. It's not as much

a real estate play. It actually isn't really part of that process to bring in some local market. If there's someone who's going to add a ton of value, great, do it. But you selling a 15 year Walgreens in Houston, Texas, even if you're in LA, you're very competent, as opposed to a multifamily building, it would be different. They're like, okay, but you need to start. Now that we're instituting these rules, you're going to have to. And my business in retail was all across the country.

In any given year, I was closing deals in north of 40 states and 100 to 150 deals a year. And then basically they were like, hey, if it's outside Southern California, you got to start giving away a bunch of the fee. And I was like, that's not going to happen. And we got into a standoff and they were like, well, these are our policies. Is that, that's not, again, that wasn't the deal I signed up for. You're changing it. I get why. I totally understand. And in your shoes,

I would do the same thing. But I'm not in your shoes. I'm an agent. I got a bunch of younger teammates who look up to me and, you know, follow my lead and this isn't, this isn't, this isn't going to work. And so we just, we very amicably, we sat down and we just said, hey, like, we're probably, you know, we're going to unwind this. And so that's, that's, that was the call. Your story, I think a lot of people are always surprised

to hear. They're like, oh, like, you must have had this plan or vision to start this. No, no, I didn't have, I didn't have a plan to start the company until like four years after I started the company. I don't think I ever even had a business plan. I think 2018 was the first year I actually wrote out, like, a vision for the company. Cause I was like, man, this is a pretty big company at this point. I probably should vision this, right?

Let's not jump to 2018. Let's get to the good part. So, so 2015, it was, you know, march, and I sat down with the two executives at Cauli that I was talking to, and I'm still very close with both of them. And we just said, hey, you know, it's time to unwind. And, and it was amicable. And the only, the only thing, I was a little pissed. I was, I asked for 90 days. They gave me, I think, 24. And so I had to get an office space, I had to get business licenses.

I had to get everything in, like, 24 days. And I figured it out. We got payroll set up and, and, you know, I had, at the time, I don't know, seven or eight younger agents, again, mentees that kind of starting to grow up in the business and in many ways become, from a brokerage standpoint, limited partners where I was starting to bring them in on deals and vice versa. But, uh, and then I had four or five assistants. Again, I was managing people

and I was like, okay, I got to go. And again, that, that fiefdom, that kind of exclusive market coverage, right concept that was unique to bigger companies. So I was like, well, it doesn't make sense for me to go to a bigger company like a JLL, CB or Cushman or someone like that. I'm not going to go back to where I was. I'm not going to go to a boutique because I basically am a boutique. I was like, I'll just start a little boutique, a little Matthews real estate, you know, least clever name in

the world, so I can relate. Yeah, I know what it's like to come up with. And a lot of, a lot of businesses, I've learned after start like this, it's not some, like, well thought out plan where you go and raise vc funding and do all that. It's just, it just was kind of like, hey, this is one, one step in front of the other, 1ft in front of the other. One step at a time. And I took that step and I asked him, I said, hey, look, I'm going to leave, obviously, I have these agents that are

affiliated and I have these employees. What would you like? I'd like to talk to them. They said, no, we assume they'll go with you. You're more than welcome to talk to them. And I said, hey, I'm going to go start this company. And they still saw value in working with me. And obviously, the employees saw value in the business I was generating and providing them career opportunities. And so started Matthews in the spring of 2015, a

little over eight years ago. And at home. You have kids at this point? Oh, yeah, I have. I'm married. I got married at 26, and I had my first kid. What was it, 2010? My second kid, 2013. So I had two children. Yeah, I have my son, Brody, and my daughter Kylie were already born. Now four kids. My third, Dixie, and my fourth, my little sneak attack. My two year old, Murph Murphy. Murphy Clay. Yeah. So 2015, I had a five year old son and a one and a

half year old daughter. Got it. You know, I was working like 80, 85 hours a week. It was a lot. It was really credit. It all falls on my wife. Right. And so she's the hardest worker of us all. It's just, you know, a lot of stay at homes and homemakers, and it's not unique to wives. It could be a stay at home, you know, husband,

which is, you know, it's more a thing now. But they operate in a, you know, very much the shadows they operate and sometimes a thinkless role and definitely a role that society very, in an unequitable sense, does not glorify or assign value to what is ultimately the most important job in the world, which is raising human beings. Yep. But that's a longer conversation for a

different day. Sure. You actually. It's funny, you talk about how you didn't have a business plan, but what you did and what you, when you started your company was, I think you hear these entrepreneurial stories and it's like, yeah, I gave it all up and I had nothing. You really had an established business. I had an established business, yeah. You were much smarter about it than I was. I was an idiot. I just kind of moved into my parents basement with some money and

started buying deals. You had something going and ultimately were able to just reshape it with your own branding, your own vision. And you're absolutely right. And so that gets to, you know, when you're as blessed from a amount of business as I was at the time and carrying. And, you know, I had the conversation with clients that, hey, I've started my own company. Does this have any effect? And every single one said, no, kyle, it doesn't matter. It's you. And can you execute? Yeah, okay, fine.

It allows you. The biggest challenge of starting a business, in my opinion, isn't so much the idea, it's the funding. Because most businesses, they dont make money the first couple of years, if they do its very nominal. But I had this massive brokerage business of transactions, and so that allowed me to start the company and accelerate it through funding of my own money. To this day, we are a huge company. We have 800 people, 22 offices, well north of nine figures of revenue,

15 billion a year in sales. And it's totally self funded. There's no debt, there's no investors, there's no venture capital. It's just me and some of the ownership that's been awarded out to my teammates over the years. Putting that into context for a second, just so everybody got to understand the recap for a second. The company started in 2015 with, you said seven brokers. Yeah, it was me. And then there were seven agents that were, in the first three years of. Their career,

effectively four support staff. Four or five. Yeah. Forgive me if you're listening and I'm missing a number or two. And then that summer, like, right away, we were hiring another six or seven younger agents. But, yeah, that's effectively the numbers at the time. Yeah. Okay, so. And today, that was eight years ago. It's not that long ago. Eight to 800. You got to remember, we work

80 hours a week, so it's like, every week is like, two for us. So, like, in terms of human life, it's 16 years is how I look at it. Okay. That's. Okay. Most people work 40 hours a week. I work 80, so. Right. Right. Am I wrong? No. Yeah. So, 16 work years. And I would argue that even if you. I'll go even further in your thesis, the people who work 80 are working most efficiently, most. More times than not. And therefore, even if the 40 and. The 40 was the same, like, longer conversation.

Yeah. It is what it is. You know, it's. They say, find something you love, and you never work a day in your life. I love what I do. I don't love everything that I do. I love what I do. And so if I'm not with my wife and kids, I am here. And if I'm not here, I'm with them. I don't play golf. I don't have hobbies. I don't need them, because work is my hobby or my family is my hobby, if you want to look at it like that. And so it gives me, again,

getting back to enthusiasm. It's. Enthusiasm is energy to do something. I have unlimited energy to do what I do. It's amazing. You do know that. And I worry about. Not that we've known each other forever, we're like, you know, brothers or best friends yet, but I do worry. Not even worry. But I wonder if you ever look back and have this. Was this your expectation to have 800 people in eight years? No, I had no expectation I could be kids back to,

because I had no plan. And I don't mean that in a bad way. I just said, hey, I'm just gonna do the same thing, and I'll just do it separate. Cause again and again, I didn't. I'm not a victim. I didn't wanna leave the first company I was at. It just. There came a point where I was like, this is just. There's such misalignment here. Sure. And I certainly didn't wanna leave colleagues. Cause colleagues was like, yeah, do

whatever you want, and we don't care. And then that changed, understandably. And then it changed. So, again, not a victim, my decisions. But when I started Matthews, I remember, you know, it's funny, when I was moving from LA in 2019, I was packing up boxes, moved out to Nashville, and I found my notebook from 2015. And in my head, the story goes, I just opened it up to a page, and the page was there. It was March 2015, and I had a five year. Like, it was, like, written in scratch

paper, and I probably was flipping through the pages and saw it. But let me just. My story's better if it just. The book magically falls open to this page. Sure. And it was a little business plan. Again, it was, like, half a page of handwriting. Like, this is as planning as I get. And it said, in five years, we're gonna have 50 agents, and we have three offices. So, like, clearly, I guess I

thought I would grow it. I wasn't like, oh. Like, there are companies that, to this day, high performing companies, but they're twelve guys, and they've been around for 30 years, and they have one office in one city. And in that market, they do a great job. But they're like that. They look at what I do. Like, Kyle, you're crazy. That's insane. I would never want that. And I look at what they do, and I said, that's crazy. That's insane.

And I would never want that. And that's the beauty of humans, is we're all different, and we should celebrate that. Right? And no judgment. Right? I always say, if that's what makes you happy, I'm happy for you. You don't need my approval, but you got it. If you're happy, I'm happy for you. Right? What I do makes me happy. So I guess I was like, okay, I'll grow it. But certainly not at the pace I meant. I'm going to dumb it down for myself. The first year that summer we had six, seven guys in

their 2nd, 3rd year. And they're like, hey, we want to bring on like a younger agent, just like you brought us on. We'll bring you on. So we brought on six, seven people and they did really well. So then the next year we're like, oh, we'll bring on 15. And they did well. And then the next summer we're like, we're going to be on 30. And they did well. And then the next summer they brought in 60, then 100. And fast forward

to this summer. We had, you know, a new agents, 250, but all in 450 people, you know, go through our summer Matthews University training. So. Wow. Yeah. How do you. One thing that I, now, just to be clear, this thing is big now. So now we, we have budgets and aops and we have visioning plans going out seven years. We have, we have seven day plans. We have 90 days. So now it is a very structured company. It is a structured company, thoughtfully

led company. But I think if you talk to almost any agent, they still feel like, man, it still feels fun, like a startup. They all have my cell phone. The amount of time it takes for me to get back to people has certainly increased over the years, but it's still an insanely flat organization. What I'm baffled about, as you know, we're an investor, right? So we're constantly talking

to people within your company. One thing that has blown my mind is when you hear about that type of growth and how fast that it happens, the word that comes to mind, historically, I'm not even close to associating your company with this is compromise. You want to grow that fast, you may not get great people. You want to grow that fast, you may miss some rounding errors on budgets.

And people can grow too fast. Companies can grow too fast. One thing that I cannot wrap my mind around on how you've been able to execute this so well is if I talk to a kid, I say a kid, somebody who's new in the business two years or less in, in Cleveland. And I talked to an agent who's been with you since you were living in California. There's a certain cultural makeup. They with the enthusiasm to come to work, a relentless work ethic.

I think of the word tenacious. And you've been able to replicate that over and over and over again in an era where it's difficult to find those people. How have you been able to find those people? How have you been able to find it at scale and keep those core values intact from eight to 800 people in eight years? I mean, to me, that is your biggest accomplishment as an outsight. Thank you. I'll say we do and we don't. So a lot of people are surprised when I push back. It's. And I'll

talk about that in a second. The way we do it is we hire a mindset. Simply put, we don't hire skill sets. If you have that real estate finance degree. Awesome. That's an accelerator. If you have a background in real estate, whether it's a you've been in the business, or your mom and dad owned a bunch of buildings and took you to them every day, like, that's awesome. I love it. Those are accelerators. You don't need any of that to be hired here, let alone to be

successful here or in brokerage. You just. It's a mindset. It's like, why we call it. Matthew's mentality is we hire mindsets, not skill sets. We don't hire degrees. We don't hire certain schools. We don't hire certain people. We just do. They have the mindset to make it in business. And again, I gotta kind of distill it down for the sake of time. Here is everybody wants to be successful. I have never asked a group of people, hey, raise your hand

if you want to be successful. And nobody, like, somebody didn't raise their hand. Everybody wants to be successful. But then I asked the question, raise your hand if you need to. And there's always, like, a hesitation, like, what do you need to be? I said, raise your hand if your need for success is a basic need, as, like, defined by Maslow's hierarchy of needs, where you need it,

like, you need air, you need water, you need food, and you need shelter. The basic needs of physiological needs that if you don't have, you'll die. Air, three minutes. Water, three days. Food, three weeks, and shelter. You'll die from the elements over time, is my understanding. A Matthews mentality, and a Matthews agents has a fifth physiological need, which is success in what they've chosen to do. If they don't have it, they will metaphorically die. And we look for that

mentality when we hire people. And if you're 22 and don't know shit about real estate, I don't care. I'll learn with you. We're going to stub our toe, you're going to make mistakes, you're going to piss off clients, you're going to make a lot of cold calls. You're going to misprice deals. You're going to not manage expectations. We'll roll with you. Okay? Because I can train those skill sets. And some people come with them, most

people don't. Some people learn them over two years. For me, it took me 5678 years. But I can teach the skillset, but I cannot teach mindsets. I have never figured out how to teach someone to be a killer. I've never figured out to teach someone to be a full time savage where they need to be successful. Because if you need to be successful, you'll get in at 545. You'll stay till 09:00. You'll pass on the thirsty Thursdays and the Sunday Fundays, and the Saturdays are for the boys.

You'll tell your mom, I'd love to come home for dinner, but on Sunday night. But I need to go to bed early because I got a big week. And it's not forever, okay? It's not for 20 years. It's not for. But for the next couple years. I'm new in this business. This is not a job. This is a lifestyle. Right? And an extraordinary life requires

extraordinary sacrifice. And the only way you will get someone to commit to extraordinary sacrifice over a long period of time, long being years, is if they need to be successful, for whatever reason their needs are, most will be like, oh, I want to make money. And what I found is most people don't want to make money for the sake of money. They want to make money because of what often is associated with having tremendous wealth, which is financial independence, the opportunity to

provide loved ones with opportunities they either didn't have or did. And they recognize the value of having them. The opportunity to not retire young so they can sit on a boat and drink mai tais the rest of life, so they can retire young and start a charity and pursue philanthropy. You know, whether it's, you know, funding an organization that is close to their heart or someone close to them was affected by it. Like, generally speaking, the motivations of the people here who need to

be successful are deep and meaningful. Their why, it's their why. And I can't teach that. Everybody wants to be successful. And again, I'd love to tell you, and I'll make this argument, we're better than anyone else at identifying these people. And even then, most people don't make it. That's the reality, is even though they think they need to, when it gets really hard and you enter that valley of despair, you know, 12, 18, 24 months in your career, they never make it out because it

was just a want. It wasn't a need. But those who need like I needed to. And I could tell you what my need, why, what my, why was, you. Know, my next question then is me. It took seven, eight years to really, really make it, but I was never going to quit because I needed to be successful. But why? Where does that chip on your shoulder come from? Here's, here's the reality. Okay? And again, people say, damn, he got deep. My grandfather, my great grandfather was a professional baseball player

and boxing coach at the Citadel. Matty Matthews, right. Wait, so he played professional baseball and then became a boxing coach? Did I hear that? Yeah, that's awesome. But my grandfather, Clay Matthews, was a professional football player and became the CEO of a publicly traded company. My father was an all pro NFL superstar, most games played in NFL history. My uncle was all pro and he's in the hall of Fame for the NFL. And I'm the oldest Matthews

boy in my generation. And so everyone who had come before me was insanely successful. And I said to myself, I am not going to be the first average Matthews. I am not going to be the first person who doesnt do something special. You can judge me for that being the reason. You could say, oh, like, well, thats great. Or you could say, thats set. Im telling you, that was my why I did not want to let my family down. I needed to do something

great, and it wasnt football for me. So when I stumbled in this little thing called commercial real estate brokerage, as unsexy as that industry may be, I said, im going to be the greatest ever. I'm going to be a hall of famer. They're going to talk about me in real estate the way they talk about my family in football. And that was my why. And over time, your why evolves. Oftentimes it evolves into your family and your children and not just providing them

opportunities. How about setting an example for my son and my daughter as to this is how we approach something, you know, and, but early on, my why my need came from I didn't want to be the first failure in my family. And to this day, it's still a significant driver for me. Love that answer. The follow up I have because I always ask every guest what they want their legacy to be like, and I specify it, and you did a wonderful job of articulating what do you want it

to be like? I think for your family, what do you want your legacy to be in the industry for? If it went not if, but when you decide to step away and pursue philanthropic whatever. I think about this day as you get older, I'm 41. I turn 40, and someone told me. It was so interesting. I remembered it, and it was so true for me. And other people may be different. As they say, before you turn 40, you approach life as if you're walking forward. What do I want my life to be about? What do I want

my legacy to be? What impact do I want to have? And when you turn 40, you turn around, you start walking backwards, you go, what has my legacy been? What has my impact been? What am I known for? What is my reputation? It's interesting. When I turned 40, it very much happened where I started. For the first time ever, I never was retrospective. And looking back in the last year, it's really been a fundamental change when I'm driving home thinking about

that question. And so I've thought about it a decent amount over the last year. And simply put, I want to have a positive impact in as many humans as possible. To where, hopefully, it's not at my funeral, right? But at a big retirement party. Thousands of people, many of which aren't even at Matthews anymore. Not literally, but, like, metaphorically show up and, you know, whether they're talking to my wife, to my son, or just to each other. And they say, that

guy, Kyle Matthews, for as long as I was around him. And ideally, it's long periods of time, and many are still here at Matthews. But even if it was one summer internship, he positively impacted my life in a good way. And that is the most tangible way I could express what I want my legacy to be. Love that. I can't think of a better way to end this. Kyle, a tremendous amount of gratitude for everybody out there that's listening. And thank you for joining me and continue to watch

you guys go from 800 to 8000. And wherever the moon takes you, God. Willing, in the creek, don't rise. There you go. Perfect. Kyle. Thanks again, man. Thanks.