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S1 EP37 | Success In a Time of Crisis with Laura Hanson

Show Notes:

Focus Discussion of the Week:

Evolving from your traditional face-to-face sales process may not be as big of a surprise to your buyers as you think. With the prevalence of Amazon and e-commerce, your buyers are already accustomed to purchasing what they want and need online. Are you ready to sell your homes virtually? Laura Hanson from New Tradition Homes joins Matt and Mollie to discuss the shift to virtual sales and the success that comes with it.

 

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Two thought leaders come together to explore all things sales and marketing from their unique perspectives. Each week, Mollie Elkman, Matt Riley, and others from Group Two dive into a focus discussion to talk about the latest trends, changes, and best practices.

[00:00:00] Laura: You know, everyone’s a little different, but overall I think we’ve been really surprised at how okay buyers are with all of this, how comfortable they are. I think that anybody that was looking to buy a home or in this process that hasn’t directly been affected by maybe losing their job or, or so forth.

It’s still moving forward. They’re ready to go. So it’s like these buyers are really willing to just to go for it with us and kind of get into all this technology. And, they’re really comfortable with it. And we’ve been, we’ve been pleasantly surprised actually at how well they’re. They’re adopting with us.

Matt: Hi and welcome to building perspective with Matt [00:01:00] Riley and Mollie Elkman.

Mollie: We’re here to bring value to you and your team by exploring all things sales and marketing related

Matt: all from different perspectives. All right, and we are super excited to have our special guests with us this week. Laura Hanson from new tradition homes is going to come on and chat with us about.

Having success in a time of crisis and, Laura, you and your team. Are based in Washington state and Vancouver, just South of Seattle, where this whole Corona virus started. Well, I shouldn’t say where it started, where it hit our shores first, and you guys have been diving in from the very beginning and understanding what to do and what to change.

And we thought, you know what? There’s nobody better out there to talk to and to share info with our industry than someone. And a team who’s been dealing with this from the very beginning. So Laura, thank you so much for coming on the show and, and, [00:02:00] and be willing to share.

Mollie: Welcome, Laura.

Laura: Thank you guys.

Thanks for having me.

Matt: Absolutely. So before we start to, you know, really get into the nitty gritty, why don’t you take a second, share a little bit about yourself, how long you’ve been in the industry, and about new tradition homes.

Laura: Okay, perfect. Yeah. So, I’ve been with new tradition homes for, let’s see, you, I think we’re a little over 13 years now.

kinda started up. Ironically, before the great recession started. So this time it’s feeling a little familiar for me. But, yeah, a new tradition where our headquarters is in Vancouver, Washington, so we’re kind of a suburb of the Portland, Oregon market. if you know where that is. And so. We’re a family owned builder, and been a local builder in Washington for like over 30 years now.

So, we’re a pretty medium sized builder. about 200 homes a year, give or take.

Matt: And you guys do an unbelievable job and [00:03:00] you have, you build a beautiful home. You’ve got a, a reputation and a brand. How long has your company been in business?

Laura: I think we’re in the our 32nd year now.

Matt: Yeah. So second generation home builder, right?

Laura: Absolutely. Yep. Yeah.

Matt: So family still involved. So it was, the, the dad that started and then now the, the brothers run it. Is that right?

Laura: That’s true. Yeah, exactly. And, now it’s owned by two brothers and, we have all kids and cousins and family and relatives all working, whether they’re with us or in the trades.

I’m not related, but I, they call me. I’m adopted at this point,

Matt: I guess. That’s right.

Mollie: Yeah. I’m all about family business and that’s how we feel about Matt. my kids have started calling him uncle Matt.

Matt: Hold on. When I go to Philadelphia, well, I haven’t been in a month and a half, but when I go, I stay at Mollie’s house, and so we all.

You know, we play with the kids, right? It’s just part of it

[00:04:00] Mollie: though, Laura, our listeners, you know, have been so interested in hearing some success stories at this time. You know, it is, there’s a lot of doom and gloom out there, and it’s been really hard to pull out some of these amazing, great stories because quite frankly, you’re working, you’re.

You’re in it. So you know to be a success right now, you have to really be focused. So I am just so excited to hear everything that you are doing so that we can share it with our listeners.

Laura: Yeah. Yeah. Happy to share. We’re definitely in the trenches. I would say that. So, yeah. Well, let’s,

Matt: let’s first start, let’s kind of build the credibility, right?

So you, this started, this whole thing started, when did it really start in your area? Like when did, was it starting to become a real thing.

Laura: Yeah, it, you know, I, I think we’re coming in to it. I think we’re in like week five now of being on, the governor’s stay at home [00:05:00] orders. And so I think that happened really early for us here in Washington.

because it’s so bad up in Seattle, thankfully from a health perspective, it’s not as bad down in the County where we are, but we’re all kind of operating under these guidelines. And unfortunately when that all kind of went down, our state was one of just a few that was determined to have residential construction be non-essential.

so that was, that was scary. And that’s been, that’s been a little unique here for us compared to some of the rest of the countries. So that was a, that was a pretty heavy blow. when we, when we got that news.

Matt: Yeah. No, it’s definitely not easy to continue moving forward with your company when they say you can’t go do anything, right.

You can’t build houses. You’re, nobody’s allowed to be out there. but yet you find a way. Right? Cause what are the other option is we stick our head in the sand and figure out, you know, when’s the best time to come back out? We still have to, we still have to plow forward. And so you guys had a record [00:06:00] March.

How many, how many homes did you sell in March?

Laura: gosh, I think we were over 30. We’ve had, you know, if we typically do a couple hundred homes a year, and from January through the end of March, we were already hitting that a hundred home Mark. So our backlog from the beginning of the year, which is not even counting all the homes we have under construction, was huge.

So we were just kinda roaring into this year, which was really exciting. and now we’ve got all these customers who are. Ready to go to get their homes built. And here we’ve been told, well, sorry, you can’t build.

Mollie: Yeah, that’s hard. That’s hard news to get to be told that you’re not essential when you provide a basic human necessity of shelter.

So, you know, it’s the same thing here in Pennsylvania. And it was, it was really, I mean, I, I definitely understand, you know, what that felt like. so what did you guys do? You get this, this news that you are not [00:07:00] qualified as an essential business. So let’s start with appointments. You know, how did you, how did you transition?

What did you do to make it so that business did not

Laura: stop? Well, you know, we immediately kind of went into crisis mode planning, but there’s so many different departments and levels that we had to really quickly. Adapt to, and as we’re trying to do this, different information is coming down from the governors and from the BIA is trying to help us kind of Wade through all of the rules of what we can do and what we can’t do.

and so, like from a sales perspective, we first and foremost just got with the sales team and we were like, look, you guys need to. Communicate with these customers immediately, you know, with our backlog, with our folks, and just because that, that panic mode set in that fear set in for everybody. And we just wanted to make sure.

So communication number one across all of this has just been huge. You know, just whether we [00:08:00] communicate, Hey, we’re here, we’re working through it, we’re going to. We’re going to be here with you guys. We’re not going anywhere. We can’t wait to build your home as soon as it’s safe, you know, how can we help you?

That kind of thing. And so for sales, we’ve helped our team just kind of transition to doing everything virtually because we are not allowed to work or to be in our, our model homes, really at all. So we’re, we’re just immediately learning. How to do this virtually via zoom and FaceTime. And we, we hadn’t really done a lot of that, to start with.

So it’s, it’s been a really quick learning curve for everybody.

Matt: Yeah. And now you guys had done, now what part have you guys done that was a little bit more on the virtual side, cause you guys are a heavy. Relo market, you know, you get a lot of relocations in from, you know, the California area and things like that.

So some parts of your country or of your company have, you know, was already accustomed to doing some of that, right?

[00:09:00] Laura: Yes. Yeah, we do. And so, thankfully that made it easy, especially from like a contract and paperwork perspective. we do a lot of DocuSign and everything electronically. so thankfully buyers are pretty savvy and able to do that for the most part.

If we do some, FaceTiming meetings and our construction team’s pretty used to doing, you know, pre-construction meetings and that stuff via FaceTime or zoom. just because we have a lot of buyers out of state that will kind of go through their construction process while they’re not here. So systemic that wasn’t new in some was.

Matt: Yeah. Right. And so for, you know, how do you feel like, like what from a sales team perspective, was there buy-in you had to get immune? Did you guys immediately start practicing on how we’re going to handle this virtually? You know, putting together what our sales process looks like? Like how, what was the kind of.

Adaptation from the sales team as a whole, from, cause you know, [00:10:00] salespeople, you know, I’m one of them. You, you sold homes, you sold new homes, you know Laura and the models. And like, we want that face to face interaction. That’s how we’re built. So what was, what was that transition like for the sales team?

You

Laura: know, it’s, it’s hard because you’re kind of asking salespeople to do something that’s a little more unnatural for them. They just want to be there and meet with their customers and face to face. So, and, and not every, everyone on our team is kind of at a different level of comfortability with, with technology, I think.

And. If, if you’re not used to kind of holding the camera in your face and walking someone through, I mean, that’s, it’s a little daunting, but you know, we didn’t really have a choice. So in some ways it was a bit of a blessing because I think that ultimately. The buyers are really enjoying it, and so we just kind of dove in and tried it.

We used each other as Guinea pigs. We, we’ve been having fun with it. We set up a, [00:11:00] a bingo game, a virtual salesperson, bingo game, where they’re like, they can Mark off their things if they do a BombBomb video or if they do a virtual tour, you know, just to. To get everyone comfortable trying new things, and we’re sharing them.

we communicate like on Slack. And so we have a channel, a virtual sales rockstar channel, and we do put all of our ideas in there. And so we’ve kind of just tried to de-stigmatize the weirdness around all that and just kind of share our virtual tours. And our. Bad takes and our laughs and the whole thing with it.

Cause it’s just, we have to have fun with it.

Mollie: You know, weird way. It almost like humanizes the whole relationship even more just because you do share, you know, the good and the bad and it’s like very real and authentic.

Laura: And you know, I think that’s really fitting for our business because we are in the, we work with families, we work with homes, and now it’s kind of fun to see each other in our natural environments.

And it does really [00:12:00] humanize that. And I, I think it actually bodes well to our, to our business.

Mollie: Now how many salespeople do you have again?

Laura: so we have two regions. and so in total we have 12. I, if we have eight here in Vancouver and four over in Eastern Washington.

Mollie: How often have all of you been getting on to meet over zoom or another platform

Laura: together?

At least weekly, all together as a team, and then we’ve kind of had a lot of. Sidebars.

Mollie: Yeah. You obviously had to change your messaging. I mean, you guys are totally shut down. I do have to say in Pennsylvania, builders are going to be considered essential May 1st. I don’t know if you guys have gotten an announcement like that yet.

Laura: But I’m not.

Mollie: All right. I’m hoping for you.

Laura: Thank you.

Mollie: We had to put a ton of pressure on the governor, just from the entire home builders association in the state, but that’s [00:13:00] another, that’s a whole other podcast.

Laura: We’ll come on that one too. Yeah, so

Mollie: I mean, you’re essentially changing how you conduct business.

So with that, you really need to change. All of your marketing and your call to action everywhere, and I know we got to work together on a lot of that, but why don’t we talk through, you know, what that looked like and how quickly it happened.

Laura: Yeah. Yeah. We, we realized really soon that our messaging was all irrelevant because the way, you know, you wait, you set up your online sales process, your website, everything is to direct, the customers to come in and have an appointment and meet us and walk through and see things.

So we, a lot of messaging had to be. Had to be changed a couple of times as this progressed to being able to show a little bit to being able to not show any homes. And so, yeah, all the call to actions, you know, went from schedule a tour to schedule a virtual tour or [00:14:00] kind of directing them and letting everybody, giving those updates on the website as to how we’re handling business right now.

Matt: Yeah. And, and what did you see from a, how willing the buyers? Right. So, you know, you guys had a, a great, a huge March, April, you’re on target for a normal sales in April. and so. But how did you see the buyers accommodate, or were they willing to be accommodated? Like, okay, let’s, let’s continue to move this forward.

Like what was the percentage you see, you know, obviously walking traffic is gone, right? Because you can’t do any of that. But the willingness to the, from the customer to continue to move, kind of move the ball down the field, and doing the whole virtual process.

Laura: You know, everyone’s a little different, but overall, I think we’ve been really surprised at how okay buyers are with all of this, how comfortable they are.

I think that anybody that was [00:15:00] looking to buy a home or in this process that hasn’t directly been. Affected by maybe losing their job or so forth is, is still moving forward. They’re ready to go. So it’s like these buyers are really willing to just to go for it with us and kind of get into all this technology and they’re really comfortable with it.

And we’ve been, we’ve been pleasantly surprised actually at how well they’re, they’re adopting with us.

Matt: Yeah. No, I mean clearly, right, because you weren’t, March was one thing right from we were talking about, you know, March, having a good solid, you know, really good. March is, was almost kind of like, it didn’t count in our virtual world because a lot of those people had already started the process and you’re like, okay, great.

We, we’ve wrapped up these contracts, but these were people who had already been involved in the process and were just kind of buttoning up the last part of it. But going into April. April was a whole different type of month, or at least we are expecting it to be because we’re with [00:16:00] April for our buyer pool that we’re going, that we’re pulling from.

We’re really starting over from scratch with everyone that’s actually not been there in person yet. And so I think it’s been really interesting to see that you guys are still having an on pace, normal, normal sales goal. April. And you’re, and you’re, you’re starting all over, virtually from scratch here.

and so have you, have you seen that any change in, you know, whether it’s the, the buyer buyer, the way they feel about, you know, literally doing everything by not being in person?

Laura: Yeah. You know, some, some still do want to feel it, touch it. See it. What we’ve seen a lot here in April, especially more so than normal, is people’s desire for wanting to move in quickly.

Like an inventory does not, we call them designer homes. so we S we sold some of those, which has been awesome because now with virtual tours and Matterport tours, it’s basically like you’re in the homes. So they’re, you know, they’re okay with it. [00:17:00] And we’re allowed to have. Very, very limited contact in the homes under the, like a real estate rule caveat.

So one agent in one buyer, like a husband and wife, can’t come in together, just one. And so if we get to the point where someone’s totally not willing to do it virtually, we can go that route and we have a little bit, but safety is just more important right now. So we’ve been really, you know, pushing virtual and it’s going fine.

Mollie: You know, Laura, you said something that really stuck out to me. You said your buyers are comfortable with you guys and what that tells me, because not all builders are seeing the same thing. What that tells me is you guys have the right people in place because . In order to create that level of comfort and trust, that’s a complete reflection of the people in the communication.

So, I think that’s just an unbelievable. It’s, it’s amazing to me actually, [00:18:00] that, that you’re, that you feel that your buyers have that comfort with you and trust with you because that’s what everyone wants, right? That’s like the objective of what, of what we’re doing, whether it’s virtual or in person.

So to me, that’s everything right there.

Laura: Yeah. That’s been our, you know, from our focus, from even from our, you know, from the owners of our company on down just. Our overall arching message is just communication. And so they’ve been sending out just some really nice messaging that we can share with our buyers just to let them know we’re in this with them and our, our sales reps have just done a really good job of calling, picking up the phone, going old school, calling them, Hey, how are you?

How can we help you? You know? And, just, just being there. And so, yeah. Yeah. When they are comfortable. And they know we’re here for them, and that we can’t wait to build their home. You know, I think that builds up rapport. and, and it’s been helpful.

Matt: Really good communication from ownership, from leadership [00:19:00] to customer, to the client base.

The customer base is really, really impactful to like, Hey, this is what we’re seeing. And especially, I think it goes a long way when you’re communicating, even though you assume, because we can, right? We’re, we assume everybody’s in the same boat. We, we all, you know, in your area, everybody there lives in Washington.

Everybody knows that. You know. You can’t go out. It’s truly, it’s truly stay at home and, but even when that is in place. Having that open communication to your buyers is really, really impactful. And just that open transparency of like, Hey guys, just so you know, you know, obviously you, we, we can’t go anywhere.

We can’t build right now. A home residential home building’s not allowed. That’s going to cause some delays and those are normal. It’s okay. We’re here for you. and keeping them in the loop. I mean really can help keep your backlog together and speak like what kind of impact have you had, if any, [00:20:00] on your backlog of people that are reacting to.

The situation at hand, like people already under contract.

Laura: Yeah. That’s been, you know, that’s been our biggest focus. just because our backlog is so big. and the, you know, we forget that the process from buying a home to the point where you actually start construction is pretty long. There’s a lot of meetings that take place in there.

There’s a lot of stuff. Happening behind the scenes. And so just adjusting our process from every level. They’re doing design studio appointments virtually. which has been, we were scared of that cause it’s really hard if you can’t touch, see, feel, you know, stuff. It’s going really well. The suppliers have got onboard, the tile guys are sending samples to people’s homes so they could see their tile and they’re just, where do we had, actually, we had, we had an a couple.

Who is there are both 87 years old building a house and they did their selections on FaceTime the other day and it was the cutest thing. And we were like, okay. [00:21:00] If anyone can do this, let’s not underestimate this process. So it’s been awesome.

Matt: That’s awesome. And because it’s something like, you know, is, is we’re doing webinars and, and on being invited to other people’s webinars, like just talking to people all around the country.

You know the questions that are starting to come up now it’s like, okay, great. We’re, we’re working through, we’re, we’re still selling houses. Even if it’s not at the same rate that you would normally sell houses that you’re still selling homes and it’s not, you know, if you’re normally selling 20 a month, you might be selling 10 to 15 a month, and that’s.

That’s acceptable. I think for the situation. Not everyone is in such an unbelievable position of you guys are where you’re still meeting and exceeding sales goals, but the, the question is. That I’m starting to see a lot is like, how do we execute? You mentioned the design studio, like how do we execute virtually the design studio?

Because if buying a house as an , you know, like seeing the [00:22:00] home is important to be there in person or perceived to be important in person. Picking out your selections can, I mean, that’s even more right because, Oh, well that’s not the color of flora that I thought, or the color of tile or the carpet or the paint or whatever it is, and you didn’t see it in person.

Those are the, a lot of the questions that I’m starting to see is how do we continue to get buyers comfortable with and moving through the process of design, studio construction, you know, kickoff meetings, walkthroughs, things like that.

Laura: Yeah, that’s been a good adjustment because everybody’s kind of in their own departments is kind of figured out their process and been really innovative in the way they’ve done that and kind of come together.

So the construction guys are able to do everything on, I think they use a program called draw board and so they can get on with the clients and, and do those meetings and do their design meetings. And we’re just reassuring everyone that we are pushing your file through our backend process. Just as quickly as we would normally, [00:23:00] so that when this is when we’re able to build, we’re just going to be ready to go.

And so just kind of some things we’ll have to, we’ve, we’ve had to relax or be flexible. That’s a hard, you know, when you have. When you’re going to build a hundred homes or 200 homes to relax your processes because processes are so important. But if we have to flex on deadlines, or if someone’s not comfortable and we need to give them an extra some time, or they still need to sell their home, and we’re just having those conversations and we’re being more flexible than we normally would because we cause we have to and we’re happy to

Mollie: It’s so interesting because change is something that most people are resistant to. And very early on when we started talking you, you said how much you guys are adapting and. It’s, it’s amazing because that is exactly what needs to happen. But I think the reason so many building companies are having a hard time is because they [00:24:00] aren’t able to adapt.

They aren’t able to do that swiftly and smoothly. So it is, it isn’t working for them the way it is working for you. It’s, it’s

Laura: fascinating. Well, we were kind of joking about it because, Do you know? We were like, how? You know this is, this is going pretty well. We’re really proud of our team, the way that they’re doing this.

And then we realize that. So much of our team has been here for 1520 years and we’re like, well, we’ve been through the recession, so really this, this is not that. So like the PTSD sets in maybe, and we’re just kind of go into crisis mode and we, we know how to, we know how to do it. So maybe that’s the one good thing about the reception.

Mollie: But that’s a great point. I mean, you have a seasoned team that knows how to work together. I mean. That is what is coming across as the big thing that differentiates you guys from all other teams is you are an actual, you know, family that works together.

Laura: That’s true. We [00:25:00] are good in the band and all of it.

With that, we’re fighting with our brothers and sisters sometimes, but we make it work in the end.

Mollie: I want to get on the, on the personal side, because there’s a lot of adapting, not just for how you conduct your business, but also where everyone is. So everyone’s at home. And I know, you know, we were both talking about the challenge of being home with children and being in a different environment.

And that involves, you know, adapting as well. So how is the team doing in that sense?

Laura: you know, everyone, it’s a little different for everyone. I think it’s. Hard for for salespeople in general, just because that’s so different than the way. We work and our brains are wired to work to have that interpersonal reaction actions.

And so just to be sitting at a desk and being at home is really hard. And so, we’ve just, everyone, we’ve, we’ve just been trying to have fun with it. Everyone went and set up their home office. The minister minute, this kind of all went down and we’ve shared [00:26:00] photos and show, you know, we, we have fun things that we do on the, on our inner office communication where we’re showing pictures of the kids and the pets.

And you’re. Your home, your coworkers and all that, just to, just to kind of have some fun with it because, it’s not easy. It’s not easy. To do to do that transition for some people,

Mollie: it’s definitely not, I’ve seen on social media a lot, you know, we’re all in the same storm, but we’re not in the same boat.

Did I say it right? Is that how it is? And it’s, you know, everyone doesn’t have the same situation. You know, being home with kids and trying to sell at the same time on, on a virtual. Platform is not as easy as, you know, another situation and other situations are harder. So, you know, I’ve found with our team that we kind of have to Zig and zag a little bit and understand that we all have different situations and sometimes that means working at different hours.

I know Matt and I sometimes communicate at like 10 or 11 at night because that’s when we can. [00:27:00] so, you know, I. W I know for us we’ve had to do a lot of that just because everyone is in a different situation.

Laura: Yeah, definitely.

Matt: Well, one of the things that I find interesting is this is just like I’m human.

You know, the white people tick, right? And the, and the way that it works is, you know, a lot of times, as, as people, we’re, so, most people are so anti change, right? Everybody gets in their routines as, as a human, we push back on when changes is kind of pushed in our, you know, upon us. Right? You think about.

Laura, you think about, we’ve talked about like, okay, let’s do this. Like we’re going to implement this new thing. And you’re like, okay, well it’s going to take me a little bit cause I got to get the rest of the team on board and we’ve already implemented one chain, so we’ve got to do this a little slower or you know, whatever it may be.

And, but where we are right now is I think is a, and especially your team on the level of execution is just the absolute, like pinnacle [00:28:00] of this example is. When there’s no other option to adapt, you have to adapt. Right? Like it shows us how quickly we actually can adapt.

Laura: Yeah. I totally agree and it’s, it’s kind of been neat because I think that deep down for the most part, a lot of us have known that the buying, the buying habits of customers kind of are going this way or going online and we’ve known it’s coming and we’ve probably been way too slow to really adopt this and embrace this.

And now that we’re having to do this, we’re kind of going, okay, this isn’t so bad. This is actually really cool. There’s a lot of things that are working well. And we’ll just keep this going forward. And so that’s been fun to know that we can, we can learn a lot. And when, when things go back to normal, our process will probably look different.

Matt: W without a doubt, like the old, the proverbial toothpaste is out of the tube, right? Like, it’s not, things are going to be different. You’re not going to get it all back [00:29:00] in, you know, all back in the bottle. people are not, buyers are not going to go backwards and go, okay, we can go back to being the way the industry was.

And we’re not gonna expect virtual. We’re not gonna expect all this content. You can just continue doing a mediocre job and force us to kind of go down this path. It, the, the processes, the, the way that we operate are going to be different. Yeah. The way that buyers expect to be interacted with are going to be different.

I was, I was reading an article, just a few days ago, I think it was a few days ago at this point. It all blurs together. but it was, it was talking about, I can’t remember the publication, but it was similar to like a New York times. Like it was a big publication. And they were talking about over the past 30 days, 25% of all the transactions that have happened in real estate.

We’re, we’re all done virtually. And, and the, the title was, it may have been like Inman or realtor.com, but the title is buyer’s adapt. [00:30:00] 25% of sales all come, like 100% of it was completed virtually. And I think that’s an incorrect headline because buyers have been there. We were the ones that . Have adapted and actually brought ourselves up to where buyers have been waiting for us.

You know, they’ve been waiting to get there because they do this every day for everything. For a $20 widget on Amazon.

Laura: Yeah. Yeah. I think we forget, you know, as builders. We’re selling them the biggest, mostly the biggest investment of their lives. And we are really old school in our, in everything, in our product because we’re building something from wood into all the way through our buying process.

Cause they’re, they’re way, we’re personally way ahead of it. And we, I think we forget, We’re where the buyers are and their expectations and their habits and, and that they really don’t, they really don’t mind this. And in fact, if the contents, they’re not there, or if [00:31:00] they can’t get an answer or if there’s not a tour, you know, they’re going to go find it somewhere else.

And so, so it’s, it’s, it’s kind of like letting a little lit a little fire for us, I think, as an, as an industry to, to kind of step up our game and get on, on board. And, and I think that’s a good thing.

Mollie: I totally agree. I think there’s something so exciting about it. Just how, not only is our industry going to change, but all industry, right?

So like for group two, we have an office that everyone comes into like that’s going to look different after all of this. I mean, there is going to be more flexibility when it comes to working and where you physically are. And I think that that is exciting to see the positive side of, of how. This is going to affect business in general, and of course our industry.

Oh

Matt: yeah, for sure. Well, Laura, I want to be really mindful of your time. I really appreciate you coming on [00:32:00] and sharing this a, the success that you guys have had and and just kind of being open about how. You’ve navigated the waters to tech to get there. And I think that you guys have done an amazing job, and you and your teams should be incredibly proud of, of what you’ve been able to accomplish and continue to accomplish.

And Oh, by the way, you, you know, in the process of like, reinventing product and features from smart homes and how all that works, you guys have, you know, been green and healthy and. Implementing new technology into the way that you’re building and really taking that seriously. And Oh, by the way, managing all of this through a pandemic and to still find success is incredible.

So I really appreciate you coming on and just openly sharing like, Hey, we don’t really, we don’t know it all. We’re just trying to figure, you know, we’re navigating just like everybody else’s.

Laura: Yeah. Thank you. We’ve actually kind of coined this, our viral trial, [00:33:00] cheesy as that is, but

Matt: Oh my gosh,

Laura: that’s curious.

That’s what it is, so thank you guys. Yeah, it’s

Mollie: very inspiring. We really, I mean, it’s what you guys have going on is very special, so we’re glad that you were able to come and share it with our audience.

Laura: Well, I really appreciate you having me on. It’s been fun.

Matt: Absolutely. All right. And we’ll, we’ll have to, once we get back to normal, we’ll have to have you back on and talk about what that impact look like.

Like what, what changed after normal and how much stayed the same. So that’ll be a really interesting comparison.

Laura: Yeah, for sure.

Matt: So awesome. Well, thank you so much, Laura, and as always, it’s a pleasure chatting with you, so we’ll, we’ll talk soon.

Laura: Thank you. .

 

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