Doorify Real Estate Podcast

Meet the Board: Brett Bushnell – The Future of Doorify MLS

• Doorify MLS

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We're back with another episode for our "Meet the Board" series. 

This time, we're sitting down with Brett Bushnell, a key part of our board and the Sales Manager - Broker of Record NC at Compass. Brett's experience and passion for real estate make him an invaluable asset to Doorify MLS. We explore his journey in real estate, discuss the recent rebranding, and look forward to the future growth and additional functionality of Doorify MLS. 

Be sure to listen to the full episode to hear more about the exciting developments at Doorify MLS and how they can benefit you.

Specifically, this episode highlights the following themes:

  • The importance of rebranding to Doorify for future growth
  • Navigating market changes from COVID to now
  • Brett's personal journey and expertise in real estate

Links from this episode:

1ae5b43598204883b524f061d4880e6d10fca88c (for podfollow.com)

Brett Bushnell [00:00:00]:
When people understood it wasn't done just to change the name, it was done for current outgrowing of the triangle, right. And for future growth, too, which we've built such a nice vending machine, right. To be able to sit there and allow others to plug in and get the input and the output for it too. With the data going out everywhere, not everything's going to be perfect, ever. But this allows for additional growth, additional usability, additional functionality for you and for your clients going forward.

Matt Fowler [00:00:34]:
Hey, everybody. Welcome back. I am Matt Fowler, the executive director of Doorify MLS, formerly Triangle, just changed our name recently, opening doors to all sorts of things like meeting our board of director members like Brett Bushnell. Hey, Brett.

Brett Bushnell [00:00:50]:
Hey, Matt. How are you today?

Matt Fowler [00:00:52]:
I'm fantastic. Thanks for getting together with me and talking about this highly paid board service that you have.

Brett Bushnell [00:00:58]:
Of course, have to.

Matt Fowler [00:01:00]:
I know you do that for the money, right? I'm joking, obviously. The unpaid volunteer position for the record Doorfy subscribers. We actually ask quite a lot of our board members. They spend a lot of time traveling and reading long documents and coming to long meetings where we talk about important things. We're going to talk about Doorify a little bit. But Brett, first, do you remember how long you served on the board? Actually booked a lot.

Brett Bushnell [00:01:25]:
Yeah, no, that's pretty easy. I've only been on the board just under two years. I started serving in the start of 2023.

Matt Fowler [00:01:32]:
Okay, gotcha, gotcha. I've only been here since 2021, so I'm never sure who's, who's here before. And you're with Compass, so compass certainly has a big footprint in our industry. We got to see Robert, the CEO, at an event recently out in Seattle. He's an impressive fellow, to say the least.

Brett Bushnell [00:01:50]:
Yes, he is. And very passionate about whatever he believes in and is always working to try to move the industry forward and see what all can be done.

Matt Fowler [00:01:58]:
Gosh, you know, in some tiny way, I hope we can relate to that. At Doorify, we've certainly been trying to make things better by changing a lot of things that, you know, I think arguably needed changing. So what is a little known fact about Brett Bushnell?

Brett Bushnell [00:02:12]:
Brett Bushnell doesn't get to do it as much as he'd like to anymore, but loves to, loves to snowboard. Actually lived out in Colorado for two and a half years in my twenties, and still enjoy going up to the mountains of North Carolina whenever I get a chance and whenever the winners allow it, which it's been a little wet and warm the last few winters, so we haven't had a lot of opportunities, but yeah, I love to snowboard whenever I can.

Matt Fowler [00:02:34]:
Yeah, you're a tall guy. Is that normal? Tall guys really snowboard? I mean, that's dangerous.

Brett Bushnell [00:02:40]:
Well, I mean, at least you have one, you know, one board instead of two skinny boards.

Matt Fowler [00:02:43]:
Right.

Brett Bushnell [00:02:44]:
So that's a little better balance. It's a little wider footprint, but yeah, no, definitely used to ride without a helmet. Always wear a helmet now. Concussions aren't fun and the trees don't move, so you should always wear a helmet.

Matt Fowler [00:02:53]:
Yeah. Gosh. Good advice. So when did you start practicing real estate?

Brett Bushnell [00:02:57]:
I got into real estate in 2005, got my license in 2005, so almost. Well, I guess just now. 19 years.

Matt Fowler [00:03:07]:
Yeah, 20 years next year. Gosh. So you were. Did you do anything before that? You must have been pretty young.

Brett Bushnell [00:03:12]:
Yeah. Was in mortgage lending, obviously, before that. And the mortgage lending actually got me. I was already interested in real estate, already did a little bit of investment, but I got in real estate actually, because I was having a hard time back in the boom of 0405, finding good agents to refer to my clients, my friends to. It was hard to have them help first time homebuyers. A lot of them were moving and shaking and they didn't want to help a little first time home buyer. So that's kind of how I got my start, was sitting there helping friends and clients. A lot of first time homebuyers.

Matt Fowler [00:03:41]:
Yeah, that was a hot time. I was an MLS vendor, uh, during 04:05. Oh six. That was a go go period, right?

Brett Bushnell [00:03:49]:
It was very go go. I got in right on the tail end of the go go. Yeah, I think I got licensed at the end of zero five and then, you know, oh six was pretty good, and then oh seven got a little shaky, a little change in director trajectory.

Matt Fowler [00:04:01]:
Frothy. Yeah, I was. One of my systems had the Florida panhandle during that time, and I remember the condos had 42 months of inventory. And that's, you know, people stop putting stuff on the market, so who knows what the real number was.

Brett Bushnell [00:04:15]:
Yeah, yeah.

Matt Fowler [00:04:16]:
And you survived? Well, 18 years. That was a few different cycles.

Brett Bushnell [00:04:20]:
It was a few different cycles, yeah. I went full time in real estate in 2010, and I figured if I could be make it in real estate full time in 2010, I would be able to make it anytime. And worked really hard the first few years. And it really paid off though, right. This is a job that, like anything else, the more effort you put into it, the more results you see out. So yeah.

Matt Fowler [00:04:38]:
Gosh. Somebody used to tell me the hardest, hardest working people seem to be the luckiest. Right.

Brett Bushnell [00:04:45]:
Get more chances. Right.

Matt Fowler [00:04:47]:
Yeah. But 2008 was a gut punch, and then you survived that. But Covid, I mean, that was. Were you a compass during COVID So.

Brett Bushnell [00:04:57]:
I came to compass halfway through Covid. I started compass the start of 2022. Two. Oh, yeah. No, that was. Covid was a very interesting time as well. Yeah. That was the opposite of what we saw in 2000.

Brett Bushnell [00:05:11]:
820. Ten with 2008. 2000. Too many properties. Right. Not enough buyers and then we had too many buyers and not enough properties.

Matt Fowler [00:05:20]:
Yeah. And all these weird rules and stuff was closed. And, I mean, in a weird time, it's hard to think back to that and how we actually. I guess we. You guys, I was running a technology company, but you guys were meeting people and out in the field and had the personal protection rules about showings and all that stuff you had to go through.

Brett Bushnell [00:05:40]:
Oh, yeah. You had all the PPE, right. You had masks in the car and gloves in the car and booties in the car and limiting numbers of people in the homes and 15 minutes showings.

Matt Fowler [00:05:51]:
Right.

Brett Bushnell [00:05:51]:
To try to. Because there was so many people that wanted to see properties, but you weren't supposed to be in there together. So it was. It was a very, very interesting time to be in real estate.

Matt Fowler [00:06:00]:
For sure. Yeah. Stuff you don't worry about, like your agents wearing those booties on hardwood floors and the increased liability. I heard all kinds of people that got hurt. I mean, it was not a rare thing.

Brett Bushnell [00:06:11]:
No. It is like an indoor ice skating rink. I will almost always say, hey, I'll take my shoes off, or honestly, if you still want me to wear booties, I'll take my shoes off and then put the booty on, because you're right. You get a dress shoe.

Matt Fowler [00:06:24]:
You'Re going to fall on your booty. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Gosh. So, you know, it is these. This odd collection of expertise that we bring in. One of our board members is a, you know, multi published author. We have, you know, builder who's also a realtor. We have, I mean, we have musician.

Matt Fowler [00:06:44]:
We have, you know, small business owner that became realtors. We have people that have done real estate for 30 something years. I'm a recovering appraiser and used to run a software company. And together we try to make decisions like we did recently when we changed the name of the long standing, venerable old brand. We just decided one afternoon, just decided to change the name. Right.

Brett Bushnell [00:07:09]:
I wish. Quite a process.

Matt Fowler [00:07:12]:
Yeah, it was quite a process. Right? I mean, it took us, took a year to go through all that.

Brett Bushnell [00:07:17]:
Yeah. Maybe a few more start.

Matt Fowler [00:07:19]:
Yeah, I think you're right. I guess it really, the discussion started with the alamance merger when we kind of looked at each other and was like, well, it doesn't feel very triangly. You know, if in northern Alamance county. Is that who we're talking to?

Brett Bushnell [00:07:34]:
Exactly.

Matt Fowler [00:07:34]:
You know, if we're going to go talk to consumers and maybe we should talk about that a little bit, but what in the world we're doing that for? When we were thinking about this, we're like, we've stretched the triangle. So it's, it's not. So if we were going to change our name, what would we do? And I went to a branding agency who's done this a lot. You know, I'm not taking the responsibility of doing that any more than you are. We're going to go hire a professional who's actually done this for a pop time. Successfully, arguably. And I went to those guys and said, hey, I need to change her name and logo. And they kind of patted me on the head.

Matt Fowler [00:08:09]:
They're like, yeah, you want a logo? It's funny. So they ended up doing surveys. I mean, if you're going to change your name to what? Who are you talking to? Who are you exactly. What are you trying to even do here? And that brought a reexamination of exactly what we mean by connecting people with property. I think the idea of the MLS as an industry being a b to b to c business is something that came out of that conversation that we have been a b two b company forever. We've always just talked to our brokers and we expect the brokers to talk to the public about MLS if they ever need to. But we're in a position today where MLS is the most fair and open housing network in the world and it's under fire in the United States for practices that the regulators feel aren't pro consumer. While there's a conference going on right now today in Milan, Italy, where MLS NASA networks that might be MLS one day are meeting with MLS leaders, including our friends from Canopy and our friend Mary Jo from Stellar who we just talked to the other day about how they might do mls over there.

Matt Fowler [00:09:19]:
So in order to preserve MLS as a consumer benefit, which we truly believe it is, we have to talk to people about it. And we needed a brand vehicle, a channel through which can discuss this with the consumers. That's where Dorito came from. And b, two b to c means allowing you as the broker that be in the middle to better connect with the consumer by delivering a more transparent, faster data that might let you and your company be as fast as the fastest app on the outdoor with the upgrades.

Brett Bushnell [00:09:52]:
Yeah, and give a lot of level playing field and I wouldn't say open source maybe, right. That it's all everyone touch against same information at the same time.

Matt Fowler [00:10:00]:
I think the network is, you know, we use this term when we were in Seattle the other day at the MLS meeting, alert equity. And I think my role as the network provider is to make sure that every technology has access to that alert or price change or new listing at the precisely millisecond at the same time. And then to evangelize how you go about subscribing to that data alert so that it gets over into your technology stack as fast as possible so that functionally there's equity in the delivery of that alert. I know this is super geeky, but if they're like an Android sitting next to an iPhone with Bret sells Riley.com and another place in the app store that isn't Brett, I would like to give you at least a chance of being as faster, faster than anything out there. And all the data comes from us. People don't realize that that popular apps on Saturday Night Live get their data from the MLS. I'm not saying that's a bad thing. That's a great thing.

Matt Fowler [00:10:58]:
I do this all the time. And that was super funny. But I want your company to have the same opportunity. No one has the same capacity and that's not my job. But it's the opportunity. It's a plug that's just as fast as anybody else's. And we've really done that with our new automated back end. And we're talking about it now to the consumers through our new, our new brand.

Matt Fowler [00:11:23]:
So maybe that's a direct question. Tell me about the new brand and how that hit with you and your office. I know you saw the whole thing, so you got to know how the sausage was made.

Brett Bushnell [00:11:33]:
Yeah.

Matt Fowler [00:11:34]:
Right.

Brett Bushnell [00:11:34]:
And you always hear the funny, you know, the funny jokes and the one liners. Right. And it's. It's change, which there hasn't been change in 20 plus years of this, right. But when people understood it wasn't done just to change the name, it was done for current outgrowing of the triangle.

Matt Fowler [00:11:50]:
Right.

Brett Bushnell [00:11:50]:
And for future growth too, which we've built such a nice, what do you call, vending machine. Right. To be able to sit there and allow others to plug in and get the input and the output for it too. With the data going out everywhere. The name just wasn't, it wasn't Apropos anymore. It didn't quite fit. And so when you explain that to agents, when you explain that to the public, I think they understand more. This is for the future.

Brett Bushnell [00:12:16]:
This isn't, not everything's going to be perfect, ever, especially not today. But this allows for additional growth, additional usability, additional functionality for you and for your clients going forward. And when you explain that to them, they understand. They get it more. Right. And like everything else, it's a big oh. And then it tends to settle down as things move on. And we realize that it's not a brand new way of everything, but it's just some different opportunities and a lot wider reach whenever we would want.

Matt Fowler [00:12:46]:
Yeah. And we are talking to the consumers now, which we've never done before. I don't want to be too cynical, but I will hurry to say for our interview today, Brett, that the thing that seems to resonate the most with subscribers when I sit down and talk to them about Doorifyingwalls.com and about the brand, is that we plan to interrupt the paid lead flow that's currently all over the Internet with our brand. And we can prove that we can be successful with doing that. Just Google Dorafi right now and we're going to deliver leads to you as a member benefit. That means free. So if you, if you're a subscriber and someone says glorify to you, I want you to think, oh, that's where my free leads come from, because it is going to be that. And I can prove to you, because these things are done all over the country, starting with the grandfather down in Houston, H A R.com.

Matt Fowler [00:13:37]:
they deliver millions of dollars in free consumer connections. It's a rather crass refer to leads, but that's what we're talking about, where those normally cost money. You go buy ten buyer leads or 100 buyer leads, you pay for those. And these are real email verified people that have come through our official brand and have selected your listing and said, tell me more about that. And you got that for free because we interrupted them from going to another site that would have charged you for that same connection.

Brett Bushnell [00:14:07]:
Yeah. And that was a concern, though, that I got immediately this was launched was, oh, they're going to sell our leads back to us. They're going to do that. No, no, no, no. That is 100% the opposite of what this change in future opportunities would bring. It's actually trying to keep the agent most relevant and direct and not disconnect or intermediary. And when that was explained, I mean, people still, because so many are used to doing it another way and they may actually buy leads that way. And that, that's totally fine to do, but that is not this outcome.

Matt Fowler [00:14:38]:
Like we're the solution to that. We're trying to be. We're never going to solve that. It's. We're just going to interrupt. I didn't say prevent or control. We're going to stick a brand out there, a really good one. A seven letter domain name that didn't exist in the Alphabet before.

Matt Fowler [00:14:52]:
That we were able to buy the.com for that is super rare. I mean, worth so much money. People in the branding world will understand those things. Make this an a plus brand. And the difference in what you and I do, Brett, is about ownership. We're about bringing people into security through ownership. The thing that's different about Doorify is that we own it. And by we I mean you.

Matt Fowler [00:15:17]:
The broker, broker community of this city owns this brand now, unlike realtor.com comma, which we own a tiny fraction of, and the other brands that we aren't talking directly about in the app store but are popular. And I'm not trying. I respect and follow those guys as well as Robert. Right. I mean, huge respect for what them bill. I'm trying. I don't have that kind of money. But we've just built with the money that we do have in our MLS budgethouse something that's meaningful and valuable and that consumers will find is a source for down payment resources, articles for first time homebuyers, things that we can really concentrate on that aren't generally discussed on the retail brands of our broker community.

Matt Fowler [00:16:02]:
And that isn't a criticism. I'm not suggesting that they should do that, not in any way, but I have the opportunity to and I can do it on your behalf. And we can do meaningful things like connect them with fractional and connect them with mortgage brokers that specialize in first time homebuyers with all those programs. The very first integration that we're releasing on Doorifymls.com here shortly is with the down payment resources guys you put in the address and if your income qualified for a particular zip code or your first responder, the house that you're looking at may be cheaper for you. If you log in, look at that program, it's going to ask you what you make. The price can come down because they give you like a grant not a loan to buy the house for the first time. There's all sorts of programs like that. We want to be known as the people that connect you with things that actually get you into house where, you know, the payment for the next 30.

Brett Bushnell [00:16:59]:
Years you can't change well, and I think that's what MLS should be. Right. It should be a hub of information for, all right, so it can be listing data, it can be down payment assistance, it could be housing trends, it could be showing information, it could, you know, you name it. And the platform that's been built now is very modular. So it does not need to stay set in stone. It can move as needed. There can be additional pieces bolted on or something that, you know, is sunset. That doesn't, you're not knocking a leg out of the, of the stool and having everything else collapse.

Brett Bushnell [00:17:30]:
Right. There's redundancy. There's a lot of really good features that have, have been built into the new system. Thank you very much for bringing the vision to get us there and the execution over the last couple of years to, to continue on that path forward.

Matt Fowler [00:17:44]:
Thank you. It was super fun doing it and I really appreciate the volunteer leadership that you guys show. I said at CMLS last week where I think we all collectively won a big award, I was able to say that it was because of the vision that you guys had. You said run this thing like a business and then gave me the funds and the ability to go do that. Weve made the company stand on its own more from a government governance perspective, which is super healthy for our business. I think the next three years that we drew the outline of that at strategic planning a couple of weeks ago looks pretty amazing. This is the fun part. We just rebuilt the foundation, which was painful, but thats in the past.

Matt Fowler [00:18:25]:
Well never have to do that again. Well, never have a conversion like that again. Never have to translate to the national standards available. Everything else is just whether you want to plug or unplug something to the system, it's all about choice. We hope it's next year going to be a lot. The market's going to be, I think, amazing next summer from what we're looking at right now. And we've tooled up for that. So we'd love for people to spend a minute on the dashboard and see if there's a new product that might make your next summer go back.

Matt Fowler [00:18:53]:
That's something we're going to be talking about a lot.

Brett Bushnell [00:18:56]:
And I think the other pieces too is it's more sustainable. Right. So the change is that it's more sustainable for the future. And yes, it'll be able to adapt as new technologies come out, new policies, new procedures, practices, options. It just allows for a lot of that future growth. Right. And, you know, the market is the market, right. You can't change the market per se.

Brett Bushnell [00:19:17]:
You can change your actions and what you do to solve for the challenges and the opportunities that present itself. And that's what I believe Doorify has done as well.

Matt Fowler [00:19:25]:
Perfect. Thank you, Brett. Thanks for joining us today. And watch for more meet the board podcast coming soon.

Brett Bushnell [00:19:32]:
My pleasure, man. Have a great day.

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