Doorify Real Estate Podcast

Meet the Board: Kim Dawson – How Doorify MLS is Leading the Way in Real Estate

• Doorify MLS

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We’re highlighting another leader from the Meet The Board Series, bringing fresh insights on what’s shaping the real estate industry today. 

In this episode, I’m joined by Kim Dawson, a veteran real estate professional who’s been on the scene since 2002. As a board member at Doorify MLS, she shares her journey from a buyer’s agent to an influential voice shaping the future of real estate. 

We talk about how Doorify MLS is moving beyond traditional boundaries, embracing change, and leading with technology-driven initiatives. Kim discusses the board’s approach to making critical decisions, particularly with the integration of AI and expanding service beyond the Triangle region.

Tune in to hear how Doorify MLS is driving the future of real estate with bold changes and tech-driven solutions. 

Specifically, this episode highlights the following themes:

  • Doorify MLS's efforts to expand services and offer flexible platform choices
  • Adoption of AI and advanced technology for real estate professionals
  • The importance of offering choices in MLS systems

Links from this episode:

1ae5b43598204883b524f061d4880e6d10fca88c (for podfollow.com)

Kim Dawson [00:00:00]:
We're leading the way. We're ahead of where a lot of the other associations are. And this is the wave of the future. And unlike our MLS in the past, we were status quo forever and we were the last to get on board for anything. And now we're leading the way. We're not afraid to look into new things. Technology is changing much, much faster than it did back then and so we have to be on top of it for our members. And I know change is not always received well, but that the benefit of choice.

Kim Dawson [00:00:33]:
If they don't want to learn something new, they don't have to.

Matt Fowler [00:00:43]:
Hi, everybody. It's Matt Fowler, the executive director of DoorifyMLS.com, the former Triangle MLS.com, which we have been for the last couple of decades. Here to help me unpack all that is our guest today, Kim Dawson from our board of directors. Welcome, Kim.

Kim Dawson [00:00:58]:
Thank you. Glad to be with you.

Matt Fowler [00:01:00]:
I really appreciate you spending a little time with us today. So we have a mission today, Kim, just to kind of introduce you a little bit to the subscribers. You've been around for a minute, but we're up to 15,000 almost. And, you know, I want people to understand what goes on in carry when we close those board of director room doors. You know, what are we doing in there? And I think looking back at our rather compressed schedule for the last couple of years and the dramatic changes, I think it's fair to say that have happened. We just want people to know who's in there, you know, making these decisions. So tell us a little bit about Kim. What's something that maybe most people don't know about Kim Dawson?

Kim Dawson [00:01:38]:
Oh, gosh. Well, the one thing I always share with people is one of my favorite stress relievers and hobbies to do is jewelry redesign, which I will quite often take old jewelry that was families that, of course, I would never wear now, but I will take it apart and redo it with new stuff. So it's something that I can. I can use. And I make a lot of jewelry and I usually donate it for auctions and sites like that. I don't sell it. I just donate.

Matt Fowler [00:02:10]:
Well, that's a fun, creative outlet. And that stuff kind of lives on, right? In a new form.

Kim Dawson [00:02:15]:
Yep. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. It's been fun to take some, you know, family stuff that I recently been hearing inheriting and taking it apart and making multiple pieces out of it to give to different family members. So everybody has a piece of, you know, my mom or the grandmother or whatever. So it's it's fun to do that.

Matt Fowler [00:02:37]:
What a great idea. And again, it lives, lives on still, and that's a different kind of estate gift. You know, one can get split up with the nieces and I. That's really cool. A lot that I do.

Kim Dawson [00:02:50]:
Yeah.

Matt Fowler [00:02:50]:
So when did you get into real estate?

Kim Dawson [00:02:52]:
So I have been in the business since 2002. January of 2002, I got in the business. So it's been 2024 years, 22 years that I've been in, and I love it. I got in the business, I had a friend who kept telling me this is what I needed to be doing, and having relocated five times within ten years, and some of them were not good moves and good experiences. I got into this to make it better for those people who do move, because if you have a bad experience, it affects what you think about the place you've moved to. And so I want to make sure when people move here, it's a good experience, and then that'll lead them to have a better enjoyment for the community in their new house.

Matt Fowler [00:03:45]:
Sure, sure. I think that leads a lot of people into what they, what they wound up doing. It did me. I was an appraiser using an MLS system, you know, download data and stuff. That was just horrible. And I kept thinking, gosh, there's no way that this is the best thing out there. And we ended up making an MLS company out of it. So you've been in real estate since 2002.

Matt Fowler [00:04:07]:
Tell us a little bit about your practice and what makes you excited about bringing somebody into a house for the first time?

Kim Dawson [00:04:14]:
Well, when I got in the business, I was strictly a buyer's agent working with the team. And so the benefit of that is I really got to understand what the buyers are looking for and what they want. So I learned a lot by helping them. And of course, the joy of closing when they get their keys, there's nothing like that. I've had several closings where the sellers have been there, and typically it's an older couple and selling it to a younger couple. And the tears in the room are flowing from everybody, full of joy because, you know, the people leaving are so excited. A young families in there. I'm thrilled that I was able to connect, you know, my clients with this wonderful couple and, yeah, that's just the.

Matt Fowler [00:05:01]:
Icing on the cake, right? But you know that behind the scenes you're allowed to cry in the room and be part of that because you know that you represented that buyer and they don't have anything to worry about. The house is good. Everything's covered. You know, they got the right insurance. They're, they're in the right place. The, like you, you are the professional that they relied on, you know, to have the confidence to do that. So that's. I think you deserve a spot in that room.

Kim Dawson [00:05:26]:
Yeah.

Matt Fowler [00:05:27]:
What a privilege to get to do that.

Kim Dawson [00:05:28]:
And my, my slogan, I would say now, is successes in the details. And I am there. You know, the thing we hear all the way, you're. I'm there every step of the way, and I always attend my clients closings unless, you know, I'm out of town for something emergency. But usually it's on my calendar and I'm going to be there with them to hold their hand because it can be scary time, you know, it's one of the most expensive items they'll buy.

Matt Fowler [00:05:58]:
Yeah, well, there's surprises, you know, and, you know, if it's a showstopper or if it's just, you know, something that you can, you can manage, and it's that experience that people need, and it's what we really covet for people. I know real estate has all of this stuff in the news, and, you know, good and bad about the, about the industry, but I think people really lose sight of the. I don't know, maybe it's like you don't like politicians, but you really like your own, like your own guy in your own, in your own district. I heard someone say the other day, it may have been you that said this the other day, Kim, you heard someone say they had a family realtor. And that phrase really resonates with me, that somebody who is a young person, and somebody asked them, how do you have the confidence to be looking at houses? I mean, good lord. And the person responded, a millennial. And they said, oh, we have a family realtor. And it's like we have a family doctor, we have a family pilot or something.

Matt Fowler [00:06:55]:
That's how we can do these extraordinary things that seem extraordinary to people that don't know that.

Kim Dawson [00:07:00]:
Yeah. And that's so true, because I've had a young couple about their first place when they were in graduate school, and now I've helped them buy their fifth home, and they have three children, and one is heading off to college. And I've also had, you know, the empty nester that's downsizing. And I've also helped a child of a past client, which is pretty cool.

Matt Fowler [00:07:25]:
That's full circle, isn't it?

Kim Dawson [00:07:27]:
Yeah. Yeah. Although I guess that means I've been around a long time, but it's fun to, to have that happen, right?

Matt Fowler [00:07:37]:
You and I have both been in it for a little while, Kim. Yeah. I think that those people that don't celebrate, you know, those kind of birthday anniversaries aren't thinking that through. I'm really happy to have been a lot around this long and, you know, some of the companies that I work with coming up through my career are still around. Some of them are a lot bigger now. We've licensed software to companies that I used to work for or started. And seeing how that all plays out, it's sort of like a family. And watching those things grow, it's very rewarding.

Kim Dawson [00:08:10]:
Yeah.

Matt Fowler [00:08:11]:
I want to shift gears with you just a little bit and talk about our experience inside that boardroom. We've had a lot to do. Some of it was our idea, some of it was forced upon us from outside. And our subscribers have really been through a lot. In 2024, I think our, you know, our choice project is only. Most people feel it was really worth it and some ways had to be done. At some point we paradigm was going to get sunset no matter what and we had to move. This allowed people to do that in a.

Matt Fowler [00:08:41]:
I think a better way. But tell us a little bit about what it's like in that room. There are mostly realtors who talk to realtors and close deals. I think half the board is not in a management position. John Wood was just saying that the other day. So what's that like? Kim? How do we go about making sure we're making the right decision?

Kim Dawson [00:09:02]:
What you just said is very important. This is my second round on the board. And when I was first on the board back in, I think it was 2010, 2012, it actually was all management, but maybe two of us that actually listed and sold solely and were not in management. And now, like you said, it's very diversified and I think that makes a huge difference. I have always told people what I love about being on the MLS board. This is one of the best run boards, board meetings. We have great discussions. You know, it's, it's.

Kim Dawson [00:09:42]:
We ask a lot of questions. We look into the details of things. We don't just have something. And I know quite often people think something comes, disapprove it. You know, that's what I love about the board, is we have a diverse group of minds and ideas of, of how to do things and talents, technology wise. And I think that makes a big difference for us, you know, as we approve things going forward. And that's what I love. I mean, we, we're working every minute of those board meetings, you know, making decisions, talking about whatever the issues are, looking at, the budgets.

Kim Dawson [00:10:23]:
It's. And they're solid meetings.

Matt Fowler [00:10:25]:
They're usually, they're usually, you know, a pretty packed 3 hours with either, you know, a legal presentation or a software presentation.

Kim Dawson [00:10:35]:
Absolutely.

Matt Fowler [00:10:36]:
Financial projections to go through. I was asked to run this company like a business when I started. So we're even. We've moved our governance towards something that looks more like a standard corporate board. We're moving from the idea of a budget to an idea of sales projections because now we have this vending machine we've been talking about for our subscribers. Kim, maybe you've seen some of that and what's coming down the road. Tell us a little bit about. We have this program all the time.

Matt Fowler [00:11:08]:
Paragon was there for almost ten years with no changes. And most people can really only get their brains around having one thing, and here I am with this silly vending machine. So help me translate that right to somebody trying to make money next year.

Kim Dawson [00:11:24]:
Well, I think the big difference is we've changed. Our membership is not just the Triangle. We are working with associations that are outside the Triangle. And when they come on board with us because they want to be part of our MLS, our database, they may be on a different system. And I think this choice arrangement has made it easy. Specifically, when alamance came on board, it was a much easier transition, and the same for Fayetteville because they didn't have to learn something new. And I see that benefiting us in the future. And I think, as you said, we were in Seattle at CMLS, and what I learned is we're leading the way.

Kim Dawson [00:12:10]:
We're ahead of where a lot of the other associations are. And this is the wave of the future. And unlike our mls in the past, we were status quo forever, and we were the last to get on board for anything. And now we're leading the way. We're not afraid to look into new things, and we're always looking because I feel like technology is changing much, much faster than it did back then, and so we have to be on top of it for our members. And I know change is not always received well because they're busy and they don't want to take time to learn it. But that's the benefit of choice. Then if they don't want to learn something new, they don't have to.

Matt Fowler [00:12:59]:
They can stay on the old. Yeah, and three quarters of the people did. And I think, I mean to be transparent about it. Kim, the software vendors that we hire to deliver this service to our subscribers. Just to be clear, my staff doesn't write software. We don't control paragon. Paragons in 100 cities or so. And, you know, that's just like, I don't know, Microsoft Word or something that you buy and install for your own computer.

Matt Fowler [00:13:28]:
So people, people have a. Don't understand that. I don't think so. You know, we got a commitment for them from them. So they were going to pull our data in and deliver it back to our paragon people, nice and clean. And, you know, we're ten months, eleven months into this, and it's not perfect today. We talked about that on Friday. And I think that there are challenges in synchronizing this data between the systems that we continue to struggle with.

Matt Fowler [00:13:53]:
I think it's a lot better than it was. Certainly. And we're very, very close, using the new Webhook technology to get this the last mile and be able to produce an audit, which you're going to see at the board meeting this month, where we can actually show you down to the MLS number. Exactly that. Every listing is in every place, in every photo, in every document. And we won't stop until we get all the way there. And then very soon you're going to be able to see things that wouldn't have been available from Black Knight, the new AI listing manager that we're talking about is just super cool. That voice control stuff.

Matt Fowler [00:14:29]:
Maybe on our way out, Kim, we're thinking about 2025. I'm really excited about next year. What did you see out in Seattle that maybe you're most excited about, that you hope to see in our little vending machine?

Kim Dawson [00:14:39]:
Oh, I mean, to me, the coolest one was the voice system where you could, you know, by recording and taking pictures. You can load it into the listing manager and it will, through AI, create your listing and find descriptive based on the pictures you load. And the whole story behind that, that the young man created it because one of his family members was going blind. I've always been passionate about that because my, when I was in college, my sorority, our philanthropy was prevention of blindness. And so I've always been involved in some aspect of that. And so this was just so cool.

Matt Fowler [00:15:23]:
And Justin Lundy's that guy. I'll stick it in the show notes down below for our subscribers. It is a really compelling story. Would encourage you to watch the video I posted recently on the LinkedIn about Justin telling that story about his mother in law. I think it was, yeah, I think that what led him into this technology. But Kim's saying you can walk through the room, you know, taking a walk through video, just describing the property as you would to someone, and, you know, on your way back to your car, hit upload, and as part of the new AI listing manager, you. It'll just read all that stuff and create a draft listing for you later. You can identify that property in public records and as really the rest of it, and it fills out the property with more complete fields, filled out with fewer errors in less time.

Matt Fowler [00:16:11]:
And that's an example of an innovation that would not have been possible if we were going to wait on one company to do everything for us. That's just one example of a benefit that, frankly, is yet to hit the dashboard. So that's going to be first quarter. Right now, we're just asking people to choose which of the three they have to choose from that works best for them right now, and know that there are some other faster, even more impressive software choices coming to the dashboard soon.

Kim Dawson [00:16:42]:
Yeah. Yeah. That was the most exciting for me. Just amazing. And I think we all were in the room for the presentation. We're blown away by it. It will make our lives so much easier and the data much more accurate. And that's the key of a lot that we do, is we want to make sure our data that's going in is accurate, because that's the only way we can be honest with our clients so that we can know what's going on.

Kim Dawson [00:17:11]:
So this is just going to help us do our job even better.

Matt Fowler [00:17:16]:
Our subscribers, I know they get fine notices. They get these notices about data being incorrect. We have a whole staff that, that focuses on data integrity. A lot of people don't know about that. We're determined not to devolve into some Craigslist looking thing, like, we're a serious database with a lot of checks and balances and auditing techniques and rules that have real fines attached to them. If you put in data that you know to be wrong, we don't really have that problem. Our data is really accurate. And now if we could just get it to hit all of the platforms at the same time.

Matt Fowler [00:17:47]:
I'm dialing that in this year and next, then I think we will have really accomplished something here. Kim couldn't have done that without having the support of our, of our directors. I know you guys take the brunt of it a lot because people, you know, don't really understand what we're doing all the time. It's not always completely clear as somebody who just, you know, is out there trying to get their job done. I understand that. That's one of the reasons we're having Kim on and our other directors in these meet the board series. So you can hear that we, we are carefully considering how this actually lands out in the market and trying to make the best decisions we can to bring this whole company forward. And all of our five association stakeholders, they're all very important to us.

Matt Fowler [00:18:30]:
I hope our stakeholders and all of our subscribers are enjoying these meet the board meetings and we'll tune in for the next one, which I believe we have coming up tomorrow. So, Kim, thanks for so much for joining us today. We really appreciate it.

Kim Dawson [00:18:42]:
So thanks for having me. And, of course, thank you for all that you do to keep our meetings moving. So, I know sometimes we just get so into things, we just will talk forever, and there's a lot of passion.

Matt Fowler [00:18:56]:
And a lot of different viewpoints.

Kim Dawson [00:18:58]:
You know, there is, and I think that's what everyone needs to know. We all care about our mls. We all care about our members and the services we, we are able to provide. And we're just trying to be forward thinking. Now, we weren't always, and I, and now we are. And sometimes that takes some risks, but I feel like we're leading the pack and obviously being very recognized for all that we're doing, and a lot of people are copying us.

Matt Fowler [00:19:27]:
So that's, yeah, it is very rewarding to see a couple of awards come in this year. I think that's definitely industry recognition. Now we just have to bring that home to the subscribers who actually pay the bills. I think we can do that together, though. I really appreciate the time together, too, Ken.

Kim Dawson [00:19:43]:
Yeah. And you mentioned the awards. Congratulations to you for getting executive of the year for animal life.

Matt Fowler [00:19:49]:
Thank you.

Kim Dawson [00:19:50]:
That was awesome. I'm so thrilled we were able to surprise you and know anything about it. That's a great honor, and it says a lot about what you're doing and how you're helping us to go forward. So we're very proud of you for that.

Matt Fowler [00:20:07]:
Thank you, Kim. I really appreciate it. And, you know, as, as everybody up there says, I couldn't have done it with the enormous team behind me that I can't name all of them, but we definitely did that together. So heartfelt thanks for that one.

Kim Dawson [00:20:20]:
Yeah. And you do have an awesome team, and I wish more of our members could meet them or know them, because they, too, are passionate and work so hard, sometime tirelessly, hours in a row, to help fix things. And without them, you're right. We couldn't be where we are today.

Matt Fowler [00:20:40]:
Couldn't touch it. That's why I invested in them so much. I've really believe in that. Just making them all educated and everybody has their resource certification, every single employee in the company.

Kim Dawson [00:20:50]:
Awesome.

Matt Fowler [00:20:51]:
More than half have a CMLS certification. I don't know, maybe half have an agile certification as well. They're all. But when you call down there, we really have some pretty highly trained people with years and years of experience. We've been focusing on hiring already experienced people. Thanks for giving me so much your time today. I really appreciate it.

Kim Dawson [00:21:12]:
Thank you for having me. Have a great weekend.

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