Episode 73: How to Future-Proof a Legacy Business and Embrace Change with Jeff King
GUEST:
Jeff King was named CEO of the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver in 2021. REBGV is a professional association of 15,000 REALTORS®, the second largest of its kind in Canada. Prior to this appointment, Jeff served as COO and Corporate Development Officer for SOCAN, the “Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada”, a performance rights organization that licenses works and collects/distributes royalties for more than 185,000 Canadian music creators and approximately 4.5 million international affiliates. From 2019-2021, he also served as interim CEO of Dataclef, a back-office service provider to music rights organizations, CEO of rights administrator Audiam (New York) and content provider MediaNet (Seattle), as well as Chair of the Board of Directors at DDEX, a global standards-setting organization focused on creating digital value chain standards for the music industry. He was named the COO of the Year by M&A Today in 2019, 2020, and 2021 for his time in the music industry. In 2023, he was recognized as one of the Most Influential Leaders in Real Estate by Tycoon Magazine and in the Top 20 Most Dynamic CEOs in Canada by CEO Magazine. Jeff holds a BA Honours from Wilfrid Laurier University and his expertise in strategy, innovation, licensing, distribution, technology, and corporate planning has made him a sought-after speaker at conferences around the world.
“Data is morphing into the new oil.”
THE EPISODE:
As 2024 approaches, businesses must evaluate their stance on digital transformation and emerging tech. From real estate to music, blind spots are common in legacy industries, particularly amongst those that have enjoyed stable status quo operations and practices over decades. In this episode, seasoned executive Jeff King stresses the importance of agility and proactive strategy in an era where big tech disruptions are the norm and evolving consumer trends are difficult to keep pace with. King emphasizes the critical role of organizational culture in embracing change and identifying how transformative technologies like blockchain, web3, and AI might impact, reshape, or add value to their offerings in a fast-paced digital landscape.
LINKS + RESOURCES
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LINKS + RESOURCES |
GUEST: Jeff King
LinkedIn
Twitter (“X”)
“The Consumer is Undefeated” - Article by Jeff King & Trevor Koot
GUEST COMPANY: REBGV
Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver - Website
EPISODE LINKS & RESOURCES:
REFERENCED
Who is SOCAN? (Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada)
What was Limewire, Napster, and Kazaa? - ARTICLE
BC Real Estate Association (BCREA)
What is the MLS? (Multiple Listing Service)
Disney purchases Hulu - ARTICLE
Royal Bank (RBC) buys a real estate brokerage - PRESS RELEASE
What is “Organized Real Estate” or “ORE”? - More info (US perspective)
“The Innovator’s Dilemma” - a BOOK by Clayton M. Christensen
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*NOTE: The transcript below does not include opening teaser and intro in time stamps. Begins at beginning of the interview… powered by AI (so may not be 100% accurate).
Ashley Smith (00:01.41)
Hello, everybody. Welcome back to From the Blockchain. I am very excited about today's show as we have a very special guest, someone that I have gotten to know personally over the last several years, but who has been very involved in transformational change in organizations, looking at industry from macro level and understanding kind of like how things can go from one way of doing business to another way of doing business. I'm talking about Jeff King.
I know him through the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver. Jeff was named CEO of the Real Estate Board, which I will refer to as REBGV if we talk about it directly moving forward. He was named CEO of REBGV in 2021. This is a member-based professional association of 15,000 realtors, the second largest of its kind in Canada. I should say I am a member and I served on the board for about 10 years before Jeff took on the role.
Prior to his appointment, Jeff served as the Chief Operating and Corporate Development Officer for SOCAN, which is the Society of Composers, Authors, and Music Publishers of Canada, a Canadian performance rights organization that represents more than 185,000 music creators. It licenses music works and collects and distributes royalties within the country and internationally.
between 2019 and 2021. In addition to his SOCAN duties, he also served as interim CEO of Datacluff, a back office service provider to music rights organizations, CEO of rights administrator, Audium in New York, and content provider, Medianet from Seattle, as well as chair of the board of directors at DDX, a global standards setting organization focused on creating digital value chain standards for the music industry.
In his time in the music industry, he was named the COO of the year by M&A Today in 2019, 2020, and 2021. And in 2023, he was named on the most influential leaders in real estate by Tycoon magazine, and one of the top 20 most dynamic CEOs in Canada by CEO magazine. He holds a BA honors from Wilfred Laurier University and his expertise in strategy, innovation, licensing, distribution, technology, and corporate planning has made him a sought after speaker at conferences around the world. Welcome to the show, Jeff. Thank you so much for being here.
Jeff King (02:45.869)
Thanks for having me, Ashley. I'm excited to be on the show.
Ashley Smith (02:48.502)
Hey, it means a lot. I appreciate you coming here. I think there's a lot we can talk about. Folks who listen to the show know I have a real estate background. I do definitely wanna talk about the industry and your perspective, but I also wanna give a heads up to folks listening. We're not just gonna be talking about real estate today. We're gonna be talking about industry, shifts, macro shifts, and maybe before we dive in, we can get a little bit more into your story, your background.
Because I do think that your experience in seeing some of these happen in real time and some of the parallels to what we might be facing over the next few years is very informative. So Jeff, why don't you tell us a little bit about where you came from before getting into the real estate space?
Jeff King (03:33.881)
Sure, okay. Well, I started in a small town in Southern Ontario and then fast forward, I was in the financial services space for a number of years, and then decided to make a change in my career and ended up at Socan, as you mentioned. And I joined Socan in the early 2000s. And Socan is a music rights licensing body, the largest music company in Canada.
with 185,000 Canadian members and about 4.5 million international affiliates. So SoCAN represents the world's repertoire in Canada. And when I arrived there about 20 years ago, the industry had not changed a lot in decades. The basis of concerts and film licensing and television hadn't really changed much since the 50s and 60s.
But it was clear that changes were coming. You know, the internet was in place. It was sort of the Web 1.0 stage. And the early thoughts around the prospect of streaming television shows and music was starting to appear. There was no Netflix, not in the way that we think of it today. There was no YouTube. There was no Spotify. But the concept was out there. And when I arrived at Socan, they were doing about 6 million transactions a year.
By the time I left in the middle of 2021, the organization was doing 300 million a day. And that's largely due to the explosion of online digital consumption. And another feature sort of happened along with that, which is part of really on the recorded music side is around the acquisition of music. So you used to have to, I love this one song, you had to buy the whole album. Right. And it drove people crazy for years.
Ashley Smith (05:19.194)
Jeff King (05:25.013)
Eventually, that started to shift rapidly in the 2000s and really went on its head in 2007 with the introduction of the iPhone. And new licensing models began to emerge. The early warning signs were things like Kazaa and Limewire and Napster and BitTorrent were showing up. And they had a role, but eventually got superseded by more traditional business type arrangements and the rest. And some companies thrived in the new era, this new digital era.
Socan was one of them, but others did as well. A number of the more forward thinking music labels and publishers have done well. Some of the other performing rights organizations have done well, but a lot have disappeared. You know, and when was the last time you heard about Columbia House? Things like that. And so when I was speaking with the REBGV board about coming here, I started to see a lot of parallels. And right now we're kind of in the web 2.0 world where web 3.0 is kind of creeping in.
So in Web 2.0, there's transactional stuff that can happen, but it's still mostly read and write and some one-to-one type dissemination. 3.0 is much more broad-based and much more far-reaching. And it obviously includes things like blockchain and all those other different dimensions. But when I was speaking with the REBGV board, the REBGV board,
It was clear that the industry was not unlike what the music industry was 20 years earlier And was thinking along the lines of oh nothing's happened in a hundred years. There's been lots of doomsayers They've come and gone nothing's ever changed But things do change, you know And it is kind of like the old philosophers quote like nothing ever changes till all of a sudden everything changes all of a sudden and I feel that we're starting to see that now in real estate and The parallels are shockingly similar now. It doesn't mean it's gonna have the same outcome
Ashley Smith (07:04.214)
Jeff King (07:20.457)
it could end up being a much different way of how we end up resulting in it. But the one thing I've kind of learned through all this, and this goes for almost every industry, the consumer is undefeated. And I recently co-wrote an article with Trevor Koot who's the CEO of the BCREA on that very topic and about how, you know, the consumers are looking to either pull out intermediaries, be they travel agents or stock brokers or insurance brokers or what have you.
I've been relentless on it. Currently, in the new world, they have access to data at levels that was unheard of 20 years ago. That includes in real estate, but it also includes in art or in car auctions, you name it. I think we're really seeing the rise of the strength of the consumer and how this will interact and how these things will pull together. Then when you add in another dimension and being the strength of the big tech companies.
particularly the device focused ones. Apple in particular has developed in a really impressive ecosystem. And it seems to be an inevitable march towards where a lot of this stuff is gonna go. And then you read with some of the interest with some of the things that Google and Amazon and Microsoft are doing in these spaces. And I think 2030 is gonna look a lot different than 2020 did. And so I think forward thinking leaders and including yourself are realizing this
Ashley Smith (08:39.693)
I think 20 theories on the 400 million. So I think the four, I think the leaders are realizing this and are maybe not just really about this, but about the years and the years.
Jeff King (08:49.451)
are leaning in to be not just early adopters, but harbingers and leaders in this new world order that's starting to emerge.
Ashley Smith (08:57.182)
I do wonder a bit from an industry perspective, and not solely the real estate industry, but just any sector where there's a lot of, I'm hesitant to use the term self-interest, but I'm gonna use it, where folks have been working a certain way within an industry for decades. And it's more just about what they know, what they understand, how they know to provide service. I mean, we can think of many different,
Jeff King (09:17.561)
Mm-hmm.
Ashley Smith (09:26.878)
industries think of accounting, law, you know. I'm even thinking about things like you know the Actors Guild and the Writers Guild and these organizational groups that are coming together and for variety reasons there's different things going on in the economy etc but there's still this uncertainty around technology and how it might impact the way business is done, how people are
Jeff King (09:56.409)
Mm-hmm.
Ashley Smith (09:57.174)
How should practitioners, especially if they're parts of larger groups or organizations, be thinking about transformational technology, how it might impact them in a productive way? Do you have thoughts on that?
Jeff King (10:12.601)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Um, the, uh, I think you've hit on an interesting point. Uh, the, uh, two generations ago, accounting, uh, was done by someone with a green shield, you know, you know, sadly, almost always a man, but with a green shield thing filling up literal spreadsheets. And people felt better that, uh, well, human looked at it and the numbers make sense and such. But of course, mistakes happen and transition errors and all the rest of it. Um,
when electronic spreadsheets and eventually Excel and pivot tables and things emerged in the 90s, that wasn't the end of the accountant, but that was the end of the accountant with the green shield and the thing with the paper ledgers. And what ended up happening was that they could not compete with the ones using technology. And I'm kind of seeing the same thing happening now where engineers or accountants or real estate professionals
or lawyers using technology have a competitive advantage with the ones who do not. A good friend of mine is a lawyer and they've been involved in a bit of an experiment using AI and they were using IBM Watson and they were preparing for a case and something that would normally take articulating students six weeks to prepare all the case law research Watson did in about seven minutes.
And then you start realizing, oh, it could pull a lot of jurisprudence very quickly and help us dissect the different nuances of it. And Watson's not been commercialized in the way I think IBM expected it to be, but I think it's been a good glimpse into how things could look. And then of course, chat GPT right around a year ago when it sort of became available for the public, it sort of unleashed a new way of looking at different things. And I think you raise an interesting point about the human element. You know, you look at the actors and the writers.
You know, I think we can all pick off an AI generated article now. Um, but AI will never be worse than it is right now. Tomorrow is going to be a little bit better. And the day after that, somebody a little bit better. And so I think the, the concern that the creative industries have is that they'll be replaced by this. And a big part of what the, those groups, uh, sag and act and such are like working on is to ensure that there's human element. And I'm sympathetic to that because I think that's part of the human.
Jeff King (12:34.997)
experiences, that connectivity that we have. And that goes for real estate. I think a big part of my job is ensuring that realtors are on these journeys with people to buy their houses. They're not buying the house, but they're like a sherpa helping you get up that mountain and they're helping through those different elements of it. But they're gonna have to use technology and realize that there's different ways to do it and that your clients will have access to a lot of the same information that in the past was highly guarded and kept in the trunk of a car someplace.
Ashley Smith (12:37.794)
That goes for real things. I think a big part of my job is to train them. Realtors are on these journeys with people and they're going to find their own. They're not finding their own, but they're like a sure bet on helping to get up that mountain. They're helping to get up that mountain.
Jeff King (13:04.049)
I think those types of things are starting to morph and change. And frankly, I think we've seen a long history of companies that try to resist different elements and it does not end up well. And so I've spoken at a couple of conferences this year around legacy industries and you look at legacy automotive industries and how they frankly are probably behind on the electric car journey and they've been resisting it and you kind of wonder where they're going to end up. Are they going to be able to catch up to?
Ashley Smith (13:08.77)
Frankly, I think we've seen a long history of companies that try to resist all different governments, and it doesn't end up well. So, I've spoken at a couple of conferences this year around legacy industries, and you look at the legacy art of world-renowned companies. Frankly, I'll probably be trying to...
Jeff King (13:33.753)
Frankly, Tesla's the leader in this by a substantial margin. And it's really around the charging, frankly, is the secret weapon that Tesla's unraveled there. But that's a big consumer product. You can kind of get your head around it. But you look at other examples like Kodak. Kodak invented the digital camera in 1976. And they were so afraid of it cannibalizing the film, the actual physical film product business, they sort of hid it away. And lo and behold, now Kodak's the, you know,
Ashley Smith (13:43.874)
Jeff King (14:05.37)
went bankrupt in 2012 or so, now exists mostly to license its name and for some commercial applications for movies and things like that, and for pension purposes. And this is a company that was created in the late 19th century and was synonymous with, get to have a Kodak moment and had four of the most popular, four of the five most popular cameras ever made were Kodak cameras, everything from the Brownie to all the rest of it.
and obliterated like that. And I think we have to be mindful that transformation will come and will come. And the ones that survived, people often quote Darwin and say the strongest survive. Darwin never said that. The Darwin's whole thing is the ones who adapt survive. And it uses the thing about the moth in London and how they survived in the early industrial age, the dark ones weren't eaten by the birds. And I think that's kind of true. And so I often draw a parallel,
Ashley Smith (14:56.958)
Jeff King (15:02.265)
Kodak both started around the same time, around 1890. Most people do not realize Nintendo was that old. Coincidentally, both are made up words and don't mean anything. But Kodaks are stuck to what they were doing and rode that way for a hundred years. Nintendo started off doing playing cards and then quickly realized they didn't have a differentiating thing because anybody can make playing cards and started to reinvent themselves over and over again.
and had everything from love hotels, which are exactly what you think they are, to Uber before there was Uber. And so the 1930s, you could call in someone who showed up with a private car and drive you around Tokyo and things like that. And eventually morphed into board games and other sort of home entertainment things. And then, ta-da, started with electronic gaming in the 70s. But even at that, they've been continuing to reinvent themselves.
cloud-based mobile devices, buying the Seattle Mariners, eventually sold them, but not being afraid to reimagine themselves, which is not what you expect from an Eastern corporation. They tend to be very conservative and very stuck to it. And I think it's inspirational how they managed to reinvent themselves so that they remain relevant and continue, because things do change. We looked at video rental business, it came and went in a generation.
Ashley Smith (16:28.249)
So when you're thinking about reinvention and you're thinking about thought leadership and innovation, I mean, I think that I'm thinking about this from a variety of levels. So just using real estate as an example, you know, the realtor or the practitioner can lean into technology. They can use AI to help them.
Jeff King (16:33.569)
Mm-hmm.
Jeff King (16:45.259)
Mm-hmm.
Ashley Smith (16:50.562)
provide better services, better quality content. There's a lot of things that they can do. When you look from an industry perspective, if an industry is wanting to be innovative, wanting to help its practitioners be innovative, wanting to create a landscape where they can be seen as innovative by the consumer, and the consumer actually looks to the industry as a value add.
Jeff King (17:06.655)
Mm-hmm.
Ashley Smith (17:20.906)
to their life. How should organizations be looking at this next chapter, especially when they're not often tech companies? That's the part that I think is challenging. A lot of organizations and businesses require a lot of technology to provide their services and their goods, et cetera, but they're not tech companies. So how do they compete? Do they partner?
Jeff King (17:21.013)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jeff King (17:35.382)
Mm-hmm.
Ashley Smith (17:48.99)
And I'm thinking in particular in the context of Web3, blockchain and or AI, you know, if there's anything that you're thinking about right now in that context, I'd love to hear. I'd love to hear it.
Jeff King (17:54.879)
Mm-hmm.
Jeff King (18:00.269)
Yeah, absolutely. That's a great point. And I think frankly, almost all tech companies of a certain size, or all companies I should say of a certain size are tech companies. So REBGV is morphing into a tech company because it's the provision of the MLS and courses and all the rest of it. That's MLS is critical to this. And the reality is most companies don't have the size and scale or expertise to ramp up leading edge
products and services and the technology space. It's too expensive. The risk is too high. There's a number of different factors there. But these companies and the real estate boards are a good example, are sitting on a lot of data. And data kind of is morphing into the new oil of the new element of it. And it's not just the cookies when you click and say accept all, that is an element of all this stuff. But it's also around how you manage your relationships and the...
with your customers and with your suppliers and all the rest of it. So I think what we're starting to see is a bit of an evolution and there's kind of two camps. And the one camp is build a moat and keep everyone away out of your fortress. And the other camp is you build bridges across the water with the tech companies and say, we want to work with you. And we've got the chocolate factory with the peanut butter factory.
you know, let's see if we can do something together and create something special. And I kind of think that is a more successful long-term strategy to sort of start to work the leverages. Cause don't forget, you know, these big tech companies have amazing technology, almost endless balance sheet horsepower, but they don't necessarily have the relationships. They don't necessarily have the connections with the individuals involved. That goes for music and songwriters and performers, but also with real estate.
realtors and with buyers and sellers and such. Doesn't mean they can't develop them, but they don't have them right now. The realtors in this instance, or the accountants in their world, or the engineers and nurse, have these special relationships. And I think by building bridges is a longer term and a better and more stable strategy to help ensure the success for the entire ecosystem. I think...
Jeff King (20:20.049)
Holding bridges or building bridges is better than trying to hold a moat. History has shown us that moats are eventually overcome and the output is not good for the people inside and behind the moat. I cannot think of one example where the moat has really worked long-term and eventually you get ground into nothing. You know, our, uh, you know, like blockbuster, you know, their moat was, you had to go back and forth and get the thing there.
They were not open to new ways to do things and eventually got killed, frankly. But I think building bridges with the different stakeholders and looking at different ways of doing business could be quite clever. At the beginning of the pandemic, a number of the large tech firms, certainly the FAANG group, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google, or Alphabet if you're a non-traditionalist,
Ashley Smith (20:49.106)
to do things eventually. But I think building bridges with the different state bodies, different ways of doing things, is to be quite clever. At the beginning of the pandemic, a number of the large tech firms certainly were paying for Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google.
Jeff King (21:16.781)
Definitely we're looking at different ways of how things can evolve. And I was reading last night about the struggle of retail, who's not really retail products, stores who have not really come back from the pandemic. They were struggling before the pandemic was like the arrow to the heart. And who's beating them to death? You know, mostly Amazon.
Ashley Smith (21:21.562)
I was reading last night about the struggle of retail. As we've not really, or retail products and stores will not really come back from the pandemic. They were struggling before the pandemic was over.
Jeff King (21:41.265)
And people are realizing, oh, I don't need to go to the store. I'll come to the house. The price is going to be cheaper, all those types of things. And it's a lesson there because they could have handled things differently and open up their own Amazon store on Amazon or something like that and done something. But one of the things that I think is a telling issue of where someone had an opportunity, now let's slip away. Sears was Amazon before Amazon, right?
Ashley Smith (21:58.838)
But one of the things that I think is a really important issue, of course, some of them have an opportunity to do that stuff or what, Sears was Amazon before, so they had cabarades and you can order things, you know, even some of Canada was doing the schools, and children's books were at the level of power. They had the general business model figured out, check it out from a warehouse, and that came in sooner and all that.
Jeff King (22:08.941)
So they had catalogs and you can order things, you know, Eaton's in Canada was famous for this and there's children's books written about it and all the rest of it. They had the general business model figured out, ship it out from a warehouse, direct to consumer, all that type of thing. But they became so fixated on trying to protect their flagship stores in downtown Vancouver or downtown Toronto or Montreal, they lost the plot on that the consumer was not as interested in that and wanted to cut out the intermediary.
And that was kind of, I think, an example of where they missed opportunity, where they maybe could have built a bridge. Um, right now it looks easy to have had an online store or Shopify it or something. But granted in the nineties, it maybe was a, it seemed like a bridge too far, but the, if they were for more forward looking, they might have been able to pivot and save themselves in a different way. I, uh, the, uh,
Ashley Smith (22:45.922)
Right now it looks easy for President Arlen to store or stock a product or something. But frankly, then the mind needs to be to look at the needs of our people before we're overbooking them with people they don't know that are safe themselves.
Jeff King (23:01.869)
There is a risk that the world may end up being dominated by a half dozen or a dozen giant companies. If you look at the consumption of media, the media companies which were quite diverse, 100 or so 40, 50 years ago, now is largely dominated by half a dozen. General Electric and Disney are major forces in what we consume. When you look at the octopus map,
Ashley Smith (23:02.146)
There is a risk that the world may end up being dominated by half-price and part-price in China, the political consumption of world media, the media companies, white-divers, 100 or so, 40, 50 or so, now are being dominated by half-price, the general electric, the
Jeff King (23:30.153)
of who's in all these buckets. It's kind of overwhelming, you know, oh, okay, I can see why this is problematic. You know, and the same thing's happening digitally, right? And it's a concern, you know.
Ashley Smith (23:36.83)
Yeah. Yeah, that's... Absolutely, it's November 5th as we're recording this and it was just earlier this last week, I believe Disney purchased Hulu as an example. And that sort of a thing, I think, from an industry perspective, I think is not always on the forefront of people's minds is just the powerful players that can enter, like real estate as an example.
Jeff King (23:50.924)
Yeah.
Jeff King (24:02.102)
Mm-hmm.
Ashley Smith (24:05.842)
It's just such, it's prime. It's a prime industry for big tech to get into. So very curious to see when and who launches into this sector. Yeah.
Jeff King (24:16.118)
Yeah.
I'm kind of convinced it's going to happen. And to me, I'm new to this. And so bear with me. I've only been in this industry for a couple of years. But I think there's three key ways that you make money on real estate in general. One is the value of the property going up over time. Second part, it's not sexy, but a lot of money in it, mortgages, trillions of dollars with a steady return year over year, decade over decade.
And then the third part is really around like things like the commissions and then silver rate type services. Commissions is the most obvious one. Um, and I, I think those are areas where big techs are going to be very focused, uh, especially the mortgage side and, uh, and on the commission side to take a look at say, is there other ways to do these things? Um, the, uh, and the same goes for, you know, the big banks are looking, you know, they've got the mortgage piece. They want to hold onto that.
Ashley Smith (25:08.166)
Mm-hmm.
Jeff King (25:15.049)
I do think the tech companies are very interested in the mortgages. And I think we're going to see some pivoting. Earlier this year, Royal Bank bought a brokerage. It's not the first time a bank has bought a brokerage in Canada. It's been tried a number of times over the decades. They dabble in it and then give up. It may not be such a short-lived experiment this time, as they're looking to diversify. And when you look at it...
Ashley Smith (25:34.703)
It may not be such a short-lived experiment. Mm.
Ashley Smith (25:40.039)
And when you look at it, organized real estate is right now a private collection of intelligence.
Jeff King (25:41.841)
Organized real estate right now is largely a collection of smallish companies, individual owner-operators, like realtors or small teams, or even organized real estates, relatively small. Real estate board of Greater Vancouver is the second biggest in the country, but it's still a relatively small company. 105 employees, the average Walmart in Canada has about 400 employees. That gives you a sense of what we're dealing with.
Ashley Smith (25:51.83)
Jeff King (26:11.145)
And the idea that organized real estate or the remaxes of the world can mobilize something of the horsepower to take on an Amazon or an Alphabet, it's daunting. Those are deep, deep pockets. And I think there's got to be smart ways to look at it.
Ashley Smith (26:28.016)
Yeah, and it also highlights some of the challenges that are inherent, I think, generally speaking, with any industry that has professional organizations is just the fractional sort of decision-making structure framework. It makes it difficult for industry to move quickly when you have so many...
Jeff King (26:38.873)
Mm-hmm.
Jeff King (26:43.841)
Yeah.
Ashley Smith (26:49.582)
pieces to the decision-making puzzle and a lot of human element related to that and folks who are very, you know, used to the status quo, so to speak. And I should bring that up. So, you know, Jeff, you were brought in as CEO of this organization and, you know, I was on the board at the time and it was a strong priority to make sure we were looking
Jeff King (27:00.875)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Ashley Smith (27:19.35)
big way. A lot of organizations in this industry are very much used to seeing a lot of the same leadership kind of migrate maybe from one area to the other, but they've been around a long time. And maybe you can speak to that just at a higher level, what you think the
Ashley Smith (27:46.902)
especially when looking at innovation and disruption and future scenario planning for an organization. And sorry, this is a bit of a run on question, but I'm also thinking about organizations where, maybe they're not necessarily looking for a leadership change, but they know they have blind spots. Like what should they be thinking about?
Jeff King (27:58.125)
Okay.
Jeff King (28:10.585)
Okay, all right, so there's a lot to unpack there. So that's okay. All right, all right, let's see how good I am. So on your first part around organized real estate or arguably disorganized at times real estate, it is hard to make decisions because there's so many different factors involved. And there's a lot of real estate boards and a large number of them. There's eight in British Columbia plus the Provincial Association, there's 75 or so across the country.
Ashley Smith (28:12.394)
Yeah, sorry about that. That's my MO. Ha ha ha.
Jeff King (28:40.093)
all disparate, all with their own unique views of things. So it's hard to come to consensus and move with what I call the speed of business. And I think there's a strong pull to be able to try to move at that type of speed. There's a speed of sound, speed of light. I think there's a speed of business has to move at. And companies that are more cohesive or maybe even just one entity, for instance, they can move much faster. They can say, we're gonna do this, and here's what we're doing.
and organize their resources. And I think the disparate nature and the fractionalized nature of real estate makes that harder, you know, and makes it more difficult to kind of deal with. Now on the question around the outsiders sort of point of view, I love it here and I'm thoroughly enjoying the job. Uh, and, uh, but I am very pleased that, uh, the, uh, the board of, uh, REBGV had the foresight to go outside. It wasn't that there's not great people inside the industry. There are, there's a number of them.
the vast majority are amazing. But I think when you come from the outside, you have a slightly different perspective. You're less married to the being a guardian of the faith and say, this is the way we've always done it. I have to defend it. That you can ask more sort of the question, the challenging questions around, you know, why do we cut off the ends of the roast beef type of thing? And I think those are the organized real estate has a long history of those types of things. There's not much in the way of outsiders inside organized real estate.
Because of the nature of the business and who it attracts, a number of the executive officers and leadership are either realtors or former realtors or grew up within the system. But there's a handful I can think of off the top of my head that came from outside, including myself. I think that the extra perspective that outsiders bring to industries can be refreshing, it can be scary.
at times, but I think if it's done with elegance and with a direct and transparent way, people will come along and they'll sort of see the focus on how to evolve these things. And this goes for all industries. When you take a look at some of the most successful folks in the banking industry, of course, there's a lot of folks that grew up on the inside and evolved it, but some of the greatest transformational stuff comes from outsiders saying, well, why do we do it this way?
Jeff King (31:01.365)
or how does this work? Or is there a better way to think of these types of things? Now, not all of them worked out great, right? Some of them went poorly. But I think if you want to adapt and start to morph and build yourself for success, you have to have a number of different perspectives. And that includes industry background, but also includes the DEI perspectives. Most industries are heavily populated with middle-aged white guys and increasingly middle-aged white women, right? And...
That's a start, but a lot more is going to be done to help bring different perspectives on how to do things differently. I think all these things are interwoven, right? And I think companies that figure this out fast will be the ones that will be the most successful in how they deal with it. Otherwise, someone else will figure it out, and there will be the slow but inevitable erosion of whatever business you're in.
You look what's happened, you know, this podcast here, you look what's happened to traditional terrestrial radio. You know, it was the AM was all it. And then FM came and had better quality and played more eclectic music. So AM moved into talk radio and talk radio got obliterated by podcasts. And you know, here we are on a Sunday morning talking about industries, right? And able to do deep forum, deep discussion interviews, which AM radio wasn't really built.
Ashley Smith (31:58.926)
You know, this podcast here, you'll put up with the full-scale press for radio. You know, AM is all it. cover of our cover of music, so AM, we put the talk radio. And talk radio is out of the good radio, but we'll put it out there. And, you know, here we are on our...
Yeah.
Jeff King (32:27.581)
And some cars you can't even get AM radio in anymore. And those types of things are, those are canaries in the coal mine, right? We should be paying attention to things like that where things start to shift and start to look different on how these things happen. Your sort of final point in around the nature of the business and how it works like with outsiders. I did notice early on there was a lot of gatekeeping.
Ashley Smith (32:31.538)
Jeff King (32:57.117)
And a lot of, well, you're not from here. And I came from another city and another industry, which is probably a double thing. But the, um, uh, but the real estate does have a lot of gatekeeping to it. And I think part of it comes back to these are my leads. This is my project. This is my initiative, or these are my sellers or my listing. I think there's a bit of a mindset around this or piece of it. And, uh, I think fundamentally a lot of folks are hunters or gatherers in their mindset and how they.
Ashley Smith (32:58.371)
uh...
Jeff King (33:26.433)
do business. And that part was kind of surprising to me when I arrived was this. This is our backyard you stay out of it. Whereas collectively we could do a lot more together. And I've been quite I put a lot of effort in the last couple of years to build bridges with the different stakeholders, including our members, of course, but also other real estate boards, other provincial associations and the National Association for my own growth and for my own education and knowledge, but also for the betterment of
and we're starting to see some payoff of that and how to connect these things. It's still a long ways to go and there's still some big threats on the horizon. The storm clouds are there and they're not just technology coming to disrupt us, economic concerns, social unrest concerns, all these types of things. There's a seismic shift happening in North American culture as we speak. And then you layer in, we're going to proceed.
Over the next 15 years, maybe a little bit shorter, next 15 years, probably at most, we're gonna see the largest transfer of wealth in human history. You know, people selling businesses, grandparents selling the house, people passing on, things like that. It's gonna be the, we're talking the magnitude of trillions of dollars is gonna transfer to a whole other generation. And that's gonna have a seismic shift on how things get done. It wasn't, it's not as though this didn't happen in the past, but not to this scale.
Ashley Smith (34:33.726)
Jeff King (34:54.561)
There's about 1.2 million businesses in Canada, and about 600,000 of them are led by, either led or owned by people in their 60s, and they're not gonna be doing this in the 2040s. They're gonna either sell off or sell to a competitor or wind up or do something. All those things will have a big shift with a bit of an aging demographic. The immigration policies of the federal government are starting to slow that impact.
Ashley Smith (35:02.634)
Jeff King (35:25.629)
There's a lot of challenges that come with that, but to show how all these things are connected, you know, real state's under pressure as it is anyways. It's a big part of the BC economy. Canada normally gets around 450,000 new immigrants every year. About 300,000 go to the Greater Toronto Area, about 100,000 go to Lower Mainland in BC, the other 50,000 are spread around. They've got to live someplace. They don't, they aren't buying six million dollar mansions, but
There's a ripple effect where they put pressure on and that puts pressure on affordability, that puts pressure on employers who don't have an economic model to be able to pay their employees enough, that puts pressure on real estate in general and people will look and they'll blame the realtors or they'll blame government fiscal policy on these types of things. These things are all interrelated and complex, but we have to look at ways to transform and start to morph and deal with these different things individually with an idea towards a longer goal of what type of society we want to have and can.
Ashley Smith (36:10.606)
Jeff King (36:35.039)
Mmm.
Ashley Smith (36:40.278)
And as we mentioned, you're thinking more from a technology perspective, but not a defined technology company. And so as a leader, how do you think folks ought to perform environmental scans? Like this show is called From the Blockchain. I obviously have a serious interest in blockchain and web three technology. And some of the criticisms I think that someone like myself can face is like,
Jeff King (36:48.202)
Yeah.
Ashley Smith (37:09.87)
Oh, you're Maxi for this technology and you're looking for problems to solve, but you're really just trying to find ways to use this tech. And so what I'm wondering is, as different things are emerging, how do you filter through the noise or how do you look at, you know, what are the things we should be paying attention to?
Jeff King (37:13.76)
the
Jeff King (37:25.313)
Mm-hmm.
Ashley Smith (37:39.634)
a deeper interest and learn more, right? And figure out what the opportunities or risks might be. Like how do you go about doing that? And what would you recommend to others?
Jeff King (37:45.73)
Mmm.
Jeff King (37:51.189)
Okay, all right, no, that's good. Okay, so there's a couple of moments in there. On the blockchain piece, I'm a keen student of it. I'm not an engineer, I'm a well-meaning amateur. I do think blockchain will have a role, not just in real estate, but in economics and neo banking and open banking and different things like that. Fundamentally,
This is maybe the marketer in me. I think blockchain needs a rebranding. And the, you know, you think back in the past, third party storage on Microsoft or on IBM servers existed since the 70s, right? Well, IBM since the 70s, Microsoft since the 90s. It wasn't until the phrase cloud storage came into vogue, largely driven by Fortune magazine back in the 90s, where people said, well, it's on the cloud, that's fine.
It's still sitting on an Amazon or Microsoft server, but it's sort of repurposed it a bit. And I think with blockchain, blockchain itself has had more pilots than British Airways. And I think that part of the challenge has been that people are trying to find ways to use it. And it's not super fast yet. It still takes longer to do a transaction than you would think. And it's very energy demanding. It's got a, it takes a lot of energy to...
to calculate the different elements to execute a transaction. There's been a lot of progress made in the last six to nine months on that front, but I think a lot more is gonna happen. But I do think if it was a bit of a rebrand and sort of move towards like a verified ledger idea. And the example I often use is, a lot of people when they research something, they'll look at, they'll go to Wikipedia. And Wikipedia is fraught with all kinds of problems. But if there were some sort of system where it gets, where,
there was a blue check mark, you knew everything on that page. Everything about Ashley Smith on that page was right. It was kind of signed off by her and by the who knows who. You would feel much more comfortable using it or quoting it in the article or research and such. And I kind of think of blockchain was sort of positioned as, oh, I want to do this real estate deal, or I want to do this mergers and acquisition activity. And everything in here has got a blue check mark. It's all fine. And I'm looking inside this digital deal room to buy this.
Jeff King (40:14.245)
NFT or this classic car or property, whatever it is. I think that would go a long ways towards helping with adoption of blockchain as part of this sort of open, transparent way of us doing these things. We have to overcome the energy thing because I do think that's going to be a major issue for wide-scale adoption. Now to the second part of your question, how do companies prepare for it? I'm a big supporter of Clayton Christensen and the sort of the innovators dilemma.
One of the things I've done over and over again with good success is around the idea around innovation, innovator catalyst training and have people try to think outside the box, but really more fundamentally, dividing teams into red and blue teams and say, okay, if you're going to disrupt us, how would you do it? Internal staff folks, how would you do it? What would you do? You know, and think outside the box, you know, and then have them present to each other what their thinking is.
Ashley Smith (40:47.554)
Jeff King (41:12.189)
And sometimes you get out the box ideas, all the rest of it. Um, I found that to be a very useful thought exercise. And it tells you a lot about how different pieces of, uh, of your team will work and how they, uh, how strategic they are or how strategic they're not. And there are different views of the world and maybe weaknesses the company has that's either innate just there. Or, uh, that the weaknesses that are there that I haven't been really sort of sourced out. And, uh, then on a more individual level.
Ashley Smith (41:16.546)
Jeff King (41:41.061)
For a number of years, and I think you may remember this, Ashley, for a number of years, I've always sort of asked the question, if you had a magic wand with unlimited resources, what would you change about your current situation or your business? I was interviewing a number of years ago with a US broadcaster for a job, and I asked him this question. He didn't have an answer. He just sort of froze, to be honest. He was really nice, and they ended up offering me the job. I didn't take it.
But he was, uh, but he kind of froze and sort of gave us, I just wish our people worked harder and we made more money type of answer. And, uh, and this was 2012 or so. And then when, uh, when I, when I was leaving the room, he said, Oh, he said, what would you answer if you asked that question to me? I said, Oh, I'd get into streaming in a big way. I said, I think that's if I had a magic wand resources were in a problem, I would lean in on that super fast. It was, Oh, okay. Well, I couldn't help but notice.
that they are into streaming in a big way. It took them a while, but they have an incredibly valuable catalog that they could monetize. But that was the first time I had done it with sort of an outside person. I'd asked that question to people in interviews, but there were people I was interviewing and asking them about their business, not someone I was interviewing. And it gave me good insight on how they saw the world. They just saw, how do we keep going, what we got going that's good. And so I use that a lot now.
Ashley Smith (42:44.322)
Jeff King (43:02.873)
And it's interesting on how people react to it. This includes realtors and brokerages, but also law firms and banks and regulators and all the rest of it. It gives a good insight. I'll have to come up with a more clever way to articulate it so it doesn't become boring, but I do find that's a useful thing and that's something I would encourage the audience to do with their teams and with the people they work with.
Ashley Smith (43:10.67)
Jeff King (43:32.77)
Mm-hmm.
Ashley Smith (43:39.854)
And you have, you know, been spending time learning about something that you think is like the greatest idea. Like, you see some innovation, you're like, ma'am, this would rock in our company or whatever. How would you suggest that person further unpack that and bring it to the top to be properly explored?
Jeff King (43:46.854)
Right, right, okay, yeah, yeah.
Jeff King (44:04.309)
Yep. The, this happens frequently. And there's a couple of things. We're going the assumption that the company has an open culture that encourages discussion and dialogue, which RevGV does, but not all companies do. But for the more junior person or the person that say a board member or a customer even that's on the outside, my recommendation would be to work with your mentor group.
I think everyone should have kind of a group of mentors and proteges that you're working with, right? Frankly, by the way, I think it helps sharpen ideas and battle test concepts. But for this hypothetical, I would recommend the person to test drive it with the sort of the people they respect inside or outside the company and say, I've wondered about this. Or and you know, can you help me refine it? Because I'm not I'm missing something I think, because why aren't we doing this? X, Y or Z?
And then eventually, keep refining it until you feel comfortable with it. And then work to get an audience with some senior people who can help marshal those resources that you need. Senior executives are people, right? And they're just as flawed as the rest of us. But at the end of the day, they want their companies to do well. And if you have an idea or a concept, even if you're a lowly board member, and you do it, you know.
present it and work to battle test it. But don't have a sense, you own it, but don't have a sense of ownership where you have to have it my way or this is the way I always thought about it. If you feel that strongly about it, then start your own business and compete. But generally most of them are not that. They're usually process oriented things or they're new lines of business things. And I would recommend testing it for a few times to sort of help refine it and then work to get an audience with the senior people.
Ashley Smith (45:38.232)
Mm-hmm.
Ashley Smith (45:54.014)
Jeff King (46:00.889)
And I'm speaking largely to my audience now. If you're a member of the real estate board at Greater Vancouver or an employee here, feel free to reach out to me 24 seven. And I'll be happy to talk to you about any and all of your ideas. I think together we can do amazing things. I can't do this in isolation and the great ideas come from everywhere.
Ashley Smith (46:17.902)
Well, I think you're doing amazing. And I love, you know, I think I really appreciate your perspective, but I also appreciate your focus on culture and all of that, because I think when you're talking about innovation, that's such an important piece. Yeah.
Jeff King (46:26.081)
So, oh, thanks.
Jeff King (46:40.601)
For sure, for sure. You know where it gets to me, open cultures are incredibly innovative and the ones that are not open, very hierarchical, that type of thing, they're not innovative at all. And they end up having everything from turnover to they get stale, they can't compete, they can't move quickly enough. It's unbelievable, right? Because at the end of the day, we're all people and we're trying to do something. And so culture's super critical.
We're in the process of releasing the new strat plan, strategic plan for the real estate board of greater Vancouver. We have three main elements, operational excellence, product innovation and industry leadership. And woven through all those is a cultural element about how we interact with the members and with the other stakeholders and of course internally. And I think if we're authentically transparent, there's not much we cannot do.
But that's really where our focus is going to be for the next three to five years.
Ashley Smith (47:44.199)
We do have to wrap up pretty quick here. Before we do, I want to ask you one kind of, not rapid fire, but we don't have to dive super deep. But I do want to think a little bit about your previous experience in the music industry and whether or not you have any thoughts on the Web3 applications of music. Like the creator side has certainly seen...
Jeff King (47:51.053)
Okay.
Ashley Smith (48:10.282)
Web3 touched that space more directly over the last few years. And I do think from my perspective, music is likely the one that we'll probably see over the next few years really do something. I'd love to know if you have any either predictions or just thoughts on that sector and the technology.
Jeff King (48:13.037)
Mm-hmm.
Jeff King (48:31.825)
Yep, I think there's two big elements, and I'll keep it short, but I think there's two big elements. The tracking of the ownership of the various pieces of music, works or compositions or recordings, is incredibly complicated. And for instance, the highest earning song in Canada in 2021 had 50 participants. So that was because of the collaboration and everybody had their own publisher and...
samples with a whole bunch of other writers and all those types of things. That's a lot of folks to keep track of, especially when you're talking under a fraction of a cent that's being paid for it because it's on a YouTube clip. Uh, so I think web 3.0 is going to be the beginning of a way to sort that out. Um, some companies, including, uh, you know, SOCAN and, uh, and CSAC have done a lot of work to prepare for those types of things. Uh, but I think that's going to be the next big frontier in the next couple of years.
I think the other part kind of interwoven with this is the role of AI. And so AI, you know, when people think about AI with music, you know, the generation of music is obviously an area where a lot of people draw their mind towards. And some of the AI music actually is better than you would think it is, and we're still near the day, so it's kind of alarming. But that will continue to evolve. And I still think there'll be a human element and people will still enjoy the
Ashley Smith (49:41.198)
Jeff King (49:53.985)
the T-Swift concert and all those types of big shared experience moments. You know, that's one thing COVID taught us and, you know, the shared experiences are powerful things. But the other part of AI will help with the processing elements of the web 3.0 piece. Now the huge processing power of AI is really the big difference maker. Now it's cool. They can make a new version of Hey Jude or something.
Ashley Smith (50:04.654)
Jeff King (50:19.777)
But it's also extra cool that they can take that song with 50 participants and track it and realize that it was played on a YouTube that was consumed in Cairo, but also played done in a concert in Vancouver and also on a TV show in Tokyo and be able to match all that stuff back together. That's done through a very rudimentary system right now. I think that's going to be a major shift and that'll streamline the system. The speed of money going through the system would be better. Fewer people touching it.
more money in the hands of the creators. I think we're gonna see a seismic shift over the remaining parts of this decade in music.
Ashley Smith (50:57.974)
Cool. Well, looking forward to seeing that side of it all. Jeff, I really appreciate your time. I think we could keep going. There's a lot I'd love to unpack and I think we might have to do a second episode at some point. But before we leave, can you tell our audience where they can find you and anything you're working on? I know you mentioned your article. I'll link that in the show notes. But anywhere else people should find and follow Jeff King?
Jeff King (51:06.257)
Hahaha.
Jeff King (51:20.016)
Mm.
Okay, yeah.
You know what, you can find me on X at Jeff King 17th and I'm on LinkedIn. I'm at the Max LinkedIn connections, but feel free to follow me and I'll get rid of people so I can have new connections if need be. But that sounds good. I think I'm easy to find and I'm looking forward to hearing from you.
Ashley Smith (51:43.059)
Cool.
Ashley Smith (51:48.214)
Cool. Well, thanks so much, Jeff, everybody listening. Thank you for tuning in today. Until next week, have a good one.
