Ever Onward Podcast

How to Sell Real Estate in 2026: The Elliot Hoyt Playbook | Ever Onward - Ep. 102

• Ahlquist. • Season 1 • Episode 102

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What does it really take to sell real estate in 2026? According to Elliot Hoyt—former Boise State Bronco, Top 1% Realtor®, and founder of THG Real Estate—the winners aren’t the loudest agents in the room. They’re the ones who lead with value, understand human behavior, and build a modern content engine that earns trust at scale.

In this episode, Elliot breaks down the journey from a small-town kid in Tavistock chasing rugby dreams…to landing on the blue turf at Boise State…to building one of Idaho’s fastest-growing and most talked-about brokerages. His path wasn’t linear—nine months without a deal, a humbling reset, and a rebuild driven by discipline and process, not luck.

Elliot opens up about:

  • The real 2026 playbook for selling real estate: trust, clarity, and hyperlocal expertise
  • How he built THG’s media machine, running daily content with one-hour film blocks and scripts that actually convert
  • Why consumers follow educators, not entertainers—and how value-first content attracts developers, sellers, and agents
  • What’s actually happening in Boise’s market, from “shadow” inventory to rate-locked owners and the life events that will drive the next wave of movement
  • How Traction reshaped his business, helping him identify as a visionary and build a leadership team that can scale

You’ll walk away with a blueprint for selling homes in a changing market, a deeper understanding of how Boise really moves, and a reminder that consistency beats charisma every time.

If you’re a builder, agent, entrepreneur, or just Boise-curious, this is one of the most actionable conversations of the year.

Like what you hear? Follow, share with a friend, and leave a quick review—what part of Elliot’s 2026 playbook will you try first?

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SPEAKER_02:

Today on the Ever Onward Podcast, we have Elliot Hoyt. Elliot is the founder, strategic leader, broker of THG real estate here in Boise. He played uh uh football at Boise State as a defensive lineman uh for four years. He was born and raised in England, has an incredible story of his transition from rugby to American football. Uh, he is now a broker and a real estate agent here and is on fire on social media doing all things with real estate. We're really excited to hear his story and learn more about uh Elliot Hoyt.

SPEAKER_01:

Elliot, thanks, man. Thanks for having me on. It's a big deal. Yeah, it is. I know I made it now. Let's ever you're everywhere. This is gonna be fun.

SPEAKER_02:

I can't wait to we've never met.

SPEAKER_00:

No, we haven't. I've seen you around. You you're a big deal, so I've seen you around, but you never I never never stopped to say hi because I don't know if you'd know.

SPEAKER_02:

So well, your name's been coming up a ton of like, you gotta get that guy on your podcast. I know I I know I follow you doing some cool stuff.

SPEAKER_00:

Trying to, man, trying to bring value. That's what I always say. Try and lead and bring value, you know.

SPEAKER_02:

Have you always had a uh like eye for like what you're doing?

SPEAKER_00:

And uh uh with the with the social media side of stuff, I always knew that it was gonna take off. I mean, I I got into real estate, that's obviously my background back in 2018, and it wasn't as prominent back then. Um, but I knew that social media would become a big deal because it's the biggest reach you can get for a very limited budget. I mean, you don't have to have a lot of startup costs to get rolling with that stuff, you know.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, you're reaching. I can't I can't wait to get into it, but yeah, I do want to. I mean, it's an incredible story. Um like how how on earth do you get uh is American football even a thing where you grew up?

SPEAKER_00:

Uh yeah, not very, not very much, though. It's kind of like rugby is here. People, you know of people that play it, but you don't really see it, right? So tell us your story. So uh born and raised in a small town uh called Taverstock in England, 10,000 people. Nearest city was Plymouth, a little bit bigger, about I think 300,000, 400,000 people, um kind of like down about 30 minutes south of me. Grew up playing rugby and soccer, as you do in England. Um, got too big for soccer eventually, so stuck just to rugby. Um and I started playing football, like American football, uh, when I was 16.

SPEAKER_02:

Um so they do have American football leagues.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it's club. It's all clubs, so it's like mismatch kit half the time, like different helmet and shoulder pads, and just you know, you just out there having fun. Um, but yeah, I played rugby most of my life. Always thought I played professional rugby and started playing club football um and was pretty good. Um I actually reached out to the coaches at Boise State through mutual connection. There's a guy that played rugby in California, his name is Chase Baker, who now um actually coaches for the NFL Academy. He's retired, played in the NFL for a couple years. He was at Boise State. I saw him playing on ESPN, reached out to the coaches through him because he remembered me when he came for a rugby tour of England years ago, sent my firmware to the coaches through him. Um and I was bigger when I was like 16 than I am now, even. Um and yeah, Coach Pete offered me a scholarship on the second day. So moved to Boise in 2012, moved there with 600 bucks, two bags of clothes, and that was it. The rest is history.

SPEAKER_02:

What was uh so so you grew up playing rugby?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

A lot different, right? Yeah, a lot different. But but I think a lot of rugby players that excel in rugby do really well in American football just because you're mean tough toughness, tackling on tackling.

SPEAKER_00:

You can't, you can't in in football, obviously, you can kind of to an extent, it's not it's frowned upon now. You can kind of throw your body at someone to bring them down. Whereas rugby, you have to perfectly wrap them up and tackle. So I always had an advantage on the tackling side. The rest of it though, I mean, I had to look I had to learn the game quickly. Yeah, quickly, quickly.

SPEAKER_02:

So what was what was the transition like? What what attracted you to American football versus rugby? You said you were looking at the case.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so my dad actually played in the 80s. My dad played for the University of Akron. My dad's English, but played college football as well. And he played in the first year of what was NFL Europe was the World League back in 1991. So I had there was a big hiatus between my dad playing and me playing. But that was kind of the grab for me was my dad had had played previously. And I just knew there was more opportunity in America. So even if I didn't play professional football, I knew if I got to America I had a chance to live a good life. And was he uh was he uh coaching you, uh mentoring you? Yeah, exactly. He coached me, mentored me, gave me everything, you know, every all the skills that he could and whatnot. My dad, I always on record whenever I get an opportunity to say it, and I wouldn't have said this 10 years ago when I was younger, but there's a level of humility I think you gain as you get older. My dad was ten times the athlete I was, an absolute freak, just straight Nigerian blood freak, and way better than I was. And if he had the opportunities I had, he would have gone a lot further than me. So I I probably underperformed in comparison, believe it or not.

SPEAKER_02:

So that's that's awesome. Yeah, pretty influential on you, your dad?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, for sure. They everyone has that figure in their life that um, you know, I think forms them and molds them, and and my dad uh definitely instilled a lot of values in me about doing the right thing and just you know executing essentially, you know. He's got to be very proud of you. I think so, yeah. Yeah, I think so. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

He's still over in England, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

He still lives in England, yeah. So he's uh he he can travel to and from whenever he wants. And my mum's retired now. So they come out here at least three times a year, which has been really nice. When I was in college, it wasn't doable um financially or time-wise, but now I get to see him a lot more.

SPEAKER_02:

So we're making up for lost time, you know. That's great. So you come to Boise State. Um what what talk I I know you had the connection you just talked about, but but isn't it interesting the Boise State brand? Yeah, even back then, um, for a kid in England. Did you know who Boise State was? What what did you know of that?

SPEAKER_00:

I mean, it's it's probably the same story a lot of people that live in Boise, you know, um have. I first heard of Boise in from the 2007 Fiesta Ball. It was New Year's Eve, I think it was back in England. It'd already gone past New Year's because obviously, you know, we're seven hours ahead, at least of uh mountain time. And uh yeah, that was the first time I saw him play, and I was hooked ever since. So I followed Boise State every game, I didn't miss a single game from then. Yeah, incredible. And I never I didn't even play football at the time, 2007. I didn't even play football, I was just watching it on TV. So yeah, I mean, it yeah, it was just crazy how it works out, you know?

SPEAKER_02:

You talk about the value of, you know, the there's a lot of like, you know, catchphrases out there, like it's the front porch of the state. It's you know it is, man, and it's an international brand. Jeremiah will say that all the time. It's an international brand. It is, it's known everywhere.

SPEAKER_00:

You can go to, I mean, you uh every once in a while, I have friends back home in England that will say, I saw someone in London or Bristol or you know, any of the cities in England, I saw someone wearing something from Boise State. They recognize the blue and orange right away. And then there's people you can talk to um back home that are you know football adjacent and even big football fans, but when you say Boise, they go that's a blue field. That's that's the synonymous thing, the blue field. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Um, so Coach Pete was your coach. Yeah. What was that like?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, two years of Coach Pete, three years of Coach Haas. It was great, two different types of coaches. Coach Pete was uh the last two years of his career at Boise State. Um and it was, I'll be honest, it was kind of weird um the first couple years because here's a coach I'd watched on TV since a kid, and he's you know, he's he he's one of the best coaches of all time. I mean, truly. And for them that to now be your coach, it was kind of a surreal experience. It I never quite actually figured it out. It's kind of a weird thing that this is my coach, the guy that's been on TV for you know all these years, you know. Yeah, it was good guy, right? Great guy, genuine guy, yeah, really good guy.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, yeah, it's it's been fun to watch him stay so connected to the program and now with his role on Fox and you know all all the stuff he does. He's just an incredible guy.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh yeah, my face lights up every time I see him. I forget every Saturday.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, it's Coach Pete every time, you know. That's awesome. And so you played uh played for Boy State, um some great experiences. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Uh ended up uh starting defensive end, right? Yeah, so played uh we have uh it's similar now. Um we had a 3-4 and 4-3, so depending on the formation, I either played three tech, which is D tackle, in a in a four-three, or I played D-end in a three-four. Um, so yeah, I went from I mean literally fist string coming in, didn't know my head from my my butt. Um, to yeah, starting, I started, I think, I think it was like 16 games in total. Um, contributed obviously on D-line, you rotate a lot. So I played in like 48 games or something in my career. So yeah, went from nothing to something, I think. That's awesome. What's your mom most memorable experience of those games, those years? Do you know what I get asked is every once in a while. A lot of people uh naturally gravitate towards saying, oh, the fiesta ball, but this is gonna sound corny, it's not actually any of the games, it's actually the experiences. Like just the day-to-day of being in an environment like that, um, where you're achieving at a high level when everyone's bought in. I can't just say that it was one particular memory, one particular game. It was the overall experience of the things it instilled in me, which has helped me to today. I mean, I know it's kind of cliche, but I I can't give you one one definite thing, you know? That's an awesome answer.

SPEAKER_02:

Um, and and you think about the value of learning team, the your role on a team, your responsibility, the culture. I mean, they're all buzzwords, and in the business world, it's the same thing, right? How do you build a team? How do you build a culture? How do you motivate people on days when they don't want to be motivated? I mean, there's a lot of lessons that can be extrapolated from what you learned from and um are you finding that even still? Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

You're still a young guy, but I mean Yeah, so it was um when we started to build our team out and our brokerage out um a few years back, there was a light bulb moment for me. And it took a while to get there, but I realized everything that I'd done in football and athletics was building me to build a team in the real world. And and 90% of it is applicable, it's just a different game you're playing now.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

And when my when that light bulb moment clicked and I was able to start building a team the same way a football team would build a team, it all started to make sense. Um, a lot of guys go through the program or go through college athletics in general, and they don't get the full experience. And by that I don't mean like playing um, you know, winning games, but actually taking the lessons you learn from that team atmosphere and applying it to your actual life, you know, the the next version of you, which is gonna be hopefully 60, 70 years if you if you treat your body right.

SPEAKER_02:

So yeah. Well, and and and that's that's where you all of a sudden start seeing the value of mentorship, value of lessons, those those locker room talks, the the the the doing something hard when you don't want to do it, right? I mean it's uh there's so many great uh great lessons that are learned. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Um how was Harzan compared to different, different in in in in the best way to me. So Harson's a lot more polarizing for a lot of fans and and players to an extent. Um I got along with Harson really well. I actually grabbed breakfast with him like last year to catch up before we got this uh this cow job. Um Harson was a lot more um I don't know direct is the wrong word. I can't if you know if you know coaches, you know the different styles, you know the different types. Um was a little bit more direct in some ways. Um and I think for some people that maybe weren't great with authority, that could rub them the wrong way sometimes. They get in trouble and then they would get that kind of victim mentality. Well, why me? I was always I was a little bit older, I was gray shirted and red-shirted. I understood that like my time here is finite, I have a job to do, he's the boss, I'm gonna do my job. And I always got along well, never got in trouble, was never late to anything. I just got my role. Like, I'm 20, 22, 23 years old, shut up to your job and go to work. Yeah, you know?

SPEAKER_02:

No, that's great. That's some really good, yeah, some good words there. That's great. Well, he he was a great coach, and I think he's probably getting another head coaching job here. So I hope so.

SPEAKER_00:

I I really hope so. Yeah, I I I whenever I hear fans talk, oh, I don't really like Carson, I got nothing ill to say. I I love Coach House personally. That's awesome. So, so did you always know you were gonna do real estate? Uh no, I I can't say I I always knew it. No, I mean college, I kind of uh we toured houses like rental-wise, and um I think one of the people I ran into that was like showing us, even though it doesn't happen much in our market, was a real estate agent. I got talking and I was like, oh, you can make how much money doing this? So I'd heard about it in college a little bit, I always thought back in my head, oh, it's kind of a cool idea. But I actually uh I worked for Lyle Pearson, the local dealership. I I worked for the Mercedes and Porsche brands out of college. That was kind of the first thing I went into. So real estate wasn't at the forefront of my mind. No, not starting out at least.

SPEAKER_02:

What did you do over there?

SPEAKER_00:

Uh over at Lyle Pearson. Um, yeah, so I was I was I graduated in 2016.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Um, I my senior thesis, my senior paper, or capstone or whatever you want to call it, was on luxury sales. So I went and interviewed Bob Hampton that worked for the Rackro dealership over there because he was a connection I had through a classmate. So I'm interviewing him to put my sources together. And uh Bob Bob says after the interview, and I interviewed a bunch of sales guys there. He goes, What are you doing after football? And this was October of 2016, my so I only had like two months left. And I said, Well, I know I don't want to go to the NFL, I know I don't want to play football, my body hurts, I don't want to play rugby, I had opportunities there too. Um, I don't really know. And he goes, Well, you you're charismatic, you're obviously well, he said this, these aren't my words, he said you're intelligent. I was like, Okay, cool. Uh, you ever thought about sales? And I was like, I mean, kind of. I've always been kind of an entrepreneur mindset. Anyway, a couple days later, I get a call from the GM through Bob, and he says, Hey, we want to interview you for a sales job. So go and interview. Um, and it was for the Mercedes and Porsche brand, and they kind of offered me on the spot, and I was like, That's this is awesome. Um, but I I still have got two months of football left. They go, okay, we'll hold the job for you. When can you start? And I said, Well, second week of January. So finished that game against uh Baylor, they blew us out on the cactus bowl, took a week off to get my wisdom teeth out because that was the only time I had outside of the season and went straight to work. So I went straight to work for Porsche and Mercedes for two years.

SPEAKER_02:

So what did you learn through that experience?

SPEAKER_00:

A lot, a lot. Um, I mean, I was cutting teeth, you know, negotiation-wise and deal-wise. I mean, so Porsche and Mercedes are two of the most prestigious brands in the world. I mean, in the world, period, let alone in the car industry, especially with Porsche. So I was cutting my teeth and getting to know very influential people in town, um, doctors, attorneys, surgeons, developers, real estate agents, which kind of helped segue towards that. Um, very successful business people. Um, I learned how to communicate with people that were much older than me and relate to them on a level that, you know, they they didn't see me as a young kid. It was uh it was their equal. Um, obviously, perseverance and and work ethic. I mean, that's hard sales. It's not door-to-door, but you're the sales.

SPEAKER_02:

I just want to say what a what a great first job right out.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, the sales cycle is short when it comes to the car business. Um, a little bit less so with some of the orders, you know, Porsche, the customer order vehicles sometimes. Um, but I think more than just the sales process, which I think I naturally excelled at, it was the ability to um relate to people and make them feel comfortable, you know.

SPEAKER_02:

Did you ever know Mark Marlin over there?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, yeah. So Marlin started after me. Yeah. Um but Marlon, yeah, Marlin did. J. For Peterson, right? Yeah, I think he did. Yeah. So Sean Ferguson over there was uh like he's he's I think he's the Porsche sales manager now. Mark Marlon's been my guy for a long time. Yeah, that was Sean's the only guy left there that was in the sales for that. But Marlon's awesome. I I always see Marlon when I jump in and go see him better.

SPEAKER_02:

It's incredible. So so let's talk real estate. This is exciting. So you you get in real estate, you know, have your brokerage, and then I want to get into the the meat of like you've you've you've you've done a great job, man. You're like everywhere.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I've got a long way to go still. Yeah. So I uh I kind of I woke up one day and decided, hey, obviously you're good at selling cars. Um I was out of the 20 salespeople, I finished second in our dealership my first year. So I was like, all right, across like all the different brands. So all right, I've got something here. I remember meeting with our GM and I kind of was asking him, hey, what's the career trajectory here? Um and he's like, you know, if you do five to seven more years of sales, you could become a sales manager and then you could become a GM, then a C level, and you can maybe own something, but to get to like the C level, you know, it could be a 20-plus-year career. And I was like, I I don't want to wait around to figure out what that looks like. And in the meantime, as I mentioned previously, I was meeting with real estate developers, agents, um, builders, and I was like, there's something here, entrepreneur-wise. Real estate can be whatever you want. So I kind of quit cold turkey from the dealership um in July of 2018. So I'm gonna go get my real estate license. My wife thought I was insane because I was I left a you know a straight off school, a six-figure job to go and get my real estate license. And I was gonna create a real estate business, I didn't know what it was gonna be. Um, became an agent, um, and I I was really ignorant. I mean, this is me at 25, and I realized how ignorant I was. I had maybe three months of savings. Um, easy come, easy go when you're younger. I had three months of savings, and I'm like, all right, it's fine, I'm gonna sling million-dollar homes every other week. It's just like selling cars off the off the floor. And I went nine months without selling anything. So here I am, broke, had debt. I was driving Uber while my wife was in law school just to make ends meet, didn't sell anything for nine months. And the week before I was gonna quit real estate, um I the very first person from my very first open house called me up, remembered me, asked me if I'd help them out, and we got that first deal done, and then I sold 27 homes that first nine months of actually selling full-time. So yeah, it was a crazy, crazy ride. Almost fell off the cliff though, it was close.

SPEAKER_02:

It's uh isn't it? I I love this story because um you learn so much through sales.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

And I think of uh I think of the jobs that I've had that have kind of trained me to do what I needed to do, it was it was those jobs where I needed every nickel because I was so poor, I I had to have it. And it was these sales jobs that like you go into. Uh I'll tell you a funny story. So when I was in I was in medical school and I I just didn't want to take out any debt. I just you know, I just thought, yeah, if I get just if I get too burdened with that right now, it's just gonna change down the road. So I I really worked hard. I I worked as a phlebotomist doing night shifts or drawing blood, and I I worked in a research lab uh doing research on uh animal research for pediatric department. And then my uncle had an engraver and uh he could engraved uh plaques for trophies and he just he bought it on the side uh just to do some some stuff and I'm like, man, would you let me use this thing?

SPEAKER_00:

Because I was thinking if I'm an entrepreneur mindset.

SPEAKER_02:

I was thinking if I could, if I could go door to door and sell trophies, I I just wanted something that would give me some recurring revenue, right? And I and so man, I just I made up a bunch of trophies in his garage and I started putting them in a bag and I started going around to every every little like baseball league and high school and gym. But but you you find out everyone needs trophies, like like especially in the world we live in, every everyone gets everyone. Everyone gets participation territory and everyone needs gratification. So yeah. And uh but that's what I did. I I all the way through medical school, I did uh they did trophy sales, but I remember sitting in those calls, uh, those cold calls with people and just thinking, man, if I can't, and I do the math in my head, I'd be like, okay, if they order this many, I I can make 400 bucks in one time. And and it's some of the best hard stuff too. But and then you get it and you're like, oh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna I'm gonna survive till the next one. I think it's so valuable to do stuff like that. It's hard.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, being able to take rejection and being able to push yourself out of your comfort zone. Like we're talking about sports before, right? I mean, that's why, honestly, it may sound crazy, it's easy. When you think about the physical stuff you put yourself through in athletics, you learn and you learn from it.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, yeah. I mean, the the learning curve, it there's nothing like uh there's nothing like forced learning on you because you have to to survive.

SPEAKER_00:

Literally have to pay your bills.

SPEAKER_02:

You walk out of that bit meeting, go, okay, that one didn't go well, but here's how I'm gonna shape it next time. And I think of now my life and you know the other, I'll tell you another quick story. Yeah, yeah. When I got right out of residency, I started a company called Stat Pads. And it was um, it was uh it was back when uh automated external defibrillators were new, AEDs. Oh, yeah. And they started they started putting them into golf courses and everywhere else around. But most states had um regulation where you had to have a doctor write your prescription, you had to have oversight. So we wrote some software, which is crazy now to think about software in the year 2000. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. 25 years ago, what software meant then and what software means now. And then we we thought, well, we'll just get our license in all the states and we'll become the go-to for people that need oversight of their AED programs. So then um, then I was sitting there one day and I'm like, well, what if I what if I attached myself, my my my service to someone that already sells thousands of these things? So I went, I got on a plane, again, just crazy and naive, put my suit on, and I put my little bag, and I made, I remember printing off my own like brochures, and I went back to Cintos corporate headquarters in Columbus, uh, Ohio. And I land, I go, and I'll never forget, because I go by myself and I'm there on my my suit, and I and the guy comes down to get me, and they were very formal company, and he takes me up, and and we're I'm hitting it off. I'm I'm selling this thing like crazy. And and he's like, Hey, I think this is a great idea. I think we want to use you guys. And and and I said, Well, that's great. How many, how many EDs do you sell here? And the number was crazy. It was like it's like 20,000. I'm like, so I'm doing the math in my head, and I'm like, Oh, I got this thing. Count the commission. So I leave. It's a great story. So I leave and he uh he calls me and he says, Hey, we really like you. I think we're gonna choose you. This is gonna be a great long-term relationship. We just want to come out to Boise and visit your corporate office. And uh, and once we once we kind of check that box, so it's funny now because the guy worked for me, but I call Mark Cleverly, who now works for me. He was a he was a real estate guy at T OK, and I said, Hey Mark, I said, I gotta find it, I gotta find an office like now. And and so he found me this, the cheapest office that I could go month to month on.

SPEAKER_03:

Yep.

SPEAKER_02:

And then we like hurried and made our logo, put it on the wall. We actually hired some people to show up like they were working there, and this guy comes to town and and we took him around. But I but I think about uh I don't know, you think about some of those experiences you learn so much through sales, and it and it extrapolates into every part of your life, right? How do you interact with someone? How do you build trust? How do you resolve concerns? And how do you land deals? How do you put deals together? There's an art to it. And um, so I think it's it's a fascinating story that you went straight to cars.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, expectations and communication setting. Yeah, expectation setting and communication is that's that's sales.

SPEAKER_02:

That's smart. Yeah. So you sell 27 and then it's just been a rocket ship from there, right?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, yeah. So um, yeah, sold 27 homes the first year, um, started the next year and uh realized all right, if I'm gonna I'm gonna have to scale basically. I was a single solo agent, so towards the end of that year, I hired my first assistant just to help. I didn't know what I was doing. I mean, leading in football and leading in sports is different to leading in the business world. So I learned a lot of lessons in in that kind of that that time frame. Next year, ended up, I think, selling 57 total with an assistant, then built out a team, so I ended up getting another agent to help me out with showings and then someone to help with marketing. I think we were like 70 something that year. Um, and after that, that was essentially my third year, and I was at another brokerage uh on my own, just you know, with my team. Um towards the end of that year, it was 2021. I decided, hey, I'm I'm gonna scale this and do it on my own. So got my broker's license. Um, and we were called the Hoyt group back then, um, and just wanted to branch away so we had complete autonomy. So I called the short too. I wanted to do scale over time and see what happens. Um ended up doing similar numbers the next year. That was when interest rates really spiked back in like cutting into 2022. So things were uh things weren't easy. We still did an incredible job, things weren't easy. Had a team of like five at the time back in 2022, um, and kind of made the decision, okay. I got to 2022, end of 2022, and I realized that I was limited by my time. Um, I was as an agent, I was limited by my time. If I wanted to scale, I had to get more people. And also I was I had this team of five people, but they were all answering to me. And I read the book Traction by Gino Wickman. I'm sure anyone that's into business has heard of it before. You talk about integrators and visionaries. That's when I realized, okay, I'm a visionary. I need to get an integrator. So I hired my now still uh COO Ruben, who helped me integrate and actually build the business and build the brokerage. Um so we went from five to now, I think we're at 36 total as of right now, including independent contractors and then 14 full-time employees on my staff. So that's been like in a three-year time period, essentially. So yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

I think it's incredibly insightful that you you well, you were educating yourself, which is one of the things we talk a lot about in this podcast, is there's like this never-ending, you never arrive, right? You just keep learning and learning and learning. But that you would realize, hey, what are my weaknesses and how do I how do I complement those weaknesses with someone else's strength? It's key early uh early lesson.

SPEAKER_00:

You have to kill your ego. Um, and and and and you know this because you're in the business. Real estate has some of the highest ego in any industry, um, aside from maybe athletics. Um so I had to learn from other people's mistakes, and I had to learn to kill my ego and submit to the fact that I don't know everything, and that the best way to get to where you want to get to isn't isn't how, it's it's who, basically. It's it's who can help you get there. Um, so yeah, we we now have uh myself. I'm I hate using the word CEO because every agent gets uh gets their license, starts an LLC and says they're a CEO. I have to call myself a CEO. I say founder, strategic leader, whatever you want to call it. Um I still do sell and work with clients, um, you know, referral basis, you know, high net worth clients, typically speaking. Um I have my COO, Ruben, I have my CMO, Brandon, I have a designated broker, Jessica. Um we have a marketing manager, we have a creative producer, um, we have a web developer, we have a whole marketing agency in-house. Then we have my team, I have a VP of sales mic who does a lot of new construction stuff, two agents within my team, and then everyone else, really other than the other staff members, are all independent contractors. So we have a lot of agents who run their own business under us.

SPEAKER_02:

So uh where I why why you're you know you're out there and and is the your your social media is just on fire. Yeah. So talk about the creative juice behind that. Where does that come from? And tell us a little bit more.

SPEAKER_00:

I can take little credit for it. Um at the end of the day, I just I say this like it's it's genuine content we put out, and I think it has value, but I'm an actor at the end of the day when I look at it. It's all the team that I put together. Brandon, our CMO, is a genius. And and when Brandon joined us um back in uh full-time role, at least back in May of last year, I came to him with the idea and I was like, we need to really lean into the content side of stuff and just leave with value. We'll figure out the funnel behind it, we'll figure out how we'll make money from it, but we need to get impressions and we need to lead with value. So we sat down and started figuring out editorial calendars, so figuring out okay, how are we gonna put together an editorial calendar? What is our pillar of content's gonna be? What problems are we gonna solve for people? So we just made it hyper-local information that was adjacent to real estate, either directly with real estate or adjacent, you know, adjacent stuff that brings value. And I had like 9,000 followers back then anyway, partly due with Boise State football, and also people follow me because of the car business. So it wasn't like we started with nothing, but um, yeah, we've over doubled that following. We're almost at 20,000 followers on my personal. We took THG, the brokerage's account from a thousand to almost 10,000 now. Um, and we grew it by almost double in that time frame, and we're getting, on average, anywhere from one to two million views every 30 days, and it's all hyperlocal, it's like 60 to 70 percent in Ada and Kenyon County.

SPEAKER_02:

Can you think of anything better selling real estate than having that connection?

SPEAKER_00:

It's it's solid. And and as my position you know evolves, and like I said, I still do work with clients, but where it's really helped um on the development side is I mean, we sat down with developers that have decided to go with us on a project because they know the reach we can get through my credibility and also agents too. Like we do recruit other agents so they understand, hey, when you come to THG, you get the same resources within within reason. So yeah, it's been reach is huge.

SPEAKER_02:

Fantastic. Well, it's been it's been it's been fun to watch happen. Uh, with with what you've got going on and your finger on the pulse of this place, what what are you thinking about growth and where we're headed? Yeah, give us give us your take on on the market.

SPEAKER_00:

This is probably the first time if anyone's watching this, I've shared an opinion because normally I keep it down the line, not down the middle, because I get abuse and death threats and all kinds of things being the messenger of just development. Look, you're not gonna stop growth. I mean, you know this. You're not gonna stop growth. So why don't we just be responsible leaders and grow responsibly and be at the forefront of it and be able to provide solutions that, yeah, we're not gonna stop growth, but would you rather have some crook doing it? Would you have rather have credible people at the forefront bringing value and trying to do it the right way, you know? Just being honest. Like that's the first time afraid shared an opinion. I I get change is hard. Um, I moved to Boise in 2012 and it wasn't anything like it is now. And you know, I've got family, you know, married into family that have lived here their whole lives where Meridian, like we've literally sat in a field, as you know, was just fields. So I get change is hard. Um, but you have to learn to try and find the calmness in that change. And like people are angry because Boise is not the same way it used to be. I do understand that, but at the end of the day, you can't stop it. So how are you gonna how are you gonna benefit from it, you know?

SPEAKER_02:

What are the big factors you think that are uh are leading to our growth in the valley?

SPEAKER_00:

Being at the forefront, or at least having been in the forefront for the last three or four years, I would say a large amount of it is political and lifestyle.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Um politics is not something I normally touch. So you're the first person that's ever sit down with me on any type of camera to even have this discussion. Um but there's obviously a huge political driver. Um this is quite a conservative state, um, and there's a lot of people that live in other states aren't conservative that don't really want to be there anymore because the policy um doesn't fit with their lifestyle. Um any um pardon me, 90 plus percent of anyone I've worked with is relocated here in the past five years, they've all been conservative Californians from Oregon, Washington. Um so this this kind of narrative that everyone moving from out of state are bringing this liberal agenda or whatever, I don't think it could be further from the truth. I agree with you. If I'm being brutally honest, you know. I agree with you.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, and and and again, we you you talk to people that are moving here, why wouldn't you, right?

SPEAKER_00:

Um Yeah, politics aside, the lifestyle.

SPEAKER_02:

I mean you look at you look at all the things we've known that are here. Uh, you know, we have a the climate is great. The four seasons are great. I mean, look at Halloween night tonight, it's gorgeous out there. Yeah. Um you you look at uh you look at the mountains and the beauty and the proximity to all the outdoor stuff and hunting and fishing and recreation and all of that. And then and then you start talking about arts. I mean, we have an incredible arts community here, uh, if you're into that. Uh you got you know, and then you got the university, which you know that the the the growth of the explosive growth of Boise State and coming across a river and becoming kind of the urban university in a town that's beautiful, that people want to live in, that's clean and safe. There's a lot of reasons to be here.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, yeah. And it's not, it doesn't, I mean, you would have more of a take on this than me, because you've been here longer, but I I haven't, although Boise has changed, I haven't seen it negatively change in direct comparison to the growth. Typically, when you see growth happen exponentially, um, you see, you know, the crime increase exponentially as well. I would agree with that 100%. But it's like a case study for other cities' growth because Boise hasn't the bad stuff hasn't come with it at the same pace that other places have.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I do think there's a tremendous amount of work being done by our our local leaders on homelessness, on you know, our biggest problems, infrastructure, those sort of things. I think we're trying. So, you know, it's kind of like do we ever get caught by it? And and I think there are some big challenges with infrastructure that are that are gonna probably rear their ugly heads soon. Um, you know, housing costs. Uh that's what that's what everyone talks about right now. Talk about that. Talk about supply and demand right now. Give us some insight.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So, I mean, I won't go into like just you know random days on market numbers. Numbers themselves don't mean anything without context, right? Um, I can give some anecdotes and we can talk a little bit about kind of what we've seen in the past is to where we're at right now. Obviously, with what happened during COVID, there's a there's a big boom, everything went crazy, interest rates are super low, you had a lot mass migration, money was basically free in comparison to what it is today, which meant there was a lot of inflation of pricing because supply and demand simple. There was very little supply and a ton of demand. Now that's changed, it's very much juxtaposed. Um, it's not a full buyer's market, even if you look at the data as far as what is on supply. And I'm talking about the Boise metro area, not any of the states, obviously. Um, but there is a significant increase in inventory. There's less buyers out there, uh, which means we know we're seeing a lot slower churn rate when it comes to inventory. But the the the the thing is pricing hasn't dropped significantly in this time period. And a lot of that, you know, I I talk to people all the time um that say, you know, is a crash coming? Do you see a crash coming? Because pricing's been high and this happened in 2008. Well, what happened in 2008 was very, very different. Yeah, we didn't have interest rates that were 2.5%. So bear with me on this. But the way I look at it from a residential perspective, there's people stuck in homes, right, that can more than afford the payment. So they're not going to sell, and you have to sell to reset the market. So if people can afford their payment, even if the economy isn't that great, you don't have the opportunity to have that event where the market resets, which is why pricing doesn't come down. So I don't see things might come down in ebb and flow, but they're never, I I don't see it crashing. Maybe I just don't see that happening.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I I I 100% agree with you. I do what's your take on the inventory question? Because I have heard, and that this is just rumor and from people that have said, hey, have you heard? Um, that there that one of the things that's happening is a lot of builders, national builders, um, are are have more inventory than that's on the MLS right now. So there's actually shadow inventory that is even higher whether where they're trying not to flood the market and cause I'm not talking about crash, but I think they kind of can, it's kind of like setting the prices where they're dripping them out instead of dropping them down by putting even more out. Is that something you're saying?

SPEAKER_00:

For sure. I mean, a lot of the a lot of the national builders or even you know some of the more local big builders, the big names, um, they're able to control the inventory to an extent because their carry costs aren't as as high as you know, the small medium developers. Small medium developers and builders, you're carrying pretty big paper on those, on those lots, on those projects. So you have to move velocity, which means sometimes you're forced to sell because you have to have that event. Whereas the bigger builders, they can sit on inventory a little bit longer. They have the economies of scale on production, um, they can push things out slowly over time and kind of slow the bleeding, so to speak. So there is a lot out there. I mean, it just I have lots of different softwares I look at and I can see you know what plats are being pulled and what's going on. And there's a lot of you know, ghost inventory out there as far as you know the future development of the next couple of years that there's plats that have been approved that are just selling because they don't need to sell them. Um so there is there's a lot of inventory out there that people don't know about. It's just builders are being or developers being responsible. Whereas in 2008, yeah, people were just blowing stuff out. And I was I wasn't even I was a kid back then, but I educated myself back in the day. From everything I understand, builders and developers were just blowing inventory out, and then all of a sudden you get caught out in the wind and there's no place to hide. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

I think that's where you're yeah, it it seems like forever ago now, but it was not that long ago. And and uh yeah, but I I I I agree with everything you said, and I'm not in the in it the day-to-day, but I think you're you're spot on. Um for for for the you know, I think supply, demand, you know, just the normal pressures on uh on the economy are going to allow us to get out of this, I think. Because I think you are gonna have I've we follow those plots too. Yeah, there's a lot of them out there. There's gonna be more inventory, it's gonna start going. I think interest rates just went down a little bit last week, and they're gonna go down one more time. Um, do you do you see that we're gonna start having more absorption?

SPEAKER_00:

I hope so. If I had a crystal wall, I wouldn't be here. Yeah. I hope so. I mean, it one of the things that people don't understand, just the general public, is they hear interest rates drop the Federal Reserve, and then they equate Federal Reserve to mortgage rates, but that they're not directly correlated. It's obviously based off of bonds, not off of the Federal Reserve. But with the Federal Reserve dropping rates, it means money's more affordable in general, which boosts the economy. So it kind of has a back, you know, it has a backlog effect essentially. Um here's how I look at it, Tommy. People have been stuck in their homes in the residential side. I'm talking about residential strictly. Commercial is the whole other story, but residential people have been stuck in their homes now for you know a three, heading on towards a four-year higher interest rate environment. At a certain point, there's two types of people here that fall into these two types of buckets. You have people that just can't afford it because the interest rate is too high for them to make the upgrade to the next step. And then you have the other people who can afford it, but principally they're like, well, I have a two and a half, three percent interest rate, I'm not gonna move. Either one of those, depending on what the pain point is, especially the bucket where they can afford it, eventually living in a situation residentially that no longer fits your wants, needs, and desires, that pain outweighs the pain of making a payment that's higher. So I just think we have a back, we have a backlog of sales. I track numbers pretty heavily. And we have, on essence, uh, since the last three years, we have about, we we typically speaking in RMLS do anywhere from 25 to 25 to 28,000 transactions per year. We're almost 30,000 transactions latent over the last three years, which means we have about 30,000 transactions that didn't happen in the last three to four years. That's a backlog of stuff that's gonna have to blow eventually. And that's not accounting the fact we've grown so much in three to four years. There's probably even more than that. So I'm I'm cautiously optimistic, cautiously optimistic. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, you I think you listen, you're a smart guy. You I think you're spot on it anecdotally. Again, I think it's anecdotal, but my daughter's in that situation with her little family. I mean, she little teeny starter home now has three kids, been kind of sitting around saying, Hey, we need to, we need to go and finally just just went. Yeah are there is our interest rate gonna be a little bit higher? Yeah, but they're not, you know, they're not hit, they're not anywhere near where they've been in the past. I mean, they're still at six.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, yeah. You look at you look back in the day, and this is long before I was, you know, around really, but um, you know, the interest rates were in the double digits for a long time. Yeah. And and that was normal. And I know that pricing itself is obviously much higher too, but you just look at it historically, it's not as bad as people maybe think it is, you know.

SPEAKER_02:

I I think you're right. I think it's gonna uh I think it's gonna go. Um let's look up your uh so how do people follow you?

SPEAKER_00:

Uh Instagram's the best way to start a platform, yeah. So so Elliot E-L-L-I-O-T underscore H O Y T E Elliot Hoyt. That's that's the best place to find me.

SPEAKER_02:

Uh you do a lot of great stuff on the community too. I mean, I mean you're real you're I I get the like whoever's uh if it's not you, whoever your branding guy is, it's really, really good because it's our team, yeah. Because even though it's ultimately it's gonna get you people that are gonna come to you for a new home, it's a lot of great community stuff, a lot of big stories about what's out there, and then the way you present it is really, really good.

SPEAKER_00:

Is that you? Yeah, that's all me. Um as far as the the scripting, I I write all the scripts. Um our team helps source information, whether it's like news articles, whether it's um you know, going to P and Z and seeing what's being what's happening. Yeah, we do kind of a team effort to curate it, but I actually write all the scripts, so I get no script help. The scripts are all done by me. So I spend people will be surprised actually how little time it takes relative, because we built a machine now. I'm probably spending six to seven hours per month creating content. And we're posting almost every day. That's it. Six to seven hours per month. It's not that much at all.

SPEAKER_02:

And don't you think that's one of the one of the uh um myths of people that understand social media is if it if you're really efficient at how you create your content and how you make those clips and how you use them and you have the right team, can be very effective.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh yeah, 100%. It's it's we have a whole system and a whole machine. So I know that Ainsley, who's our project manager, she will set in my calendar a deadline for me to have X amount of scripts. She can say, Okay, I need five new development scripts, I need three business scripts. This is your day to have them done. I'll spend a couple hours, you know, scripting them out, um, give them to Will, our creative producer. So Will knows what he's about to film, so he knows how to edit. Then I sit down, um, come in on film day for it's like an hour normally. We can rip out a video every two minutes so we can move quick. So we'll we'll load it into teleprompter at teleprompted, or sometimes we do other produce uh other produced stuff, throw it up, get behind the camera, rip it out. We'll we already have the studio set up in our conference room. We'll uh we'll take the studio down, we'll then go, he'll go sit down, edit, and then he puts into through Dropbox on my calendar um each for each day I'm gonna post. I just go in there, pull the URL, download it, stick it in, pick the captions, off I go. It's all done by us. Like, like, although I have a team behind it, it there's only really two or three of us that are really in it heavily day to day. And we've managed to match produce this and we can scale. I mean, I could if we were doing this full time, Tommy, like this was the only thing we did, we could create years. I'm not kidding, we could create years of content in a month. Years easily. It's awesome. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, it's I think it's good for people, it's so effective too, right? I mean, like you said, now now people are recognizing it.

SPEAKER_00:

It's it's weird, man. Like, I'm not gonna lie, it's I mean, I played football at Boise State and I I wasn't like a star player, but people knew who I was. It's 25 times what it was. If I I literally cannot go anywhere, like coffee shops, wherever it is, like I'll be sat down and people will just come over and say, Hey, can I chat or can I grab a picture? Like, I I I've never met someone out in the wild before. And I'm like, I'm just a regular guy. I'm the most boring regular dude ever. So yeah, it's it's like uh I'm my ego's not big enough to allow me to say it, I guess, but it's kind of like a micro fame. It's a weird, weird deal. But it opens up conversation.

SPEAKER_02:

But the other thing it's gonna do too is once it gets going, it keeps going, right? Once you find people that bring value and content that you want to see, you're gonna watch it more. And and then it just this thing grows on itself. And good for you because if you're mirroring, you're mirroring your scaling in your business, it's it's brilliant. It really is really cool to watch.

SPEAKER_00:

The most important thing for me is is leading with value. Like that's all a lot of the content we do. There's not really there's that we have a we have a cadence, there's not very many calls to action, so to speak, because we just want to bring value. If you lead with value and you you do something a little bit different, people you're rewarded in the end. And and I hate to say it, and I'll probably get flamed for this. If you go and look at a lot of real estate agents' content, it's so it's all self-conflated, it's all about them, it's all about ego. I I don't I don't want to do that. I want to lead with value and and and and and just put some good stuff out there. I don't want it to be all about me. Like, yeah, I know it's but I'm the person behind it and I'm the the visual, you know, it's kind of interesting. It's brilliant, but it's just not that's not me, you know.

SPEAKER_02:

It's brilliant. What's next?

SPEAKER_00:

I I hate I love and hate that question so much. I mean, we have so many opportunities, especially with the growth on social media. There's a lot of people that want to do lots of different stuff with us and me and my team. Um, the biggest thing really is growing our brokerage, continuing to bring on good agents and teams. That's a that's a big one. Um, and then on the content creation side, um we have some opportunities here working on some of our own podcast stuff to really have a bigger reach from the real estate kind of community across the country to start bringing trainings and value to other agents, teams, and brokerages so we can really help you know elevate the industry by providing education, um, how to do content the way we've done it. Just anything I can do, really, from an educational standpoint, to help other agents grow their business and help people do it responsibly. That's the next calling for me, you know.

SPEAKER_02:

Fantastic. You're an inspiring dude, man. Thanks, man. This is like uh it's been great. Uh congratulations on your success.

SPEAKER_00:

And you, man, you're the one with the building at the side of I84. I'm trying to get to that level somehow.

SPEAKER_02:

So oh, you will. You will. Um, well, we appreciate all you do for the community. You're you're an authentic dude, man. There's no again, you you meet guys like you, and there's a reason you're successful. It's because it's genuine, it's authentic, you're in it for the right reasons, and and yeah, you follow your heart and it happens. So thank you. Congratulations. Thanks, man. Thank you. Thanks, everybody.