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Guest Bio: Justin Acker is the owner of The Acker Group with Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices, serving the Denver and Highlands Ranch markets. He bought his first home with his mother at eighteen, later moved into full-time real estate in 2012, and has since built a deliberately sized seventeen-agent team built on accountability and repeat referral business.

Episode Summary: Justin Acker traces his path from buying a home with his mother as a teenager to building a disciplined, accountability-driven real estate team in Denver. He unpacks how structured one-on-ones, CRM discipline, and honest client advice keep his business consistent, and why he intentionally keeps his team smaller than it could be.

What's Covered:

• Justin explains how buying his first home with his mother at eighteen sparked his early fascination with real estate and wealth-building through homeownership, even though he didn't pursue it as a career until years later
• He describes converting Zillow lead leftovers at a 10 to 13 percent clip early in his career by grinding on follow-up that his mentors weren't doing themselves
• Justin breaks down his accountability system, including biweekly and weekly one-on-ones built around six line items covering current deals, call logs, and CRM smart lists
• He discusses Zillow's quarterly lost transactions report and how reviewing missed opportunities keeps his team honest about where follow-up breaks down
• Justin shares a mentor's framing that accountability is the greatest form of love for agents, and why he intentionally caps his team at seventeen agents instead of scaling to forty
• He talks through where AI is helping and still glitching in his business, from building weekly team decks to experimenting with AI-driven outbound calling

Timestamps:

00:00 - Introducing Justin Acker and the Acker Group

01:16 - Buying his first home with his mom at eighteen

03:48 - Moving to Colorado and getting into real estate full time

05:33 - Converting leftover leads at a 10 to 13 percent clip

06:43 - Deciding to build a team instead of just his own production

09:10 - Systems and one-on-one accountability structure

12:33 - Zillow's lost transactions report and missed opportunities

19:51 - Why accountability is the greatest form of love

22:15 - Experimenting with AI for outbound calls and marketing decks

29:18 - The work hard play even harder culture motto

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Guest Bio: Julie Busby is the founder of Busby Group at Compass in Chicago, a referral-driven team serving buyers, sellers, relocating professionals, and athletes. She built a successful real estate business in San Diego before relocating to Chicago in 2011, where she partnered her way to a number one ranking before launching her own brokerage.

Episode Summary: Julie Busby traces her path from a one woman San Diego business to a 25 year career leading a high-touch Chicago team built almost entirely on referrals and repeat clients. She explains how a dedicated client concierge, deep vendor relationships, and a collaborative team structure let her deliver white glove service without burning out her brokers or herself.

What's Covered:

• Julie describes shadowing a top-ranked San Diego agent early in her career and later offering free help to a top Chicago broker to rebuild her business from scratch after relocating in 2011
• She explains why she created a dedicated client concierge role to manage vendor relationships, prevent client confusion when multiple team members reach out, and give clients a buffer so agents can set boundaries after hours
• Julie details how she broke into working with relocating professionals and athletes after a chance listing connection, and why being prepared with building relationships ahead of time matters more than chasing that business reactively
• She shares that Busby Group runs on roughly 95 percent referrals and repeat clients with zero paid lead generation, relying instead on drip campaigns, client gifting, and staying in touch for years after closing
• Julie attributes her low team turnover to a collaborative structure where brokers fully back each other up on transactions, allowing team members to take extended vacations without losing commission or client trust
• She outlines a two-pronged approach to AI, using it internally to streamline systems like Dropbox and offer rough contractor estimates, while also investing in SEO and reviews so clients discover her team through AI-driven searches

Timestamps:

01:08 - Julie's early path from selling insurance to real estate in San Diego

02:41 - Rebuilding her business after moving from San Diego to Chicago

06:21 - The moment she realized she needed to build a team

09:12 - Why she created a dedicated client concierge role

13:47 - Building trust with relocating professionals and athlete clients

19:18 - Running a 95 percent referral business with no paid leads

22:28 - The collaborative team structure behind her low agent turnover

25:55 - How Busby Group is integrating AI while protecting client relationships

30:04 - Her top tactical advice for agents who want to double their business

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Guest Bio: Jason Farris is the founder of FresYes, a Fresno, California media brand built around storytelling about local people, food, and lifestyle rather than traditional real estate marketing. He leads FresYes Realty Group with roughly 80 agents under eXp, and serves as the 2026 president of the Fresno Association of Realtors. He also recently acquired the domain Fresno.com, which he is building into a community-wide directory and media platform.

Episode Summary: Jason Farris explains how he turned a quirky domain name into an 80,000-subscriber newsletter and a real estate business built on community storytelling rather than listings. He walks through the origin of FresYes, the lessons learned from Facebook and Twitter experiments, a jaw-dropping broker's open that used actors and horses to sell a stuck 20-acre property, and why he restructured his brokerage to put more money in his agents' pockets. He closes with blunt advice for agents who want to grow fast: find the inefficient, unscalable actions everyone else avoids.

What's Covered:

• How Jason went from running a youth entertainment rental company to land sales with his uncle to founding the hyperlocal brand FresYes.com, named after his old company's YES logo
• Why the FresYes newsletter hit over 80,000 subscribers with an 83 percent open rate, and the personal unsubscribe outreach and door-hanger campaign that built the list from scratch
• The story of staging a 20-acre horse property open house with hired actors, catering, and classic cars that sold the home the next day and led to 50 additional condo sales for the same client
• Why Jason broke up his traditional brokerage of 80 agents and moved everyone to Real Broker, giving agents large raises by cutting commission splits from 65 to 70 thousand dollars down to 12 to 15 thousand
• The strategic purchase of Fresno.com to build a community-wide directory and real estate search platform now launching, separate from the FresYes brand
• How Jason uses AI for offer analysis tools, digital staging, and calendar management while insisting the newsletter's opening and closing paragraphs stay 100 percent in his own voice
• His closing advice that real value lives in the inefficiencies, illustrated by an expired-listing experiment comparing letters, phone calls, and door knocks

Timestamps:

00:00:54 - Guest introduction and episode roadmap

01:27 - Jason's path from youth entertainment business to real estate

04:10 - Origin of the FresYes name and brand

07:17 - Building an 80,000-subscriber newsletter from door hangers

11:08 - Lesson learned losing subscribers to Facebook

20:00 - The 20-acre property broker's open with hired actors and horses

27:16 - Restructuring the brokerage and moving agents to Real Broker

37:01 - Buying Fresno.com and plans for the new platform

43:06 - How Jason uses AI tools while keeping his voice in the newsletter

45:20 - Tactical advice on doubling your business through in-person effort