S12 Bonus: Why Paper-Heavy Back-End Portals Fail Agents and the Rise of Client-Facing, Real-Time Transaction OS with Reannah Wyatt, Founder & CEO of The Real Time

[SPEAKER_01]: So I made a $45,000 mistake.

[SPEAKER_01]: My $45,000 mistake happened when I outsource some development.

[SPEAKER_01]: And that's why I'm very particular about not going overseas, just because I feel like for our product, it's so detailed oriented and you have to understand real estate in order to develop it.

[SPEAKER_01]: But I went ahead and I hired a company to come in and help build that native version of the client app.

[SPEAKER_01]: The web-based versions already built

[SPEAKER_01]: And we got about 90% of it done, like they thought 90% of it was done, and it was just, it was terrible.

[SPEAKER_01]: My name is Rihanna Wyatt, and I'm founder and president of Real Time.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is Code Story.

[SPEAKER_00]: The podcast brings you interviews with tech visionaries.

[SPEAKER_00]: Six months moonlighting goes.

[SPEAKER_01]: Lassin on the bedcats.

[SPEAKER_00]: Who share what it takes to change an industry?

[SPEAKER_01]: I don't exactly know what to do.

[SPEAKER_00]: It certainly goes to get right.

[SPEAKER_00]: Who built the teams that have their bad company is its people.

[SPEAKER_00]: The teams help each other achieve those proud of our team.

[SPEAKER_00]: Keeping scalability top of mind.

[SPEAKER_00]: All that infrastructure was happening.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, we've been fighting it as we grow.

[SPEAKER_00]: Total waste of time.

[SPEAKER_00]: The stories you don't read in the headlines.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not an easy thing to achieve.

[SPEAKER_00]: To get the shelf and dust it off and try to begin.

[SPEAKER_00]: To ride the ups and downs of the startup line.

[SPEAKER_00]: Need to really want it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Not just about technology.

[SPEAKER_00]: All this and more.

[SPEAKER_00]: On code story.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm your host Noah Labhart.

[SPEAKER_00]: And today, how Rihanna Wyatt made a platform to simplify the world of real estate.

[SPEAKER_00]: For realtors and their clients in real time.

[SPEAKER_00]: Rihanna Wyatt is from Bandara, Texas, raised on a fourth generation cattle in horse ranch.

[SPEAKER_00]: Eventually, she went to West Texas for school, rodeoing for Howard College, specifically barrel racing.

[SPEAKER_00]: She eventually started selling residential real estate and fell in love with the industry.

[SPEAKER_00]: But outside a tech in real estate, she's a mom and still loves horses and cattle.

[SPEAKER_00]: She doesn't rodeo anymore, but she still rides horses as often as she can.

[SPEAKER_00]: Rihanna was in residential real estate for over a decade and was in the mix when Zillow was launched.

[SPEAKER_00]: The platform helped her grow her business and she knew this was where the industry was headed.

[SPEAKER_00]: But what she couldn't understand was why wasn't there something built to track the end-to-end real estate process and transaction?

[SPEAKER_00]: This is a creation story of the real time.

[SPEAKER_01]: So crazy story, so like I said, I was in residential real estate, and I was in it for over a decade, so as you can probably imagine, a lot changed in technology.

[SPEAKER_01]: When I broke into the industry, people were still spinning $20,000 a month on newspaper ads for new listings, and a new company was coming onto the market, which was Zilla.

[SPEAKER_01]: And, as young, I was the young's person at her firm.

[SPEAKER_01]: I thought, what do I know?

[SPEAKER_01]: But when I heard about Zillow, I thought, man, I really feel like that's where the industry's going.

[SPEAKER_01]: I feel like people in my generation are going to want to look at their phones to look at, look at homes.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so I watched that transition and I invested in Zillow and some leads.

[SPEAKER_01]: and grew my business at a rapid speed and worked really hard and just worked for morning till night.

[SPEAKER_01]: But really hit that kind of curve coming in and it really blessed me.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I grew a very strong and successful residential real estate business in West Texas.

[SPEAKER_01]: And as that was all changing, things were happening and I realized that

[SPEAKER_01]: It was just mind blowing to me that in this day and age that we can track everything in our lives.

[SPEAKER_01]: You can track pizza being made, package being delivered to your front door, but my clients, when they go to make the biggest purchase typically of their life, there was no good way for them to track it.

[SPEAKER_01]: They'd call me and they'd say,, Riana, I know you told me this, but remind me what day is closing, or what am I missing anything and am I supposed to be doing something right now?

[SPEAKER_01]: Or can you please rescind those documents to me?

[SPEAKER_01]: So that was just so mind blowing to me.

[SPEAKER_01]: I could not believe in every other insure they were doing this, and there was not a good option in the real estate realm.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then alongside of that, I was just as frustrated on the real to her side of the software we were offered.

[SPEAKER_01]: And everything we were offered to use, I felt was clunky.

[SPEAKER_01]: just had a big learning curve and it felt like a room of developers created it and just never asked a single work in realtor.

[SPEAKER_01]: What do you want to see here?

[SPEAKER_01]: So with that I just felt that I had found a white space in the industry.

[SPEAKER_01]: So that was about three years ago and I would have never imagined all of that had just happened in the three years but I set out

[SPEAKER_01]: did not know a single thing about tech, software, nothing, and that's where I always talk about just your network of people, which when I say network really just your friends, your family, the people you work for, the people you know, I don't care if it's at the grocery store, whatever it is, that's your network, and it will, it blessed my life tremendously because I told one person and they led me to another person and then that kept going.

[SPEAKER_01]: and I ended up interviewing multiple companies to build our first version, went with a company out of Fort Worth, which was the perfect company to do it.

[SPEAKER_01]: We built our first version, and then it's grown from there.

[SPEAKER_01]: So now we're a full team of five, we're in-house.

[SPEAKER_01]: We do all of our development there in our here in Fort Worth, and we don't do anything overseas, so all of its control right here.

[SPEAKER_01]: And real time to answer your first question is a real estate platform for realtors to use to manage all their transactions and their clients in one spot.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then once they establish relationship with their client, they invite them to download the app and it gives both parties everyone involved.

[SPEAKER_01]: a better experience letting them track everything in real time and just bring in all that synchronicity together and enhancing that process for everybody involved.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so we are we set out to really change the way that real estate's done and we're not stomp in there.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let's dive into what you would consider the MVP for the real time.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, probably those early days when you picked your partner, you built the first version, tell me about that process.

[SPEAKER_00]: What sort of process you went through to bring it to life, interacting with that third party, the whole Shabang?

[SPEAKER_01]: So I literally took the gosh, 500 and something transactions I had done as a realtor, and all those systems I used, and what I did, which this is hilarious, but I literally just built a PowerPoint, and I did little mockup drawings of what I would imagine real time to be, and I did a presentation to my dev team.

[SPEAKER_01]: And just said, this is what I want to do.

[SPEAKER_01]: I want to take these checklists in these tasks and these notifications that we are all doing manually.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I want to push them into this one spot.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so from there, we built first.

[SPEAKER_01]: We started with the Rilter platform.

[SPEAKER_01]: So we knew that hey, the client app is a great idea.

[SPEAKER_01]: But if I don't have a fabulous place for these Rilters to want to work, they're not going to want to use Rilter.

[SPEAKER_01]: So we built a spot for them to go in and manage their transactions, which gives them all their information on one spot, checklist, they can upload documents, and set tasks for their clients.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then we built the client app, which of course was all web-based set first, and what do that process?

[SPEAKER_01]: And so we soft launched that about a year and a half ago.

[SPEAKER_01]: And one thing I had learned and read was to ship your product before it's ready.

[SPEAKER_01]: And that's such a difficult thing to do because you're like, oh, it's just not there yet.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's not the vision I have for her, but it was absolutely the best move and I'll always encourage other founders is get it out there and then listen to your people, listen to what they want, what they don't like and don't be a salesman, but actually just be a student of what they're what the people are wanting and what they're liking, what they're not liking,

[SPEAKER_01]: And I always encourage people like when I was going through even now, really those first versions is to not sell your product to them.

[SPEAKER_01]: Don't be a salesman.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm such a salesman.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I can I say I don't really like to call myself a salesman, but naturally when I tell people about this new product that was working on they're like, Oh, yeah, I love it.

[SPEAKER_01]: And they didn't even, they don't even really know about it.

[SPEAKER_01]: They're just saying it because of the excitement and the joy I have with it when I talk about it.

[SPEAKER_01]: So you got to be very careful to really put that test down and say, okay, is this actually a good idea?

[SPEAKER_01]: Is this working?

[SPEAKER_01]: What's not working?

[SPEAKER_01]: So that's kind of how that first version went out.

[SPEAKER_01]: We knew it was really good.

[SPEAKER_01]: We got some peep, got it in some hands, and then we went on to build the native app.

[SPEAKER_00]: you've got that MVP you're setting out to test the idea to get the feedback you're looking for and you're getting it.

[SPEAKER_00]: How did you progress from that point and you mentioned building the native app next, I'm curious about how you built your roadmap, how you went about deciding that okay, this is the next most important thing to build or to address with the real time.

[SPEAKER_01]: It took a while to build that platform, the first part of it, the real estate platform, because real estate, there are so many moving parts, and so when you're developing something like this, if it's gonna be good, you have to think through each button, and then absolutely each scenario that could take place.

[SPEAKER_01]: And in a transaction, there's cash, there's conventional, there's VA loans, there's selling, buying, we had to work through all that.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then from there, it was really just taking that kind of one point of version and growing the realtor portal and the client app to be the best product possible.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then going up against money so that capital is always a factor and software is very expensive to build.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I had to be very intentional about what we were doing and be a savvy as possible with the dollars I had.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm curious about team, so you know, you went out and chose a development partner for the early version and now you mentioned, you know, there's five of you that are in house, I'm curious about both selection processes, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: So in choosing the team that you work with initially, I'm curious about what process you went through to identify the best one.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then I'm also curious about what did you look for in the people that you hired full time, you know, to indicate that they were the winning horses to join it.

[SPEAKER_01]: The main thing I knew that was so important that when I looked at my competitors was the UI, the design of the software we were being offered.

[SPEAKER_01]: It, when you opened it, it just, it brought me everything but peace.

[SPEAKER_01]: And when I looked at apps on my phone or different software as I used to my computer, I knew that design was a very important part.

[SPEAKER_01]: and that these that you got to think about the people using the software and I always talk about the realtor in the white BMW and she's not going to want the same thing that a coder's going to want to see on the screen.

[SPEAKER_01]: So you always have to think through that perspective.

[SPEAKER_01]: So to answer your first question, when I went and interviewed companies, I wanted someone that was very strong and designed because I knew that was going to be a huge factor to make an

[SPEAKER_01]: So that's where that was really the big thing was going from there.

[SPEAKER_01]: I was very fortunate to have worked with some really great people in that first company And so the reason I went to that company was a friend ever friend and we ended up hitting it off and he's actually a co-founder in real time

[SPEAKER_01]: and is a developer and designer so when I know that I literally have a unicorn on my team which is so special because he speaks both languages and then can also turn around and translate it from the idea that this little realtor has take it, look at it from a coding standpoint and from a design standpoint.

[SPEAKER_01]: His name is Carlos and was is an absolute

[SPEAKER_01]: just a star, a force to be reckoned with.

[SPEAKER_01]: So he was a huge part of our company.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then from there, he directed me to some people who had contracted on real time, that joined in.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it was like, hey, I think this would be a great fit.

[SPEAKER_01]: And one thing about me whenever I hire folks on my team is it has to be someone that is,

[SPEAKER_01]: I think that has the same work ethic I do, and I am all about work and hard, but at the I'll always tell people you gotta be fine with clean and toilets.

[SPEAKER_01]: Everybody on this team has to be good with clean and toilets.

[SPEAKER_01]: We all do a little bit of everything, and nobody's above anything, and so when I went out and I hired people on the team, that was a big factor.

[SPEAKER_01]: First of all, is that personality, those traits I have to find.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then, of course, their skill set got Carlos on the team and then we went on and I hired a full back in developer.

[SPEAKER_01]: And she was a gal that, like I said, had been a part of the original development.

[SPEAKER_01]: Came on board with us and is again amazing.

[SPEAKER_01]: The amount of development we do know for our small team is absolutely incredible and Jordan is the reason behind that.

[SPEAKER_01]: So...

[SPEAKER_01]: That's really we work with two of those coders that's all we run and then the rest of our team is Megan who's our chief of operations and then Charlie who's sales.

[SPEAKER_01]: So it's a team of five.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so I'm curious about scale and there's scale in several different arenas, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: There's technical scale and there's also scale of business and I'm curious about how you approach that in the beginning and really I'm interested if there's any, if there's been any interesting areas where you've had to fight scale as you've grown.

[SPEAKER_01]: scalability is a huge thing because in technology, like you were talking about in the beginning of this, is that you have to figure out what tools the people want right, and so of course we launched the client app, the realtor portal, but then from there it was like if we're going to scale, we have to be able to do the things that these other software is doing, and so there that's when our development right now, we're in a very heavy stage of development.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so here we realized that the broker compliance platforms, the different tools that we needed in order to grow and be able to win huge amounts of crowds when it came to the real estate realm, that's where we are now.

[SPEAKER_01]: So right now it's heavy development, I believe, in order to scale.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then from a marketing standpoint, it's different.

[SPEAKER_01]: But right now we're very focused on just building the absolute best product out there

[SPEAKER_00]: So, as you step out on the balcony, and you look across all that you've built thus far with the real time, what do you most proud of?

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm most proud of the realtor portal, actually.

[SPEAKER_01]: Of course, the client app is the part that everybody loves because no one else in the industry was doing it.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it is such a huge thing, but the realtor portal, I just think it moves so well.

[SPEAKER_01]: It literally benefits the life.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm sure from how hard that was to build.

[SPEAKER_01]: And anything you do, it takes...

[SPEAKER_01]: If anything that, it's very simple for...

[SPEAKER_01]: a consumer to use was very difficult to build on the back end.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I would say that part was such a labor of love.

[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't anticipate it to be as hard as it was, but I'm very proud of it.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then right now we're going to be launching in the next 30 days our realtor app.

[SPEAKER_01]: And that is that's really the next thing that I am so excited about, because there's nothing else like it on the market.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, Rhianna, let's flip the script a little bit.

[SPEAKER_00]: Tell me about a mistake you made and how you and your team responded to it.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I made a $45,000 mistake and I always told people I love to talk about mistakes because I love to learn their mistakes.

[SPEAKER_01]: I love to talk about my own mistakes because it's the best way for us to grow a right.

[SPEAKER_01]: My $45,000 mistake happened to win.

[SPEAKER_01]: I outsource some development.

[SPEAKER_01]: But I went ahead and hired a company to come in and help build that native version of the client app.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I thought this is going to be easy.

[SPEAKER_01]: Me and my co-founder were like, yeah, this was already the web-based versions already built.

[SPEAKER_01]: We're just going to be able to convert it.

[SPEAKER_01]: of it done like they thought 90% of it was done and it was just it was terrible.

[SPEAKER_01]: It was not to the standard and so I said hey we're stopping at this point we're going to trash this product but I will say that taught me that you cannot just go out and hire a development team it's not their fault they're just getting little bits of information and they're trying to build it to fit you without really knowing your company or knowing you and

[SPEAKER_01]: And that was where that was a really big mistake that I made, but ended up being a huge blessing because it actually taught my co-founder how to build a native app.

[SPEAKER_01]: He already had a lot of dev skills, but when he was watching them build that native app, it gave him those extra skills and he ended up building his own version side by side with theirs.

[SPEAKER_01]: So we trashed that one and we went with his and that's actually the current one we have today.

[SPEAKER_00]: So let's move forward, and this will be fun.

[SPEAKER_00]: What does the future look like for the real time for the product, the platform, and for your team?

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm so excited about this, because of course, like I talk about, we have this transaction management platform.

[SPEAKER_01]: That is really like the process of buying and selling ride.

[SPEAKER_01]: That comes into play once you find a home.

[SPEAKER_01]: But we're moving way past that, and we really want to change the way that people and clients and realtors experience real estate.

[SPEAKER_01]: From the moment you start searching at home to weigh past that, to the way you manage the maintenance on your home and much more.

[SPEAKER_01]: So we've got some really cool partnerships coming up and we actually just, we've got some cool things that events that we are going to be at.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so we're just growing, we're meeting people, doing different connections and stuff.

[SPEAKER_01]: So we don't plan to stop here and I feel that we're at the right place at the right time in the industry.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let's switch to you Rihanna, who influences the way that you were?

[SPEAKER_00]: Name a person, or many persons, or something, you look up to and why.

[SPEAKER_01]: I am a big fan of immigrant who runs good American and skimps.

[SPEAKER_01]: And she actually has a podcast and I love, of course, like when it comes to females, especially mamas and me being a single mom and working and all these things, I love hearing how other women are doing it and being open and authentic and so I would say that.

[SPEAKER_01]: I really look up to her.

[SPEAKER_01]: I love, of course, strong women like Kendra Scott and Sarah Blakely who just started with nothing and kept building and just had a ton of tenacity and so that's the folks that I like to focus on and read because I look at it and I think if they can do it then I should be able to do it too.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, we're on a last question.

[SPEAKER_00]: So you're getting on a plane, and you're sitting next to a young entrepreneur who's built the next big thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're jazzed about it.

[SPEAKER_00]: They can't wait to show it off to the world and can't wait show it off to you right there on the plane.

[SPEAKER_00]: What advice do you give that person?

[SPEAKER_00]: Having gone down this road a bit now.

[SPEAKER_01]: I would tell them that it really is that hard.

[SPEAKER_01]: So when you reach those moments where you're like, it cannot be this hard.

[SPEAKER_01]: Is this how hard or is this the world telling me that I should not keep going?

[SPEAKER_01]: No, it really is that hard.

[SPEAKER_01]: Every founder goes through that exact thing.

[SPEAKER_01]: Multiple times your company will almost die.

[SPEAKER_01]: That is actually how it works.

[SPEAKER_01]: And you'll hear different entrepreneurs and founders say, really, it's who does it quit?

[SPEAKER_01]: And so I would tell that young entrepreneur.

[SPEAKER_01]: When you get to points where you're like, I can't keep going, you can.

[SPEAKER_01]: You find it and you keep fighting, you keep praying, you keep your eyes open and always be ready to move and bounce and listen to your feedback.

[SPEAKER_01]: And the game is move quit.

[SPEAKER_01]: When you know something's not working, fix it.

[SPEAKER_01]: If you know something's needed, change it, move towards it, develop quickly and always be on your toes and be able to move with the industry

[SPEAKER_00]: That's fantastic advice.

[SPEAKER_00]: It is that hard for sure, where we want to thank you for being on the show today.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for telling the creation story of the real time.

[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much.

[SPEAKER_00]: And this concludes another chapter of Coat Story.

[SPEAKER_00]: code story is hosted and produced by no-alapart.

[SPEAKER_00]: Be sure to subscribe on Apple podcast, Spotify or the podcasting app at your choice.

[SPEAKER_00]: And when you get a chance, leave us a review.

[SPEAKER_00]: Both things help us out tremendously.

[SPEAKER_00]: And thanks again for listening.