The Pizza Chain Playbook for Real Estate Success
We can learn a lot about the future by looking in the rearview mirror. Transformative change is inevitable, especially with the rapid escalation of technology and AI. There are many industries and companies that still exist, but in dramatically different formats. Some adapted better than others. Some vanished entirely. And most of those industry changes were driven by technology that was not created by the companies or services impacted.
The threat (and solution) came from an outside entity or field. But the solution and the need for it came from the end user's demand that outsiders pay attention and force the changes. Will real estate be one of those industries that undergo dramatic change, not from within, but in response to end-user demands?
What has changed:
Newspapers and Print Media (Free Online News/Social Media)
Department Stores/Malls (Amazon/Online Shopping)
Music Industry (Spotify/Subscription Models)
Travel Agencies (Expedia/Online Booking Directly with Airlines)
Taxi Cabs (Uber/Lyft, App-Driven Models)
Movie Theatres/Film and Movie Industry (Netflix/Apple TV/Subscription Models)
and Real Estate (Online Portals and Access to Information/Different Compensation Models for Agents)
They all confused current demand with previous demand. I am going to provide two examples that we need to pay attention to. One is an industry transformation, and one is a company.
Let’s use the travel industry as an example. They had a dramatic rise and fall, then another rise. I use them because, like us, they sell a service. While we sell houses and move household goods, we don’t own those items; most of what we do is service-driven as facilitators.
Throughout the 1990s, about 150,000 full-time travel agents booked airline tickets in brick-and-mortar US travel agencies. As the model changed and regular travelers became more self-sufficient due to improved technology or by using sites like Booking.com, travel agents wisely shifted to being independent travel and planning advisors. That number has grown to about 300,000 full and part-time people fulfilling some sort of role specializing in cruises, luxury package vacations, destination weddings, or corporate travel. The Boomers have got places to be, and they don’t want to plan it themselves. But that didn’t happen before the industry dipped to a low of about 60,000 travel agents in 2015. They adapted, but not before experiencing a profound cleansing and a shift in their mindset. They went from performing a task to creating an experience for the end user. They took a hard look at current demand versus previous demand. They listened to their customers.
When the pivot worked and when they didn’t even really try.
I can use the usual suspects as examples of actual companies that couldn’t/wouldn’t embrace what their customers were telling them. Some that dug their heels in and became basically obsolete in their original line of business: Blockbuster, Kodak, Nokia, and Blackberry. They hung on to what was comfortable and had been successful for them, not their customer. It was their demise.
Some companies that successfully reinvented themselves include Apple, Netflix, Lego, and Domino’s Pizza. They all did it in different ways, doing it themselves rather than allowing an outside entity to come in and snap up their business.
I really like the Domino’s Pizza example because I think it shows the painful journey to self-awareness. Sales were declining, and their pizza was awful. They literally launched a campaign in 2009 under a new CEO that publicly claimed, “Yeah, our pizza wasn’t good. We fixed it.” And they did. They completely overhauled the recipes and invested heavily in online ordering and mobile apps. They made it really easy to order a pizza and get it quickly…guaranteed. They created efficiencies, added real customer reviews (good and bad), and responded to them publicly. They faced the challenges head-on and fixed them. Even with a lot of competition out there, they are still a dominant player in pizza delivery. They listened to their customers. They built brand loyalty by being honest and transparent, and by doing better.
Real Estate is no different. Ok, maybe a little.
Zillow was the first to bring consumers to a site where they could search for a property anywhere in the country. Zillow was launched in a big way in 2006. It was right before that in 2004, I was asked to create and manage a call center to service inquiries to our californiamoves.com website. We were still thinking small. Each state or region in our national company had its own website and area listings, since we were run regionally.
By 2008, Zillow had established partnerships with MLSs across the country to provide a national feed directly to consumers. We were scrambling to create a national feed of our own companies and franchises' listings. It took an outsider to force us to think bigger with a national website, and it has been a game of catch-up ever since.
We did it to ourselves.
They did what we could not see. Our company and the industry could have thought bigger, but we were so insular and disjointed that we could not get out of our own way. We were gatekeeping our own data.
Critics on the real estate side claimed Zillow would put brokerages and agents out of business. A silly assertion, but that’s what happens when people and entities feel threatened. Instead, Zillow began selling our leads on our listings from inquiries on their website back to us. It was brilliant.
What’s old is new again.
Here we are in 2026, and there are real estate companies (primarily Compass International Holdings (CIH)- the largest in the world with 340,000 agents) that want to take us backward. They want to gatekeep and withhold information from certain potential buyers and agents outside of their sphere, just like we wanted to do in 2004.
It has become a battle against them and online portals (primarily Zillow), many other brokers, MLSs, and state associations over data and who gets it first and when, all at the expense of the consumer.
As an industry driven by independent contractors, the bar for entry is low, and quality and expertise vary wildly. And those independent contractors are now being asked to fall in line, get behind, and blindly follow the private exclusive listing initiative that most know in their hearts isn’t good for their clients.
There are parties on all sides who are in it for the wrong reasons, and they have all perfected their storyline. CIH is trying to take back control of its own listings, but the cat is out of the bag. There are more portals and middlemen than I can count competing for the buyer's eyeballs to ‘sell’ those leads to a brokerage, listing agent, or another agent willing to pay…Zillow is the largest entity out there doing it.
Get rid of the smokescreen.
You know that when a company has a seller sign a disclosure that says this, “I agree that, if I choose to list my property as a “Private Exclusive” and/or “Coming Soon”, I do so for marketing, privacy, health, safety, security, or other legitimate, nondiscriminatory reasons outlined in this disclosure, unrelated to the potential group of buyers' race, color, religion, sex, familial status, national origin, disability, or other characteristics protected by the Fair Housing Act and other civil rights statutes and that my real estate broker and agent must and will follow national, state and local fair housing laws while marketing and selling the property,” that they know this is exactly what they are doing but don’t want to be held liable for it.
The abuse of private listings is making what should be a rare exception…the norm. You can read the full disclosure document they proudly display on their website. This disclaimer is their attempt to protect themselves for when (not if) there is a lawsuit.
The power of influence.
We seem unable to create our own solution to a self-inflicted problem. No average seller is begging to have their property ‘privately’ marketed to fewer prospective buyers. Because if they really understood that could mean fewer and lower offers and a longer time to sell, they wouldn’t do it. But sellers listen to their agents, and they have been trained to ‘sell’ this concept.
And what about the buyers? Why is it okay to withhold information about a home's price history and how long it has been on the market? Why are they not allowed that information to make better decisions? It’s the largest transaction of their lives. How about just pricing the property right to begin with instead of playing all of these games?
Compass literally uses the phrase that “price drops and long days on market, which happen during public marketing, could ‘damage its value’” (meaning of your home). That notion is masterfully planted in the seller’s heads using a 3-step smokescreen, validated by unchecked internal data. It would make me laugh if it didn’t make me sick to my stomach knowing about this abuse of influence.
Some may say they are reinventing themselves or the industry, but at what price and at whose expense?
It is ugly and messy, and shows no sign of resolution without outside intervention, including legislation and lawsuits. NAR and some MLSs are caving to the pressure as they grow increasingly desperate to stay relevant and avoid lawsuits. It is going to get way worse before it gets better.
The real estate industry needs to be more self-aware. If a pizza chain can figure it out, you would think we could, too. It all comes down to transparency and always trying to be better. Does the real estate industry need changes? Absolutely. But not this way. Our customers deserve better. The winners will be those who bravely pull back the curtain on the real reasons this is happening. We need to start listening to those we serve instead of planting self-serving ideas in their heads. It needs to stop being about money and control; it’s about our very important role in helping families achieve the American dream in the complex world of real estate.
