Adam Torres and James Huang discuss the Texas FFA.
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Show Notes:
The Texas FFA is ripe with talent including members who plan on pursuing careers in real estate. In this episode, Adam Torres and James Huang, President of eXp Commercial at eXp World Holdings, explore the Texas FFA as an organization to recruit talent as a corporate leader, along with the book James recently released, Mission Matters: Mission-Based Leaders Share Inspiring Stories on Leadership and Success (Texas Leaders Edition Vol. 1).
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About James Huang
James Huang is a seasoned and visionary leader in the commercial real estate industry, with over 25 years of experience in brokerage, investment, management, and advisory services. He is the president of eXp Commercial, the commercial company of eXp World Holdings, a global cloud-based real estate company that offers 24/7 access to collaborative tools, training, and socialization for real estate professionals.
In his role, James oversees, builds, and runs the commercial and ancillary services to support the growth of eXp Commercial, both domestically and globally. He leverages his operations experience, having launched and managed several companies from startup to profitability, to create a culture of diversity, collaboration, and teamwork. He is also a shareholder and advisor to real estate syndication firms and start-up technology companies, helping them raise capital, consult, and connect with other private equity investors and family offices. As a Certified International Property Specialist (CIPS), he has a strong network and expertise in the global real estate market. James is also the national president of the Asian Real Estate Association of America (AREAA), a nonprofit organization that promotes sustainable homeownership opportunities in Asian American communities.
About eXp World Holdings
Their vision is to positively transform the world of work on a global scale. Their cloud-based technologies enable businesses to scale globally, with unlimited operational flexibility and resilience, and gain on-demand access to real-time information, tools, and community. Through eXp’s companies, they aim to give every business and individual the means to achieve financial stability, profitability, and freedom to realize everyone’s potential.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and I’m so happy to announce I’m at the 95th Annual Texas. F F a convention and look who I found in the lobby. I’ve been waiting for this interview for a long time. I have Jim Wong on the line, who is the president over at exp commercial.
Hey Jim, welcome to the show, Adam. Thank you. No, this is fantastic. Mike came in, I found all this energy, the excitement, looking at everyone moving around. You know, you just feel, it’s just so exciting to be here. Well, I’ll tell you I’m, I’m pumped. We’re gonna be talking today about a whole lot of things.
I wanna go through your background a bit also, you know, why, why exp commercials here, why is exp realty representation important here? Mm-hmm. And maybe talk to some other corporate leaders out there. And of course, we have a book that we just released together. Yes. I’m so pumped. For everybody that’s been watching this show for a while, you know, we are promoting the very first edition of the Texas Leaders Edition.
Of course, Texas had to have their own book, so we’re gonna talk about that as well. Well, Jim, hey, just to get us kicked off, you, you came out here, I believe this is your first year for the, for the convention. Is that right? Adam. It is, and it’s, it’s truly exciting. You know, I’ve always been involved in children and youths activities like the scouting.
I was very involved in scouting. Also a passion of mine is real estate. You know, that’s why commercial real estate, and we all say real estate starts with the land, and one of the largest lands are agricultural, farmland, ranch land that you use, which is most of America. So really coming to this event, tying in with the youth.
With land education and, and just helping our future Yeah. Is, is really important. And I would say that for any corporate leaders, we gotta invest in our future, which is our children. Mm-hmm. So, exp realty you coming out here is a big deal. Why did you feel is important for exp to be present? Well, you know, like, I, like I said, exp, we’re the fastest growing real estate company and we’re worldwide and it is important for us to show leadership.
With the children. Mm-hmm. We talk about land and the use of land, so it is important to be involved, to be present. I always told many of the leaders, you need to be present. You need to experience conventions, events. We all know with the Metaverse, which is our company, we always say we use the metaverse.
But without being present and seeing what’s going on, feeling the energy, showing up and seeing what’s happening. You can’t really be there. Right? Like when sometimes looking at the screen or watching TV through Zoom, right? We’re all zoomed out. It really doesn’t, yeah. You don’t get the full experience.
Mm-hmm. And by being present and seeing what’s going on and being active mm-hmm. Okay. You gotta be there. Yeah, you gotta be here. So I, I’ve had the opportunity to be part of, and, and on the Ella platform through Y X P realty. And you’d mentioned technology. So I wanna, I wanna talk about that a little bit more.
So how does technology really relate to some of the things that we’re, that we’re seeing here today? Well, you know, technology touches all parts of our lives. Yeah. We remember maybe 20, 30 years ago, Technology started to come. Just mainstream people remember, and I know you and I Atari where we all had to go to before our cape places, before we had consoles to play games for, for all the young kids out there.
Atari is one of the early platforms. Okay, go ahead. I had to, had to stop there just in case. That was the, I remember the big December Christmas gift everyone wanted in the seventies and from there we started seeing technology advance. We started seeing, the internet started coming out in the nineties.
That was more mainstream. Most people in college now can’t work without emails. They don’t even understand how could you do things without email. Yeah. Well, most of us, we grew up when there was no emails. Yeah. There was no cell phones. A lot of paper. A lot of paper and, and a lot of memorization. Yes. We were remembering 20 to 50 phone numbers in our head because we had to remember there was no.
Storing it on your phone, or maybe we wrote it in a little address book that we had to have. But then as the evolution started coming out with internet, right? Mm-hmm. That started really changing and then everyone started saying, do you have a website? Yeah. What’s a website? But now that is so commonplace to have a website and interactive, let’s say in the, in the two thousands where the websites and plugging in and e-commerce started coming into this world where most people would look at it and say, I can’t believe I would buy something and give money over online and.
The package would show up at our door. Oh, in the beginning it was like, is that a scam? Like don’t put your credit card in that site, or what’s that all about? Like in the very beginning. Exactly. But I said, what the heck? So I actually went to buy something on Amazon, see if it show up, and before it was a bookstore, before it became an everything store.
And I would just say, I’m gonna try this out. So I actually bought something I said. Well, it didn’t come over in two days. Yeah. Yeah. It came in a couple weeks, but it did show up. And I said, wow, that’s amazing. And I remember in downtown LA I was needing to get somewhere I couldn’t find a cab or a taxi.
Mm-hmm. And this is when I first tried Uber. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And this was so weird to order something online because I just said, okay, I’m gonna try this. And back then it wasn’t regular cars, it was limos. Yeah. It was the limo drivers that. Had some time before picking people up. And you did. And I didn’t even know how to pay ’em.
So I had money trying to give him money and tips. Like, they’re like, no, we don’t take that. But it’s just watching the evolution of technology and growth of technology and data to a point right now, we always hear there was the metaverse. Yeah. Which during the covid time. Lockdown time mm-hmm. That people needed to find other ways to interact.
Whereas Zoom and other mediums like. Social media and everything else started to really blossom. But with us in the Metaverse, people started using other ways to interact because you still needed to find ways to do business, to interact, to collaborate, to educate and teach. Mm-hmm. So through there we saw another change to a point where we are now, where there’s AI and chat G B T, it is everywhere.
Yeah. And it is exciting, but it is also scary. Because it’s evolving so quickly. Mm-hmm. That everyone needs to plug in and data and your information is so powerful. So I do encourage everyone to really understand this, to reach out because it is a new technology platform. Yeah. That maybe a year or two it came out.
Mm-hmm. But everyone should start learning because it’s gonna affect like the internet. Yeah. Which everyone uses. But now, With ai, everyone’s gonna see how it’s gonna be useful in their life. Hmm. So one of the things that, like I’ve had the pleasure to do is every, every year I come here, I just get a little bit more let’s just say intelligent on agriculture just a little bit.
This year I learned the difference between when you say ranchers and farmers, different things, everything. I’m, I’m learning it all, but do you have any ties or like background in agriculture, because I know you for obviously LA and other things, but talk to me about some agriculture. Like what. Yeah. And it is important.
So we know in California we, we raise a lot of citrus, but also nuts. In California, we have a lot of farmland and it is a big different agricultural land to sometimes timber to ranch and cattle. There is a big use and, and with real estate, commercial real estate with land, land development in infill areas.
And we always see the path to progress where many places like Orange County used to be farmland. Yeah. And that’s why it was Orange County. Yeah, they used to grow oranges, but as time expanded, it became cities. But you should understand the value of the land, the ranch, cattle, land, agricultural, but how you can use it, embrace it, and how it expands.
So when you are developing it, you’re not overdeveloping it, you are not ruining the land, but how can you work together with it? So you still have food production ranch. I know there’s especially in Texas, oil and gas. Yeah. There’s so many uses of land. So being in commercial real estate, I always say it always starts with the land.
Yeah. So, I wanna take a moment and let’s talk to maybe some of the, the, the younger viewers out there today specifically that maybe have thought about a career, maybe in, in real estate, whether it’s commercial or otherwise. Like what would you say to the, that next group of budding entrepreneurs that are considering a career in real estate?
Get involved. Our commercial real estate is getting older. I remember going to many conventions like the, here at f f a. Mm-hmm. The commercial conferences. And I remember first starting the average age of a commercial agent was 52 years old. Wow. Mm-hmm. Did not know. Now it’s 62. Really that means we’re not getting younger people to come into the commercial real estate field.
Wow. A lot of opportunity. That’s opportunity. Yeah. Tremendous opportunity and a, a gap because there’s so much knowledge and connections and relationships in commercial real estate that’s leaving. As we know, the baby boomers people are retiring, but no one is replacing them at this time. Mm-hmm. It is so important, and many of the commercial real estate firms wants to educate younger people with internships.
Mm-hmm. How you get involved, you know, some type of stipend to just. Teach people whether it’s transactional. Mm-hmm. Whether it’s leasing, whether it’s business opportunities, whether it’s development capital markets and finance. There are so many parts of commercial real estate. It is not just as, as simple of one project, like residential, commercial touches everything.
Mm-hmm. We do all of it and we have the lack of youth. Entering into this new field. So there is an opening and if you wanna reach out, I know Adam, you could give information. Oh yeah. ’cause I would always love to plug younger people in, whether you’re in high school, people that are in college for internships and those that are masters or higher degrees that want to get into commercial real estate.
And the aspect. Of commercial real estate. Yeah. And one of the reasons we’re here, so mission matters on, on site for the conferences, we’re always recruiting, like we’re looking at new talent. Like we have Sean here, who’s over in the background, who he he is an intern that we brought in after, after he was a brand ambassador last year.
And one of the things that I love about Texas, f f a and the entire organization really is the, the, the leadership skills, the organization. Like there’s, I won’t give too much of the inside business notes that are going on right now, but let’s. Say that these kids are making, and, and young adults are making real world decisions for their organization and they’re learning things, whether it’s parliamentary procedure, whether it’s like all these different things, but they’re learning how to function in these ecosystems that do translate to their adult lives.
And they, you know, they, they put ’em, I believe ahead for what’s next. Absolutely just seeing what I’m observing, reading some of the signs, you know, I’m very familiar, like I said, being in organized mm-hmm. Organized. Youth like scouting, teaching responsibility, teaching how to organize, teaching, how to run and inspire and encourage learning skill sets.
Yeah. Right. From an individual to running a team, these are all a, a applicable skills. And you know what the biggest things too, now, interpersonal. How do you relate? So many kids in younger generation right now are using only social media. They’re not interacting. Mm, they’re not. Kind of giving people hug, like being a person.
They’re using a technological medium to interact. Yeah. But seeing everyone here, they’re interacting. They’re talking, they’re communicating. Oh my gosh. You, and, and if you’ve been watching this whole series, Jim just got here. He didn’t watch some of the earlier things. We’ve been talking about this all week.
Like I’ve been looking around and you can see they’re talk. Everybody’s talking to each other. Like everybody’s not glued to their phone. And I’m like, wait a minute. I’ve, I’ve, I’ve never seen another group of kids like this. No, it, it’s truly amazing. And this is the skill sets. Yeah. That’s really lacking.
But this is gonna be the very big competitive advantage. Oh yeah. Humor, action, eq. They got the iq. Eq. They’re learning a lot of leadership skills. They’re learning everything that you do need mm-hmm. In your adult life to be successful. Right. And I know because of the Houston Rodeo and other rodeos that I’ve been to, you know, F F A, teaching them responsibility even.
Raising a calf, raising something, taking responsibility, right? Doing things day to day consistently, right? Mm-hmm. And then wanting to step up to lead and run organizations, but the others is public speaking. Mm-hmm. Getting in front of it, organizing. These are really, yeah. Real world skills that people need to know and, and do and apply.
Now, you know you can’t casually drop Houston rodeos and rodeos. I didn’t even know you ever been to a rodeo. Tell, tell me more about this. I’ve never been to Houston Rodeo. I know it’s one of the, everybody’s tells me it’s huge and that’s where I’m supposed to go. Like everybody’s told me. But you’ve been, I have been.
And I love it. And many of my friends run some of the committees. I always told people I got my boots, I got my hat. I gotta get my silver belt buckle, so I gotta volunteer help out. But you know, it is tremendous. And going to there to the rodeo to see the auctions. Yeah. You know, you learn and, and get to know so much.
Really good people, good envi. Mm-hmm. A good environment to learn. So much fun also. So going to these rodeos and watching the kids really taking their calf, taking what they have worked so hard for to auction it and seeing how proud they are going through this and growing up through the process, but also just community watching people interact.
Yeah. I, I always love, you know, the family environment, the people getting together, helping each other. Yeah. You know, so it really makes me happy. It’s like, You know, old Cal, you know Americana, right? Yeah. And it’s really fun. Yeah, it’s awesome. And, and that, that’s one of the things I like about coming here too, is that for anybody that says like, what’s the future of our country look like?
Or what, what is the, the youth of today? Any of those type things, come to a Texas F F A convention if you wanna see what the youth of today are doing because they’re working hard, they’re smart, they’re intelligent, they’re driven, and they’re doing great work. Okay. Well, Jim, I just wanna say really appreciate you making some time outta your schedule.
I know you just got here, you got a lot of things you gotta do, but thanks for coming on the show, Adam. I appreciate it. And I can just say from my experience watching F f A, the future is bright. All right.