Joe Skousen, founder and CEO of Inside Real Estate, says BoldTrail is not just born from the company’s expertise as a longstanding technology partner to many of the largest brands and fastest-growing brokerages and teams in real estate, but from the values, insights and relationships built from its very earliest days.
“My first year or two in the real estate space,” Skousen recalls, “I said, ‘Man, I’ve got to get to know these people.’ So I personally went out and met them shoulder-to-shoulder in over 300 offices that year, all around the industry, just to get to really know real estate professionals and to understand—what are their pains that we’re helping to solve for?”
Today, Inside Real Estate supports over 450,000 users, with a unique vantage point to evaluate what makes agents, teams and brokerages succeed, and what doesn’t. With a passion for customer success, the scale and resources to take on massive industry challenges and the insight and experience to solve common pain points for real estate businesses of all sizes, Skousen says the company is fully armed for this critical moment that has created uncertainty—but also opportunity—for everyone in real estate.
Enter BoldTrail.
“We’re in a tough market,” Skousen explains. “We have new dynamics. And yet there’s more potential for world-class client experiences as well as broker, team and agent profit than ever before. If you’re playing yesterday’s game, it’s over. Now is the time to be bold and embrace where we’re headed as an industry.”
As teams, brokerages and agents are taking on these shifts, top performers are recognizing the need to really excel at the fundamentals—operating efficiently, providing a five-star consumer experience, showcasing value at every turn and partnering with companies that not only care about you today, but care about you forever.
What is BoldTrail, though? On the surface, Skousen says it is a seamless, integrated and complete suite of solutions leveraging more than 10 tech products that Inside Real Estate has built or acquired across its lifetime, designed to drive productivity and profit for every user through a marriage of front-office, back-office and homeownership experience.
That includes everything that team leaders, brokers and agents need to generate new business, manage transactions and drive a full homeownership lifecycle relationship. It is tailored for every type of real estate practitioner—from individual independent practitioners to companies with 100,000+ agents. BoldTrail, Skousen explains, means the most connected and comprehensive CRM, diversified and effective lead gen, marketing tools that take on all the legwork of pushing listings and personal brands, deep insights and key performance indicators, an omni user-friendly search to engage instantly with the whole platform, a next-generation purpose-driven website, industry leading business analytics to supercharge coaching and follow up, an award-winning fully-interactive CMA and presentation solution, a complete and AI-powered back office, recruiting and coaching tech and plenty more.
But at the same time, Skousen emphasizes that BoldTrail is much more than a rebrand. With a lead-to-close ecosystem, tailored solutions that support your unique brand, a strategic support team and vibrant peer-to-peer communities, BoldTrail is the next evolution of how top performers operate, and it facilitates something bigger—an experience that Skousen describes as “Real Estate+.”
“There is no brokerage, team or agent in the space that in five to 10 years from now will not have to run Real Estate+. It’s the full transaction and lifecycle profitability. It’s an imperative. It will be non-negotiable for the future,” he says. “BoldTrail is the most capable foundation to set yourself up for growth. It’s also the other layers of value that truly allow businesses to be as profitable and successful as they need to be.
“The future is brighter than the past,” Skousen adds, “but you have to be ready to adapt your business model.”
Sum of its parts
“This industry has some of the best, hardest working, truest forms of entrepreneurship you will ever see—looking at the brokers, teams and agents in the space. And it’s one of the things we love most about real estate,” says Skousen.
Bringing together other founders who have also spent decades learning what top teams, agents and brokerages need to excel, Skousen emphasizes that BoldTrail is a vision drawing on more experience than any other vendor in the space can claim.
“I say that not in pride, but with intent. That has been my intention, from the very beginning,” he explains.
Allen
Grier Allen is the founder of BoomTown—which was acquired by Inside Real Estate in 2023. Now chief strategy officer at Inside Real Estate, Allen says over roughly the last 18 months in particular, he and the whole Inside Real Estate team have tuned in even more deeply to what top agents, teams and brokerages are experiencing in real estate.
“To be a true partner, we really lean in to tap into the power of listening to our clients, helping them solve their problems, but more importantly, innovating on their behalf to keep them in front of these new, exciting opportunities that are arising as a result of this changing landscape,” Allen says.
Skousen agrees, and emphasizes just how important it is to be able to look around corners—delivering what clients need before they even know they need it, to understand what’s going to drive success in real estate before anyone asks for it. That’s why the history and experience he and Allen have in this industry is so important—because BoldTrail is the result of what Skousen’s team anticipated the space would need today.
“When you’re thinking about BoldTrail and what we’re doing now, we’re bringing forth a vision we saw years ago that has never really existed,” Skousen says.
That vision is built on four pillars that together, Skousen says, support the experience of “Real Estate+” for the industry. The first pillar is the lead-to-close technology ecosystem—a seamless platform that provides all of the core functionality that every business in the space needs—CMA, design, social and marketing tools, business intelligence and reporting, forms, predictive analytics, lead qualification services and websites formulated to attract and convert leads.
Allen says he saw other companies throw together “poorly integrated” slap-dash solutions because they weren’t actually thinking of the end-user and how people actually need their tools to function.
“We understand the necessity of building products that are powerful and robust, but most of all, they have to be intuitive and easy to use, and most importantly extend that seamlessness to the consumer,” he explains.
The BoldTrail experience delivers BoldTrail BackOffice, too, a complete system to manage every back-office task, providing everything real estate businesses need to manage deals while also growing a brokerage or team. BackOffice streamlines operations and workflows, and automates back-office processes, handling everything from transaction management and commissions, to forms, e-signature, compliance, accounting and reporting.
Part of the BackOffice bundle, BoldTrail Recruit, is designed to identify top agents who are growing and ready for a move, as well as driving meaningful conversations with existing agents using market benchmarks.
The second pillar Skousen dubs “enterprise to engine.” He notes that top teams and agents need tech that’s tailored for their unique brands and business models. “One of the realities of the space historically is that you have this disconnect between what the enterprise has often provided and what a top team and agent really needs,” he explains. “BoldTrail closes that gap, so that brokers can provide teams and top producers the customized solutions they need, and those same teams and top producers benefit from lower tech costs and more streamlined operations under their broker’s umbrella.”
The third pillar that Skousen describes is value-added services and community. Emphasizing that technology has to be applied to business realities, he says the industry needs expert support and success solutions, from all angles—internally, from their tech partner, and through peer-to-peer communities.
“This goes beyond just software tools in our minds,” Allen says. “This is creating raving fans, through your service and support team, who truly understand what the needs are for agents, teams and brokers.”
Shannon Williams, chief marketing officer at Inside Real Estate, hones in on the community aspect—detailing how the BoldTrail Community brings the brand and technology to life, creating new opportunities for real estate professionals to communicate and engage directly with other motivated and successful professionals.
“We’ve developed new community strategies and recently launched new BoldTrail communities for top teams, for brokers and for agents. They’re a place to connect and collaborate with other like-minded top performers on not only the BoldTrail tech, but on real estate best practices, the market and the industry. It’s facilitating and fostering a vibrant peer-to-peer community environment that is very unique to us as a company and this industry,” she says.
All of this leads to the fourth pillar—the aforementioned “Real Estate+” solution that Skousen describes as a “non-negotiable” for top teams, agents and brokers in the near future.
“What has been a ‘nice to have’ in the past—things like ancillary services with mortgage, title, etc., are imperatives now,” Skousen states. “But the future is about tapping into the value and services you can provide across the lifetime of homeownership. We’ve finally cracked that code, and that is where Real Estate+ truly sets you apart.
“The future is truly brighter than the past,” he reiterates. “But it doesn’t look exactly like the past.”
Blazing a (bold) trail
Despite just how big this moment is, and how BoldTrail brings together so much of what Inside Real Estate and the industry has long been working toward, Skousen declines to characterize it as a culmination.
“I will say it feels like a major milestone, a big chapter and the next big thing in the evolution of Inside Real Estate and the industry,” he says. “I talked about intent earlier, and we intend to continuously evolve and innovate on behalf of what our clients need, what the industry needs. We’re always driving toward that future state.”
Instead, looking back on his company’s long commitment in the areas of customer success, scaling to take on macro industry challenges and everyday innovation in-step with brokerages of all sizes, he characterizes this moment as the beginning of “the greatest phase we have ever seen in the industry.”
And being able to take advantage of this phase requires entrepreneurship, an intense work ethic and, of course—boldness.
“For brokers, with market dynamics more challenging than ever, the path to profitability requires innovative strategies and a willingness to embrace change,” Skousen says. “Realize we are in a dichotomy—brokerages are either very profitable or very unprofitable. It’s important to move to a position of profitability, where agents and teams are willing to and wanting to pay for the value you provide. Similarly, a time when teams, who power so much growth and production, are able to realize the profitability of streamlined and efficient operations. I believe the years ahead will be the most profitable years for many.”
Allen points to the positive feedback loop that feeds BoldTrail. Inside Real Estate has used insights garnered from the most successful and driven agents to create the tools and all the support around them, he explains, making BoldTrail an ideal solution.
“How do we attract those that are truly in that growth mindset? Those are the people that we’ve been spending our time gathering feedback from, and investing our time into—the true professionals that are in this business who are truly engaged in this business,” he says. “A lot of brokers are looking for different ways to create better profitability.”
Williams
Williams points to the “breadth and depth” of Inside Real Estate’s experience with top performers, and the deep understanding of the opportunities available today (and tomorrow) for clients to seize in the midst of major industry changes.
“We are deeply committed to engaging in these critical conversations and strategies with our clients,” she says. “Brokers, agents and teams are all thinking about these changes and how they can adapt to continue growing their business and increasing profitability. Whether it’s the capabilities that we’re putting in the product to help solve these issues for our clients, our value-add service offerings or our peer-to-peer community, it’s our mission to help guide and partner with our clients.”
With many of those changes to the industry already in progress, the response from those who have used BoldTrail has been overwhelmingly positive, according to Skousen, with people already “leaning in” based on their commitment to their craft and the industry. That response validates Inside Real Estate’s vision and belief in the spirit of real estate’s most driven entrepreneurs.
“We’ve always been pushing the boundaries of innovation, to deliver what our customers need today and what they’ll need tomorrow,” Skousen says. “So far, our customers have praised the new BoldTrail experience, not for just a new look and feel, but for the ease of use and the time it saves them.”
But the power of BoldTrail, all of its innovations and strengths, are also reflective of Inside Real Estate’s people—the developers, product team and engineers, marketing, founders and client services teams whose DNA is innovation with purpose. Williams describes a concerted effort following “one flag” from every team in the company to rally around BoldTrail and passion for driving customer-centric successful outcomes, while Skousen reiterates “creativity, purpose and commitment” to support bottom-line results for their clients and the industry.
Maybe the most impressive part of BoldTrail today, though, is what it will do tomorrow. Many of the people experiencing BoldTrail for the first time are only just grasping its potential, Skousen says—and what it’s really built for.
“Often, when people are sitting in a moment of transition, they’re looking at the past,” Skousen says. “They’re saying, ‘How can I fit what I see into that perspective?’ To really understand BoldTrail, you must see the brokerages, teams and agents that will be leading five to 10 years from now. The future has more profitability and success than we have seen in this space—but it looks different and requires a different breed of solutions.
“For that future, we have BoldTrail.”
To learn more, please visit https://boldtrail.com/.
