Chris Sauerzopf is the co-founder and CEO of SafeWire, a technology that protects real estate transactions from wire fraud (which we will get into), as well as the Co-Owner of World Class Title. He’s a real estate tech entrepreneur, a dad, a deep-thinker, a traveler, and overall one of my favorite people in real estate.   In this episode, we talked about how Chris juggles his time between being an entrepreneur, a Dad, a traveler, and how "time away" is one of the most important things he can do for his company and himself. We get into the details of wire fraud and how widespread this scam is. Did you know 1 out of every 425 real estate transactions has fraud?   We then talked about how his company, SafeWire, has built a very interesting technology to protect real estate transactions from these scammers.   Find more about SafeWire at www.safewire.com

• Jason introduces his guest, Chris Sauerzopf ...00:27
• Chris talks about what entrepreneurship is and is not about...1:30
• What is important to Chris- his daughter, enjoying opportunities, self-care... 02:00
• “Fuelling the tank”- refuelling the self, going to Bali to learn yoga, fly-fishing, helps to be a better CEO, a better dad...2:40
• Success is different for everyone...3:10
• The importance of taking out time for self-care like daily meditative practice, setting an example and empowering others to care for themselves...4:00
• There is a time and place for everything, needing the experience to realize what you want or what you do not want to do…5:55
• What SafeWire is, how and why SafeWire came about, what Chris is doing at SafeWire and what SafeWire is doing about wire fraud in the real estate industry…6:43
• Segmentation as the biggest challenge in real estate as an industry…8:20
• Competing with up-coming companies with secure platforms that are eliminating all the segmentation…9:15
• What scammers are doing…10:00
• Scammers have added sophistication to their activities by partnering with hackers from India and Pakistan who facilitate complex phishing scams…10:55
• Scammers activate forwarding rules in their victims’ e-mails…11:45
• Scammers are from Nigeria, in partner with hackers from India and Pakistan…13:05
• There is a process to recover the money if reported to the FBI via their website https://www.ic3.gov/default.aspx within 3 to 4 business days …14:40
• The FBI on average gets back 75% of the lost money; past 5 or 6 days, the money gets outside federal jurisdiction, it’s gone…14:55
• There is no insurance and cyber policies for this kind of situation…15:22
• 2019 losses up 50% from the year before, $221M, according to FBI data…15:45
• Phishing attempts up by 350% since Covid…16:20
• How SafeWire protects the transaction…17:40
• SafeWire was launched 2017 and has since then authenticated 40,000 buyers and sellers without any occurrence of loss…18:00
  • Given free to brokers and real estate agents
• SafeWire process flow…18:20
  • Get in as close to the beginning of the transaction as possible
  • Bank grade multi-factor authentication (digital)
  • Originally created not only for wire fraud but also as an authentication layer for a blockchain solution
• SafeWire transaction protection in the next 2~5 years…21:55
  • Offered on every real estate transaction
  • Keep buyers secure
  • Going into earnest money, using earnest money to authenticate buyers and offer assurance warranty, called SafeWire Assurance
• How to build tools and opportunities to empower real estate agents with technology…23:35
• The company culture within SafeWire…22:45
  • Team is 100% remote from all over the world