#REIS2026 | Highlights

Hi, my name is Dr. Craig Wing, and I'm so proud to be the Master of Ceremonies here at Ries 2026. It's an incredible opportunity to be in the beautiful Mother City in South Africa, and even though I've traveled around the world, South Africa truly is one of the most beautiful places around. Now, in my role as MC, I'm so excited that we're gonna be running this event. We'll be discussing resilient by design. How can you, as an agent, as part of this real estate world, really be more resilient when it's baked into what we all do? And it's all about saying how do we build a foundation of the future? Resilience sounds like a nice word on stage, but it's hard conversations and difficult change. So what we're saying today is, don't wait for resilience, design it. Because businesses that win tomorrow are the ones that's designing strong foundations today. From a macro perspective, in a difficult external environment, how do we build resilience? It is going to be difficult, it is going to be challenging. There's a lot of uncertainty, but at the same time, I think it's important to remember that the South African economy is very resilient. See, we've just wrapped up a panel conversation about the agent of the future and what mindset skills and systems they need to have in place in order to be resilient by design. Thriving in today's market means drowning out the noise, focusing on the actions that are in your control that you can take. Best way to do that, first of all, is to get the mindset right. So look after the body, look after the brain. That'll give you the energy to be able to focus on building a database that will allow you to thrive in any market. And being an exhibitor at RISE this year is just phenomenal. The quality of leads, interactions, quality of conversations just makes it worthwhile being in Cape Town. It's really amazing. It's where the industry comes together. We collaborate, we share, and it's all for the greater good of homeowners. So thank you, private property. So agents, the future for us is a lot of work to deal with these multiple cultures, multiple languages we have to support. And the utilization of AI will help you to build personal relationships with people if you interact in their language of choice. Welcome to RISE 2026! Woo! What an incredible 2026 RISE we had in Cape Town today. On behalf of EPSA Bank, I'd love to thank the industry that came out today. I'd also love to thank the exhibitors and the sponsors for the event, which was extremely successful. We had good conversation, which allowed us to reflect around building resilience by design. Thank you.