I been waiting for this interview to have a chance to brag with the world about my business partner at eXp Jeff & Amanda Whitespeare.
In this episode, They will share their story on how they get started on real estate, how they sold their 1st home all the way to selling 300+ homes a year and leading an organization of 800+ agents and brokers at eXp Realty. Stay tune, take tons of note and don’t blink!
Read more about our company, and what we do to help real estate agent scale up to leave a legacy for them and their family
Hi Jeff hi, Amanda. Welcome to the cashflow agent show. How are you guys doing?
We’re doing great. Thanks for having us Huy
yeah. I’m super excited as well. Especially after our, you started a new yesterday about our company. We can making a killing on Q2 and we’re getting dividends and, the stock pumping up like 35%.
It just blew my
mind. No, it’s a good time to beat it. .
I had to do a lot of Googling. Like before this company I had never even had stock. And I was like, what? What’s a dividend stock. What does that even mean? Searching it. And then of course I already knew, but wow. We’re so excited.
So maybe we can touch on that a little bit. good time to be in exp for sure
Needy. But really, I didn’t want to take an opportunity, to do back with everybody. Who’s my sponsor is my senior business partner at exp. So if you don’t mind just share with the audience, know who is Jeff, who is Amanda?
So I’m Amanda. This is my 13th year in real estate. Wow. Yeah, it’s gone by so fast. It’s been so much fun, never a dull moment. Every deal is so different. I kind of played follow the leader with Jeff. So Jeff was one of those I’ll he’ll tell his story, but he just always knew he had a passion for real estate.
And I moved to Houston. I had a degree in biochemistry. I had a totally different path and game plan and he got into real estate here in Houston and he was. So much fun, like just a blast. And I was like 3% of what is what, you don’t want to have to, come to find out you have to work all the time and learn we had leveraged life.
But anyway, so I got my license and we’ve been having a blast ever since.
Wow. Bio chemistry. Okay. Now and. And just make a note on this, if you think that you introvert, think about Amanda. Okay. She has a degree in biochemistry. Okay. Not even business. And there she is selling 300 Homes a year. so no excused for the listener
I spent all day in a lab with like gloves and goggles and half the time you’re not talking to anyone and you’re writing in a notebook, so definitely naturally super introverted. Wow.
So that’s a sign off Amanda that we don’t know.
Can you picture, bring it back.
Yeah. Yeah. I’ve always wanted to be in real estate ever since high school.
Really? Yeah. Yeah. So knowing your high school, what are you going to college? What are you going to do when you get older? Everybody asks you to ask you and everybody’s I don’t know, I’ll get my basics and I’ll figure it out. I was, so I was operating. I always knew that I wanted to sell real estate and especially in Houston.
So I told people from even on graduation night, I had a little speech and I told them that, they’re like, what are you going to do when you get older? And I was like I’m going to get my business degree. And then I’m gonna use that degree to focus in real estate and build a real estate company, hopefully in Houston.
So I’m a little, I’m from a town where there’s probably about 6,500 people. And I graduated with maybe 35 people in my entire class. So everyone was like, hell yeah. Good luck, Jeff selling real estate. Oh,
so you actually, I was happy, jokingly asked this question, but you actually Reem to be a real estate agent when you grow up.
Obviously when you’re a kid, you want to be a firefighter or an astronaut or whatever, but I would say probably when I was. 15 or 16. I knew that I wanted to sell real estate. So cause my biggest thing is when my sister, she moved down to Houston before me and she started at the, at Keller Williams there at the metropolitan office and she got rookie of the year within six or seven years.
She was the assistant team leader. She called me one day and she was like, I can’t believe that Jeff, I don’t have anyone else to call. I want to have to call you. I’m putting $60,000 into my account today. And I didn’t know, I had to tell somebody that, so I figured I’d call you. And I think I was like maybe 17 or 18.
So I was like she can do that. And then that’s what, when I’m start applying for these jobs and stuff, that’s about, if you saw a $60,000 salary, that’s phenomenal out of high school, you’d be like, wow, I want to try that. So anyway, I went to a straight, I went straight into school and I went to business.
So I have a business marketing degree. And I use that to get in real estate. Got my license pretty young, joined a little from KW in Tyler, Texas. Yeah. In east Texas. And I sold seven houses. My first year was all for every single one for us, for Selma. That’s all
my that’s thinking of that, and everybody knows you as the king of strip Mia in the group.
Superman we’ll have you shedding your script and basically helping everybody achieving the same thing you did. Yeah. Yeah. So briefly help everybody understand, how a biochemistry degree and a business degree, how you got able to join forces and now, Great, pretty much an empire.
So take us back just quickly how you guys met and how, especially how you and Amanda decide to do business together, which is really hard.
I moved to Houston. I didn’t really know much about real estate, that it had seven sales under my belt and my sister, she was at KW. So I went there cause that’s where my sister was and I said, who’s the number one team here.
And she introduced me and did guy named Renee Serola and I interviewed with Renee and I said, I don’t know anything about, Houston, the real estate. So I want to join a team. I want to pay my dues. I don’t care what the split is. I just want to learn from you. Okay. And then I was his buyer’s agent for about three years.
The first year I started off, I did 27 houses next year. I did 35 and the next year almost did 50 houses. Okay. And I asked him, I think I ran as fast as I could sell in about 50 homes. I want to make more money next year. But, I don’t necessarily want to sell more houses. And he said that’s hard, that doesn’t work for him.
You have to somewhere else, if you want to make more money, I’m like, eh, okay. But in the interim, Amanda was there and little about your little office you had and team. Yeah.
So it took me three years to recruit him. I always joke like that, but it really did. I joined, I got my, an office right next to his office and I heard him doing this scripts and doing it.
Practice making more calls to make more money, his full. It was really cool. And but naturally I just was super introverted. And so I would go online. I got a message on LinkedIn actually from a builder and the builder said, Hey, I’ve got these two beautiful million dollar homes. I went, I want you to bring it back.
Like how many times do you get this opportunity of, Hey, bring me a buyer and you’re like yeah, whatever. And so I said, Hey, I don’t want to bring the buyer. I want to find you the buyer by listing it. And he’s oh, are you have people? I’m a builder. I’m cool. I’ve been around for 20 years.
I said, let’s just meet for coffee. By the end of the coffee date, I had both the listings. And so then I had a builder that was brand new. I was like, I can do this. And so I started there and then I, with my chemistry background, I ended up getting a relocation company. Who’s the number one chemical company in the world, which is really cool.
So people coming in from Germany and New Jersey and Japan and Hong Kong and all over the world. So then I was really busy. And I asked Jeff, Hey come work with me. And he was like, I’m not working with you. You’re new. You didn’t even want to do it. What are you doing?
She created the city side properties and she had a one buyer’s agent at first, and then I was seeing, I would sell a house and it would be a lead I got from Renee.
And then I paid my split to Renee and then I played my splits. To the KW and then I’ll see my check and then she would have a closing same sales price, and her check was way different. So that’s what kinda got me thinking, but I was like, yeah, let’s join up. It’s kinda tough. Working together living together, being at that time boyfriend and girlfriend was weird, anyway, so I started, I was like let’s make it, JW properties or Jeff Whitesburg properties or white spear team or something like that.
And she was like, Nope, we’re doing this. Yeah, it is
it’s for me. And I should have doubt.
Yeah. tried to buy JW properties.com and the guy wanted like 3,500 bucks for it. And I was like, yeah, whatever. I’ll just do city stuff.
Yeah.
So that’s the creation of CDCI proper date. That’s when you know, you actually bring Jeff Allah as my agent, and then that’s the way I’d come fall
for sure.
Yeah. Cause she was getting the listings from the builder and the relocation company and also. I’m over here, splitting my money with Renee. Let’s figure out something. So that’s what we did. That was a long time ago.
Gentlemen. So I want to slow down a little bit, because a lot of agents on this podcast, they want to scout a business from a solo agent to a team, right?
Even myself, I have been a solo agent for years, without any team member, or could you slow down a little bit and help, like solo agent, like me understand. On a decision why you decide to scale your your city side property and especially how do you scale it from just you and Jeff and I? How many agents do you have now?
We just hired a few agents cause we’ve been getting busy. So I’ll just say it’s me. Amanda, Mikey, stormy, Thomas Kimmy, Gabe cot. Debbie just 10. And then we have a staff, we have ISA team and Cheryl runs everything.
So 10 Asian, to to them all, to assistant ISA in, in what in 10 years from the day you started city side from here, is that about 10 years?
Six or seven years old. Seven years old, right? Maybe seven or eight. Yeah. Yeah.
Is when you can’t handle your own business, like when you’ve, you’re working the nights and the weekends and you’re doing everything, you can just, like Jeff said, I’m selling 50 houses. How do I make more money when you’re to that point where you just truly can’t sell any more houses?
You need to find leverage. And that’s when you know, it’s time to start either, hiring an assistant for TC who helps you with the backend paperwork or hiring a showing concierges to help show houses for you or taking on that first buyer?
Yeah, I hired an assistant first and then after my assistant, I hired a coach.
The, yeah. That’s I think that’s key. There is, in this business, nobody’s going to tell you to get up. Nobody’s going to tell you to make your calls. Nobody’s going to tell you to show houses. Nobody’s going to tell you to put out open house signs and doing, nobody’s going to tell you to do that.
Let’s try to find another form of motivation and accountability. So I hired a coach and he said, he told me it blew my mind. The most time consuming parts of your job really require the least amount of talent that you need to leverage that out. You’re the talent you need to leverage the not so talented part where you don’t really need talent to do you need leverage that out.
He said from just the paperwork, inputting listings into MLS all that kind of stuff. And then even to showing properties. And at that time I was like, no, why would my, I would definitely want to show my buyers their properties. He’s yeah. But no, it’s, it doesn’t take talent twos to map out properties and openings.
We
were still putting signs in the yard to
put boxes on that and find leverage on signs and. At first you get a listing. You want to go out there and you wanna stick a sign in the yard. You want to put a lock box on the door, which is fine. We get up to 40, 50, 60 listings. It’s really hard to do that.
So hired a Howard, an admin hired a coach, a part of ours agent. It was me and Amanda. And my first buyer’s agent was Michael Bass who is still with us today. And he is now our team leader. Our second buyer’s agent was a guy named Andy era’s Mindy. He’s not with me anymore, but he’s with exp, which is awesome.
About that in a little bit. So that’s another thing when you’re building a team within. Within the exp model, you almost want them to do as well as you, and to be better than you, and to create their own team and build out their own team within the model, because you’re getting paid company dollar on, on their sales as well.
So traditionally. On any outside of exp you’re building a team, then you’re basically training your competition. Exactly. And that competition realizes that they can do the same thing that you taught them the last few years, they’re going to go and do that. And they’re not going to pay you 50%. And that kind of sucks at any other model, but at exp you’re like, wow, that’s awesome.
And congratulations. I want to help you grow. You get the company dollar. So three years is exactly about the timeline that we see the trend of you joined as a buyer’s agent. You figure out your market, you understand the sales, and then once you, after three years, she felt confident enough to graduate if you will.
And so we had it, it was a funny. We knew when we were busy enough to start a team, a mind shift. And the coach said, you’d have to treat this like a business. And I was almost offended. I was like, I have a business. I sell houses and make money. That’s a business. And he’s no, you’re not investing into it.
It’s not structured. You don’t have people in place. There’s no leverage or scalability. And so we really had to sit down and look at it from a different aspect other than just selling houses.
Wow. Is it okay if I can get the contact of your caution, then we can share it at the end of the day. Man. I’m even thinking, not for myself right now.
Yeah. So for those that you listening, I wouldn’t go back and just listen to this like seven times Amanda and Jeff has just, re-upped so many, not yet, especially for people that want to scale and have an exit strategy, so also speaking of that, Amanda, so seem things are super good at KW.
Things are going way out, you being, you building a big team, you killing it. Why all of a sudden you risk everything to move to back then this tiny company called exp that nobody knows.
Yeah. Yesterday was our five-year anniversary
yesterday five years.
But five years ago, I was like, what is that?
And what is the, what’s the cloud? I don’t know. I thought Jeff had gone crazy. So I was super happy. I was in the luxury division. I went to all the meetings and all the, bingo nights and all the things that, we had. I was very comfortable and that’s really the word for it. I was just comfortable, I was selling more houses each year, but I wasn’t like building, like you said, building an entire.
And our aha was when Jeff said, Hey, we’re selling a lot of houses. There’s all these little tiny fees I keep adding up. We for the first time did a profit last statement. If you guys have not done a profit loss statement, I would say, don’t do it because it’s horrifying, but you really do need to know and treat it like a business.
And we realized that we were paying all of this money just to tie our name to a brand. And my clients didn’t even care what brand I was with surprisingly. And so Jeff said, Hey, we’re going to this exp, we’re going to make more money. We’re gonna have all these streams of income. And all I could picture was like, first of all, I had never heard of it before.
What is this? What are you thinking? And I just picture like a PO box and a laptop and I’d be all by myself. And I had no idea because the proof of concept wasn’t there yet. And what I’ve learned is it’s the most collaborative company. People actually want to go out of their way and help me and share their secrets and bring us, bring us up before.
If I asked the top producer, Hey, how’d you sell a hundred houses, I’m really committed to be successful. They would say, Hey, go make your phone calls or go do some open houses. If you see, yeah, the ABCs of real estate, they, they wouldn’t open up their book and share all their secrets with me.
And here it’s just been so different. I feel. There’s so much more support and collaboration
here. Yeah, so as it goes back to the coach, he told me if you’re running your business, like a business, you need to, first thing you need to do is show me your books. Let’s make sure you’re profitable.
Yeah. And I was like water books who I’m just blown and going on. I feel like I’m making money, but how profitable are you? What’s your, your profit margin? What do you, what let’s dig into some of the numbers of your business. And I’ve put down all of my marketing expenses. I was paying for a BoomTown.
I was paying for Zillow. I was paying for all kinds of stuff. My staff, my cat, my everything, and my goodness. I had to make $150k per year. Just to get out of the hole. Yep. Yeah, my goodness. What are we doing? I, started breaking down. He was like the first thing of item of business, you need to start trimming some fat, if you will trim some of the expenses.
And unfortunately, one of the largest expenses was just being associated with the big brand for me. They had the cap, they had the loyalty, they had the transaction fee, the Eno insurance, the desk fee, all that kind of stuff. Times 150 transactions at the time we’re doing my goodness.
It was almost about 50,000 of that was being associated with the brand. And it wasn’t like it wasn’t, the KW was doing anything wrong or anything like that. I just started thinking a little bit differently. And then I saw another $36,000 annual expense was my CRM. Oh, it’s $85,000 just to be associated with this company and pay for my CRM.
Okay. Zillow that’s 2,500 a month. That’s another 25,000 a year. So I’m already up to a hundred thousand year before I, sell a house. So started thinking a little bit differently because of my coach and I started researching different companies and then my sponsor uh, Wilco. Um, I guess he just reached out to me in a good timing because as soon as I noticed I was spending so much money at KW, I moved over to, to work with my buddy, Charlie, and went in the visors.
And, while I was doing that I got introduced to exp so exp golf, some pretty good problems for me. It solved my CRM. It saved me 3000 a month with my CRM. It cut my cap down by about 10,000 a year, asks me out on fees, maximum on Eno insurance fee is out on the transaction fee, all that kind of stuff.
And then on top of all of that, I can earn that back and stock my goodness at the time. I was like, if this is. Actually true. What you guys are saying is true. This is going to be crazy. If half of it was true, but there’s only like 17, 18 people in Houston at exp. And they’re only like 1800 people in the whole company.
And the stock was like a 1.80 is on the pink sheet. It was on the OTC markets. It’s a penny stock. And I was like, my, and I don’t know.
We really have this moment though, of what do we have to lose? Because we had been at Keller Williams for so long and walking away from that and looking at, Hey, did we start our own brokerage?
Or what do we do? What should we change? I walked away with my last 30 days of escrow, my database. I didn’t walk away with this empire that I had built over those last eight years. And so it was really like an aha moment of, you joke about how realtors don’t get to retire and then you work your tail off and then you’re going to leave and you leave with your database and you’re like, I’ve been making fun of him.
Other realtors. Who’ve been doing this for 30 years saying they should’ve known better and they should that X, Y, and Z. And then here I am not doing anything different. And so that was a huge aha of us going. We have nothing to lose. Yeah.
So that’s why I basically just came down to the numbers, but yeah.
That’s why when you getting getting uncomfortable and just thinking a little bit differently, so
amazing. Okay. So I just want to slow down a little bit. You mentioned a really important key point that I want to I want to revisit we’ll call doesn’t do anything. But what he does, he has the courage, and he is consistent.
He call you and then, by the time he call you just like me, I am already looking for some but something that, you know, but I didn’t know that thing is called exp same thing with you, something what I’m meaning we are looking for something. And we just didn’t know that thing is called exp.
Correct. Or had, we’ll go. He has, he’s been consistent. He has taught us to call and the rest is history. You go ahead, Amanda.
So thankful for him, like looking back, I’m like, it, wasn’t him doing a suit, doing him a favor. He did us a favor. Like our lives are so different now.
And he jokes that a couple of years ago he calls and he’s. I had no idea that calling you guys would be a multimillion dollar phone call. I know you have no idea who you’re talking to or how their lives are going to change or what they’re going to do in the future. And so I’m really thankful that
he had the courage to take a picture.
They called us. I was interested cause I was looking he drove all the way down from Dallas. He presented, he ran out of Regis space. You can tell you spent some money on it. He told us about the model, all super confused, like a lot of people, cause there’s so much information. And then he tried to explain the residual part and I was like, what the hell is that?
Like, why wouldn’t I just put everyone on my seventh level, get paid email for them anyway.
Live inside the box mentality, right? You sell a house you’re fired. You’d go get another client. You sell a house. We had never thought of all these different capacities of being in real estate.
So he just kept, he met with us.
He drove down again. He put us in front of gene, Frederick. We went to a corner. I said, okay, team. I think I’m very interested in this. I need you, God. I need you guys to poke some holes in it and tell me why I shouldn’t do it. So let’s go ahead and y’all do. And then after that we can meet with gene. So it’s about two or three days went by and then we met with gene.
Gene came out from Austin. He met us at corner bakery. Yep. Thank you. 59 and Kirby, pretty much whatever that corner break corner bakery is. And he legitimately pulled out a napkin and started writing down. The a, basically it explained the old school brick and mortar on how that business runs and essentially flipped over the napkin.
He’s this is how this business runs. And it basically turned itself on inside of each other. And the agents were at the bottom on the first example, in the second example the agents were at the top. And again, it whoa, okay. And then I looked I’m, he left, I looked around at all my agents.
I was like, okay, what’s going on? And everyone was like, yeah, we’re doing this. And I was like, okay, we’re doing it.
The legendary napkin presentation that he
really did it. And it’s powerful for sure. But we’ll go for the first about 600. He drove down every single Friday and he presented for us.
And so we got comfortable enough to present ourselves and he drove that’s a four hour drive. He wouldn’t even stay the night. Yup. He would he would present, he would have lunch. I even offered to take him to golf afterwards. Anything he’s Nope. Got to get back. He drove right back every single week, man for probably six months.
It was incredible.
Yeah. And that is amazing. So fast forward now, not only you able to build your city side property team, but over the course of five years with exp you are able to build a revenue share organization up to 600 active agent now, right? Correct me if I’m wrong on a number
of almost 800.
800 an
activation. So for the next half of the podcast, we’re going to dive deep into this aspect of revenue share off DXP. That is not a lot of agencies is aware of, like Amanda say, a lot of us, we have the mentality of sell a house and then get fired and then do it again with no way of getting out.
So remind me. Of everyone on your first agent that you brought on to your revenue share group, how does that conversation go? How did you find that agent and how did you open that? How did you present, how do you get your first cute?
Our first recruit was through a guy named Jimmy Lam
He was my, one of my first people I ever met. My very first week. And he told me about you and he helped set it up. We went on a sushi lunch and I presented it to you. And truly you are other than our immediate team, our very first recruit. So
yeah, my team, I’ve had to present it to my team to where it would make sense, but I didn’t want to sell them on it.
I asked them to poke holes and then tell me why I shouldn’t do it. And all my team members said yes. And at that point it was my assistant. Kendra. It was Andy. It was Mikey. It was Amanda and me. That’s it. So I told, Mikey who’s been with me from the start. I was like, man, you gotta tell me why I should do it.
So that’s when we joined. And then one of the first persons I called was a guy named Keith Galloway. And the only reason I call him is because when I was at KW met, he was sitting right next to me in a cubicle, Hey, how’s business. And I kinda met with him. And I would say. To be honest and don’t listen to me.
I didn’t recruit for about the first year and a half. Yeah. But it wasn’t as powerful back then as is now, to be honest with you, the value proposition was phenomenal, but now it’s so relevant that you almost feel obligated to tell everybody about it, especially your friends in real estate and stuff like that.
And I, what I told him is what I told Keith is, Hey, we just joined. You sat next to you sat next to me for a long time. I heard you talk, I know you do a lot of commercial stuff. I want you to take a look at the model and kind of poke holes in it. Tell me why I shouldn’t be here. And then I would say in a month he was with us.
He joined us. I to my first recruit outside of my team was.
We were having so much fun!
Let’s slow it down a bit for the audience. So for Jeff, right? He used his his influence to call the people that he already know. Amanda, I don’t even know Amanda back then. Okay. We are networker, we network two people. So Amanda happened to know my good friend, Jimmy and gave me happen to know that my job is not very good at that time. And I’m looking around to see if I should make a move and risk, like full-time and all he needs. And all Amanda do is network through Jamie to make the connection, to be able to connect with me.
And then the rest is just. Yeah. So that is really important. You don’t even have to reach out to real estate agent per se. Just reach out to your friend, ask Hey, I’m looking, tell them what they’re looking for. And your friend will tell you,
And a lot of real estate agents, if they’re struggling in business, or if they’re struggling where they’re at.
They don’t tell another real estate agent. Exactly. Thank you. They tell lenders and they tell title company reps, appraisers, and they tell inspectors and they tell their friends and family that man, I’m having a tough time here, man. I’m there. They’re not calling it a real estate agent. So it’s really important that you educate.
And you get to know, and you network with all your vendors, all your, all, your, all your lenders, all your title companies and stuff, because I’ve been introduced. I got introduced to one of my key business partners Mickey Patel and Sugarland of off of a lender and Mickey, again, just like most agents went to the lender and said, I’ll start up my own company.
We, we bought this building with my buddy Jacob, and we started killing it. And we’re just not having fun. It’s not like I thought it would be like the independent brokers is not what I thought it would be. We’re spending so much money and Jennifer, the lender. Oh, sorry. It was an insurance company.
So they reached out and they said I think you should talk to Jeff and Amanda, because. They’re doing the same thing you did, you’re doing, they seem like they’re happy and having a great time. So we met with Mickey and Jacob and, they’re one of our key business partners now and they keep holding company over.
Wow. There’s so many good connections with your vendors. Yeah.
Yeah. So that kind answered my next question, because my next question was going to be, how do you get to 10 agents? And that, I guess that was a story or how do you get to modern tenants?
It should be a goal, right? You need to create a wealth chart.
You need to create contact base. But I, if you’re joining exp and you want to make agent attraction a part of your business and have that residual income, the first thing you do is need to make a list of agents that if you were to call, they would know of you or know from you or something like that they would know you.
So even if that list is 5, 10, 15 agents make the list, make a list of friends and families that know agents and stuff like that. My coach told me to call your friends back home, your friends back home, like in east Texas and say, Hey, nice talking to you, man. It’s been a long time and I’m looking for some agents to join me in my mission and whatever.
Who’s the best agent, in your town. Who’s that? Who’s the number one agent. Yeah. And then you can call that agent and say, Hey, I just spoke to someone and talk to my buddy, Joel. And I talked to my buddy William and I talked to my buddy, whatever. And your knee, your name keeps popping up as one of the best agents around town.
Ah, that’s a good one. Yeah. I wanted to talk to you and see, you keep your incomes off, you keep your income options open or do you, are you kinda, you good where you’re at or what? And then once they say. No start there.
So I think we had a mindset shift because I know when we joined the Expedia was like, oh, I don’t want a second job.
I don’t know what recruiting is. I’m still learning what a stock is like. I’m good. And what we found is that people who are joining were doubling their business and they were tripling their business and they had all the support and they were having fun. And it was just this totally different collaborative environment, rather than this competition where people push each other down and you were an independent contractor.
And so our biggest, my, my big aha was. We were in the middle of a lunch and learn. And Jeff was talking about there’s five different ways to get stocked. And the sweetest old lady was sitting next to me and she had been with Remax for 30 years and she got like this frustrated look on her face. And I said, what is it?
And she said, I’m with a publicly traded company. And if they would have just given me one type of way to get shares, my first deal of every year, over the last 30 years, I wouldn’t be sitting in this chair, honey I’d be at home and I would be retired. And I was like, I had this aha moment of, we need to tell everyone if someone would have told her years ago, she wouldn’t have to be here.
Yeah. Yeah. The model is just so strong. Now it’s so relevant and it’s exploding. It’s almost, you feel like the word I’m thinking of is obligated to tell other people and it’s not to sell other people. I didn’t say sell. I said, tell other people, educate people on the opportunity and just ask them, on top of your commissions.
If I can show you another way to create income on your bill, On top of your commissions, would you be open to it almost? Everyone’s going to say yes to that, right? And if they don’t say yes, that’s probably not the agent you want to talk to anyway. So if I can say Hey bill, we told me to give you a cost of you’re the best agent in town, man.
That’s awesome. How’s business going? Great. I’m doing this blah, blah, blah. If I can show you another stream of income on top of your commissions, I bet you’d be open to that. And then they’re going to say yes, and he’d say great. When’s a good time to meet when’s a good time to chat over coffee or whatever.
And it gives you the end. But if you make those, if you just have that little conversation, Five to 10 times a day in five years. My goodness. Yep. So
we just hit our five-year and it was so cool. Cause we had like a marker. If you will, of our goal of five-year to, we did a five-year plan and looking back, we really hit that marker two and a half years into it.
It was just like crazy reminder of set a big goal and it’ll just kill it. So we’re super passionate about this company and sharing it with everyone. I’m to the point of, I don’t care who your sponsor is. Just get over here.
Yes, but I just want to circle back on that Ringo of say something really important.
I listened to this morning that was two sales that we actually make any . The cell number one is when the agent get into exp and sound. Number two is when the agent actually in exp and fully immersed in the system. And see over six story and then they go share with everybody. That’s the second.
Yeah. Yeah, no, that’s great to stuff.
Then that’s the most powerful sale that we can make. But yeah, no,
exactly. Go ahead. I was going to say when I first joined and people were joining my group and stuff like that, I was so busy in real estate. I realized that those people are out there and they’re looking into the cloud and they’re trying to get classes and stuff like that.
And again another word for my coaches was basically, whatever you do to that agent, when they join you. It’s exactly what they’re going to do to the agent that they get actually got to sit to roll out some type of business plan for everybody and stuff like that. So I know, I think one of your next questions was, how we create some type of duplication in the system, right?
Yeah, exactly.
I think creating a culture too, people want to belong to something bigger than themselves. And so to be able to say, Hey, here’s our culture here to brand here. Let’s lift you up. And we really are approachable and you can call us for anything. When you join a big company or any industry, when you’re being recruited, they’re like, oh, I’m going to give you all this stuff.
And I’m going to be here. You call me in time. And then when they come, the rainbows and sunshine are gone and they’re you’re already in, right?
Yeah. That’s why we created a system, a culture, a training calendar. Hopefully with a coronavirus, hopefully continues to die down and we’ll be able to do more live events and just get in front of people.
We’ve Amanda and I, and even you, one of our leaders and we created a brokerage within a brokerage and we created our own culture and it’s exciting. It’s fun. It’s not the old re rigorous, get a house, sell it, get fired. Finding other buyers showed 20 properties in a hundred degree heat.
You know that is part of the business, but it’s not the business anymore. So it’s pretty fun opportunity.
The more people you help, the more money you make. And it’s it’s the opposite of you being stingy and being all by yourself and keeping all your secrets. It’s like the more you collaborate and have fun and help others and lift them up.
I get text messages all the time of, I thank God for that. I got to get, bump into you or that we get to work together. Or my God, my life has completely changed. And it’s just investing a little bit into those people. You just happen to get paid while you do it. Such a cool team.
Yep. So last question.
Not a rush here. And before we move along to the end of the section, this is my personal pack up, like my personal question, if you will. So now I’m getting to a hundred agent, I’m ready to scale. Do you have any advice for the leader that the one that already get their feet up and running like a hundred Asian 200 agents?
Do I need to do any different, do we need to do any different to scale up to, 800,800 agent, 1000 agents, anything I need to
do? Oh, for sure. So you’re already doing the lunch and learn, which is phenomenal. You got to get people in front of other people and get them re motivated and remind them of the opportunity.
Each month, remind them of the ESP opportunity. Number two, what we started doing is reaching out to our, our leaders within our group and just asking them who they know about in real estate and getting information from their contacts. Some might join exp and they say I’d like to make agent attraction a part of my business, but I don’t know what to say to agents.
So that’s okay. Give me five to 10 agents that you would want to have that conversation with. And I’m going to say, Hey, we, Amanda told me to give you a call, but your real estate business out, how’s everything going? Who’s this? Oh, this is Jeff. Amanda widespread. She told me to give you a shout. Oh, I know Hannah, right?
Oh, Amanda. Okay, great. Yeah, man. How’s business and start and then have those conversations.
So I think one of our big secret secrets, if you will, is, there’s a military term where you can only really actively, be in charge of five people at a time to be really efficient.
And so we said we need to, instead of being over a hundred people and being that one go-to, you really would fail a longterm as scalability wise, we need to. Five generals, if you will five liters and they have to be people who are really passionate, they’re motivated, they’re open to learning.
They’re willing to get uncomfortable to grow, and they want to do exactly what you’re doing now. And so we had that conversation and not everybody is an actual leader, but some people step up and they surprise you and they want to be that leader. And so then you really invest in those people and say, how can I help you do exactly what I’m doing?
Let me show you. And Jeff said, let me make those calls for you. And Adam, like the king of taprooting and all that is right. Recruiting through people. How can I help you get your first commission check and revenue sharing? The, yeah, if
you haven’t heard Adam Bailey firing him on social media ad him, he has a podcast.
He has a, YouTube is called the, just do it movement. And he has probably. 15 to 1800 agents in his revenue share group. And on his front line has maybe 30, 40 people all in Roger. Really, he calls it tap rooting. He said that if an agent comes into the company and they join in and they never hear from you, Jeff you’re disrespecting the opportunity.
VXP whoa, that hit me crap. So Jeff, if you have 40 50 agents joining your group every month, and you’re not talking to those agents and asking them who they know about real estate, You’re he said legit you’re disrespecting it. It’s not even it’s mindset
is those are 40 or 50 new leads. It’s like you got 40 buyer leads and you never
called them.
Yeah. So it’s just about reaching out to them, asking them why they joined the it to be a lot of people. Join it for different reasons. If they say they want to make agent attraction or be part of your business. Great. I want to get your rev share paid in 90 days. That’s my goal. In order for me to do that, I need you to give me five to 10 contacts of agents that you know, and let me reach out.
Yeah, I don’t need you to do it at first. I don’t need you to be the pro I’ll do it for you and then start reaching out to those agents for them. It’s called taprooting. It’s a brilliant idea. I think he got it from Brian Carruthers, which Brian is a huge legal shield guy, like legitimately like hundreds of thousands of people in his organization.
And he calls it. Taprooting.
Man. I’m just taking note right now, just for myself. I gotta do that. Man so not only you have this rep organization of 800 people, right? You and your team, you guys do selling crew that all my year, plus if I’m not mistaken. So Amanda, what is your day look like?
Because you and Jeff, you have you have a family, you have a kid. So what is your day look like? Just tell it a day of Amanda and Jeff. Tell us a day of Jen look like, what does it look like for you?
Yeah. We’re on track. I think this year we’ll sell about 500.
It’s been crazy. It’s everyone’s level of success is different. And so I love talking to people and finding out what does success mean to you? And for me, it’s getting off work by two o’clock so I can pick up my kids from school. That’s okay, I’ve made it. I can have my cake and eat it too. Kind of thing.
And not working. Weekends, and it took a long time to get there, but yeah, so I wake up, if they’re going to school, they go to school, checking emails, agent attraction working with, we work with a lot of investors in hedge funds, my, my traditional clients. And then in theory, I have it all wrapped up by two o’clock and I’m able to go pick up my children.
Anything after that, I, you can use the show and concierge or an assistant, and then your clients know that you’re there to help them, but they also know. Monday was a Friday. She does this, she there’s this, she does this. And they really treat me like a business. They booked me in advance like two weeks in advance, typically, which is wild.
And so it’s just, educating your clients on how your business is ran. Yeah that’s how my day looks. So go. I have, I feel like I’m almost more productive because I have a shorter amount of time to get things done and way more efficient every minute counts, but then two o’clock.
I’m finished. Oh, wow. Only at two, two o’clock
Yeah. So for me it’s off. It’s off and on, but I have a hedge fund, multiple hedge funds that I manage and manage, but they want to buy investment properties all around Texas. Usually the first thing I’m looking at is my Excel sheets. And is my emails and stuff like that.
But it’s also, whatever’s in my calendar. I do, but, and not to say unfortunately, but unfortunately whatever’s not in my calendar. I don’t. So if it’s not in there, I’m not going to do it. So if I see some some free time or something like that, I usually spend it on sourcing deals or following up with other offers that I’ve made or checking on.
The leads have generated for the team opening up my ISA background, ISA and looking at the numbers and see who’s gotten some leads lately. Checking on that. Managing my emails is a big hassle, trying to keep my emails down because I’m negotiating so many contracts and things like that.
And then, as you’re doing, as you’re in the grind and calling and emailing and writing offers and stuff, you open up your calendar and boom. Yeah. You got a 10 o’clock zoom, you got 11, eight it’s, whatever in it’s whatever’s in the calendar. So it’s off and on. Every now and then yesterday I think we went to the city center, like three o’clock and we just hung out with our kids and we ate and had an early dinner, if you will, with our kids were there for about two, three hours.
And then the kids came home and Amanda’s mom came home and they did their thing. And, me, I snuck off and went back to work right. In the office. It’s nice to have an office at home. And then, so it’s just it’s, it used to be very structured. But now it’s, I have a list of things that have to get done.
And for me, I w I wish I would do this more often, but your tomorrow starts today, right? So at night or maybe at the end of your work schedule, you probably miss something. You probably left something on the table. Go ahead and write all that stuff down. And those are your have to do as your next day.
You have to get these done. And if you continue to getting your half, two’s done, you can stay ahead of the game. But yeah,
it, the night before, especially if you’re, you are high producing, you have a lot going on before I would stay up all night. They think of all the stuff I needed to do, or I’d wake up with a mom, and I go, oh, I better not forget to send this out.
But if it’s on your checklist, don’t even think about it. You don’t worry about it. It’ll get done the next day.
That’s another reason if you’re, if you have trouble sleeping like that, high efficiency. People are a lot of people that are busy, have a tough time going to sleep. If you get that stuff off your brain and writing on paper okay, I forgot that.
So I don’t have to think about it anymore. It’s all on paper. The checklist is awesome. And then I confuse my mind with a big box fan. I turn a big box fan. You can’t even think when you got a box full in a box pain, go and use you false. Melatonin every now and then prioritized
like a way that’s really?
Yeah. I can tell you what. I’ll tell you a day in the life of a new agent.
Go ahead!
Eight to eight to 10:00 AM. You need to be lead-generating. You need to be calling past clients, current clients, you need to be calling for sale by owners, expireds for rent by owners. Pre-foreclosures all that kind of stuff. And then stop that after about 10 o’clock. Because even if you get someone on the phone that it’s an expired listing, per se at 11:00 PM during the day.
Or 11:00 AM during the day. Me realtors they’ve already spoken to that morning. Oh man. It doesn’t matter what you say. Stop calling me kind of thing. When you get a fresh list of expireds or fisbos or whatever, you got to hit them from eight to 10, 10 to 12, you’re sending it. You’re hopefully you set some appointments, but always set your appointments for the afternoon, maybe after lunch.
So if someone does want to sell property, or if someone does want to list you list their property, let them know that you can, you can meet them any day, after one o’clock, before 6:00 PM and then. 10 to 12 you’re doing emails and you do the daily grind.
If you will, grab some lunch for yourself, hopefully one to about three or one to four you’re in appointments. Your hands are showing property or your where you’re at listing appointments. Are you doing whatever? And then again from four to 6:00 PM, you’re back on the phone as lead generating because from eight to 10, people are getting ready for work.
People are driving to work. People are in their car. And you can get ahold of them during the middle of the day. They’re probably at work. And then four to six, they’re probably driving, getting off of work, driving home from work. They just got home or something like that from four to six. And that would be the structure of your day, but you should never schedule any for me when I was a new agent, never scheduled any appointments from eight to 10 or four to six, you’re busy, you’re lead generating your most important client for me anyway.
And it sounds harsh. Your most important client is your next. Even if you have a client that you’re working on and they say, Hey Jeff, good morning. I want to see this property. Great. I can show you a 10 30 or a, Hey, when you show me, we show me at five 30. Nope. Traffic’s terrible. At five 30. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.
I got a call, but I can show you at six there. I can show you at seven or I can show you tomorrow morning at 10 30, like your eight to 10 year four to six. Are they going to be the foundation of your business? You need to be lead generating in those four hours. Wow. If you’re a new agent, if you’re a new agent, obviously when you get clients coming in and like us, you get blessed enough to work with builders and hedge funds.
You can create your own day. And then if you have obviously an another stream of income coming, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. Yep.
That’s what I took away. Done. The important client is your next client. Wow. That is
fine. Take care. Obviously take care of your current class.
Yeah, then you don’t know your schedule. You don’t, they don’t need to run all over you. A lot of
new agents, they get so busy with that one or two clients and getting that deal close that their next month they have no closing. Every time we
do this for first one, they worked so hard closing that first client.
Yeah. Yeah. So what is your goal for the next five years? And anything that we can do to help you?
Yeah. So my goal continue. My goal for the next five years is to never let my commission. Be less than my revenue share checks. Oh wow. And that’s, and it’s, we’re fine right now, we’re selling a lot of houses.
We were blessed enough to have our largest month ever this month, we had about 92 closings and over three or four markets. And obviously that was a good month. But that’s, the goal is just continue to build the team and pour into people and really grow our expansion teams.
I think Houston, we have. Good group of people in Houston. I want to copy and paste that into San Antonio. Copy paste in Austin, copy paste into Corpus Christi, hopefully in Dallas as well. And once I’m in those, four or five markets and they’re all producing, like I want them to do then maybe I can have a little break and after five years,
It’s hard because we love what we do in real estate.
So addictive and there’s so many avenues of being successful in real estate. It’s really hard to just go, oh, I’m going to sell a house or, oh, we’ll just live off revenue share. There’s so many opportunities to take advantage of. We want to try them all.
That’s awesome. But yeah, hopefully five years, We’ll have multiple expansion teams doing, at least 20 to 30 million each and each of those cities.
And then in five years, our re our revenue share organization should hopefully be, yeah. I would say five, 6,000 active agents,
our cost 3000 by the end of next year. So
we have some big goals. And when you get up to the, those big numbers, like 508, Literally if half of those guys. No. If an eighth of those got one agent you’ve added 15 agents, that’ll the organic growth gets to be crazy.
Yeah. Kind of pouring your time into them. Even by default, we should be at, six, seven, 8,000 agents in five years just by default because we already started that thing. That’s the beauty of organic and compounding stuff, organic stuff, exponentials.
Someone told me the other day, they were like, so you help all these people and then they’re successful, but you get paid. And I said, yes. And I said, and then it grows and I was telling them, and she goes, so it’s like compounding interests. But
with people
she’s I love compounding interest. She has from a finance background.
She’s I can see how powerful that is, but you get to help her.
I tell them, I say, w let’s say you find a rental, and you find a room and he’s shining that rental up and you put a tenant in it. And that starts making you some cashflow. It’s like that rental saying Hey house across the street.
You should really do this. You should give me some money every month. Clean he’ll paint you, they get you new carpet. They see everything. It’d be nice. And then that house yeah, that’s a great idea. I’m doing it. And then Hey house, I’m struggling over there. You should meet this week, guys.
He gave me new, fresh paint carpet and granted property is copy and pasting themselves risk involved.
So you don’t have
to think you can run it, obviously. Yeah. Your margins are.
Yep. Yep. Yep. We didn’t talk about it yet. That that the margin, not revenue share, it’s just crazy.
It’s Ms. regional model upside down. Exactly. Instead of having a 10% margin, now our margin is 90%, which is not a lot of people. They see it that way. Yeah.
Yeah. I was just saying it’s an opportunity. And like I said, You almost need to feel obligated to tell people about it.
And I think that’s going to be your new slogan.
Jeff, my commission is going to be never less than my revenue check
I don’t want that to
be really hard. It’s going to be tough. Those expansion teams and they’re producing income and they’re talking face in our model. Hopefully that’ll be the thing, but here’s the thing let’s say. I don’t hit my goal.
Okay. We live in a true residual lifestyle.
Oh, man. I love that. I love that. Oh, I saw we’re moving onto the final section of the show and a lightning round. Jeff what are you for fun?
I hang out with my kids. We ha we swim in the backyard. I’d take them on bike rides. There’s a secret park over here.
We run to have a little tree house in it. What does it mean a date night? Every Friday night we have date night, usually ends up. We go to dinner, we have some drinks and we’d come home and sit in our laptops until 11. They tell our nanny to go home. But yeah, date nights look forward to the weekends.
I really try not to work on the weekends, just hanging out with the kids golf. We’re about to make a, we’ll have another house out in Bluetooth. I saw an ad, which was a phenomenal golf course. And, we’ll start having some fun out there, just hanging out with the kids and stuff.
This is why we, it to have some free time with the kids.
Amanda, what do you do for fun? That doesn’t involve Jeff.
I said about that. I have a ladies of real estate dinner club. I have a lot of friends tomorrow or today actually we’re doing like a fancy tea party, which is exciting campaign and sandwiches and it’s in the middle of the day.
So cool that I’m able to do that because of the way our business is structured. So really any opportunity. Yeah. We were just not getting into some fun charity staff. The Amy’s been doing with the food bank. And so it’s really cool to share that passion and give back, but have a glass
Amanda’s is she’s a supermom.
So she’ll say that she wants to get out of the house and do her own thing and have some free time. She’ll call me 20 minutes in. How are the kids? What are you all doing? You’re going to come meet me. The awesome. She has poured a lot of time into kids that
supermom. Wow. What is the any of the business or real estate book that come across your mind right now?
That is a must read.
Yeah. So building an empire by Brian Crothers is a great book. It’s a phenomenal book. Amanda’s reading atomic habits. That’s a phenomenal book. And there’s so many,
there’s a new app called headway. I don’t know if you’ve heard it cause I’m hooked on Blinkus blink is we’ll summarize books for the whole year.
You can go through a bunch of headway. You’ll say what you’re passionate about. If you want to work on being more social or be more business structured or being a better parent or being more active and it will give you a daily assignment. 10 to 20 minutes of reading an entire book, but you know, 28 day challenge by the end of the day you’re, you’re thinking so much bigger and it’s structured.
You don’t have to go find the books it’s laid out for you. It’s awesome.
Amazing. All right. I’m on the app. Okay. So last question, and you can pass any money to your kid. You’re only allowed to pass the mic, right?
By expi By expi and sit on it.
Oh no, that’s a good one.
There’s two, one is networking. I’m not a natural networker, but I’ve found that through people, you’re only one person away from hitting your goal, whatever that could be. Finding that right connection. I think
that’s huge. So I’m gonna tell him, I’m just like my uncle who was pretty much, my father figure told me if you’re gonna, if you’re gonna take the time to do something, do it right.
The first time he always told me, and I really still do that too. Like If I’m a, if I’m, gonna do anything, just do it right. If you’re gonna do an open house, they’ll show up when it’s at one o’clock and then throw some signs in the yard and hope for the best show up. I mean, Do it right. So, uh, I, one time I we, we grew up on like 60 acres and my uncle told me to go mow the field and we’d eat around the trees and stuff like that.
I probably spent four or five hours out there because it’s such a big field. I get back. And he was like, that’s a terrible. You missed this section, you missed that section. You didn’t we’d eat around each of the trees going up the driveway. And unfortunately I need you to go back out there and finish that.
Okay. And I was like, God, dang God, dang it back out there. And this is a Sunday and I had to weed. And I was thinking to myself, if I were just done this right, the first time I wouldn’t be out here right now. And that kinda stuck with me. If you’re going to do something, do it right the first time.
Yeah. Work ethic. I think just teaching them work ethic and be motivated and passionate goes a long way. The rest they can pick up.
Oh that’s it. So the end of the show here, Jeff, Amanda, thank you so much. I don’t know what I did, but I was so lucky to meet you guys and why to, help you, help everybody in the group.
And together, we going to grow as a company as well.
Yeah, we want to help. Yeah, for sure. We don’t view, we help everybody in default. We help ourselves. So that’s okay. Awesome.
Thank you for having us on your podcast. I can’t wait to follow you and start listening to all of it.
Awesome. Awesome. Yeah. I got to have this edit and then we’re going to push it out next week.
So can’t wait to share this to everybody. Especially people with exp people have not MBA any extra, yet new real estate agent, seasonal real estate agent. They own it. That. I’m so excited. All right, man. We appreciate it. Thank you.
