There is a good chance you’ve already heard about eXp Realty. At the time of this writing they have just over 6,000 agents. So what is the buzz all about? Is this opportunity for real? Are they for real? I’ll answer all of those questions in this post and many more you haven’t thought to ask.

There’s a good chance an overly excited agent with eXp tried to tell you about their great company. Depending on their ability to communicate you may or may not have received the full picture. So I’m going to cut through all the hype and give you my perspective as I went through the process of discovery.

If there is a downside to this model it might be that agents that aren’t the best “spokesman/spokeswoman” for the company deliver a hype-filled pitch focused on all the

Instead, I’m going to tell you the truth - the truth about EXP Realty, their “agent owned” philosophy, and a real estate brokerage in the cloud.

In doing this, I’m undoubtedly and unapologetically going to piss a lot of people off.

Note: If colorful language offends you - be offended (but keep reading anyway).

I’m giving you this information from my heart and with emotion...and I ain’t changin’ for NOBODY.

And to be honest, if it takes a couple of F-bombs to shock you into hearing me, then you’ll probably reach out and thank me for taking the time to share this controversial perspective.

This post will no doubt be circulated and shared among the top brass at Keller Williams, Coldwell Banker, Century 21, Remax, ERA, and especially at EXP Realty.

Top agents, new agents, mega agent teams, friends, enemies, and investors of all kinds will read this post with both fear and excitement.

As I said, I’m here to deliver the truth and facts. My commitment to you is do that without any hype.

Is this for real?

To give you some perspective, I’m writing this post the day before my 40th birthday. This will mark my 21st year in real estate.

Also, my son, Brayden, is in real estate class right now. I’m excited about him getting into real estate. He’s 19...the same age I was when I got into this amazing industry.

Additionally, with over 5,000 career home sales, having owned two brokerages, and as Co-founder of the National Association of Expert Advisors, Kinder Reese Coaching, and few other companies in the real estate industry, I’m without question, qualified to speak to you on this topic.

For context, I am on a plane flying back from an eXp Realty event as I write this post.

Apparently, this was their "annual event" and I was humbly invited by my great friend Albie Stasek who asked me to simply watch a webinar about eXp. Without a doubt - if you are reading this post, even if it’s just with morbid curiosity, you should invest 50 minutes in watching this webinar where we break down the model.

Watch the Webinar

Brent Gove, who is possibly one of the greatest human beings on the planet, organized our meetings with the founder, CEO, President, and several of the top brass.

Brent sells north of 400 homes a year...maybe 500 for about $100 million in volume annually. He’s a beast and I’ve known him for 17 years. We met at a Craig Proctor event in 2001.

Good times.

Brent graciously took care of the hotel, food, and drinks for me, John Kitchens and Alex Piech.

“You just have to get here.” he said.

We arrived at the event and the welcoming committee was impressive. It was the tail end of the awards banquet and Jeff Wilhems, Brent Gove, Darren James, Clayton Gits and a host of other industry bad asses were taking the stage to get their awards.

Don’t get me started on this industry and awards. MEH

Was I shocked to see them already at EXP Realty?

Hell yes I was. - SHOCKED

John Kitchens, who is out cold next to me as I’m writing this (it gives me great joy to take pictures of you sleeping on a plane) and I scanned the room to see Cliff Freeman, George Philbeck, and a whole host of highly-respected individuals that were cheering with glee.

 At this moment, I’m thinking to myself...who the f**k is EXP?

 I’ll answer that or you, but first, let me take you on this journey with me.

 Trust me...it’s worth it.

You gotta see it to believe it

If you haven’t already grabbed your favorite beverage and found a quiet place to read this - do that now.

What I am going to share with you - regardless of your affiliation - is going to affect you. In fact, it’s going to change the way you do business...whether you agree with it or not.

So, at minimum, you should be informed, even if only to be able to intelligently fight off the imminent hoard of agents that are about to descend on you with the goal of convincing you to join this amazing new company dubbed EXP Realty.

The first thing that got my attention was the calendar of events:

Day One

7:00 p.m. Arrive

8:00 p.m. Meeting with Rob Flick (#14 profit share earner at Keller Williams)

1:00 a.m. We finally crashed

Day Two

4:30 a.m. JK and I hit a five mile run on the beach. (Fort Lauderdale is Muggy - FYI

6:30 a.m. Breakfast with the President of EXP Real Estate Division

11:45 a.m. Lunch with Founder, Glenn Sanford and CEO of EXP Holdings, Jason Guessing

5:00 p.m. Dinner with the notorious Keller Williams legend Gene Frederick (#12 all time profit share earner at Keller Williams)

That’s a lineup of people with some serious pull.

Gene is a firecracker and so is Rob Flick. They are what I call BAMF: Bad Ass Mother Fuckers.

I love their energy.

Gene sold a Keller Williams region and 6 offices to move to EXP and he did when they were under 1,000 agents. He saw it. He knew what was going to happen and is one of the key people who are responsible for their growth - do doubt.

This event wasn’t my first time hearing about EXP Realty whose agent count nationwide crossed 5,000 agents while we were there.

It’s funny. A little over a year prior, at an Oklahoma Sooner vs.. Ohio State game in Norman, OK, my good friend John Mayhue introduced me to a guy. I don’t remember his name…..but I remembered what he told me.

It had to do with eXp. A little more about that later.

Now, it’s been 10 years since anyone actually tried to “sell me” on joining a brokerage; Keller Williams, when the Kool aid was still stirring.

Personally, I don’t know anybody at Keller Williams that is making any money from their complicated profit share program.

Okay, too harsh? Nothing meaningful.

Let’s face it: Gary Keller, whom I hold in high regard, is the only one benefiting from the business being done at Keller Williams. For sure, it’s not the agents.

That ship sailed a long time ago.

So at the OU game, my middle son Karsen and I are at a party in some guy’s backyard and this guy is pitching me eXp Realty. He’s talking about his shares and how fast the company is growing and how it’s an agent-owned brokerage.

I left with one big take away: if you give someone ownership in a publicly traded company, they get on board and stay on board. My guess is this guy isn’t going anywhere.

The #1 challenge brokers and teams are facing

It’s no secret the number one challenge for you brokers and folks with teams is recruiting and retention. Why is that?

Value proposition. What is your value proposition to the agent? Is it leads, culture, a red balloon? What do you offer that differentiates you from every other brokerage and really matters to the agent?

The real estate brokerage is a recruiting model. All of them. So you better get clear on what you really provide and why it matters to the agent.

So now let’s look at eXp’s value proposition.

Do you think that offering shares in a publically traded company would align the agent and company? How about if you offered revenue off the top of every agent that the told about the company? Revenue share off the top. Do you think maybe agents would stay longer. Do you think maybe you wouldn’t have to recruit? Maybe the agents would do it for you?

So do I.

Let’s continue.

We opened our brokerage in Dallas at the end of 2014. We didn’t mess with it much in 2015 but my business partner Michael Reese and Alex Piech built it up to 2.2 in GCI with 267 transactions closed in 2016.

They did this pretty much from scratch.

At that time, we knew we wanted to add some kind of profit share or stock package and this was clearly a good way to do it.

Like many brokers, we were just trying to solve the “retention problem.” We were also trying to solve the “agent productivity problem.” I’ll save that for another post.

The idea of offering company stock made sense and going to the eXp event cemented it for me.

When the student is ready, the teacher will appear

For a year I dodged calls from the “bigs”. Ya’ll must be crazy if you think I’m joining a brokerage.

I laughed at the idea. I literally laughed. This is before I watched the webinar. Keep that in mind.

Finally, one of my best friends, Albie Stasek finally nailed me down to listen.

Albie is a long-time member of the NAEA Mastermind Group and one of the top agents in all of Ohio. He’s also a broker in the EXP system and growing his organization at break-neck speed.

He gave me maybe the greatest line I’ve ever heard: “I’m about to jump off a cliff here - will you take a look at this and let me know if I’m missing something.”

As a friend, I was honored to shoot holes in this.

Happy to do it.

So, on my youngest son Riggs 4th birthday, on Kinder Ranch out here in Aubrey, my wife watched in frustration as I paced back and forth across the yard - doing nothing to help get ready for the party - waving my hands around in an obviously animated conversation with Albie for nearly three hours.

Pull!!!!! Gun cocked and loaded, I fired back at Albie: “Why the hell would you go join a brokerage when you are independent and CRUSHING it?”

I listened intently to Albie. If everything he was saying about eXp was true - it could be a potential disrupter.

Those of you that know me and have followed us know we have a vision of our own.

We are wildly passionate about NAEA and what we can do with the brokerage - an independently-owned brokerage.

We believe in our hearts that the “Big Box” brokers can do nothing to help agents over the long term.

But there I was, on the phone, with my #1 most loyal believer sharing with me why he was joining eXp Realty.

I listened twice as hard.

The value of being radically open-minded

None of us are born knowing what is true; we either have to discover what’s true for ourselves or believe and follow others.

It’s almost certain that you haven’t experienced the deep study of business models and have ran and tested multiple variations to understand what gets the best results. That means if you take a position about an idea you won’t be able to discover for yourself what is true.

In Ray Dalio’s book, Principles, he explains why being radically open minded and radically transparent allows you to learn faster.

As he describes it in the book, this allows you to create a feedback loop for making decisions much faster than someone who doesn’t ask questions when they don’t understand (radically transparent) or who are so deep rooted in a belief that they look for why things won’t work. (radically open-minded).

Understanding this strategy helped me put my ego aside and really listen.

Then, the research project had began.

I started documenting the webinars that were circulating about eXp Realty.

Since they are publicly traded, I read their balance sheet, scoured their financials.

In all my searches all I could find was one potential threat. Is this model sustainable?

They weren’t profitable at the time, which isn’t the case today.

I was saying to myself: “Tell me how the hell a company is going to revenue share when it it’s losing money.” There wasn’t enough cash to fund the growth and their business model has them giving all the money back to the agents.

Here’s what I have learned since then. The crushed their quarterly earnings and the stock went from $3.63 to right at $8.00. Tell me those agents aren’t raving fans of eXp.

Revenue Share Trumps ALL

This ISN’T the profit-share like Keller Williams. This is REVENUE SHARE. If you watch much Shark Tank you know that Mr. Wonderful is always quick to make the royalty deal. Getting paid off the top means you get paid first.

This my friends, is a big deal.

At this point, I’m intrigued. For the record, I was still skeptical, but I had to know for sure.

These multiple layer compensation models weren’t exactly my “ball of wax”. I do, however, know a couple of very intelligent people in the multi-level marketing industry.

One of them is the CEO of a $50 million MLM and the other one has over 150,000 people in their “downline”.

More on that later.

Honestly, the thought of trying recruit wasn’t appealing at all. There is a reason they don’t use that word by the way. They “attract”. That’s both true and a much better experience for everyone.

I learned a long time ago: if you sold 50 homes last month, good for you. Now, get your ass up; you have to do it again this month.

The grind never ends.

This model gives the agent a legitimate retirement plan with the shares. They even allow you to take 5% of your commission and purchase stock at a 20% discount. (Based on a 30 day rolling average)

The whole plan is very generous - basically your cap comes back to you in the form of a revenue share so you basically get paid to work here.

There’s so much I could say, but at this point, it’s probably better that you see for yourself.

Take a few minutes and check out this webinar I prepared for you. It will answer a lot of questions for you for sure: sevenfigureagent.com

Or, if you’d like to set up a time to talk personally, send me a quick message on Messenger at m.me/jaykinderteam.

Either way, don’t wait too long.

This opportunity is exploding in every market and you want to be ahead of it.

Tony Robbins says it best: “Windows of opportunity open in life and you have to jump through them as soon as you can because sometimes, they close as quickly as they open.”

Don’t miss out on this incredible opportunity to change the trajectory of your business and life forever.

Find out if EXP is the right place for you to grow your business.