The Alan K Show

Why Keeping My Brokerage Would Have Cost Me Millions

• Alan

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SPEAKER_00

Tony Robbins talks about this all the time. Proximities, powers, success leaves, clues. You want to be in a room with people that have done epic sh and doing epic shit. Right? And I'm not saying copying them, I'm just saying modeling after them, getting inspired. And again, being in that room and also pulling my agents and putting them in those rooms like we did last week at Curtis's office. And they're ready, they're already talking to the agents. Like one of my agents, like today, come to me and say, Hey, I got three agent appointments this week. What do I say? What do I do? You see? So that's the beautiful part about it.

SPEAKER_02

Alright, guys, we're back on the next level agents. I'm so excited to be joined by my good friend. Obviously, I'm talking about Alan. I guess I'm also joined by Fred Weaver. Alan Kushmanikov, Alan K as you're as you're known.

SPEAKER_03

You just butchered my last name, Kushmikov. You ended them there. After 15 years. I did. What a hell of an intro, too. Welcome to the next Open Agents podcast, buddy. Well, no, actually, I don't think. Did we ever do a podcast together?

SPEAKER_02

I don't think I was ever asked. You're starting to sound like Curtis Johnson. Be careful.

SPEAKER_00

A little bit needy. Yeah. I don't get asked either, Alan. Alright. Well, thank you for having me, guys. Yeah. It's definitely an honor, for sure.

SPEAKER_02

Dude, we're we're glad you're here. The biggest, most obvious news of all.

SPEAKER_00

Hey, real quick, if you're a real state agent team leader or a brokerage owner, and you're curious what it would look like to partner with me at EXP, listen closely. Look, when I say partner, I don't mean join my team. No team transfer, no control, no weird stuff. I mean this. You keep building your brand, your business, your team. And you get me as your behind-the-scene support system. Hands-on coaching, training, mentorship, strategy. So you actually hit the goals you've been chasing. And you also get my business partners, like Joshua Smith, one of the best in the world at deploying systems and who coached over 4,000 agents and done over 4,000 transactions with these people. Kevin Kaufman and Fred Weaver, who I've known for over 15 years, who have a real estate team and partner with over 2,600 agents at EXP. So it's basically four high-level coaches under one roof, and you get full access at no additional cost when we partner at EXP. So if you want to explore what the partnership could look like, there's a link below in the show notes. Book a hundred percent confidential, zero pressure Zoom call with me. And I mean zero pressure. I'm not going to recruit you, I'm not going to push you. That's not my style at all. This is just a straightforward conversation. Where are you at right now? Where you want to go, what systems, tools, and support you and mentorship we have, and whether this makes sense for you.

SPEAKER_02

You made a big decision recently.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, dude. I we we we officially now part of EXP Realty. We officially made that move last week. Friday was the last day. I think today they're shutting down like 3DRE, they're shutting down the brokerage today. And I'm excited, dude. I am so stoked. I feel like I'm like three years, maybe even like five years younger. Seriously. With everything that's been going on for the last two weeks, and you know, I shared a lot of things with you guys. I I feel great. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Dude, that's awesome. So obviously that that's a big transition. Not everybody knows how big of a deal that was for you. Let's start start with this. Let's go backwards a little bit. When did you get into real estate? 2013.

SPEAKER_00

So 13 years ago, wow, right? We know each other for 15 years, right? You did a short sale on one of my rental properties. That was, by the way, the only short sale. All the rest of them were like foreclosures. I should have hired you for all of them, but hey, but you know you live and you learn. Listen, we all make mistakes. So anyway, so so yeah, we got connected 15 years ago, and then when I sold my company in 2012, I was thinking what the next thing is gonna be. And real estate was always kind of like coming to mind. And I reached out to a few people in real estate, and they're all kind of gave me the same pitch. Real estate agents are not doing that well, it's hard out there. It's I mean, granted, I mean, guys, it was like 2010, 11, 12, things were tough for the real estate agents. I was like, you know what? I got this guy that helped me with a short sale. Let me reach out to him. And I reached out to you, and we had a really good conversation at Starbucks, and you said, hey, Alan, if you're gonna treat this like a business, you're gonna crush it. So I listened to you, and the next day I went signed up for real estate classes. And uh took me like two months, I think, to get my license. Two, three months, I don't remember. But in 2013, I got license. On January 14, 2013, that's when was I officially a real estate professional.

SPEAKER_02

Wow. Dude, as like an outsider, like I've we were friends, you know, and we've always stayed in touch this whole time. I just remember kind of watching, I remember because you lived on the opposite side of town from our office. And I remember I remember going, damn, I wish we lived like I wish we were closer together. Because I don't know what it was. I just believed you. I just I had a sense of like you're gonna, you're gonna you're gonna make things happen in this business. I wasn't I've not been surprised at all by any of your success. And I'd always wished there was a way for us to be in business together. And at that time, like I couldn't wrap my head around it. Our business model really wouldn't allow for it. I just observed you what seemed like, dude, on a rocket ship. Like you, your business took off. You went from, hey, uh, I got my license now to I'm selling a lot of real estate. Then I was like, building a team, building a brokerage. It seemed like like you did it all pretty fast. It probably didn't feel that way to you though.

SPEAKER_00

It didn't feel like there are just through this entire journey, there are just obviously a lot of blessings, but also a lot of challenging times. Like I remember when I got my real estate license, I was on cloud nine thinking I'm gonna crush it from day one. But it took me like six months to finally like close my first deal. And it was like a hundred thousand dollar listing with a two and a half thousand dollar commission shot. And for six months I was calling expireds and cancels. I picked uh probably the most difficult Legion source out there, expireds cancels, getting rejected left and right, going on listing appointments, but finally got it, got that first listing. Plus, on top of that, I had some health issues, was diagnosed with autoimmune disease, ulcerative colitis. And that was also tough because you're driving to the listing appointment instead of thinking about that listing, you're thinking about man, how would the sellers react if I ask them to use their their bathroom, their restroom, right? And that was tough. And I was battling that for almost two years. Right now I'm thank god in remission. So that was difficult. And then just financially, you know, like coming home and you're like, you know, you put in the full day at work and then you come in and there's nothing to show for financially six months. That was tough looking in my wife's eyes, you know. Hey man, after six months, closed my first deal. I think that that year I did like th 13, 14 transactions. The second year, I think it was like 35, my third year, 75, I think, with an assistant, my fourth year 87 with a few agents. Just kind of snowballed after that.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, at what point did you start building a team outside of having an assistant?

SPEAKER_00

Out of necessity, I started like buying a lot of online leads, right? And and for me, like, I mean, don't get me wrong, I enjoy working with the buyers, but I also felt like it was just taking too much of my time, right? You know, I needed help. So initially it started with the showing assistants. I had four showing assistants all over the valley, showing homes. By the way, that was probably the most profitable model that I ran. And then and then I started bringing in agents. That was uh year number four, 2016. And dude, I feel like I made every mistake in the book when it comes to like starting a team and trying to grow a team. I remember my first year I brought in like five agents. Out of those five, I think one only like left after like five, six months. And I think that year, collectively, they did like 10 or 11 transactions. Like it wasn't that much. I spent a lot of time, but I also was not the best leader that time. I was still so heavily focused on production myself, right? Could have definitely improved on leadership skills, but I didn't give up. My second year, I think I brought in like 10 agents. I left with three or four by the end of the year, kind of same thing, but improved. And then my third year, I think that's when I hired coach Chaplack, right? Yeah, and that's when we started like really growing and expanding to like I think we had like 15 to 17 agents, did a little over 200 transactions, and I ran the team for almost five years, almost five years. In 2020, launched you know best homes on the same date that I got real estate license, January 14th, 2020. So seven years apart, I got my real estate license 2013. In 2020, I launched my brokerage on the same date.

SPEAKER_03

Did you line those dates up on purpose?

SPEAKER_00

Dude, I had no idea.

SPEAKER_03

Really?

SPEAKER_00

Like Melissa, like a year or two years later, she's like, hey, did you know? I was looking at your license through this clock. It's like, you know, you got license on the 14th of January, and we opened our doors officially on January 14th. That's wild. Crazy, dude. Now I wanted to line up the same thing with XP. I really wanted to move on January 14th. But it was just way too close. My staff would fucking kill would kill me. It was just too many moving parts.

SPEAKER_02

And we have confirmation of that in the room. Not be a living, breathing person right now.

SPEAKER_00

The best decision, right?

SPEAKER_02

So then you go and you so you like you've kind of done it all. You sell a lot of real estate as an individual agent, you figure that out, you you realize how hard it is to start a team, but you do it, you build it, you grow it, and then you go and start an independent brokerage. Yeah, yeah, you're nuts. But I mean, you had a lot of success in that. Tell us about that journey real quick.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it's it's just stages, right? You know, for me, the the the the next stage was starting a brokerage. And uh, I know we had conversations back was it 2018, I think.

SPEAKER_02

It was it was May of 2018.

SPEAKER_00

May of 2018. We had conversations about you know partnering, right? That's when you were thinking of joining EXP. I think you were in a process of making that move, and you're like, hey man, let's partner up, let's do this. And for me, it was like, dude, there's just there's gotta be a next step, right? Like, I'm running a team, it's a good team. Didn't really see the big vision at that time. I was like, man, I was just paying like I think it was like a hundred bucks to my brokerage. My agents were paying nothing really. And I was like, I'm selling a lot of real estate, I'm good, I'm investing in real estate, I'm good. I just didn't really see that vision. You know, there's that saying appears when the student is ready to learn. And I think, you know, at that time I was just not not ready, not ready to learn, right? So the next step for me, when I started losing some of my producing agents, I was like, all right, I want to I want a bigger, bigger platform, better platform for my agents, right? Build that. And that's when we started the brokerage. We I'm talking about me, and my wife was was part of it as well. And in 2020, we we decided to launch it with a handful of agents. Not every agent followed my brokerage. By the way, half of them decided to stay with the existing brokerage, and only a handful of them decided to to join me.

SPEAKER_02

And yeah, you built that up to how many agents?

SPEAKER_00

No, do we over the years we we brought in a lot of agents, hundreds of agents we brought in into the company. Not everybody obviously sticks around and everything like that. So we're like a hundred and I think a hundred and eight or hundred and nine, I think. It's a lot of agents for a brokerage. We're like top 30 in the valley in terms of the agent count and uh the sales volume. Out of 2,400 brokerages in MLS, if you look at our MLS Armless, there are 2,400 brokerages. We're like a top 30. So that kind of gives you an idea. Like, dude, like most of the brokerages, they know where anywhere close to what we have built.

SPEAKER_02

Well, dude, I rem I remember one time, this is probably two years ago, you and I were at Coffee, and uh you had started a another business like coaching, yeah, and teaching basically teaching other brokerage owners and team owners how to recruit and kind of grow their business. And you were sharing some stats with me about the number of brokerages and the average size of those brokerages around the country. And I I was I was blown away. Do you remember any of those off the top of your head by chance?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah. So there are like about a hundred thousand brokerages out there, right, in the United States. I think 80% of them have like 10 or less agents. So you have a lot of brokerage owners that own a brokerage and they at the same time is the brokerage. They do everything, they wear multiple hats, you know, and like we we have conversations with them pretty much on a daily basis. Where are they at? You know, I break the the brokerage world into like three segments or three areas. So there's someone who's kind of like, you know, up to 10 agents, you know, we call them a pretender. They pretend like they have a brokerage, but in reality, it's it's not really like owning a business, right? God forbid something happens with you tomorrow, your business collapses. And most of those broker owners they have to sell in order to cover the expenses, right? The second layer or the second group of uh broker owners are operators, right? And those are the ones that have, let's say, 25, 30, 40, 50 agents or so. And then the third one are the ones that actually really want to build something special, like an empire or something along those lines, right? And those are usually up to from a hundred agents and up. And with every single area, if you will, there are certain constraints that they have to deal with. And uh, with the ones that have less than 10 agents, the biggest constraint is the fact that there's no leverage involved. Their systems, you know, are not really dialed in, and they're the ones who are responsible pretty much for everything in the company. And it's hard, it's very taxing.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I mean that's wow. That seems like so much work. I mean, that I was gonna say that could be another episode, but that sounds actually sounds like another therapy session that we might need to have one one of these days. It it fascinates me. All right, so part of your business, you've you've grown a brokerage as well. You started coaching other brokerage owners and team owners on recruiting. Tell me a little bit about that journey.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, so it really kind of came out of I was already like working with the broker owners around the country, right, helping them to do what I'm doing, right? And uh it was a really old pro bono. It was just leading with lots of value, helping them with agent attraction, agent development, agent retention, everything that we're doing as a brokerage. I was just sharing that model with them, right, for free. And uh Tristan and I, Tristan is my partner in that business, about three years ago, decided that you know what, let's make a business out of it. So it's more of a if you look at the model, it's more of a marketing company, right? And we add consulting and coaching on top of that, you know. So we create funnels for the broker owners where they can attract agents into the world, right? Wormer leads, agent opportunities that raise their hand who want to learn more about their company, what they're offering. Because the biggest issue with a lot of brokerage owners is the fact that they're just not willing to do this.

SPEAKER_02

So it's the same problem agents have?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. They don't want to do this, right? They don't want to be call-calling agents, they don't want to do cold outreach, right? Or they do it here and there, but you know, they don't do it consistently. Most of them are good, you know, sitting down just like this and having a conversation with an agent, right? Presenting their offer to that agent. But most of them are not really that good in terms of attracting agents. There's a big difference between attraction and recruiting, right? Attraction is when you're using marketing methods, branding methods, and educating and nurturing those agents to come to you. That's how you attract them, right? You nurture those relationships. With recruiting, for the most part, you're doing this, you're calling somebody, doing cold outreach via text and everything like that. So, what we do with our company is we're attracting those agents to these broker owners, right? That's what we do. So imagine if you're a brokerage owner, every single month you have about 15 to 20 agent opportunities that raise their hand that want to learn more about your brokerage, right? And that's what we do for them. We run all those funnels, all the automations. We're doing all the heavy lifting on that side, and their part of the equation is to talk to these agents, meet with these agents, and then offer the partnership with those agents.

SPEAKER_02

It's awesome. All right. But I want to go, I want to go back to one thing, which is you've got this brokerage that you've put your heart and soul into for the last six years. It's built up to over a hundred people. Yeah. You just ask them to trust you, right? Hey, we're gonna make a change. And and you presented your case as to why and what you see, your vision for making the move over to EXP. But I've been through this before with with other people. Fred and I have been through it with our own team. It's not always all sunshine and rainbows. Not everyone just goes, Yes, Alan, you've never led me astray. How has that process been for you, man? Because I think that's the question that a lot of people don't want to ask you who might be listening to this right now, but they're thinking about it.

SPEAKER_00

Dude, we have like another 40 minutes to go through everything that I've said this session in two weeks or something like that. It's been pretty intensive, right? Intense in so many different ways, mentally, emotionally, physically. Don't like change. People are afraid of change, right? So when we made that announcement, you were there. I mean, there were agents that were cheering, but there were also agents that were crying. Right. And and they were thinking that that, you know, we're almost kind of like like betraying the betraying the whole thing that we started. It's almost kind of you give birth to the baby, you you kind of raise that baby, and now you're like, okay, I'm losing this baby, right? And I was like, no, you're not losing the baby. The baby just gets married, right? I told everyone right there at the event, I said, hey, here's here's here's the link to my calendar. The QR code. If you have questions, concerns, let me know. I'll walk through you through it, one-on-one conversation. And dude, like I remember Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, I probably had about 50 plus 60 one-on-one convos with agents. And not all of them were like fun or pretty intense. Some of them were pretty intense, right? And I get it, I understand. Look, it took me months, if not even years, to make this decision, right? And I'm expecting them to make that decision in like less than a week, right? So a lot of those conversations, and I remember coming home on Wednesday, something, something my wife said and kind of triggered me. And I, you know, we got into this little argument, right? When outside, I I usually when I get to these situations, I I walk. I could walk two miles, three miles, four miles. I can just I walk, walk, walk, walk, clear my head. Came back, realized, you know what, I was stupid in what I said. Like she has like sh she's not responsible for it, it's my decision. And we squashed it, everything was fine and everything like that. But like, but overall, if you think about it, come to like Thursday and Friday, there were more and more positive conversations coming from the agents. I think that that initial shock that hit the first 24 to 48 hours, or like, wait a minute, like we are disbanding the band, if you will. Like, and then you're like, no, we're not. We're not. Melissa's staying, Selena's staying, uh, David is getting promoted, everything's staying, the office is staying, everything's staying. We're not removing anything. Everything that you like about best is here. Like, you didn't join best because of best, you joined best because of people, right? And all of us are here. We're staying, we're just adding more for you guys to take advantage of, right? And by the way, you can try it out. If you don't like it, you know how it is, man. If you don't like it, I can just then walk you to another brokerage and introduce you to another broker owner. That's fine. I'll do that for you personally, right? I would not do this to the broker owners that call my agent and say that I'm deported, being deported by ICE. Not gonna do that. But we had that. Oh my dude. I had an agent call me up. He's like, hey, like, I I just spoke to the broker owner who's like telling me that you're being deported. I was like, what are you talking about? Hey, you're you're supposedly not legal in in in the United States. I was like, dude, you want to show me your my passport? Like, I am legal. I had another agent call me up and said, Hey man, like I heard that you're you're like you sold this to uh to XP for like a couple of million dollars and you're gonna be moving to Florida. I was like, shit, that would be nice. Yeah, but that's not that's not the case, man. I'm not selling my company, absolutely not, right? So that's that. But yeah, just wild stories, you know, but it was all good, right? It was good to connect to most of the agents. Some agents, you know, they decided to leave without uh having conversation with me, but they definitely made a lot of noise out there. I'm not gonna name those agents, but it happens, it's just part of the the journey, part of the process. Last week was much easier, to be honest with you, and uh we made that transition. Now, could have made that transition as as as as seamless as it was without um like Melissa, Celine, David, Beth. I mean, they just crushed it. They were there every day making sure that our agents are taken care of, moved. And we got, I think, close to like 75-80% of the agents that moved to the XP. The ones that did not move, aside from a couple of them, most of them are like part-timers, they're not doing any business. Most of them don't even know if they're gonna be in real estate three to four months down the road. I'm just letting you know, most of them are not doing that much business.

SPEAKER_02

That's usually the way it is. Listen, I remember one time when Fred and I were exploring our future and our opportunities. We were speaking with the he's he's now the former CEO of NRT real estate. He had personally done like 400 of their mergers. And he said to us, like, the perfect merger is like if you can retain 80% of the agents. Now he was actually buying a brokerage, so a little bit different, but still very similar. You're asking someone to change regardless. He's like, that's about as good as it gets. And if you can hit 80%, you're doing really good. I mean, he told us like that's a benchmark. He knew that that brokerage that they bought had something really special if they could actually retain 80% of those agents. Yeah, to hear that's that's effectively where you're at, it's not surprising at all.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, but also you expect there's gonna be that breakage, right? Yeah, you're you're you're you're gonna have people that are gonna go, and there are chances in the next three to four months, five months, you're gonna have some additional that additional agents that they're gonna move. But we control the controllables, we cope with the things that we cannot control and focus on the number one thing, which is all about leading with value, build relationships, nurture those relationships, and be in partnership with more people. That's it. And that's beyond the team, right? It's it's nationally, it's globally. That's the vision, that's the goal.

SPEAKER_02

So that brings us up to today. I'll call it today. Yeah, Fred, I cannot believe you've kept quiet this entire time.

SPEAKER_01

I've just been trying to figure out when I wanted to toss in the Kushman Kov, a spelling of the name. So I've just been kind of holding it back.

SPEAKER_02

The guy that's never said anybody's name right now. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01

Last week, I think I called somebody bid when his name was like clearly on the screen.

SPEAKER_03

Three times you called him David. Well, in all fairness, it wasn't actually on the screen.

SPEAKER_00

It wasn't on the screen. It was Steve's name on the screen. Oh, maybe. It wasn't the invite then. It was an invite. But it happens to me all the time. I butchered the names all the time. That's a that's okay. Yeah, you did it. But he corrected me himself after three tries. Yeah. It only took three times.

SPEAKER_01

At least I only met that guy like for about ten and a half minutes before I butchered his name. But anyhow. So Alan, it's pretty clear, like, here you are, you're a successful solo agent. It takes you a while to get the business off the ground. You run a successful team, you build up a very successful brokerage. Correct me if I'm wrong here. I don't believe you just made this jump over to EXP because the house was burning and you needed to, you know, put it. No, so so success, success, success. Like, I'll ask the obvious question, I guess. Why join EXP and why join EXP Realty now?

SPEAKER_00

Man, that's a that's a big question, right? There are two parts to it. Okay. The the first part is when I started my brokerage six years ago, right? My vision, my purpose as as a broker owner, as a owner of a company, as a leader is like, all right, I want to build uh the best vehicle for my agents. To grow and thrive. Like that's it. Right. And every day for me, it was all about that. Like, how can I make sure that I provide the best tools, the best resources, the best support for these agents to continue to grow. Right. And I have a great people in my company. You met all of them. You know, we provide really good tools. But eventually I felt like it was lacking certain things. And I'll give you an explanation of it. Most of the agents get into the business because they want to generate good income. But more importantly, they want to create wealth and they want to also have flexibility in their life. Okay. I felt like we helped our agents to create great income. But when it comes to wealth, and what I mean by that is not purely only trading time for money. We all trade time for money initially in the early stages of our business, right? But eventually, we want to start buying back our time. We want to start utilizing the income that we're generated in creating more income. And that has to do with equity in a company, which by the way, I tried multiple times. I couldn't really do that. You have to go public, and it takes a lot of time, a lot of resources to do so. Couldn't do it, right? And then the revenue share component to it, right? Build that residual, right, and ultimately creating that wealth. Also, the same thing with flexibility, right? The flexibility is important in our business, but like Curtis last week said, flexibility doesn't mean you're sitting on a beach and writing emails. Living your life on your own terms. Location freedom, time freedom, income freedom, all of those things are important, right? There are agents out there that spend years and years and years and years going out there and slinging homes for a living and nothing to show for. Every time we sell a house, we become unemployed again. Every time we have a client that we help with the buyer, with the purchase, right, we unemployed again. So having opportunity as an agent, not only to sell real estate, and by the way, EXP is probably one of the highest producing brokerages in the country, if not even the world. 2024, 344,000 transactions closed, right? A lot of transactions. But in addition to that, as an agent, now you have access to the equity side of the business. You become a co-owner of the business. Because if you think about it, agents can be part of a brokerage for years and years and years and years, and they're essentially tenants. They're tenants, right? They pay every single transaction, they pay a monthly fee, and what are they getting in return? Not that much. Right? They don't, right? Now they do that, but also now they get stock in return five different ways, right? That's important. That's a retirement. They also have an opportunity to partner with other agents in their ecosystem or they want to be part of their ecosystem, right? That's another way of generating income. So I really like the the the multidimensional side of the business where the agents are not just in that proverbial hamster wheel slinging homes for a living until they're like 75, 85 years old, and then they retire if they retire, right? So that was my vision for the agents. And then of course, you add all the tools, the resources, man, 60 to 70 hours of live training every single week. That means that I don't have to be constantly training my agents. I don't have to do all of the heavy lifting. That's huge. Different types of trainings, yeah, right? That means that if let's say you're an agent that needs healthcare, they get a huge discount on that as well. I think Kevin, you and I were talking about the fact that you're like saving like close to like$800, I think, a month healthcare alone. That's huge. In a valley, there are 28, 2,900 agents, over 2,000 listings. Now my agents can leverage all those listings holding open houses. That was another thing. Like we are so predominantly in Northwest Valley. I had agents in East Valley, Scottsdale, and Phoenix want to hold open houses on somebody else's listings, not a brokerage's listings, they couldn't do it because the brokerage would not allow it. Now they can do that as well. That's big, right? And there's just so many other things that I can mention. But for the agent, it was more about like, man, how can I offer them something where it's much more than just selling a bunch of homes? It's about like accumulating the opportunity, the the the wealth for the years to come. Yeah, that's awesome.

SPEAKER_01

For folks that are maybe like listening to this, and especially other independent brokerage owners, they hear you joined EXP. Does that mean you just sort of handed all your agents off to EXP and you're like, cool guys, enjoy it? I mean, there's like what does that process look like? Because I think that's sometimes hard for other independent broker owners as well as the agents at your own company. You've had to explain to them what that what this new relationship looks like. So, what is that new relationship? The brokerage of best homes isn't there anymore, but what still remains? What what's been added to what's still there?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I mean, I mean the the the the brokerage is not there, and and thank God from the compliance standpoint, from for all the older risks and and and liabilities and chasing agents for the signatures and initials and all of that jazz. No, it's no longer there. Thank god, thank God. I think was it Glenn who said that you have to be like brain damaged or something like that to own it, but have a lot of clients, I have a lot of friends that own brokerages. It's it's it's great, but for me, my goal is to partner with at least 10,000 people around the world. I'm talking about agents, I'm talking about team owners, I'm talking about brokerage owners, right? And I had opportunities to, right? And the more I thought about it, the more I was like, do I really want to do all of that heavy lift? Do I really want to like sacrifice the next five years, six years, seven years of my life in going into identifying a leader? And then six months later, a year later, that leader says, you know what, I don't want to be a leader anymore. I just want to sell more real estate. I want to have a peace in my life. And now I have 20, 25, 30 agents in their leader list, and I was like, I gotta find another leader. Do I really want to go through that? I'm 47 years old. I've been in business ownership now for 23 years. 23 years. Built multiple companies, had five companies that failed. One point was half a million dollars in debt. Like, like all those things I went through. Do I really want to do that? And the answer was like, no. So why not just plug in what I have built for the past five years, right, to probably one of the best platforms that is out there. Now, it doesn't mean ex Realty is perfect. It's not. But I think based on everything that I I really truly believe that it is the best aligned to what our agents need right now, to what the brokerages need right now, and not only right now, but going forward for many years to come.

SPEAKER_01

So safe to say the best home agents that used to be at a brokerage transitioned with you into a team, a community, whatever label we want to put on it. You were running a team at one time. But now with a much bigger vision in mind, way more so than just the 107 or whatever agents that were here with you in Arizona.

SPEAKER_00

It's a much bigger vision, but let's, for example, apply to the most of the agents that that joined us. We're not removing anything from what they liked about. It's not about replacing best with EXP, it's about adding EXP to best. So, like Curtis says, and so it's best and EXP. What you like about best, the people, the culture, the tools, the resources, all of it is staying. We're just adding more to it with the XP. And not only doing it here in the valley, but we're doing this all over the world. 85 bucks a month. Like you as an agent, you as a team owner, you as a brokerage owner, can partner with anyone around the country and around the world for 85 bucks. And you can't beat that. No potential risks, no potential liabilities, no compliance, none of that stuff that really pulls us down as a broker owners on a daily basis.

SPEAKER_01

And and building it on top of, but like you said, not a perfect company by any means, but the most sustainable real estate brokerage. And this is a publicly traded company. I know you're a smart guy. You went and looked at the financials. Did all of that. I'm sure you saw that there's little to no debt, and there's a credit card that gets run up and paid off every month. Tens of thousands, tens of millions, excuse me, if not a hundred plus million dollars of assets in the bank. There's settling of lawsuits and legal teams and like all of those things are matter, right?

SPEAKER_00

All of those things are important in the last two and a half, three years, right? I mean, how many brokers are there? Like, literally, if you look at their financials, if you really dive into their financials, are are like really solvent. Like a lot of them have a lot of debt. That's that's the concern, right? But I think the biggest thing for me, honestly, it's the people. Like, what I mean by that is is is the who. The who, right? You, you, Fred, Curtis, Joshua, everyone else that you connected me with, being in a room with those people and learning from them, like it's just a completely different level. Completely different level. And for me, like, who is the most important thing? Tony Robbins talks about this all the time: proximity is power, success leaves clues. You want to be in a room with people that have done epic shit and doing epic shit, right? And I'm not saying copying them, I'm just saying modeling after them, getting inspired, and again, being in that room and also pulling my agents and putting them in front of those people and putting them in those rooms like we did last week at Curtis's office. Yeah. Man, they're already they're already talking to the agents, like one of my agents, like today, comes to me and say, Hey, I got three agent appointments this week. What do I say? What do I do? You see? So that's the beautiful part about it. And for me, I think that's the most important. And we joke this all the time. It took you what almost eight years to to bring me to EXP. Like Kevin and I, we met about this like almost eight years ago. And after eight years, we're together. But we reason we're together, again, the EXP is a is a cool platform, I love it, but also you guys, that's one of the main reasons.

SPEAKER_02

That's I mean, it's still to this day one of the things, if not the thing I love most, is it allows us to be aligned, to work together, to grow together. Now, your growth is our growth. We're fully vested in you growing. It always mattered to me as your friend, and now it matters to me business-wise too. So it puts us in alignment to literally work together. And I love it because I think I look at all that you've built over the years, you know, from the MDB marketing to Fast Leads, to the way you've just been able to lead the agents around you, both on your team and and then at best homes, that's a big asset that you could bring to a lot of other people, and that you're going to be able to bring to other people, some of which you probably already know, some of which you probably don't know yet, that you're gonna be able to help other people grow their business because of the EXP platform and because of all of this knowledge and these tools and resources that you've built over your career, that you're gonna just literally be able to open the playbook for somebody who who wants to partner with us and come along for the ride. And now all of a sudden you're helping somebody else's business grow the way yours did.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, you're absolutely right. It's all about leading with value, and it's all about, you know, building, developing, and nurturing the relationships. Yeah. Right. And and and again, like you guys like our models for that. Like we know each other for such a long time, and uh did we have conversations about EXP? Yeah, multiple times. Was I ever felt like you guys were like overbearing with with it? Absolutely not. You always led with value, you know, whether it's masterminds, events, book club, right? All of that, right? And I appreciate that a lot, right? And this is how exactly I'm planning to do with all of these future relationships, right? Like just continually leading with value. And like you said, I think, Evan, last week. You said don't really focus on your time, focus on like how they're gonna decide and respond and join on their time. Like it's all about their time. So some of them it's gonna be two, three months, some of them maybe two, three, four, five, six years, and that's okay, you know, because we want to build something very special, and it's gonna take years to do that, and that's perfectly fine with me. It's awesome.

SPEAKER_01

I just want to hit back to your sort of 10,000 agent goal and and just this idea of I I guess the reason I bring that up, Alan, is it's just awesome, man. I think sometimes, like Kevin and I used to have a mentor that, you know, he'd he'd hear people say, Oh, you know, I'm overwhelmed or whatever, and he'd always say, just get a bigger plate, right? You know, I got too much on your plate. And I so I kind of think to this idea of like 10,000 agents, and I think you'd have figured out a way to do it. I think your alignment with XP though was this idea they've already built a bigger platform, a bigger plate for me to plug into. But number two, like, I get to go do the thing that I want to do more quickly, which is just get into a relationship with people and help them grow their businesses, versus I gotta go open up a brokerage in Colorado tomorrow and another one in Florida in in a month from now. And I gotta, you know, like all the I gotta open up all these E and O policies and take on more risk and hire people for it and like just what a what a nightmare. And so I reason I bring that up is to say that I think XP is is for true entrepreneurs that have a vision that maybe they could do it on their own, but they look and they say, you know what, I could go do it on that platform with other business partners and other people in my world a lot faster and have a lot more fun doing it.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, absolutely. You're you're you're spot on. And and uh, you know, we're thinking 10,000 people that that you're gonna be doing all that heavy lifting yourself, but that's not the case at all. The beautiful part about our model is the fact that it's it's multiplication, it's duplication, it's compounding. Your job is to find leaders to find those builders that will get you to 10,000. And that could be 10 builders, 15 builders, 20 builders that can get you to 10,000. Could be even less than that. So my job is to continue to lead, bring on these leaders, empower those leaders, help those leaders to make sure they can do exactly what they want to do. And that's the way I look at it. It's not about me recruiting every single agent in that 10,000 agent organization. It's about me finding the right people and empowering them.

SPEAKER_01

I I want to hit on one thing, and Kev may have somewhere else he wants to go here because we're maybe winding down. But you you said something in the last couple of weeks, and I don't know exactly how you framed it, but something to the effect of you sort of had to ask yourself, like, where's the exit ramp off of this business that I've been building, or or you know, what does retirement look like for me, or what, you know, where where is this all going? And I think a lot of times in real estate, like we just go get our license, 2013, you know, 2007, whatever it was, right? We just show up and we get our license and we kind of figure it out. But I don't think a lot of real estate agents, a lot of team owners, a lot of brokerage owners always have the right people in their corner to ask them these questions of like, well, what's what's next? Where where where do you exit? What does that exit look like? And do you mind walking us through maybe just a little bit? I mean, you're not retiring tomorrow.

SPEAKER_00

I'm not trying to set that up, but I don't I don't I don't ever want to retire, but I really want to live my life on my own terms, right? That's the beautiful part about it, right? Like I started really thinking about it maybe six, seven months ago, right? Then I read this book. I think you guys suggested that book to me, Dying with Zero, right? And it was really eye-opening for me. Like, I, you know, I was like, oh my gosh, like like I'm doing all of this, I'm building all of this for years and years and years to come, like enjoy the fruits of my labor. And who knows if that day is gonna come, right? And again, as a business owner, it's hard. You have a lot of responsibility on your shoulders. Making that payroll every two weeks, it's hard. You know, paying that office rent and utilities, it's it's hard, right? Being responsible for a bunch of employees. And by the way, I love it. I don't complain about it. We still have employees, but after a certain period of time, you're like, okay, there's gotta be another way. There's gotta be a different way. There's gotta be a more, I wouldn't say easier way, but a way where I don't have to sacrifice the next five to ten years of my life, the best years of my life, where I want to spend more time with my my kids, my wife, in in flying all over the country, starting these offices or these markets, right? And then what is the end game? The end game is I don't know, in the last 12-14 months, I got three offers on my business, and those offers were like okay, but in all reality, like I felt like this is this is just not what I want to do. And that's when I started really thinking about this whole thing, right? I'm not saying that like everything just happened in the last six years. Like, I was telling this to my wife uh over the weekend, I said, look, babe, like the brokerage started six years ago, then because of the brokerage, we were able to start MDB modern-day brokerage, right? Now, all those relationships that I was able to to build in the last two to three years, now there's gonna be the next stage, which is the the EXP, right? And and everything starts, you know, happens for a reason, and I love it, and I would not trade it for anything else. And I'm just I'm blessed. For me, the biggest thing is health. I just want to make sure that I'm healthy, I'm present with my wife, my kids, and uh the amount of time that I have left, I want to spend with them versus you know being on the road constantly for the next 10-15 years. Just don't want to do that.

SPEAKER_02

All right, dude. So we talked about all these big ideas and and plans for growth. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Well, I just want to say, man, I'm excited for this partnership. Seven and a half plus years in the making, but we're here. Um, I don't know if for those of you that may listen to this on audio or you just can't see this through the through the lightness about you, if I can say it that way. There's also like an excitement about you like this week. There's just something to be said about closing that other chapter, right? Like it's just it's merged into a new chapter. There's some new stuff happening. But I I think this whole I'm not a broker owner suits you really well. And this, you know, we're building something bigger here. We're going to 10,000 people and beyond. This is not just specific to Arizona. This is a this is a bigger thing. And uh hearing the stories about your agents already getting fired up to talk to other agents about the opportunity and just watching the collaboration and just just the people get excited and get behind this move is is really exciting, man. I'm excited for you. I'm glad to be along for the journey, man.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Alan, anybody who wants to reach out to you, hear from you, maybe even inquire about modern day brokerage and some of the other stuff you have going on, what's the best way for people to do that?

SPEAKER_00

Just DM me on on Facebook, Instagram, my name Alan Kushmakov. I'll I'll respond pretty quickly, you know, and we'll go from there. All right.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Thanks a lot, guys.

SPEAKER_02

We'll see you next time.