Thinking About eXp Realty? Watch This First

Hello, I'm Alan Kushmakov, and this is why I decided to make one of the biggest decisions and moved my brokerage to EXP. In this video, I’ll break down exactly what EXP is, how agents get paid, how the cap works, and how stock + revenue share can create leverage without the hype or pressure.

0:00 — Who this video is for (agents/teams/brokerage owners)
1:02 — Alan’s origin story + what he “lived through” building locally
2:40 — The core idea: EXP is a brokerage first, built to change the economics
5:09 — The basics in plain English: 80/20 split + $16k annual cap
6:00 — The full fee picture (startup, monthly fees, per-transaction, caps)
10:16 — Stock at EXP (ownership incentives + what it’s not)
14:26 — Revenue share explained (and why most people misunderstand it)
19:04 — “Freedom has math” (the 4% rule + what residual income really means)

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

If you're a real estate agent, a team leader, or a brokerage owner, and you've been hearing all this noise about exp reality, this video is for you. Because some people talk about exp like it's magic, other people talk about it like it's hype. And most people talking about it actually don't understand the model deeply enough to explain it the right way. So in this video, I'm going to break down EXP as simply as it could be: what it is, how it works, how agents get paid, what the cap is, how stock awards work, what a revenue share really is. Why did a brokerage owner like me made a move and who this model is actually for. Not from theory, from a real business perspective. From someone who has lived both sides of this conversation. So let's get into it. Before I explain EXP, let me explain where I'm coming from. I spent years building this business, real estate. I got licensed back in 2013. I sold over 500 homes personally. I run a real estate team. I built an independent real estate brokerage, starting with a handful of agents and recruiting hundreds of agents to my company, closing over 4,000 transactions and $1.5 billion in sales value, which I recently moved to EXP real estate. I coached, I mentored, and impacted hundreds of agents, team leaders, as well as brokerage owners. I lived through the pressure of working for months with nothing to show for, the pressure of growth, the pressure of payroll and overhead. The pressure of trying to create opportunity for agents while still making the business makes sense financially. I know what it feels like to build a production, a real estate team, and real estate brokerage. Break by break, climb by climb, and agent by agent. To pour your heart into the culture, to invest in people and then lose people, to create systems, to recruit, to retain, to train, to carry responsibility. And what I started seeing very clearly is this a lot of brokerage owners are working incredibly hard, wearing multiple hats, but the model itself is fighting them. Too much overhead, too many fixed costs, too much operational and compliance drag, too much exposure to risk and liability, too much energy spent feeding the baby that we gave birth to. And at some point, you have to ask a harder question. Am I building a business or am I babysitting an expensive structure that depends on me nonstop? Death pushing changed everything for me because I didn't just want growth. I wanted smarter growth. I wanted leverage. I wanted alignment. I wanted a platform where agents could win bigger. I wanted less risk, less liability, and zero compliance drive. And I wanted the model that wasn't dependent on me carrying the full weight of the building business forever. That's why this conversation matters. At its score, EXP is a real estate brokerage. Let's just start there. It's not just a recruiting company, it's not just a stock company, it's not just a revenue share company. It is a brokerage where agents can list homes, sell homes, serve clients, and build their business. Glenn Sanford, who founded the company in 2009, wanted to build a company differently. Instead of loading the model with the same traditional office overhead, franchise drag, and local cost structure that many brokerages carry, EXP built a cloud-based model designed to scale differently. That changes the economics. And when the economics change, the opportunity changes. That's the big idea. Glenn looked at the old brokerage model and basically asked, what if we removed all of the fixed overhead? What if we create a platform that agents could plug into from anywhere? And what if we shared more of the upside with the people actually helping grow the company? That is why EXP got attention, because it changed the conversation from where do I hang my license to what business model am I plugging my effort into? That is a much better question. As a brokerage owner, this was the aha moment for me. Instead of realizing something a lot of owners eventually realize, you can build something beautiful and still be trapped inside of it. You can have the brand, the office, the team, the recognition, the culture, and still wake up every day carrying an enormous amount of weight. And the problem is not always that you build it wrong. Sometimes the problem is the model itself that has limits. You're paying for the office, you're paying for staff, you're paying for systems, you're paying for tools, you're paying for expansion for overhead. You're trying to recruit agents, you're trying to retain agents, you're trying to increase per agent productivity. And in many cases, the entire business still depends too much on you, the owner. And that gets exhausting. And I reached a point where I asked myself, I'm 47 years old. Do I want to spend the next chapter of my life defending an old structure? Or do I want to move into the platform that gives me and my agents more leverage? That's a different question. This was not about quitting. This was not about giving up. This was all about evolving. This was all about seeing the future more clearly than the past. This was about recognizing that I could bring my experience, my leadership, my systems, my community, and my vision into a platform that had bigger upside and less drag. That's how I looked at it. Not emotionally, but strategically. Now let's make this simple. At EXP Realty, the general US model is 80-20 split with a $16,000 annual cap. So what does that mean in real life? It means you get to keep 80% of your commission until you paid $16,000 into your brokerage. Now, once you hit the cap, your economics improve dramatically for the rest of your anniversary cycle. That matters a lot, especially to producing agents, because one of the most frustrating things in real estate is producing more and more every year while feeling like your brokerage just keeps taking more and more every year. At least with a cap, there's a ceiling. There's a point where the math changes in your favor. But let's get one level deeper because agents also want to know what are the actual costs in addition to the split. Well, there's a $149 startup fee to join EXP that includes the first month. There's $85 per month cloud brokerage fee, there's a $25 broker review fee, and then there is a $60 risk management fee capped annually at $750. So when people evaluate EXP Realty, they should not just ask what's the split. They should ask, what is the full economic model looks like for me and my business? What do I pay for to get in? What do I pay monthly? What do I pay per transaction? Where does the cap kick in? And what do I gain access to in exchange? That is how business owners think, that is how producing and series agents think. Because the goal is not to find a brokerage with the sexiest headline, right? The goal is to find a brokerage where the economics, sport, opportunity, and scalability actually make sense for your business. Now, here's where it gets more interesting, especially for team leaders and brokerage owners. And this matters because not every agent is operating the same way or in the same phase. Some are solo, some are building teams, some are married partners in business, some are already running high-volume organizations. So with EXP, it offers different compensation structures for all of those models, right? For example, there's a domestic partnership option that is for legally married or union partners with the same sponsor. The minimum is two people, a primary and secondary, and they can share $16,000 cap. There are also icon eligible with one award per partnership. By the way, I'll unpack the icon status where you get paid that $16,000 back in stock in the next few minutes. Then there's a full cap team. This is for any agents with no production requirement. Minimum one leader and one member. In that structure, all retain the full $16,000 cap and all can qualify for an icon program. Then there is a half a cap team. This is for teams that have done $6 million in sales volume or 30 plus units in the past 12 months. Minimum again, one leader, one mentor. The cap options are members can choose $8,000, a full $16,000 cap. Again, their icon eligibility applies. Then there is a quarter cap team or a mega team. This is for larger teams doing $40 million in sales or 140 plus units in the past 12 months. Again, minimum one team leader and 10 or more team members. In that structure, members may have a $4,000 cap or choose us $8,000 or 16,000 cap options. Again, the team leader is icon eligible. Now let me add something else that matters a lot to me as a brokerage owner, former brokerage owner, and also to producing agents. Training and skill development. Look, the split does not build a business. A cap does not build a business. A brand does not build a business. Execution builds a business. EXP isn't just selling a model, it's backing the model with training. For example, EXP University, the platform offers over 60 hours of live training each week, along with separate icon agent training resources, lessons, video sessions, and program built for agents who want to grow, scale, and perform at the higher level. Like a fast cap program, a six-week live program build to help agents develop the habits, systems, strategies, and pipeline needed to cap faster. Agents who go through that program generate on average 3.9 contracts within the first six weeks. And on top of that, we get free buyer and seller leads through Realty.com for the next 12 months. That's huge. Also, like think about it, training, structure, and accountability matter because most agents do not fail from lack of motivation. They fail from lack of structure, lack of repetition, lack of proximity to people that are already winning. And as a broker owner or as a team owner, this is one of the things I pay attention to. I do not just care about what works for one agent doing a few deals here and there. I care about what works for a productive solo agent, a married partnership, a team leader, and a growth-minded organization. That is a different lens. And that is why I keep coming back to the same question. What do I get for what I'm giving up? That is the business owner question. Because yes, the split matters. Yes, the cap matters. Yes, the fees matter. But what matters even more is does this model support the kind of business I actually want to build? That's the real conversation. And once you understand the split, the cap, the fees, and the team structure, then the next logical question becomes what other upside exists beyond just commissions? That's where the stock conversation starts to get interesting. Now let's talk about one of the most interesting parts about EXP, which is the stock. This is one of the pieces that got agents thinking differently, because in most brokerages, you can sell for 10 years, for 20 years, even 30 or 40 years. And when you're done, what do you own? Maybe a database, maybe a brand, maybe a team, maybe some savings if you were disciplined, but you usually don't own part of the brokerage. That's what made the stock conversation so differently because at EXP Realty, 71% of the company is owned by EXP agents. So EXP breaks the stock equity opportunity into three buckets. The first is the equity wards through incentive program. This includes $200 of EXP stock for your first transaction closing, $400 of EXP stock when you cap, that's $16,000 cap, and $400 worth of stock for directly attracting another agent, and that agent closes their first deal. By the way, they all have three-year vesting periods. Now, are those numbers by themselves life-changing? No, but that's not the point. The point is the model is reinforcing ownership behavior. It is straining agents to think beyond just close a deal, cash a check, and repeat. It is creating little moments where the company says, look, you produced, you hit a milestone, you helped grow the platform. Now you get to participate in ownership. That matters a lot. Now, in addition to the awarded stock, you can use 5% of your net commission, which is totally completely up to you, by the way, to purchase an additional stock at 5% scale. And 5% from every closing adds up. About 65% of the EXP agents participate in that program. Now, this is interesting because it shows a lot of people in this model are choosing to convert a piece of today's income into a long-term equity. Again, not because stock is magic, but because they're thinking beyond only the next paycheck. Now, let me be clear stock is not magic, stock is not guaranteed wealth, stock goes up, it goes down, and not every agent will maximize it. But here's why it matters most agents spend their whole career earning commissions without ever building ownership in a platform to help to grow. That is a huge blind spot in the industry. They work, they produce, they sacrifice, they pay bills, they pay splits, they help to build the brokerage brand. But in the end, they usually own none of it. That's why this matters. It changes the psychology. Now you're not just thinking like a salesperson, now you're starting to think like the owner. And for the agents and leaders who understand wealth creation, that matters a lot. Because once agents start thinking in terms of commissions plus equity plus leverage, they stop looking at their broker just like a place to hang their license. They start looking at it like a vehicle. And this is much more powerful the way to think. And one of the clearest examples of that owner mindset inside of the model is the icon of work. That's why I think it deserves its own conversation. Now, when agents hear about icon, they often hear that it's just another some shiny badge or a trophy. And that's not how I look at it at all. An icon is an agent who caps at $16,000 and then closes 20 more transactions. Now, in most markets, that's roughly between 25 and 28 total deals or $500,000 in GCI. Now, in return, you can earn up to $16,000 back in stock. And after you cap, you only pay $250 per transaction until you hit $5,000 in post-cap fees. Then it drops to $75 per transaction. And no, I never tell someone to join a broker just because they heard the word icon. But I would absolutely tell a producing agent to pay attention when a model has the mechanisms that reward production in addition to just transactions. That's a bigger conversation than most brokerages are even having right now. And that leads to the next piece. Because if stock gets people thinking differently, revenue share gets people thinking even bigger. And once you start thinking beyond just production and into ownership, the next question becomes can this model also create leverage beyond my personal production? That's where the revenue share conversation starts. Let's talk about the most misunderstood part about EXP Realty, their revenue share. And I want to explain it in a way that actually matters to you and your business. Not just what it is, but why it actually matters. Because most agents have spent their entire career thinking in one lane. Close a deal, get paid, start over. Close a deal, get paid, start over. That is active income. And by the way, there's nothing wrong with active income. I made a lot of money in active income. Most stop agents have as well. But at some point, you have to ask a bigger question. How long do I want to keep rebuilding my income every single month from scratch, from zero? I remember my mentor telling me this, Alan, every time we close a deal, we become unemployed again. That's where this conversation changes. The simplest way to think about a revenue share is this. If you're an agent listening to this, let me ask you something. How predictable is your pipeline? Because most agents aren't struggling with the skill, they're struggling with the opportunity. You can be the best agent in the world, but if you don't have conversations with buyers and sellers, you're not closing deals. That's where fastlead.io comes in. We help agents create consistent opportunities. No random leads, no guessing where the next deal is coming from, a real pipeline that turns conversations into closers. That's what we're here to build. If you want my playbook to increase your business without burning out, book a call below. You help to attract producing agent into the platform. You help them win, you help them stay productive. And if the company earns revenue from that production, a portion can flow back to you. That is why the idea of leverage income gets people's attention, because now you're not only dependent on your own personal production forever. Now you build leverage income with revenue share through agent attraction. And here's the simple breakdown of tiers. There are seven levels. Okay. Tier one, fourteen hundred dollars plus a twenty six hundred dollar bonus in a first year. That's four thousand dollars. Okay. Tier two, sixteen hundred dollars, tier three, a thousand dollars, tier four, six hundred dollars per agent per year. Again, these are per agent per year. Tier five, four hundred dollars per agent per year, tier six is one thousand dollars per agent per year, and tier seven, two thousand dollars per agent per year. Now, let me make this agent attraction process as simple as possible. All right, if you know good agents and you bring good agents into the good environment and those agents help other good agents come over, there's a leverage in that. That's the point. No hype, no pressure, not a weird recruiting energy. Leverage by adding value. But this is also where the training becomes a really big deal. Because if a company is going to talk about growth, attraction, and leverage, there needs to be a real system behind it. Not just hype, not just people saying, hey, go sponsor a bunch of agents, the actual proven training. That's one of the reasons why I think programs like a fast track matter at EXP University. It positions fast track as a life training path for agents who want to grow their attraction business with more clarity, more confidence, and repeatable habits. And I think that matters because attraction is not supposed to be random, it should be skill-based, it should be relationship-based, it should be system-based. Now, there's also another program which is a co-sponsorship program that was launched back in May of 2025. And it's been a game changer. The co-sponsorship program gives an agent the ability to have both primary sponsor and co-sponsor in plain English. That means as an agent, you can get support and guidance from two partners, not just one. This is a big deal because one of the biggest fears agents have is am I going to have like real support locally? Am I going to have access to specific tools and resources that will help to grow my business? This structure is trying to solve that. Now, why does that matter? Because it shows the model is trying to balance two things at once: support and structure. Support for the agent and structure for how the compensation model still works. As your partner, I pay attention to that big time. Because I don't just care about what works for a top producer, I care about what helps all agents to plug in faster, get real guidance, and have a better chance of success. Now let's keep going because this is where I think most people still miss the whole conversation. They hear revenue share and they immediately think small. They think cool, maybe a little extra money here and there. No, this is not just about making a little extra money. This is about understanding the difference between earn income and leverage income. Because freedom has math. That's why I want to tie this to another concept: the math freedom, also known as the 4% rule. So when you speak to a financial advisor, most of them talk about the 4% rule. What is a 4% rule? If you retire and withdraw about 4% of your portfolio in the first year, then increase that dollar amount each year with inflation, your money has historically had a good chance of lasting for about 30 years. If you want to safely withdraw $50,000 in a year in retirement using that 4% rule, you need around $1.25 million saved. Now think about that. Most people say they want freedom, but they have never actually done the math on the freedom. What is your undone number? In other words, at what level of monthly residual income would you feel like you finally had a real breeding room? Here's how the breakdown works. If you want $5,000 a month in residual income, that's $60,000 a year. Using the 4% rule, you need about $1.5 million in liquid net worth. If you want $10,000 a month or $120,000 a year, you need about $3 million in liquid assets. If you want $20,000 a month, that's $240,000 a year, you need about $6 million. Now, if you want $40,000 a month or $480,000 a year, you need about $12 million in liquid assets. And if you want roughly $83,000 a month or $1 million a year, you're looking at $25 million in liquid net worth. Now stop there for a second. Because that is the real conversation. Most agents say they want passive income. Most agents say they want freedom. Most agents say they want options. But very few have actually sat down and asked, what would it take if I had to build that freedom the old fashioned way? For straight savings, invest the capital alone. That is why I think this matters so much. Because when agents brush off revenue share, when they brush off stock, when they brush off the leverage income, I think they're missing the bigger idea. The bigger idea is this if you can create residual income through leadership, mentorship, value creation, agent attraction, and helping people win, you may be able to build freedom faster than trying to save millions strictly from commissions, income alone. That is why this is a bigger than recruiting. This is why this is a bigger than one split. That's why it's bigger than one transaction. This is a wealth-building conversation. Now let me be clear revenue share is not automatic. It's not guaranteed, it's not a substitute for production. You still need to have skills, you still need to have leadership, you still need to have consistency, you still need to have integrity, you still need to help other people win. But if you're already that type of a person who influences people, already mentors people, already builds culture, already creates opportunity, already helps agents grow and win, then why would you not want to be in a model where the value creation could turn into the leverage income? And that's how I see it. And as a brokerage owner, this is what really hit me hard. I was already doing that work. I was already helping agents grow. I was already building people up, I was already creating opportunity. So the question became. Why keep all of that trapped inside of a model where the upside is limited? When I could bring that same leadership into the platform where the upside can scale. That's what really made me pay attention because commissions pay the bills, but leverage income can change your life. And once I understood that, I stopped looking at EXP Realty like just another brokerage option. I started looking at it like a platform that could support both production and long-term leverage. That's where this hit me hardest as a brokerage owner. Because once you understand the math of freedom, you start looking at your business differently. You stop asking only how many deals can I close, and you start asking, how do I build something that gives me leverage, scalability, and long-term wealth. That's where the owner conversation really begins. This is where my brokerage owner perspective really comes in. Look, I spend years building environments for agents, helping them grow, helping them to convert, helping them to think bigger, helping them to build confidence, helping them to close more deals. And I realized something that I was already doing, the leadership part. I was already building community, I was already helping people win. So the question became why would I stay in a model where all of that value creation stayed trapped inside of a local overhead heavy structure when I can bring that same leadership into the platform where the upside was much bigger for everyone involved? That was the shift. That was not me running away from responsibilities. This was me stepping away into a bigger container, a model where I can still lead, still mentor, still help agents to produce, still build culture, still build community. But now do it inside of the platform with more scalability, less risk, and liability, and by leveraging 2,500 EXP employees to participate in things like capping, stock, and revenue share for only 85 bucks a month. And that matters because the future belongs to agents who can see where the industry is going, not just where it has been. I didn't move because I was tired. I moved because I saw a bigger future. So who is EXP a great fit for? EXP can be a great fit for the agent who wants more than just a place to hang their license. The agents who want flexibility, the productive agent who wants a cap, the team leader who wants to scale, the brokerage owner who's tired of carrying the heavy overhead, the agent who naturally mentors and influences others, the agent who wants to think beyond just the next commission chart, the agent who wants multiple lanes, commissions, equity opportunities, and revenue shared through leadership and attraction. That's why this model resonates with growth-minded people. Because it lets them think bigger. Who it is not for? Now, let me be real. EXP is not for everyone. If you need someone standing over your shoulder every day, it may not be for you. If you need a physical office just to feel validated, it may not be for you. If you think a brokerage will save you from poor habits, weakly generation, low skill, or lack of discipline, it is definitely not for you. No brokerage can fix that. You still need skill conversations, you still need appointments, you still need listings, you still need closings, you still need leadership, you still need personal responsibility. A better platform helps, but it does not replace execution. The biggest mistake people make is evaluating EXP emotionally instead of strategically. They listen to one bitter person or one overhyped person or one social media post or one rumor, and then they build the whole opinion without actually understanding the model. That is reckless. This is your business, your income, your future, your next chapter. You should evaluate questions like what am I paying for? What am I getting? What is the cap? What are the stock opportunities? What support exists? Who am I aligning myself with? Can this model really help me to grow my production, my business? Can it help me create leverage in my business? Can it help me build something bigger with just another year of commissions? These are the right questions to ask. So here's my honest take. EXP is not perfect. There's no perfect brokerage out there, but it's one of the few models that forced the industry to rethink what the brokerage can actually be. A brokerage can be more than just an office, more than a split, more than a logo, it can be a platform, a wealth vehicle, a growth environment, a place where agents can produce, cap, earn stock, and create additional upside to help others grow. For me as a brokerage owner, that mattered because I wasn't looking for a comfort, I was looking for alignment, I wasn't looking to protect the past, I was looking to build a future. And if you're an agent, a team leader, or a brokerage owner trying to understand EXP, that's how I would encourage you to think about it. Not with gossip, not with fear, not with hype, with business clarity, with a long-term vision, with math, with the honest self-awareness about what kind of model best supports the life and business you want to build. Look, if this video helped you to understand EXP at the deeper level, hit the like button and subscribe. And if you want to talk through the whether the EXP is the right fit for you as an agent, as a team leader, or a brokerage owner, there's a link in the description section to book a call with me directly. Like I'm happy to have a real conversation with you. No fluff, no pressure, no weird pitch, just clarity. See you on other side.