KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Beyond the Hamster Wheel: Engineering a Wealth-Focused Real Estate Exit Strategy

Episode Date: June 24, 2026

Summary:Alan Kushman shares his journey from a solo agent to building a top-tier independent brokerage before transitioning his 100-plus agent firm to eXp Realty. This episode dives into the "brutal honesty" of brokerage ownership, including the liabilities and lack of leverage that trap many owners. Agents and leaders will learn why moving from a "tenant" model to a co-ownership model is essential for long-term wealth, flexibility, and building a global organization without the overhead of traditional expansion.

Welcome to Next Level Agents, the podcast that's all about breaking barriers and building empires. I'm Kevin Kaufman and together with my crew bringing you straight up fire. Interviews with top tier agents, game changing thinkers, plus the strategies and mindset shifts to dominate in real estate. Whether it's personal growth, leadership packs, or next level tactics, we've got you covered. So tell me, what does the next level look like for you? Buckle up because we're about to take you there right now. All right, guys, we're back on the next level agents podcast with the biggest best news I've had in a long time. This is shaking up Phoenix real estate and beyond, if we're being real honest.

I'm first of all joined by Fred Weaver, which almost never happens on this podcast. Plus, we've got a very special guest here today, Mr. Allen Kushmakoff of Best Homes Real Estate. But now it's not just Best Homes. It's best at EXP Realty. Welcome home, brother. Great to be back, guys. Great to be back. Well, actually, I don't think, did we ever do a podcast?

We've done a lot of stuff together. I don't think we've actually recorded a podcast together, dude. I don't think I was ever asked. You're starting to sound like Curtis Johnson. Be careful. A little bit needy. Yeah. I don't get asked either, Alan.

All right. Well, thank you for having me, guys. Yeah. It's definitely an honor for sure. Dude, we're glad you're here. Let's just start off with, like, The biggest, most obvious news of all. You made a big decision recently.

Yeah, dude. 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 3D area. They're shutting down the brokerage today. And I'm excited, dude. I am so stoked.

Like I don't know. I feel like I'm like three years, maybe even like five years younger. With everything that had been going on for the last two weeks. And I shared a lot of things with you guys. I feel great. Yeah. Dude, that's awesome. So obviously, that's a big transition.

Not everybody knows how big of a deal that was for you. Let's start with this. Let's go backwards a little bit. When did you get into real estate? 2013. Okay. Yeah, 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, live and you learn. Listen, we all make mistakes. So anyway, 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 going to 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 giving me the same pitch. Real estate agents are not doing that way. well, it's hard out there. 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 going to treat this like a business, you're going to crush it. So I listened to you. And the next day, I went sign up for real estate classes. It 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 it was officially a real estate professional. Wow. Dude. And as like an outsider, like, we were friends and we've always stayed in touch this whole time. I remember, because you live 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 going to, you're going to,

you're going to 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 wish 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. And I just observed you what seemed like dude on a rocket ship. Like you, your business took off. You went from, hey, I got my license now to, I'm selling a lot of. a real estate, then I was like building a team, building a brokerage. It seemed like you did it all pretty fast. It probably didn't feel that way to you though, right? It didn't feel like they're just through this entire journey. They're 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 in cloud nine thinking I'm going to crush it from day one. But it took me like six months to finally close my first deal. And it was like a hundred thousand hour listing with a two and a half thousand dollar commission check. And for six months, I was calling expires and cancels. I was like, I picked probably the most difficult legion source out there, expires, canceled, getting rejected left and right, going on listing appointments. But finally got it, got that first listing. Plus, on top of that, has some health issues.

I was diagnosed with autoimmune disease, ulterior of colitis. And that was also tough because, like, 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 bathroom, their restroom, right? And that was tough. And I was battling that for almost two years. Right now, thank God, in remission. So that was difficult. And just financially, like, coming home and you're like, you put in the full day at work and then you come in and there's nothing to show for financially for six months. That was tough, looking at my wife. eyes. But hey man, after six months, closed my first deal. I think that that year I did like

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 few agents and just kind of snowballed after that. Yeah. At what point did you start building a team outside of having an assistant? Out of necessity, I started like buying a lot of online leads, right? And for me, like, I mean, 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? And I needed help. So initially it started with the showing assistance. I had four showing assistants, all over the valley, showing homes. By the way, that was probably the most profitable model that I ran. For sure. And then I started bringing in agents. That was year number four in 2016. And dude, like,

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 at 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. Then in my 30 year, I think that's when I hired coach, Chaplac, 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. And then in 2020, launched Best Homes on the same day that I got real estate license, January 14th, 2020. So seven years apart. I got my real estate license 2013 and 2020 I launched my brokerage on the same date. Did you line those dates up on purpose? I had no idea.

Really? Like Melissa, like a year or two years later, she's like, hey, did you know, I was looking at your license through the C.E. Club. 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 the EXP.

I really wanted to move on January 14th. You did say the 14th. I remember that. But it was just way too close. and my staff would kill me. Like, yeah, it was just too many moving parts. And we have confirmation of that in the room. You would not be a living, breathing person right now.

It was the best decision, right? So then you go and you, like, you've kind of done it all. You sell a lot of real estate as an individual agent. Yeah. You figure that out. 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. And, yeah, you're nuts.

But, I mean, you had a lot of success in that. Tell us about that journey real quick. Yeah, it's just stages, right? For me, for me, the next stage was starting a brokerage. And I know we had conversations back, was it 2018, I think? It was May of 2018 for sure. In May of 2018, we had conversations about partnering, right? That's when you were thinking of joining the XB.

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 got to 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.

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. There's that saying, a teacher appears when the student is ready to learn. And I think at that time I was just not ready to learn, right? So the next step for me, when I started losing some of my producing agents, I'm like,

all right, 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 part of it as well. And in 2020, we decided to launch it, man, 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 handful of them decided to join me. And yet you built that up to how many agents?

Over the years, 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, 108 or 109, I think. And it's a lot of agents for a brokerage. We're like top 30 in the valley in terms of the agent count. and the sales volume out of 2,400 brokerages in MLS. If you look at our MLS, our MLS armist, there are 2400 brokerages. We're like a top 30.

So that kind of gives you an idea. Like, dude, like most of the brokerages, they know we're anywhere close to what we have built. Dude, I remember one time, this was probably two years ago. You and I were a coffee. And you had started another business like, coaching 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. I was blown away. Do you remember any of those off the top of your head by chance? So there are like about 100,000 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.

Like, they do everything. They wear multiple hats. And, like, we have conversations with them pretty much on a daily basis. Where are they at? I break the brokerage world into, like, three segments or three areas. So there's someone who's kind of like up to 10 agents. We call them a pretender. Right?

They pretend like they have a brokerage. But in a reality, it's not a 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 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 100 agents and up.

And with every single area, if you will, there are certain constraints that they have to deal with. And with the ones that have less than 10 agents, the biggest constraint is the fact that there's no leverage involved. Their systems 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. Yeah, that's, I mean, that's wow. That seems like so much work.

I mean, I was going to say that could be another episode, but that actually sounds like another therapy session that we're might need to have one of these days. It fascinates me. All right. So part of your business, 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. 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 with. Right. And 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 is a brokerage.

I was just sharing that model with them, right, for free. And 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. So we create funnels for the broker owners where they can attract agents into their world, right? Wormer leads, agent opportunities that raise their hand, who want to learn more about their company, where 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.

So it's the same problem of agents have? 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, they don't do it consistently. Most of them are good sitting down just like this and having conversation with an agent,

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. 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 or you're doing called out or reaching me a text and everything like that. So what we do with our company is we're attracting those agents to these brokerage 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. That's awesome. All right. So that brings us up to today. I'll call it today. Yeah.

Fred, I cannot believe you kept quiet this entire time. I've just been trying to figure out when I wanted to toss in the Cushman Cove spelling. Wow. So I've just been kind of holding it back. The guy that's never said anybody's name right ever is trying to throw the end of the bus. Did that happen last week? Absolutely. Last week, I think I called somebody David when he's.

His name was like clearly on the screen. Three times you called him David. Well, in no fairness, it wasn't actually on the screen. It wasn't on the screen. It was Steve's name on the screen. Oh, maybe. It was in the invite though. It was an invite.

But it happens to me all the time. I did say, I butchered the name and sold it back. Yeah, you did. Yeah. But he corrected himself after three tries. Yeah, I mean. Yeah, it only took three times. At least I'd only met that guy like for about 10 and a half minutes before I

butchered his name. But anyhow, no, so Alan, it's pretty. 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 i don't i mean correct me if i'm wrong here i don't believe you just made this jump over to ex p because the house was burning and you needed to put it no so so success success success like i'll ask the obvious question i guess like why join ex p and why join expe realty now man that's a that's a that's a that's a That's a big question, right?

So there are two parts to it. Okay. The first part is when I started my brokerage six years ago, right? My vision, my purpose as a broker owner, as one of the company, as a leader, is like, all right, I want to build the best vehicle for my agents to grow and thrive. Like, that's it. 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? grow, right? And I have great people in my company. You met all of them. 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 and creating more income. And that has to do with equity in a company, which, by the way, I tried multiple times. Couldn't really do that.

You have to go public, and it takes a lot of time, a lot of resources to do so. You can do it. And then the revenue share component to it, building 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 the beach and writing emails. Flexibility is living your life on your own terms.

Location freedom, time freedom, income. 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 it. 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 a 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. their 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.

They want to be part of their ecosystem. Right. That's another way of generating income. So I really like the, 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're retired. Right. So that was my vision for the agents. And then of course, you add all the tools, the resources, is, man, 60 to 70 hours of life 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 would talk about the fact that you're like saving like close to like $800, I think, a month, healthcare alone.

That's huge. I mean, in a valley, though, 28, 2900. agents, over 2,000 listings. Now my agents can leverage all those listings holding open houses. It 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 and other 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 wealth for the years to come. Yeah, that's awesome. For folks that are maybe like listening to this, 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 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's been added to? What's still there?

Yeah, I mean, I mean, the brokerage is not there. And thank God from the compliance standpoint, for all the, all the risks and liabilities and chase. agents for the signatures and initials and all of that jazz. No, it's no longer there. Thank God. Thank God. I think it was a Glenn who said that you have to be like brain damage or something like that to own a brokerage? And by the way, I'm not sitting here and knocking on brokerages. I have a lot of clients. I have a lot of friends that own brokerages. It's great. but for me, the way I looked at it is, okay, what's the next chapter in my journey, right? And 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 go into different markets, partner with other brokerages, essentially starting that market from scratch, right? And the more I thought about it, the more I was like, do I really want to do all of that heavy lifting? Do I really want to like sacrifice the next five years, six years, seven years of my life in going into the markets, 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 got to 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. Build multiple companies.

I had five companies that failed. One point was half a million dollars in debt. Like all those things I went through. Do I really want to do that for the next five or six years? Do I really want to reinvent a wheel? 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 EXP Realty is perfect.

It's not. But I think based on everything that I looked at, the diligence, you and I've been talking about this for seven and a half years, right? I really truly believe that it is the best aligned to what our agents need right now, to what the brokerages need right now, not only right now, but going forward for many years to come. So safe to say the best home agents that used to be at a brokerage just transitioned with you into a team, a community, whatever label we want to put on it. You were running a team at one time. So we could just say you went from running a team and to create a team.

a brokerage back into running a team, 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. Yeah, it's a much bigger vision, but let's, for example, apply to the most of the agents that joined us. We're not removing anything from what they liked about best, right? It's not about replacing best with EXP. It's about adding EXP to best, right? So like Curtis says, and so it's best and the EXP, which you like about best, the people,

the culture, tools, the resources, all of it is staying. We're just adding more to it with the EXP. And not only doing it here in the Valley, but we're doing this all over the world for 85 bucks a month. Like you as an agent, you as a team owner, you as a brokerage owner can partner with any around the country and around the world were $85. You can't beat that. No potential risks, no potential liabilities, no compliance,

none of that stuff that really pulls down as a broker owner's on a daily basis. Yeah. And building it on top of, but like you said, not a perfect company by any means, but the most sustainable real estate brokerage that I found at this size and scale. This is a publicly traded company. I know you're a smart guy. You went and looked at the financials.

Did all that. I'm sure you saw that there's little to no debt and the credit card that gets run up and paid off every month. There's tens of thousands, tens of millions, excuse me, if not, $100 plus million of assets in the bank. There's settling of lawsuits and legal teams and like all of those things that matter, right? All of those things are important in the last two and a half three years, right? I mean, how many brokers are there? Literally, if you look at their financials, if you're really diving to their financials, are, like, really solvent. Like, a lot of them have a lot of debt.

That's the concern, right? I think the biggest thing for me, honestly, fellas, like, like, it's the people. Like, what I mean by that is the who, right? You, you, Fred, Curtis, Joshua, everyone else that you connected me with. Man, being in the room with those people and learning from them. it's just a completely different level. Completely different level. And for me, who is the most important thing?

Like, Tony Robbins talks about this all the time. Proximity's power, success leaves clues. You want to be in a room with people that have done epic shit and doing epic shit. 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. And they're ready, they're already talking to the agents, like one of my agents, like today,

come to me, is like, 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 part of it. And we joked us all the time. It took you, what, almost eight years to bring me to XP?

Like Kevin and I, we met about this like almost eight years ago. And after eight years, we're together. But reason we're together, again, the XP is a cool platform. I love it. But also you guys. That's one of the main reasons. Yeah. 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. because it now it always mattered to me as your friend and now matters to me business-wise too. So it puts us in alignment to literally work together. And I love it because I look at all that you've built over the years 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 then at best homes, that's a big asset that you. 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 going to 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 going to just literally be able to open the playbook for somebody 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. Yeah, you're absolutely right. It's all about leading with value and it's all about building, developing, nurturing the relationships. Yeah.

And again, like you guys like are models for that. Like we know each other for such a long time. And did we have conversations about EXP? Yeah, multiple times. Was I ever felt like you guys were like overbearing with it? Absolutely not. You always led with value, 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 continue leading with value. And like you said, I think Kevin, last week, you said, don't really focus on your time, focus on like how they're going to decide and respond and join on their time. Like it's all about their time. So some of them is going to be two, three months. Some of them may be two, three, four, five, six years. and that's okay because we want to build something very special and it's going to take years to do that and that's perfectly fine with me.

I just want to hit back to your sort of 10,000 agent goal and just this idea of, I guess the reason I bring that up, Alan, it's just awesome, man. Like I think sometimes, like Kevin and I used to have a mentor that he'd hear people say, oh, I'm overwhelmed or whatever.

And he'd always say, just get a bigger plate, right? Like, I got too much on your plate. 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 EXP though was this idea of number one, 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 relationship with people and help them grow their businesses versus I got to go open up a brokerage in Colorado tomorrow and another one in Florida

in a month from now. And I got to like all the, I got to open a lot. all these E&O policies and take on more risk and hire people for it. And like just what a nightmare. Right. And so the reason I bring that up is to say that I think EXP 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. Yeah, absolutely. You're spot on. And we're doing 10,000 people that that you're, going to 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 multiplications, 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, right? So my job is to continue to lead, right? 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. I want to hit on one thing. And Kevin may have somewhere else he wants to go here as we're maybe winding down. But 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 is the exit ramp off of this business that I've been building or what does

retirement look like for me or what where is this all going and I think a lot of times in real estate like you just go get our license 2013 2007 whatever it was right we just show up and 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 do you exit? What does that exit look like? And do you mind walking this through maybe just a little bit? I mean, you're not retiring tomorrow.

I'm not trying to set that up. 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? And 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 was like, oh my gosh, like I'm doing all of this. I'm building all of this for years and years. years or years to come. So this way, one day I would be ready to like enjoy the fruits of my labor. And who knows if that day is going to 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. Paying that office rent and utilities, 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 got to be another way.

There's got to be a different way. There's got to be a more, I wouldn't say easier way, but a way where I don't have to sacrifice the next five to 10 years of my life, the best years of my life, where I want to spend more time with my kids, my wife, and flying all over the country, starting these offices or these markets, right? And then what is the end game? The endgame 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 just not what I want to do. And that's when I started really thinking about this whole thing, right? And I'm not saying that, like, everything just happened in last six years, I think, have really helped me to build where I'm at. Like I was telling this to my wife 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 build in the last two to three years,

now there's going to be the next stage, which is the EXP, right? And everything starts, happens for the 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 just want to make sure that I'm present with my wife, my kids, and the amount of time that I have left,

I want to spend with them versus being on the road constantly for the next 10, 15 years. I just don't want to do that. It's exciting, dude. All right, dude, so we talked about all these big ideas and plans for growth. but 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 100 people.

And you just ask them to trust you, right? Hey, we're going to make a change. 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 other people. Fred and I've 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. Dude, we have like another 40 minutes to go through everything that I've been in the last two weeks or something like that. It's been pretty intense, right? Intense in so many different ways, mentally, emotionally, physically. people don't like change. People are afraid of change. So when we made that announcement that you were there,

I mean, there were agents that were cheering, but there were also agents that were crying, right? And they were thinking that we're almost kind of like betraying the whole thing that we started. It's almost kind of like you gave birth to the baby, you kind of raise that baby, and now you're like, okay, hey, I'm losing this baby, right?

And I was like, no, you're not losing the baby. The baby just gets married, right? So I told everyone right there at the event. I said, hey, here's the link to my calendar. There's a QR code. If you have questions, concerns, let me know. I'll walk through it, one-on-one conversations. And dude, like, I remember Wednesday, Thursday, Friday,

I probably had about 50 plus 60 101 convoes. with agents and not all of them were like, like, fun. We're 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. and something my wife said and kind of triggered me. And I, we got into this little argument, right? And when outside, I usually, when I get to these situations, I walk. I could walk two miles, three miles, four miles. I can just, I walk, walk, walk, clear my head. Came back, realized, you know what, I was stupid and what I said.

Like, she has, like, 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 are more and more positive conversations coming from the agents. I think that initial shock that hit the first 24th to 40 hours are like, wait a minute, like we are disbanding the band, if you will. And then you're like, no, we're not.

We're not. Melissa is staying. Selena's staying. David is getting promoted. everything's staying, the office is saying, everything's staying, we're not removing anything. Everything that you like about best is here. Like you don't join best because of best. You join 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 off. 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 said that I'm being deported by ICE. Not going to do that. Yeah, we had that. Dude, I had an agent call me up. He's like, hey, like, 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?

yeah, you're supposedly not legal in United States. I was like, dude, you want to show me my passport? Like, I am legal. I had another agent call me up. That's a new one. Like, I heard that you're, like, you sold this to XP for like a couple of million dollars and you're going to be moving to Florida. I was like, shit, that would be nice. That would have been awesome. That's not the case, man.

I'm not selling my company. Absolutely not. Right. So that's that. But yeah, just wild. stories, but it was all good, right? It was good to connect to most of the agents. Some agents they decided to leave without having conversation with me, but they definitely made a lot of noise out there. I'm not going to name those agents, but it happens. It's just part of the journey, part of the process. But last week was much easier, to be honest, audio, and we made that transition. Now, could have made that transition as seamless as it was without, my team. Like Melissa, Celine, David, Beth, I mean, they just crushed it. They were there

every day making sure that our agents are taking care of, moved. And we got, I think, close to like 75, 80% of the agents that moved to the EXP. 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 going to be in real estate three to four. four months down the road. I'm just letting you know, most of them are not doing that much business. 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, 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. 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. And 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. So to hear that's effectively where you're at, it's not surprising at all. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, but also you expect there's going to be that breakage, right? Yeah.

You're going to have people that are going to go, and there's a chance that the next three to four months, five months. You're going to have some additional agents that they're going to move. But look, 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. Yeah. 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. I don't know, for those you that may listen to this on audio or you just can't see this through the screen, there's a

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 merging to a new chapter. There's some new stuff happening. But 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, this is a bigger thing. And 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 really exciting, man.

So I'm excited for you. I'm glad to be along with the journey, man. Yeah. Alan, anybody who wants to reach out to hear from you, maybe even inquire about modern day brokerage and some of their stuff you have going on. What's the best way for people to do that? I just DM me on Facebook, Instagram.

My name, Alan Kushmakov. I'll spell it right in the notes. Yeah, just the best way to DME. I'll respond pretty quickly. And we'll go from there. All right. Yeah. Thanks a lot, guys.

We'll see you next time. That's a wrap for this episode of the next level agents. I'm Kevin Kaufman, and we've just drawn some serious heat with my crew to level up your real estate game. What does the next level look like for you? Subscribe to the podcast now so you don't miss a single strategy. And head over to next levelagents.com. Check out our events tab so you can find out all the information on our next virtual. and in-person mastermind calendar.

Let's keep this momentum rolling. See you next time.