KGCI: Real Estate on Air - How to Be a Successful Real Estate Agent The Secrets Revealed!

Episode Date: May 20, 2024

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome once again to Cliff Snotes. Okay, some of you may wonder, when I look this way, you don't know what I'm looking at, but actually there's this great-looking guy over here sitting here on my left, and that's what I do. So when I make a flub on the intro like that and say something like Claremont, California, I'm looking at him for sympathy is what I'm looking for. And he looked at me and was laughing. So anyway, that happens once in a while, but Claremont, Florida, I had never even heard of Claremont, Florida. Terlvis, have you, were trouble stepped out for a minute?

Okay, that's good. It's all right. I just thought Claremont University in California was what we were talking about until Kelly told me. And you guys are in for an amazing show today. There has been a lot in the media and a lot in the noise in the system and stuff about different brokerages that really try to copy the EXP model and figure this out and the rev share this and the. stock that and everything. And boy, everybody's got their spin and their story. And I mean, who knows how to make a decision in something like this, right? So what we're going to try to do today, and Kelly has done an amazing job. He's actually spent time at a couple of different places that we'll

talk about. And he's going to help open our eyes here a little bit. He did a beautiful video expose on his journey during the last three years on YouTube. Check it out. We'll get you a way to find that here in just a minute when he comes on. But I got to tell you what, there are some updates that we're going to share today that are going to be priceless. And so if we could, can we go ahead and bring Kelly in all the way from Claremont, Florida? Looky there is. How you doing, Kelly? I am doing wonderful, guys, doing wonderful. It's beautiful in Claremont, Florida. And I might just have to go to Disney World tonight just because of that. You know what? I mean, what a beautiful piece of the earth you've found.

I mean, what'd you say, 25 minutes from Walt Disney World? And Orlando. And Claremont's kind of funny, Cliff. It's, it's, but one of the things that makes our town so amazing. If you think of Florida, it's flat with palm trees, oceans on each side, right? Claremont is the city of hills. So it's like taking a slice of up north and bringing it to Florida, but we just don't get any snow. You say up north?

You mean it's like maybe North Carolina, something like that? Yeah, tennis. You know how they have all the mountains? Well, we don't have mountains, but we have beautiful hills. So we've got some absolutely amazing views that you don't get really anywhere else in Florida. A lot of northerners choose Claremont and many old in the surrounding cities because of our hills. It's just an amazing place. I don't think I'll ever not live here, but at some point I'm going to have a cabin up north

and I'll probably maintain a lakefront home here in Claremont just because it's just amazing. So if anybody's moving to Claremont, call the Ninja. There you go. So, and it's the lake life, right? Do you have a lot of second homes in your market? Oh, yeah. We have a lot of second homes. This is an area because we're close to Disney that you've got a lot of Airbnb. We have a lot of, this phenomenon, and I think because of COVID, and honestly, because of a lot of political stuff going on, we've got a lot of Californians, a lot of New Jersey, Vermont, New Yorkers moving down there. I've actually sold new construction homes to, well, I'll say Texans, but. But a lot of Californians, some New Yorkers, a couple of Vermont.

These people are moving to Florida. And I think it's just an interesting time. Same things going on in Austin, Texas is happening here in Claremont. You know, it's, yeah. And actually, if my numbers are correct, the in-migration numbers from the coasts are actually close to 300,000, I believe, in Florida last year. And they were just under 200 into Texas. But, you know, at one point, we had 5,000 people. a week moving in just to the Dallas Fort Worth area. I mean, it was, it was really incredible.

Yeah. Well, you know, Kelly, it's, you're, you're a bit of a celebrity these days. You've kind of been in the eye of the camera and the eye of some other people as well because of, you know, your journey over the last three years. And would you just take a minute here and for the, for our members of the audience who have not had a chance to see your video yet, just give us. the kind of the 30,000 foot look at where you've been? What have you been up to? So, Cliff, my story is very similar, I think, to a lot of real estate agent stories. I joined the EXP Realty, which was the second broker that I ever joined, and I was with them for four and a half years. When I joined EXP, they were just shy of 4,000 agents. That's how long ago it was that I joined. And about two years ago, I left

EXP and went with what I call on that other video, a two-year walkabout. If you're familiar with Austria, what is it, Australia, they talk about the walkabout. Well, that means you're going out to find yourself. And I found myself at Real Broker. Then I found myself at LPT Realty, which we'll talk a little bit about that today, I'm sure. And I made my way back to EXP a little under two months ago. And the best classification that I can tell you in terms of the journey is I ended up back at where I should have stayed because the things that we get at the broker that I'm with were what I was looking for, but because of discontent, misinformation, and a lot of what drives agents away from the broker was inside of my thinking and my mental acuity.

You know, it drove me for those two years until I could make it back to really where I think is the perfect fit for myself, the team that I'm growing, my rev share partners, and my business goals. So that's kind of a 30,000-foot view of the last two years of my life. And maybe leveling the playing field to help agents to make sure that they are making the right decision, not based on YouTube influencers, but on very good sound logic and data. That's where my heart's at right now is to help agents. might be not joining me, right? But I want to have that discussion because I'm so tired of agents getting swayed and lulled by big fires and then finding out instead of letting that fire cleanse them, they get burned by it.

So I'm on a mission. I'm like the pastor of helping agents, man, not making the wrong decision. And doctor is in the house. Yes. Come on somebody. Put your hand on the television, yes. You know what? In all seriousness, though, this industry is replete with shiny objects.

I mean, everywhere, every corner you look around, whether it's lead generation or I, this, that, you know, everybody's trying to sell realtors something. And so, I mean, how many times have we tried to save somebody from throwing their money away on a gimmick or something like that? And, you know, you heard me mention before the show and I say this again and again and again and again. and that is that realtors will spend more time planning their next vacation than they will investigating and doing their due diligence on a brokerage where they're talking about building rev share and owning stock i mean it does no good to build rev share if that company's not going to be around in two or three years so or cliff if the rev share is unobtainium and we'll get into that as we progress in this conversation.

Wow, I want to hear about that. Yeah. Don't you? Yeah, no. Let's unpack that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, I mentioned, Kelly, that we want to help you build rapport with our audience here. And the audiences tend to really like us to just sort of pull the curtains back a little bit and find out behind the celebrity.

Who is this guy, Kelly Wheeler? Give us a little story about your background and how you got into real estate and how you got to where you are right now. Sure. So I started off years ago prior to the 2009 market crash. I was a contractor. I built swimming pools, not just any swimming pool, but backyard oasis. My pools didn't look like a normal pool. And we had this little market crash in 2009 that absolutely decimated the finances in this country.

And because of that, people could not afford my $100,000 pool. No bank would finance it. There was, homes were losing value. And I remember my last month in business, I lost over $4 million in contracts, which in 2009, that's massive. That's like $12 million today, right? And I told my wife, you know, we got to figure something out. So, you know, it took a couple months to figure out what I wanted to do. And I realized I was really good at marketing.

And I had been building websites and such back then. So I got hired by a local real estate attorney who's since become a good friend of mine. And I took his business and made his business in three years, the number one real estate business in the area. He became the dominant law firm. We were doing so much lead generation that they literally, the paralegals asked me to shut it down because they couldn't handle it. That's a good thing. From there, I took a little dog leg left. I had another law firm snapped me up.

They were like, dude, do for us what you did there. And I did. But eventually I started seeing all of my friends making crazy money in real estate, because that's when the REO was going nuts. And a local broker snapped me up, hired me as his vice president of marketing and sales, and my job was to lead generate, hire agents,

train agents, get them on the field. And I did that for about six months unlicensed. I wasn't even a licensed agent, and I was training these guys. Well, I finally got my license, and about two years into that journey, I started hearing about EXP. And that's how I came into real estate.

I joined EXP when there was about 4,000 agents and stayed with them for four and a half years. And from there, we can go on that journey on the next set of questions, but that's how I got into real estate. I built up my social media channels. I, at the point in EXP, you know, we have workplace in EXP. I had the largest group inside of workplace at the time. I had about 16,000 agents following me on my marketing channel in EXP. and when I left, I turned that over to another agent. My YouTube channel, like I said, is growing quickly.

It's about 8,000 subscribed agents. And then I've got other channels that are also growing. So that's kind of where I'm at right now. Before I started this journey for the last two years, that's how I got into this, and that's kind of how I started developing what my niche was. And right now, I think my biggest niche is helping agents to weed through the BS of marketing,

to find stuff that works, get rid of shiny object syndrome, and then to implement and take off from that implementation and be consistent to crush their real estate goals. That's kind of where I see myself right now as I'm building my revenue share group and my book of business. So when you looked at EXP the first time, just what were the real highlights of the things that you like best about it? Well, the biggest determining factor for me to leave was I started looking at multiple streams of income. I wanted the stocks. I wanted to build revenue share. I mean, back then, they had these revenue share calculators that you could plug in, how many agents you thought you could bring in, and holy

moly, I started seeing the potential there, right? So what attracted me to EXP wasn't cloud brokerage, wasn't broker support, which now all of that stuff is high importance to me. Back then it was the ability to take my natural marketing ability, my talents, and to build a real estate business where I could have multiple streams of income that I wasn't getting at the broker that I was the VP of and I wouldn't get it at Keller Williams. I wouldn't get it at a Caldwell banker. At that time when I joined the expe, they were still a fresh, the only cloud brokerage around and it gave options to real estate agents to be able to go out and create just different channels of income. That's what attracted me to it originally. So if we could just maybe take that moment

and fast forward about four years, all of a sudden we see copycats around. Everybody's the next DXP and, you know, people are going to make a killing in the stock and all that sort of thing. Correct. What was so compelling. Now, you went, first you went to Real, right? Is I recall? Correct. But before we get to Real, let me say this.

If you're watching this right now, and I don't care which broker you're looking at, I want you to hear this wisdom. Stop. Don't stop with the forward motion eventually. Stop what you're doing and look at the numbers. And I'm not just talking about commission splits. Look at everything. Don't rely on the YouTube influencers like me as your sole decision. For me, Cliff, back at that inflection point,

I had started going down the rabbit hole of YouTube on a real broker and it was the next thing. It was built for EXP agents. It's a better EXP, better revenue share, The stocks are going to go crazy. All of this stuff was supposed to be like the stuff that you didn't like an EXP was solved over there, right? But I didn't check it out. It was just a big fire.

And I ran to it without the logical statistical data for me to forward think two to four years out, right? So that was that inflection point. I was listening to a lot of disinformation in my humble opinion. And I was also creating excuses like maybe I'm not with the right down. line, right? My rev share partners, they're just no good, this, that, and the other. And so all of that came together and fermented the perfect wine for exiting out of the XP. And that's the inflection point that had me. And a lot of agents are going through that same exact thing right now as they are looking at the potential elsewhere. Does that make sense? Yeah. So you were following the fire

trucks to the scene of the accident, right? Correct. To get big money. Oh, this can be big money over here. Yeah, yeah. And did you actually stop and read any of the company's public filings or look at their corporate finance structure or look at any of their history no and let me let me give a big warning right now cliff I liquidated and I hate myself for doing this I'm just can I expose a can I expose something I did that other agents are potentially going to do and it was a massive mistake this one guys I'm laying myself open right now when I left to LPT I did buy into the fact that they were new and they were going to blow up, I'm sorry, real. They were going to blow up

and their stocks were going to go through the roof just like EXP. And so I liquidated 100% of my EXP stock. Stupid. Put them into Real Broker. At that time, Real Broker was $2. The month after I joined, their stock started going back down to about $1.12 before I left. So I lost half of my net worth in stock. And today, they haven't broken $2. So they haven't even made them. money back. So I did not take time to statistically look at the implications of doing things like that. I was just looking at the possibility if this is the next EXP for their stock to be 75 bucks a share within five years. Does that make sense, Cliff? It makes a lot of sense. Yep. And I lost about $100,000. Yeah. Yep. Is what it is. That's painful, man. It's hard to make that money back up, you know.

Yeah, it was. Should have left it where it was at. Yeah. Lessons learned. So that was a good lesson learned. What other gaps did you have that are scatomas? Let's talk about blind spots for a minute when you got over there. What did you start to realize once you got over there and you could really kind of get an inside out look? What was it like? For a real estate agent, some of the reasons that they're looking at to move. And let's just be frank and real about EXP. There are a lot of agents that join EXP with a sponsor that they have not vetted. I'm just going to be open and honest with you because I have these conversations weekly with agents on my calendar. And so the sponsor they

came in with goes in communicato or doesn't really deliver on, you know, helping that agent out. And that agent feels like they're on an island all by theirself. And so when you have a broker like a reel or an LPT, you kind of have this assumption that they've solved these problems. Surely by now this is solved. And so when I went to a real broker, there were a couple things that I noticed. And you don't notice these things until the fire starts to wear off, and now you're in the middle of it. You're like, hmm, a couple things that I saw. And I'm not going to speak ill about anybody at a real. I'm not going to speak bad about the company. I'm just speaking to my own experience. Draw your own conclusions, but vet it, don't trust my word.

Just vet it yourself if you're looking at it. A couple of things that those nuances, stocks, I just started noticing right away stocks going backwards. The education that we had that I used to make fun of at EXP was nowhere near the level that I left when I came to real, even though they did have education, it was nothing like what we get live in the world. The other thing is broker support. A lot of agents need good broker support. This was a big one at LPT, and we'll talk about that in a minute. But at real broker, the broker support was not anything.

Now, again, I've been gone from those guys for over a year now, so they might or might not have changed. But my experience at that time, it was nothing like what we have. And Cliff, let me tell you this. The day I got back to EXP, I had to go into the world, to Florida, broker support. I was in front of a broker within 10 minutes, got the answers I needed. And so far in the last two months, I've had to go in to broker support, accounting, and technology. All three times I was in and out within 10 to 15 minutes. Agents don't understand. That is literally unheard of. And that was a major deficiency when I went to a real broker is that broker support. Not that it was bad, but it was nothing like what I left.

I started to have kind of buyer's remorse at that point. And there was one other big thing that happened, and I'll talk about that in a minute. Do you have any other questions before I go there? No, no, no. You got it. Keep going. So my primary reason at this point to go to Real and then LPT is I was ready to explode revenue share. And I believed in the misinformation two years ago.

And hear me on this. One of the things you hear a lot from influencers downplaying EXP is that all EXP agents care about is recruiting. And by the way, I hate with a passion the word recruiting. Recruiting means you're cold calling, sending postcards, direct mail, you're having ISAs column, you're doing all this crap without value. There's no value added proposition or exchange of value for time. And so now what I do on my YouTube channel, the agents that follow me my rev share partners, I talk about attraction. You have to have an attraction mentality where you exchange value

for their time. So when I went and left EXP, I bought into this notion that we were so big, everybody at EXP, all they wanted to do was just recruit, recruit. And I didn't find out until I came back that 89% of all the agents of the EXP are actively involved in selling real estate. That's why we sell so much real estate. Only 12% are actively involved in attraction. Not that it's unattainable. It's just 12% saw the vision and they're building an attraction-based business. There's still those 12%, 95% of those guys are actively selling real estate as well. Not everybody's a Brent Gove.

So I believe in this lie that EXP had reached his pinnacle and I needed to go to real because every agent was going to want to join me there because it was new and I'm going to build like crazy. Well, here's what happened. It'll give you one story. I could give you a couple, but I'll give you. you one. I had a couple agents that wanted to join me. They live about an hour away from me. And so I sent them the join link and it was several days later the agents called me. Said Kelly, nobody's called me yet. So I called corporate.

Corporate then sent an email to them and said, hey, in order for us to accept you as an agent, we're actually not a part of that MLS you're in, but we're the one right next door to you in that county. Go join that one. We'll approve you. Cliff, before I go on with that, you understand what I just said. I understand. Yep. Yep. Okay. So now I've got corporate telling me that in order for an agent that I've attracted to be able to be accepted by the company, they have to go spend another $600 a year on a different MLS. That's no bluenot. So I went to corporate and fought for them and they finally acquiesced and joined that brokerage. But that was starting to be the writing on the wall. And then they started, rumor started coming down that we were going to be going up on our joint fee from 149 to 259. Well, they did it. Then I heard that they were going to also change the, feed and it was going to go up. And to me, that was billed when I came in as something that was going to be free. And if you wanted to upgrade, you could pay 25 a month. Now we're going to go to 45, 50 a month. Then the camel that broke the straw is they said, we're going to start

taxing your revenue share. And I'm going to let it stay right there. Y'all can go research that all you want. I started realizing maybe the grass is not greener over here. My stocks are coming down by half. I'm attracting agents and I'm having to fight. to get them to join the local MLS. I started losing confidence in the business model because I thought if we're that week, where am I going to be out four years from now? And that's when LPT, that's when that thing started blowing up in Florida.

And so that's where I was like, I have to make a decision. And that's when I made the decision. Based on that and some other factors, I made the decision to go to the new fire on the block, which was LPT Realty. Okay. And I'm just curious, were there any fundamental

differences in the revenue share models. Did you have to, how did you qualify to receive rev share at real? You have to sell. You have to sell. Okay. So is there an eye? Are you ever going to be able to retire? How does that, what's the end game there?

Well, they, yeah, okay, so remember, I've been gone a year. But at that time, you had to personally sell. They were talking about willable revenue share, but whoever gets, it's going to have to be licensed and sell. Also, when you look at the numbers for the revenue share, and this is something I didn't understand back then, but now I understand it because I ran the numbers. Their biggest attraction to agents is,

if you're going to do revenue share and you've got somebody in your level one, you're going to make 4%. Okay? That's more than we make. But as you go down to their fifth level, and they only do five levels, the revenue share gets smaller and smaller.

Well, Cliff, let me ask you. you're going to actually build revenue share are you going to have more people on your front line over time or more people on your bottom tiers which of those are going to build out organically yeah over time your fifth level is going to be by far your largest level yeah of all the real estate brokerages that do cloud expe is the only one that gives you more weight at the bottom right to me that is where expe has forward thought Glenn Sanford has thought about us agents when he built this, he thought about us. And the very thing that agents get wrong

is the very thing that makes this model so right. Over time, your largest levels are going to be three, four, five, and six. That's where you start to see more income. And at Rio, I noticed that we were only five levels, so I'm missing two levels, and then the levels at the bottom, which will be organically,

my largest levels will pay me the least amount of money. And once I started running those numbers with the other deficiencies, that's when I realized long term this is not the healthiest option for me. I didn't think and I did run the numbers before I jumped. It was an actual, it was an absolute debacle, but let's get into that. Any questions on that before we jump into the next part of my life? I'm chewing my arm off wanting to hear how you stack up LPT's revenue share with real.

Okay. Let me say this before we get into actual specifics. And I'm going to try to not be as verbose on this so you can interject with questions. I did exactly what I'm telling agents today, if you're listening to me, not to do. I started seeing this model. When I joined LPT October of last year, they were only in Florida. They were about to open in Texas in December, but we were only in Florida and they blew up the 2,000 agents, right, in one year.

And all of the LPT Realty YouTube influencers at the time were all sharing this model that was hybrid. 100% brokerage, 8020 if you want to get revenue shares. They were talking about how great the revenue share is. They were also saying they have no fees. Cliff, you're going to like this in a minute. Their biggest claim to fame is we don't have a joint fee and there's no monthly fees. Well, that only works if you sell nothing.

If you sell 10 deals a year at LPT, let's take the cap off the plate. Let's just go commission splits. If you do 10 deals over there and you do 10 deals over at EXP, just fee, not cap. Yeah, that's pretty black and white. How is that possible? $500 per file on the 80 on if you're a hundred percent or you pay 500 per file and you pay $195 per file indefinitely. And you pay $500 every year that covers their see they say we don't have any fees, but you pay $500 a year covers your technology and E&O. Then you pay 500 per file and you pay $195. So if you add all that up to 10,000, 10 deals, you're at like 2640 a year and fees. If you add all of our fees, the 85 a month,

the 40 and the 25, and you get to 10 deals, you're a thousand dollars less per year. So that's what, when I hear them talk about, well, we don't have this and that. You have to understand, one man's tomato is another man's tomato. If you're not going to sell anything, then obviously you want to be at LPT because you're not going to pay anything. Well, I didn't get into this game to sell nothing. I want to sell as much real estate as I can. and I want to have as many agents partner with me as possible. I want to gain as much stock options as possible. So in order for that model to work, and please understand,

Cliff, I was it for eight and a half months. I attracted almost 80 agents. Do you know how many of my agents were 100% versus the revenue share? Four agents were revenue share. The rest of my agents were on 100% plan, which means I made pennies on the dollar when they closed a deal. Oh. So if their business model,

is attracting the majority of their agents are 100 percenters. I'm wondering what their long-term numbers will look like. Do you understand? You're a numbers guy. Yeah. If you're only charging $5,000 cap to the majority of your agents, if they do 10 deals, you know the majority of the agents sell between three and five deals a year. That's the average.

So let's just give them 10 deals a year for their agent count. How's the company going to make money long term? We don't know because they don't have to put their, financials out and let everybody see them. Correct. That's what you have to get savvy with this. If it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, that mother, that's a ducker. That's a ducker.

That's a ducker. So here I am. I'm over there and Cliff, listen to this. My last three and a half to four months, my rev share partners sold almost $20 million in real estate. What do you think was deposited into my bank account in my last four months? What do you think I made on $20 million with their revshare sales? Just throw a number. 20 grand?

That's a little high. A little high. Yeah. Well, let's say I was at EXP. It would be about $3,500 a month. Yeah, yeah. I would say that's reasonable, yeah. I never got a dollar in my bank account.

Nothing. I got no revenue share, and here's why. Again, you have to personally sell a deal, which means you're never going to have revenue share as a business model to retire you. you're going to always have to produce. And number two, you have to cap first before you see $1 exchange in your bank account. That means any revenue share that you make,

they do apply it to your cap. But again, for the average agent doing 10 deals a year, maybe recruiting, I hate that word, attracting, say 10 or 15 agents, they're not going to see revenue share. They'll never see it. And that, to me, is a hidden danger. So if you're looking to move over there

and you're not going to attract 500 or more agents and you're not going to personally be active, forget revenue share. Well, not only that, but if you attract 500, only just less than 100 are going to be in the revenue share program. No, no, less than that. 98% will be 100%ers. Okay, so here, no, yes, a lot of them do, but here's how they do it.

I'm not going to name names, but I spoke to an LPT influencer that had at that point, let me just say he had more than 500, and that's all I'm going to say. And so we were talking. And this individual at that time, and he's since grown it from there, but he had 500 at the time, and his revenue share was roughly, let me let that sink into you. That means, and he personally wasn't in production, he wasn't doing a lot of deals. That means on his anniversary date, if he had 500 agents and it took two months for him to eat his cap up, he could be waiting three months to get a revenue share check. That's not why I got into this business for.

I don't want to have to cap before I see a dollar of production. So with the model, and I will give Robert Palmer this, he said right off about we are real estate first, which what company's not, Keller Williams is real estate first, they want their agents selling, Caldwell Banker wants their agents selling, EXP, we're real estate first, 89% of our agents are out producing just about every other company out there. So we are real estate first. But for them, what they mean is real estate first before cap. Does that make sense? Before, yeah, before Rebtshire.

Yeah, yeah, I was on an alpha call, EXP alpha call, and Leo pulled up a slide today showing how we're like, I think, number one in production now per agent out of all the other brokerages. And, you know, we often heard that, you know, EXP agents don't sell. They just recruit. That's the lie. That's the misconception. The spin that these people put on this is really, and. That's why I'm so excited, Kelly, to have you on the show today because we're here to help educate agents on the due diligence, the questions they need to ask, the numbers they need to look at. I mean, this is serious.

Why would you go invest like that? I bet you wish you had that two years back, other than you learned a lot. But if you had just stayed here that two years, how much further down the trail would you be? Oh, my family's fortunes would be changed right now. I have to tell you, I have to be careful not to focus in on that because it's depressing. Lesson learned, and it was a valuable lesson. I didn't just lose $100,000 in stock. I firmly believe I lost $25,000 to $30,000 a month in revenue share, right?

But I learned that lesson. I was hard-headed. And so now you understand now, Cliff, why I am on a mission to let agents know before you make that decision. So let me say this. If you are watching this podcast and you're thinking of joining EXP and you love Cliff and you're, you know, you've been following him. Get on his calendar. Cliff will run the numbers for you, unbiased. You tell him if you're thinking of LPT, let him run the numbers for you

to show you how this would look financially in the next 24 to 48 months before you make that decision or if you're going to go to real, whatever. He'll run the numbers. I'm doing the same thing now. When an agent gets on a call with me or a Zoom, we're going to look at the numbers before we even talk about how great EXP is because they need to understand that this is going to affect the next 24 to 48 months of their life. And then how much money do you want to have left on the table? And the last thing I'll say is this. Agents that tell me, well, Kelly, I don't really care about revenue share.

Yet you don't until you're in that company for two or three years and magically you suddenly got 15 people and five of your 15 have gone out and blown it up and you're seeing revenue. Now you get serious about it. But if you make the wrong decision and it starts blowing up, but your revenue share is unobtainium, you can't buy back those years. So what we're trying to do is help agents see what that's going to look like two to four years in the future and make the right decision before they make the wrong decision. Yeah, you know, you're right. You can always go make more money, but you cannot make more time.

There's no question about it. Kelly, speaking of time, we're running toward the allotment here. I wanted to just ask if there's anything that has come up recently, any updates that you want to throw in here, anything new that's, you know. come up and then also maybe talk a little bit about the environment that we're in right now as an industry and how these firms that may not be capitalized appropriately, how they're going to be dealing with the possibility of commission compression and buyer agents. I mean, it's some people that are predicting we could lose a ton of some of the agents who produce three, two, three, one, two, three, four, five deals a year, you know, just because they

don't have the, the skill set to be able to, to, you know, state their value when they, when they're talking to a buyer, they've always, they've never had to do that. They just had to open the door and, and, you know, yeah, that's it. Yeah. Well, without getting to philosophical, let me say, I want to bring this down to something that can be, eaten by an agent that makes sense. First thing I'm going to say is don't fear. If you're listening to this podcast and you've been watching all the influences

on YouTube talk about, oh my God, Armageddon, you know, this thing is horrible, don't fear. Learn how to bend with the season, and I'll make a point. In my market, new construction is way up. So if you are selling real estate and you don't have an online or an internet presence, letting people know that you are a new construction

expert, you've missed the boat. In the last 90 days, according to my MLS in the city of Claremont, over 51% of all the deals that have closed have been new construction. It wasn't like that a year ago, or two years ago or three years ago. But because of the incentives and the builders offering rate buy downs, it's more attractive. So for agents that saw this six months ago to a year ago, like me, we are being able to dominate the market because we shifted. So for you guys that are watching that's instead of having a fear-based mentality, which really all that's going to do is put you in lockdown because you're going to be wondering what could happen instead of doing what should happen. What you need to do is partner with people like Cliff, like myself, partner with

people that are out there and reinventing the will. Every time some ripple in the pond comes, we know which way to veer, and then we go become an expert on that. So if they're going to do some things with our industry that messes up, the buyer's agency, then start looking at the tea leaves. How can we compress that time, redirect our focus into an area that we know is going to work? Because here's what I know, Cliff. People are always going to sell homes. People are always going to buy homes. Even in this market, people are buying homes. You just need to know which vein to tap into, and it wasn't the same vein two years ago. Those of us that saw it and pivoted, we're doing fine. So for you agents watching this, don't be afraid. Learn to pivot. Hang around people that have been successful, no matter what market conditions are,

and learn from them, and then you're going to be fine in this market. We all can prophesy what we think's going to happen. I'm going to concentrate on what's happening today, and then I'm going to look six months down the road to see how I need to pivot. Yeah, exactly. I mean, you're spot on, you know, work on the things you can control, and the rest of it, everybody's going to have to deal with it. You know, it's funny, we've had a lot of inquiries from independent brokers

who are starting to understand the value of aligning with a larger company, at this point, you know, these, all the stuff, I mean, gosh, the real estate industry is, it's just getting crushed in the media right now. And, and I mean, who would have ever thought that, you know, and I don't want to go down this rabbit trail, but, you know, I'm concerned now about us being able to deliver services to our veterans and to first-time home buyers because of the restrictions and, you know, the inability of first-time home buyers to come up with the cash to pay a buyer's agent, you know. So we, We've got a lot of work to do.

Sometimes there's unintended consequences when, you know, we're trying to do the right thing. And, and, and, uh, but when you get a jury of however many people that were of peers who probably knows zero about the real estate business in two hours. And you get some sharp, you know, tongue attorney up there to be able to twist them. Uh, you know, it's, this was a, this was a shock, you know, frankly, um, that it turned out the way it did. And, and there's more to come. So, but I agree with you.

This is not the time to panic. The ship is not going to go down. It could take years for this to work itself through the system. But in the meantime, it just really stresses the importance, Kelly, like you pointed out earlier, so important to do your due diligence and, you know, look under the hood. And, you know, with your experience and your journey. Love that. Yeah. Yeah.

Hey Kelly, real quick, before we close shop, we really didn't talk about your team. I'd like to just get kind of a high-level overview of what your team looks like and how many of you are there and kind of, you know, what you're looking for as far as who you're wanting to partner up with. Sure. So for me, it's the importance of partnering with Eagles. I have this teaching I'm formatting right now. I'm going to teach on this on my channel. Look for Eagles that are above you. Partner with them.

For my team, and I use the word team a little bit different. I hope I'm going to say this correctly. I no longer have the team model in terms of me providing for them. I now coach and teach and train them. I teach them how to fish. I'm into the revenue share model where I'm not creating teams anymore. I've been back at EXP for just shy of two months, and I'm already pushing 10. In my first month, I had 10.

So my goal is to nurture them. My goal in one year, and this might not be a goal that seems lofty to you. but I set a goal of 100 by summer of next year. Right? And then I'm going to take those 100 and I'm going to mentor and coach them. I'm not going to leave them by the wayside. I'm going to help them achieve their goals and then help them build like I'm building. And that's guys how we do it.

I mean, think about Brent Gove. This is what he did. Think about Mike Sherard. Think about J. Kinder Michael Reese. Think about these guys. They did this on purpose. They used to have teams and they switched. That's what's the beauty of EXP.

It's that team mentality because I consider myself a team leader, but I don't have the nuances anymore. I'm having to actually feed people every day with leads. I stop doing that. Now I coach, teach, and mentor my rev share partners, and they get me every week. We do live trainings every week. Here's the other thing that I'll end with us. If you're going to go down this road, don't think that they're just naturally going to come to you. You know, that whole, remember that movie?

If you build it, they will come. Yes. That was a baseball movie? if you have value, agents will be attracted. But if you're out there on Facebook, hey, I joined DXP, come, if there's nothing of value to be exchanged, don't be frustrated when you don't build. So how do you build value? Go spend six months and learn every marketing skill you can find to become dangerous, start to produce results, and agents will come to you. I'm telling you, this stuff works. They will come to you, but you have to exchange something to value. So for me, the team,

my goal is 100 by summer of next year. And then the year later, I'm going to be pushing for 200 to 500 within 24 months. That might seem like a small goal to you guys, but that's where I'm setting it. If I exceed it, thank you, Jesus. There you go. And just to just to tie that in, isn't one of those companies we spoke about earlier today? Isn't it against their rules to offer anything of value when you're attracting agents? Both of them, both real and LPT on their ICA specifically says.

You know what? Do we got five minutes or no? We really don't. But we might have to get you back on the show, though. Let me just say this. Yes, you cannot offer an exchange of value. So for me, I've got massive marketing skills. I cannot over at those companies offer that value exchange to join me. Here at EXP, you dang well better believe if you've got something of value and it's attractive to an agent, you can use that. Wow. I think that's a mic drop. And what a great note to end on, Kelly. I am, uh,

Man, I knew this was going to be hot, man, coming in hot. And I'll tell you, it's just really eye-opening to see and to hear from somebody who's been there like you, how important it is to do your homework, guys. Just do your homework. I mean, do yourselves a favor. You know, making a mistake like Kelly did, you heard him say. It was a significant financial setback for him and his family. And we can't afford to make those kind of mistakes. And now with your help, Kelly, there's no reason for people to make those kind of mistakes any longer.

So we're just very grateful that you're back. And, you know, my heart goes out to you. I know how painful that two years was. But I think, again, you know, there's always a silver lining. I think God's got a plan that he'll unveil. And this experience will turn out to be something that I think will allow you to end. impact the lives of many people right now. So thank you. I think we need to do an offering right now because of that message, brother. Well, how about an invitation? So there you go. Yeah, I love it.

So everybody knows how to get a hold of you. That's awesome. And would you be, would you be up for maybe a checkup from the neck up down the road here? Get you back on the show. It's schedule with me, brother. It was my privilege and my honor. And I'd like to get you guys on my YouTube channel when you guys have some time. I want to hear your story. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. We'd love to do that. Thank you. It's very generous of you. And we'll get you back on here just as soon as we can. All right, Kelly. All right. All right. And all the way from Claremont, Florida, right? There he is. Kelly Wheeler. You saw him here. It's just math. Life is just a math problem, guys. But you got to do the math. So do the math, right? The right math. Yeah, not somebody's nomics. Right. Right.

Yeah, or a screenshot. Oh, yeah, yeah. And if it's an influencer on YouTube, oh my. Don't let those guys be your heroes, please. Yeah, get real heroes. All right, all right, we're going to run. We got guests coming in here to use the studio, so we are so excited to be back in the saddle

and see you guys spend time with you. If it wasn't for you showing up to watch us, there wouldn't be any need for us to be here. So we're very grateful for you as well. wishing you the best in the real estate business. Tune in next week for the next episode of Cliffsdotes. So tune in every Thursday where we'll give you the tips, tricks, and tactics to explode your business. I...