KGCI: Real Estate on Air - How to Choose a Broker as a REALTOR

Episode Date: July 1, 2025

Whether you're a brand new agent or an experienced agent and you're looking to switch brokerages, I have 23 questions for you to ask firms before you join with the last one being the most important. I speak to agents every single day that are either looking to switch brokerages or their new agents looking to figure out which brokerage is best for them. And so many times, agents make a super fast decision and they just go with the first brokerage that they see or they go with one that their best friend is at. They don't ask enough questions. And I do not want to. want you to make the mistake because joining the wrong brokerage can cost you so much money. And I'm not just talking about fees.

I'm talking about the opportunity cost of what you could have made being surrounded by a tribe that is killing it compared to just joining the first brokerage that you see or the one that's closest to you geographically. There are so many errors. So these questions are to help you avoid making the wrong choice. I want you to make the right choice for you the first time. That's exactly what this entire channel is dedicated to. I have so many videos on my YouTube about how to increase your business and how our crew might be a good fit for you if you take initiative and you're driven.

Let's start with question number one. I am bucketing these into different categories. So the first category or the first bucket is about culture. But you know what? Before I even dive into that, you have to know what your own goals are. Before you start asking other brokerages, you know, what can you offer me? What are the splits and blah, blah, blah. Figure out what your own goals are.

How many transactions do I want to do? How much money do I want to or need to make? What am I looking to get out of being a real estate agent? What type of person am I? You know, like, can I learn from afar? Do I need virtual? Do I need in person? Test them out. But before you start fixating on a certain type of brokerage or location or anything, make sure you know who you are first. Okay, culture. Question number one. Can I brand myself? Do you believe, in me building my own personal brand. Will you help me build my own personal brand? This question right off the bat will show you a lot. It'll show you if the brokerage is mainly about making the broker more famous, you know, locally and whatever. Do you have to put that broker's face and phone number on your listings, on your signs, on your digital marketing, on your paper marketing? Or can you put your own face and phone number on the signs, on every single listing that you take with every single buyer that you represent. A lot of old school models are where all of these agents are kind of just like pawns to help this one broker. So around town, you're always going to see this one broker's face.

And that does not help the agent. It only helps the broker. And of course, I'm not talking about only putting your, you know, your face, your personal logo that you create. You have to remain in compliance. You're going to have to put your broker just logo on there somewhere. But can you create your own logo because this is your business. I overall, especially if you're a new agent or even if you're just switching brokerages, this is your business. You have to maintain control of it. And I do not want you thinking of like a in a W2 employee mindset of I work for someone else. You don't, you and your broker, you work together. All those questions was just under one. The second question is after you have thought about how much money you need to make or want to make, what you want your

business to look like, what type of lead generation strategies you're considering doing, and you're considering whether it's cold calling, open houses, door knocking, YouTube, Facebook, social media, mailers, whatever it is. Once you have decided what your goal is for the first year that you're with this new brokerage, tell them the goal and then ask them, how can you help me get there? For example, when I first started out, I wanted to do 20 transactions my first year, and I did it, and I was still a part-time agent when I did 20 transactions. I was still active duty Air Force. I was in the Office of Special Investigations, where I was a special agent, and I was still traveling with the military. I wasn't even like in the state half the time. And I still sold 20 transactions.

Was it hard? Absolutely. I worked my butt off. But I joined the right type of crew because I know that I'm driven and I don't need anybody handholding me. And that's why I joined a crew out of across the country. I was in Arizona at the time. And I joined a rinky dink smaller crew at the time out in North Carolina. And that's because I heard them on a podcast. I was like, you know what? You guys have the checklist, which I'm going to get into this later. The checklist of process is all I need to do is just copy and paste what you have already created and I can apply that into my business across the country. So I just thought as long as you're there to answer a couple of my questions, I'm sick.

I can just take your playbook and enter it into my world. And so I did 20 transactions, my first year in the business. Again, I was a part-time agent. And then I did 44 transactions, my second year in the business, which was my first year of doing this full-time. Since then, I've been licensed three years and I've done 100 transactions, and I love it. I love that I joined the right crew the first time. That's because I interviewed 13 different brokerages. Okay, carrying on.

So once you have told them what your goal is, whatever your goal is, it might be five. It might be 40 transactions your first year. Have they done it? How can they help you do it? Do they have the checklist for you to just copy and paste, the canned emails, the templates, the mindset, the maturity, the bandwidth, the training? We're going to get all onto this later. But overall, how can they help you do it?

And if they even so much a smirk at what your goal is, I would say it's not the right fit. And I say this because when I was interviewing lenders that I wanted to work with when I first got licensed, I spoke to a lender and I told them my goal. I was like, my goal, I'm a first year agent. I'm part-time. I want to do 20 transactions and they go, that's going to be near impossible. And I was like, perfect. Limited mindset.

I know I don't want to work with you. I didn't say that. I was like, oh, yeah, I hear that's like pretty hard. But I know I'm going to bust my ass off, you know? We just weren't the right fit culturally. And be mindful of how they answer this question because if they answer this saying, oh yeah, we're here to answer any questions that you have along the way to help you achieve your goals, that's great, but that's also a bare minimum. Like proof, I want some proof. What are some checklist that I'll be able to use?

And of course, they're not going to give it to you right there. But you have to have, or rather they have to have some sort of proven model and process to help you achieve your goals. Or if you're like, hey, I want to do 40 transactions by first year in the business. And they're like, oh, yeah, no one in like our crew has done that. That's a red flag. Question number three is how is the communication like in this brokerage? How can I talk to other agents? How can I talk to the brokers?

How can I talk to my TC, et cetera, et cetera? And this is going to go into whether it is best for you to be in a virtual or an office setting. You know, the brick and mortar type, it's very old school where I wanted to run away from that as fast as I could because I did 10 years in the military with my butt in a seat, you know, being over a scene by somebody that was just making sure that we were there from 730 to 430, whether or not we were productive, and it was very against my worldview. You know, I feel like we should be compensated on how much our effort is, our output, as opposed to

time and seat. So I was, I personally was very against me being forced to enter an office at a certain time or be around certain people. So I worked from home and I loved it. I knew that a virtual brokerage was for me. I had the flexibility. I don't even have to put a bra on. I can wear sweatpants. I'm wearing sweatpants right now. And I love it. I want it to be treated like a freaking adult. This is my business. You know, I'm not working for anybody else.

So anytime there was some sort of power move or like, yeah, you have to come into the office and sit, this is you're going to be your seat. Like, no, no, no, no, no. You're not going to oversee my cold calls. I'm good. I am an adult. So that's kind of what I mean by communication. You know, like, how can you talk to the broker and like actually, what method do you talk to them? Do you call them?

Do you go on an EXP world or, you know, like a website? Do you email them? How do you talk to the other agents? Is there like a WhatsApp group? Is there a Slack group, et cetera, et cetera? And do you vibe with that? With EXP, I feel like a lot of people are misinformed and they think that they have to go into this EXP world,

which is online and like, oh my gosh, that's so annoying when it's not. Because we have like all the methods that you can contact your broker or your team. So we have the EXP world, of course. We have a hotline, so a phone number in case you would rather just call. We have an email for all the different devices. too. We have like a finance division, the commission division, the mentor division. Whatever the question you have is, there is a division for that and people waiting to email you back. So I've never had to wait more than four hours and that was overnight too. That was like a 9 p.m. email. I never had to wait

more than four hours for an email back. I've never had to wait more than four or five rings for somebody to answer the call when I call the hotline. And when I go in the expe world, especially within the hours of like, what is it, I think, eight to eight or nine to nine. There's always somebody there to answer your questions. And that's for the overall brokerage. So with our crew specifically, we are Five Pillars Nation, a community of agents. It's not a team. You would be joining us as an individual solo agent. We are not making any money off of you, off of every team split that we have.

We don't have team splits. We give you all the resources for you for free because we have an abundance mindset. We're not looking to make quick 50% of your paycheck now. We know that you're not going to find anything better than us. And I have interviewed. I have interviewed around. Nobody offers what we offer. So we have something called the hub where every single person that joins the community

that has access to all the trainings, all the people. We also have EXP Workplace too. That's an EXP thing again. So it's very, very similar to Facebook. It's the same Facebook layout where you can join groups. You can ask questions, all the things there. We have WhatsApp groups because we love our WhatsApp where you can just drag and drop documents on there too. All of that.

Which leads to question number four, which is, what is your crew like? can you describe it? And as they describe it, imagine yourself, you know, like, is this the type of crew that I think I'm going to vibe with? And to go further, don't just let that recruiter paint the picture for you, because they might be painting a very different picture of what the crew is actually like. So Instagram stalk them, YouTube stalk them, find them on Facebook, ask other agents in the crew the same questions. A lot of people miss this step. For example, for our crew, we are not for everyone, by the way. A lot of us are investors first. A lot of us are prior military. But now that we're growing super fast. We have like 200 agents, almost 200 agents and five pillars. And we're branching past that.

So we have a lot of just like civilians now and those that want to get started investing that haven't invested yet. But overall, the culture, the vibe that we have, we're like, we wear like backwards hats. We curse. We detest babysitting and excuses. We do not let that fly. We call each other out. And we're always looking to improve. So we're always asking for feedback. Like, hey, how did I just fuck up that listing presentation? Or, you know, in the scripts practice, how can I make this better? which is why we have scripts practice to begin with. But we're constantly, constantly trying to improve ourselves. And we take feedback seriously.

We're always asking. We're always giving. I partner with agents that do not need handholding. If you know that you're going to ask a million and one questions, I get it. I was there too. You know, like, I was a little bit nervous when I first joined Five Pillars. I was like, dude, I'm across the country. I'm a part-time agent.

I just got my license. And I have nobody with me shoulder to shoulder to ask questions of. To ask questions, too. You get what I'm saying. But I was like, dude, as long as I have the checklist, and I was given the seller checklist, step by step, how to even find a seller, what to say to them, how to close them, how to make them a repeat client. Same thing for the buyer checklist. Same thing for the investor checklist.

For outbound referral checklist, I got all the checklist and the canned emails and the trainings. And they're on demand, too. In case I couldn't catch them live, they're all in demand. You're going to get access to all of them as soon as join. You'll have access to every single training starting from day one when five pillars first started. I was like, that's all I need. I don't need to like be, I don't want to say bugging, but I don't need to be like bugging someone with like a simple question that I can just find off Google. Like I'm not that person.

If there's a question I have, I try to answer it first. So that's the type of person that I partner with also. Again, we're not for everybody. So when you're interviewing agents and they say that or interviewing brokerages and they say that and you vibe with it, perfect. Question number five is can I get a copy of the ICA or the independent contractor agreement? And, and can I get a breakdown of the commission split of a recently? closed transaction for an agent. Of course, it can be redacted. You don't have to see somebody's, you know, bank accounts or name or whatever, but you're going to be seeing a lot of fees that

maybe they didn't talk to you about beforehand. That's going to be very importante. Okay, so that's all about the culture. Next bucket is going to be about business building. Again, you don't work for somebody else. You are an independent contractor. You're not on a salary. Or at least, I hope you're not, because if you are on a salary, you are at a decreased amount that you could be making. You could be making more if you just work on commission. Anyway, this next category is on business building. Question number six, very importante also. Aside from the broker, who else can I ask questions to? Can I ask questions of? Why am I not saying this correctly? Who else can I ask questions to? And are they actually incentivized to help me? This may sound very

petty, but it is what it is. You know, like people want to help others. Yes. People especially want to help others if they're financially incentivized to do so, which is the entire EXP model. That's why there are sponsors instead of recruiters. Every other brokerage, everyone needs to recruit. Every brokerage needs to recruit in order just to stay alive. So no matter what brokerage, there are recruiters. But EXP is different because instead of paying thousands of dollars, you know, tens of thousands, like $50,000 for every single recruiter, instead they pay just a fraction of that to the agents, which is the most that you'll get compared to. to other brokerages that have started this model.

Other similar copycat brokerages that have like, you know, this similar model. EXPs finances still win. I have made videos about that as well. But the point of this question is if you're looking at a local mom-and-pop brokerage, a lot, a lot of times, you'll have one broker. Or maybe like a broker, an assistant broker, or a team lead to ask questions to. But if you're reliant on one, two, maybe three people. hint, hint, usually it's just one person. Usually it's just a broker. That's a huge bottleneck in your

business. And if you are waiting for this one broker to answer a question because no one else is available and other agents also have questions for that broker, it might be a very long time before you get a response back. And the response might be shorter than what you imagined or it might not be as in-depth as you would have liked. Contrast that with a brokerage like ours. EXP, where you would have a sponsor who would be me. My sponsor is available to help. you because she makes money. Her sponsor, Ruben Garcia, also is there to help you. Like literally seven levels up. And in our family tree, we have more than seven levels. Everyone is available to help. No matter what level you join in. So that's just the EXP sponsor family. That doesn't even

take into account the EXP state brokers, which usually there are plenty. Usually they're like about two or three. Somebody's always monitoring the emails, the phone, the EXP world. We have entire divisions for every single breakdown, you know, of the business. So whether it's a commission question, a recruiting question, an IT question, your website stopped working. You don't have to rely on your broker to fix a website, which is not their specialty. EXP has figured that out. And now that EXPs in almost like, what, 24 countries, we're all over the world. So it's EXP's one brokerage worldwide. So say your website stops working for some reason. I've never had that happen to me, but just say that happens at like 9 p.m. yet that you notice it,

you can reach out to the IT division, email them, and it'll be back up and running before the work hours of the next business day, because there's EXP out in Australia. So you have 24-7 support. This goes hand in hand with question number seven, which is who else is financially incentivized to help me? And I asked this because of revenue share. If you were to join our community,

say you think that we would vibe together. Perfect. You are a self-starter. We're here for it. We're here to help you grow, help your business just catapult, right? So I would be your sponsor. And every single time you make a closing, instead of the normal way, like old school way, of you paying 50-50, you keep 50% of your commission, the other 50, or even say 40% goes to the broker.

Instead of that happening with EXP, it's 8020. Out of that 20% that would go to EXP, I get 3% of that. My sponsor, Shelby Johnson, would make money as well. Ruben Garcia, her sponsor, which, by the way, I realized that I haven't introduced them. Shelby Johnson was the Keller Williams rookie of the year in the Carolinas back when she first got licensed. She's done over 500 transactions, and she is here to help you build your business. She is the checklist queen. Her sponsor, Rubin Garcia, used to be the CEO of a Keller Williams in Fayetteville, North Carolina. His sponsor, Micah Murwatt, is a senior partner with

EXP. She used to be a broker owner. And out of the almost 90,000 agents that EXP has, Micah was agent number 33. And you'll be able to text her. Like, you'll be able to text her. She is available. I text her on the rank. And she answers. And when I first joined, she told me, Hey, Allie, I don't even know what level you're at. And I just want you to know that I don't care.

Anybody that's in my downline, no matter if it's level 7, 8, 9, 10, 14, I am here to help. You get the same resources. So that's how all of us operate. Question number eight is a super popular question, but I have my own twist. And it's about leads.

And it's not going to be, will you provide me leads? It's the question you should be asking is, how can you help me find my own leads? How can you help me build my own business? Stop being reliant on other people to give you business. Again, you're not in a W2 position anymore. That is the employee mindset. You should instead want to learn from the best how do they build their own business and how can I copy and paste that. So that way, I am never reliant on someone else. Question number nine, what systems, what checklist, what processes? Would you be able to share with me when I

on board so I can start building my own business and scaling. Question number 10 is can I get a copy of the training schedule that you, your crew provide and would I be able to attend any before I make a decision? We have our trainings on Thursdays available to the public. The most important trainings, I would say, are on Tuesdays. Those are the actual business building, how to market yourself, because half the business is even trying to find business, right? Like, you're a real estate agent. It's not just the sales. The biggest part of your business is going to be finding clients. finding business. And that's exactly what we teach. Again, at no extra cost, which leads to question number 11, who else can I meet with in the crew that I can talk to before making a decision?

That wraps up the business building. So next up, financials. How many houses do I need to close in order to get 100% commission for the rest of the year? A lot of people mistakenly think EXP is just 8020, but it's not, it's only 8020 until that 20% reaches $16,000. And I say this, I thought everyone knew that you will cap. You know, what cap means is you've paid the brokerage enough, so that way you have 100% for the rest of the year. With EXP, not only do you get 100% for the rest of the year, but when you do even more transactions,

you can get that entire amount back to you, up to $16,000 back to you in stock, essentially making the only cost for EXP that $85 a month. So that's why I ask. This question will allow you to realize if you have a cap or not. In Tucson, that's selling about seven homes. After you sell about seven homes with a median price point, then you'll get 100% commission for the remainder of the year.

If you're in LA, they might be selling like three homes. Three homes and then for the remainder of the year, you get 100% and it recycles the next year. Question number 13. Can I make stock for doing the work that I'm already going to be doing? How much stock will I make and when would I make it? This will differentiate the brokerages that give you other revenues of income as opposed to just working with buyers and sellers, buyers and sellers or rentals. With EXP, there's like 13 different ways to make money.

It's way beyond just buying and selling. Question 14. Can I get revenue share? And how much revenue share could I get? With EXP's revenue share 2.0, which was just recently released, you don't need any frontline qualifying agents or FLQAs in order to get revenue share from levels 1, 2, and 3. It completely changed the game. Expe invented revenue share,

and now with this EXP revenue share 2.0, they just reinvented it. And it demolishes the revenue share from any other program. Question 15. To get revenue share. Do I have to pay to play? Like some brokerages make you do. Or do I have to stay in production and sell in order to make money from revenue share. So for example, this question really is asking, can you retire with being in that brokerage? Or are you going to have to sell homes until you're 85 in order just to qualify to make revenue share? With ESP, you don't have to. Question 16. What are all of the monthly, quarterly, and annual fees that I will have to pay? A lot of brokerages will try to trick you, I would say, in not being as translucent as possible. They'll say, oh, we don't have any monthly fees. Yet they have a whopping annual fee. Again, this is something that I recently spoke to with an agent the other day. I'm like,

you have no monthly fees, but then you have to pay like $3,000 in the beginning of every year. Divide that over 12 months. That's a monthly fee. That is a huge fee. And dive deep into these fees here, because they have fees for everything now. They have desk fees. They have paper fees. They have ink fees. They have color ink fees. Fax fees.

So ask and make sure that you have a very clear amount of how much you're going to have to pay for the brokerage. Question 17 is how much in fees will I have to pay per transaction? So you'll have those fixed costs, whether it's monthly or annual fees. And then you're also going to have fees per transaction. Some brokerages will say, oh, we have no monthly fees. Yet they'll have an annual fee. Or if they don't have an annual fee, they'll have a hefty transaction.

Fee. With someone else, I was running numbers recently, and they had to pay something like $800 or $700 per transaction forever. That is a lot, especially if you're going to be doing a lot of transactions. That's way more than EXP. So just because the brokerage has a slogan of no monthly fees doesn't mean they're not getting money. They are making money. Trust me. Question 18. If you're interviewing franchises, how much are the franchise fees? Franchises are brokerages like Keller Williams, Coldwell, stuff like that. is not a franchise because it's one brokerage throughout the world. It's one. So you can't franchise that. Therefore, there are no franchise fees. Question 19 is, whatever the cap amount is, can I get that cap amount back to me? With EXP, you can. You can get up to that cap amount back to you in the form

of stock. So you cap, aka around seven homes in Tucson, aka $16,000, and then you sell another 20 transactions after that. You hit ICON. That's top 1.5% of EXP Realty, and you can get up to $6,000,000. $16,000, that entire cap back to the form of stock. This is what I hit. I hit ICON my first year of doing this full time as an agent. I sold 44 homes, and as soon as I hit ICON that week, I got a phone call from EXP, and they were like, congratulations. They were so nice.

They're like, congratulations, you hit ICON, you are top 1.5% of EXP Realty. You're going to get $8,000 worth of EXP stock today in your bank account, or my brokerage account, rather. And the other $8,000 you can get back after you do some cultural requirements. and cultural requirements really just means teaching. You're top of EXP Realty, and they want you to give back. And the only people that can teach are ICON agents. So it was too easy.

I was getting like $2,000 for the classes that I was teaching for like no more than an hour. Easy. If you don't want to teach, you can also attend a regional rally. Likely, those also are starting to qualify for cultural credits. You can attend EXP con. There are a lot of different ways to make up this credit back. That wraps up the questions on finances. Notice how I did not ask, are you going to pay for my signs?

And stuff like that, like, are you going to pay for my business cards, is very much so stepping over dollars to pick up pennies. Signs don't cost a lot. Plus, they're like a one-time cost. So instead of, like, being thrilled that a brokerage is going to pay $300 worth of signs, which, yes, that's a lot, but also it's a one-time sign cost. Or business cards, which are frankly just old school. You don't need business cards. I don't have business cards, and I'm doing just fine. So instead of getting lured into a brokerage with stuff like that, think about how much am I getting paying per transaction? That one person I was talking to, which every transaction was like that $750, you could buy like 10 signs with that. The next category or bucket. Tools and training and overall offerings. Question 20.

Oops, I think I mentioned this already, is can I get the list of all the trainings that you offer and which ones can I attend before I join? Do not expect to be able to join the trainings until you, like all the trainings until you've actually joined. Question 21. What do you offer agents that I don't have to come out of pocket for? So big stuff. I'm not talking about like little business cards, which EXP actually does pay for business cards too. Now that I think about it, you get a $50 credit at this time when you sign up that you can spend for anything in the EXP marketing center. But anyway, I'm talking stuff like a CRM.

There are a lot of brokerages that do not give you your own CRM. Or if they do, it's really their CRM. So if you choose to lead the brokerage, every single person that you put into their CRM is now their lead. With EXP, that's not the case. So if you put your mother in there and your mother decides to sell with another brook, like say you're with another brokerage, you put your mother or your family, your brother, whatever,

into that other brokerage as CRM and you decide to leave. If your mom ever decides to sell, they have to go with that brokerage. That is wild. And it happens all of the time. So again, read your ICA. So again, what kind of CRM are they going to be provided? you? Is it a good one? As long as you use a CRM, like, you're good to go. Or is it more a la carte where you have to pay an additional amount for the CRM, which could be costly, even $40 a month?

That makes a big difference overall. Do they give you a website? What does it look like? How much can you customize it? Stuff like that. So question 22 is what exactly does the onboarding process look like? Who's going to reach out to me? What should I pay attention to? What are the most important items? And do you actually have a checklist? I have a checklist of a 200-step onboarding process. It covers everything. I highlight the most important. You get reached out to by your EXP upline, especially Ruben Garcia.

Do not sleep on Rubin. Text him back. He's there to help. He's the reason I was able to do 20 transactions. My first year is a part-time agent. And if you're looking to join us by now, you're already a licensed agent. Apply with the link below.

If you still have questions, book a call also with the link below. That is the best way to guarantee a spot on my calendar. Now, the last two most important questions are questions that you're going to be asking yourself. Ask yourself two questions. One, is this agent living the last? life that I want to live. And two, has this agent done what I want to do? If your goal is to do

40 transactions a year, how is the agent that you're talking to that's only ever done 20 going to help you get there? Are your goals there every day? That's it. Hope to see you join my community.