KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Terrence C. Murphy Sr.

Episode Date: May 2, 2024

You're listening to Expansion, the podcast for EXP agents. Expand your skills, expand your value. Here's your host, Glenn Sanford. Hey, everyone, Glenn Sanford here, founder of EXP Realty and now actually CEO of EXP Realty. And today on the Expansion podcast, I'm excited to talk to Terrence Murphy out of College Station, Texas, and the home of Texas A&M University. where he played football at one point in his past life, now turned a real estate professional after doing some things.

But Terrence, hey, welcome to the podcast. Thanks, Glenn. I'm excited to be here. I'm excited to be a part of your family and your team. And it's really cool to see what we can do together, you know. So I'm excited about being a part of the tribe. Awesome. Awesome.

Well, thanks for being part of it for sure. And maybe for those who don't know who you are, or maybe you can share a little bit about your background and what you did prior to getting your real estate. And also, why real estate? Yes, sir. So born and raised in East Texas, grew up with a single mom, very humble beginnings,

learned hard work, learned that if you put your mind to it, you can achieve it. I had five academic offers, from, you know, really nice, like, you know, schools like rice and things of that sort. And then had about 20 D1 offers to go play college football, went to Texas A&M, graduated in three and a half years, left as a two-time team captain, three-time academic all-conference and all these things. And so, you know, it's just been amazing to transition over into, you know, real estate. Went to the NFL. Once I retired, moved back to college station.

Now, you know, when, you know, it seems that there's been, I've met a few people who've been, you know, played college ball pro, pro football that have turned in, have become real estate agents. How do you see real estate as a career post professional sports? Yeah, I think the biggest thing, you know, sports teaches you a lot about life. It teaches you a lot of life principles. And for me, you know, making it to the NFL. And I had a really bad neck injury, having to retire. My biggest prayer was that God give me something I could be passionate about. Once I transitioned, I became a developer and investor first, then became a real estate agent.

And the reason I even became real estate agent is because I was doing a lot of developments and people could ask me, can you help me do what you do? And now I started, you know, at a franchise, was there for about a year and a half. And I was like, I can do more than this. And I went off after seven transactions as a brand new agent and started my brokerage. And we scaled it to $1.2 billion in sales in eight years in a small college town. And we were so focused on production. And then that's how we were able to connect. And so as I transitioned over the EXP, it's just been amazing to take your value proposition,

take what we were already doing and merging them together. And I think having that athletic environment and mindset is what's been really setting us apart. So I know you've got a bit of a quote, and maybe I'll let you quote it, but it's that you can't sell your weight into financial freedom. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Dave Karnard, we picked up on, I think it was at Bill Conference. I'm very passionate about financial literacy because that's something a lot of people don't talk about real estate agents. And that's what attracted me to you, Glenn, is seeing a different income streams. And I say, you can't sell your way into financial freedom. you need multiple income streams.

And that's why I love your value proposition. And that quote's starting to get legs now because you can't sell your way in a financial freedom. You have to create multiple income streams. You have to create an exit strategy out of this industry. And it sounds like you early on, even in your career as a real estate professional, you recognized one of the principles is that equity ownership or building a company you know, is one way to build multiple streams of income.

When did you sort of figure out that you wanted to be more a business owner rather than just a salesperson? Yeah, actually, that's where I started. So I started at 22 investing in with a private equity firm called Steelwater Capital. Those guys are doing some amazing things. I'm proud of them. They're now getting the PGA. headquarters that they're building out right now in Dallas. So that's where I kind of cut my teeth in that space. And then when I left from investing with that group, I said, well, I can figure out

how to do this in my own. So I went right into it with ownership, the ownership mentality. And I never got a job. I just kind of started in the entrepreneurial world. And now we have 20 companies that we own and run. And I'm invested in another 30 company. So I have 50 companies in my Terrence Murphy company portfolio. So I've always been ownership first, and then the sales piece kind of came after that. Well, you look super relaxed for a guy who's got 50 different companies. How are you organized to be able to sort of have that many, you know, things going on at the same time?

That's a lot. I mean, I, even for me, you know, with EXP, we have a couple of companies that quite, well, one is quite large, but, but 50 companies. That's a lot. Yes, sir. It is. It's truly a blessing, though, because some of them I'm involved in the day to day. Some of we put, you know, partners in place to run the day to day. And some I'm passively like an advisor because I just love growth. I love growth. God has given me an ability to scale and to create unique value propositions. And, you know, a lot of our companies, we 15x, 20xed, I'm exiting a couple of within the next couple of months.

But my thing that I'm going all in on right now is just EXP attraction and really teaching real estate agents how to set up businesses, how to scale, how to invest and how to create multiple income streams. It's something I'm very passionate about. Okay. So, and that really was the question was, you know, how does EXP align with your vision of financial freedom and literacy and helping other people? I think you're kind of describing that.

It does. One of the bigger things that I was thinking about as, you know, once my wife and I scaled our independent brokerage, no franchise to a billion in sales, it was just, it was an idea on a napkin that I rolled out 28 years old. People started taking notice what we were doing from just a volume standpoint. The average agent closes, you know, seven to 10 deals a year. Our average per person production was 39.5. So we've always been focused on production first. And in that transition of that strategy, it's like, okay, what can we do to help our agents create these other income streams? So we were trying to create the different equity and this and that.

And it just, it was, it's a tough thing to do. It's very impressive what you've done. And so one of the other things we wanted to do was expand. And to be able to have access to all 50 states and now 25 countries was, was one of the main reasons that I took my independent brokerage and merged. now well thank you for for joining and being part of it the 39.5 deals a year per agent that's that's impressive how many agents at that time before we came over it was right under 50 so it was okay yeah yeah and we so what was the if you were to pick one single ingredient was it was it because you were also developer that gave them the opportunity to do that many? What would be, what was the secret

sauce to getting them to that level production? Yes, sir. I have a, I call it my playbook. I took my experience for being a part of a billion dollar company, you know, with the Green Bay Packers. I wasn't just there cutting touchdowns. I was watching how they ran the organization. And a lot of times the sea level guys would be like, man, you're always in here with us. I'm like, yeah, because I know that's what I want to do one day is run an organization from a business standpoint where most people think, oh, you want to go coach, right? And so I was so focused on that. But as I built out my playbook, I took what I did as an individual agent. I started at Kell Williams. I did seven deals for $1.3 million in sales in my first year, which is nothing to write home about. And then I got

frustrated. I just kept asking, can somebody train me, somebody coach me? And I'm that personality. If I don't get it, I'll go create it. And that next year, No broker, no coach, no anything. I did 21 million in sales. And this was like 2010. It was a tough time to be a real estate agent coming off the downturn. And once I went from one million to 21 million, I said, I think I'm on with something. So I really just started doubling down on that.

And I'd say, I'd give people five pillars that I tell them this is what you need when you want to scale your business. And that's what I've taught my agents year after year over and over. I've actually done that class inside the XP world. It's got some really good reviews. Awesome. So what are those five pillars? Obviously, we're not going to go into the whole class, but what are the five pillars? Yes, sir.

So the first one is time block. Really understanding your time management, I think we as people now with social media and distractions, we think we're working, but we're wasting so much time. And when you're a student athlete, you're having to do so much, you learn time blocking at a very high level. So I would say I teach them my time blocking strategy. Then I teach them lead generation, very proactive. I tell them you have to eat what you kill. You have to hunt.

You got to get on the horse. You can't be very passive. Like we never had floor time in my brokerage because to me, floor time was a waste of time. And so we really focused on lead generation, but we did it based on their personality traits. So I have this training where I tell them, take your personality traits and then we build your lead generation around that.

So that's pillar number two. And then pillar three is repeatable systems. So here's how you scale. Repeatable systems. And then four is technology. How do we leverage technology? And then five is wow moments in following up with the people who believe in you, which is following up with your past clients.

If you want to be in the top 10% of agents, 88% of agents do not contact our past clients after 30 days after the transaction. So repeatable. And just that's my five. And then I just give them a system to do that. Awesome. Well, no, and that's great. I think anybody who's listening and watching this podcast today,

those five pillars, incorporate that in your business. You're going to have stellar success. And so that was a power, two minutes of content right there. So how do you, do you have a favorite CRM or what technology do you, tend to prefer since you mentioned technology. Yeah, well, I was one of the first agents that started using social media back like in 2010. You know, at that time, it wasn't cool to be on social media talking about real estate. I love using photography and videography to tell the story of the listing.

I just closed my 60th $1 million to $7 million transaction. And I'm not in Beverly Hills. I'm not in New York. I'm not even in Austin. I'm in college station. and I'm closing, you know, 60 personal $1 million transactions. So I think really leveraging the storytelling part of real estate is something that I really focus on. And then from a CRM standpoint, we use KV Core and Brivity are our top two CRMs.

Okay, awesome. And I hear a lot of people talk really positively about brivity. I remember when it first started, it was a little clunky, but is it pretty smooth platform now for you? It's pretty sharp. It's pretty sharp. They got some things that we've actually been talking to the team of DXP, like, hey, can we look at this? Can we look at that? And that's, you know, I invest in real estate technology companies.

So I bring a different angle to the team when I'm talking to them. So that's where I've been an advisor with some of these real estate tech companies, just giving them a perspective of a guy that's in the field using it, right, and leveraging it. Cool. Well, I think Leo's been talking to Ben over there about what we can do. on the on the on the brevity side and uh i know there's been uh he's been trying to guess to embrace place more i'm like i'm a little bit i push that one off a little bit but brevity sounds like a pretty pretty solid platform so um yeah i know ben if you need my help on that glen to kind of be

an in between i know leo may know him but i any way i can well i can i literally can hit his house with a rock oh okay he's right across the i mean literally so he started in my office in bellingham washington Oh, just a little aside there. So if there would be, I know you've already provided tons of value already, but if there is one piece of advice that you can give to an EXP agent, what would it be? One piece of advice to an EXP agent, I would say financial literacy. I would say start studying financial literacy. I actually talked about this at the Bill conference and got a lot of just so much positive feedback

that from speaking at Build and the EXPCon, I think what I'm saying is different. And I tell every real estate agent, build out a personal financial statement. And if you don't have one, I have a, you know, just Google it,

look up financial statement and start tracking, what is impacting your net worth, what is growing your net worth, and what's creating more cash flow. Because it's always about sell more, sell more, sell more, but we've got to be tracking what we're worth and where is that going? Is it going up or down

and what's impacted in a positive way? So one thing I and I had had some mentors before I got into real estate and I did something that virtually no real estate back agent at the time did which was I'm sure there were some but I created an LLC actually was S corp just to start to run my real estate business through very early age and that allowed me to basically run a P&L more easily versus my real estate business through a very early age and that allowed me to basically run a P&L more easily versus by my own checkbook. Where would you, what point would you recommend somebody, you know, take that step from your perspective? Day one, day one. I think you come into it and you set up the right foundation because, you know, it's all about one of the things I would train agents.

They would leave the different other offices and franchises and they come to me. You know, like I'm selling three million a year or five million a year. I can't figure out how to get over that. I said, well, you got to build your business on the right foundation. I don't see it. And so we would kind of break the business back down. And one of the things I would show them is setting up an entity, you know, because I think that's. Awesome.

Yeah. Well, it's bringing an idea top of mind to me, which is that we do need to probably do a class if you haven't done it or we need to. It's just how to set up your own S-corpor LLC for your personal really. estate practice because it does automatically create a different way of thinking about your business. It does. It does. And obviously there's some, you know, tax advantages and things of that sort and protection and all that. So yeah, I think it's. For sure. Well, this has been awesome. Terrence, thank you for taking time out today to share about your business. And how would somebody get a hold of you. Do you, I assume that

you obviously share with others, but you also probably work with inbound referrals of people who are wanting to, you've got somebody moving to college station. Would they refer to your team? Yes, sir. So, yeah, we, TM5 College Station is our local team, which you can find. We've been the number one team or top 1% and 1% of teams in the United States. for about 10 years in a row. But if they want to find me on Instagram,

it's just Terrence C. Murphy. And I did the C because there was already a Terrence Murphy at E.XP. So when I got my email, they put C in there. And so people were asking me, are you this is Merritt or this Terrence Murphy? So just Terrence C. Murphy. So at Terrence C. Murphy.

And then I've seen, I got my podcast that I rolled out. We'd love to have you on there in the future, Glenn. just Terrence it's actually a real estate entrepreneur with Terrence Murphy it's a really good podcast so okay awesome well fire me off a note on on workplace and and and I'll fire off my calendar Lee and let's let's make it happen yes sir thank you again good stuff hey thanks thanks again lots of tips here that Terrence dropped and again you can reach Terrant C Murphy on Instagram and real estate entrepreneur, obviously great background. I can spend a ton more time chatting with you today.

But thanks again for being here and thanks everyone for listening. You've been listening to Expansion. Tune in every Tuesday and Thursday for new episodes. Thanks for being the best part of VXP.