Is eXp the feature of real estate, and is it somewhere you should consider holding your real estate license? Many people have asked me about my experience at eXp and who would be best suited to work at such a firm. So today, I’ll be sharing my experience, having worked there for three years.
So, is eXp Realty for new agents? Yes!
When I first got into the real estate industry about six and a half years ago, I had no foundation in real estate. When I first got my license, I was brand new to real estate, with no mentor or coach. I had no family member that had ever been in real estate.
My family never owned a house, car, or business. So for us, it was brand new territory—us meaning my wife and me. I had just gone through the wringer, losing my mom, my job, and my home all in two weeks.
I knew then that I had to make something out of this mess. With my wife behind me and the drive to succeed, I ended up closing forty-six deals and making eight million in volume within the first nine months. I even got a rookie of the year award.
I understand how it feels to be brand new to an industry, trying to make something for yourself. If you are a brand new agent wondering how to kickstart your career, I encourage you to keep reading.
Here’s my take after working at eXp for three years; there are a few things you should know before joining the firm:
1. Your Mindset Matters
A lot of people think that you need some experience before joining eXp. I think that’s the wrong mindset to have. The reason is there’s power in proximity, and you need to understand that association is everything to being successful not only in real estate but in business and life.
“You are the sum of the people who you surround yourself with.”
– Jim Rohn
Not only do you have your team and other stakeholders who helped bring you into the business, but you also have people all over the country who want to see you succeed. eXp is an international brokerage; they’re not franchised.
The firm is agent-owned, and we all have ownership in the company through publicly-traded stock. We all want to see when someone else wins because we are also winners from an outward perspective.
It doesn’t have to be a constant competition, and that’s something that I would love if I had gotten the opportunity to visit the top producers in my marketplace. In contrast, at my previous brokerage, some of them would have an abundant mindset right now.
Think about all the things you’ve been told about real estate. “It’s cutthroat.”, “ The competition is too stiff,“ “You have to kill everything.” Now, I don’t say this to slander the industry or be vulgar, but to paint a clearer picture of how traditional real estate is.
On the contrary, eXp is pure collaboration over competition. You’ll see this for yourself once you visit their workplace, where over forty-six employees and agents operate from. Pull up thirty to forty posts from the referral group, and you’ll find employees collaborating and sharing referrals from all over the country.
Real estate relies heavily on referrals, and many of us have built our businesses on this foundation. It’s easy money, and we don’t have to go out to generate leads or pay sites like Zillow or Realtor.com.
Think about it like this, if you are the go-to in your marketplace and you’ve nurtured relationships in all fifty states, think about how much referrals can grow your brand. Most of the time, newer agents don’t have the resources to pay for expenses such as lead generation.
However, eXp gives you all of that at a highly affordable cost. The company opted to provide a bulk deal where you can access all agents. It’s so much better and cheaper than charging top producer agents $1000 to $1200 a month to get websites done.
I was still new at the time, but I recognized how good a deal was. I was more focused on the money that I was keeping. So if you’re a newer agent, I encourage you to look into eXp. They offer you:
- Ownership
- Less cost – you don’t have to shell out money for operational costs such as salaries and office supplies.
2. Ownership
When I was growing up, my parents didn’t own any long-term investments like a car or a house. I didn’t understand the implications of such a situation until I learned that whoever owns the land makes the rules.
This belief was reinforced once I got into real estate. Everyone was pushing me to own as opposed to renting. My goal was ownership, and it still is. I tell my clients, why would you want to rent and build someone else’s wealth?
I was at a prominent national brokerage, but it wound up closing its offices after a corporate company bought it. How much do you think I got from that? Zero! No matter which company you’re in, whether it’s Coldwell Bank or Century 21, ask yourself this question.
If this company was to be sold right now, would I have any say in it? Who would get paid? It’s the owners, the investors, and the shareholders.
When I first saw the eXp opportunity, I was not looking at all when they came. They gave me a pitch on why I should look at this eXp model. It was the first time I saw it, and as the mantra goes, you can’t unsee it once you see it.
I remember thinking about why I would not put myself and my family in an opportunity to have ownership, which I didn’t have before. If you are somewhere right now where you have no ownership and you plan to build a brand, why would you work on someone else’s rather than build yours?
Why would you not build something that you and your family could profit from for years and generations on end? Multi-millionaires have been made just from eXp’s stocks alone in the last five years. That’s why it was essential for me to think about it, and I would encourage you to do the same thing.
3. Agent Attraction and Recruiting
The last thing always comes up, and I wanted to address it because it was important for me in my three years here. The company is only here for agent attraction and recruiting, and less than 5% of the people in eXp focused on any type of agent attraction.
Some people come over eXp because they just want to sell more real estate and build long-term wealth through the stock they get. Some other people come over because they want to decrease their expenses. They might be paying:
- $1,000 or $2,000 a month
- royalty fees
- guests fees
- office fees
They’re paying for all these things they might not even utilize, so they aim to reduce the cost. Some people join the industry because they would love to build a team or a brokerage one day. So it gives you options – the opportunity to do whatever you want to do with your business.
Maybe you wanted options on spending time with your kids, flexibility, time to take trips and vacations. eXp allows you more freedom than any other traditional brokerage.
When it comes to agent attraction, you don’t have to, but the beauty of it is that if you partner with the right team, you’re probably going to have people who want to focus on that agent attraction.
And that’s another beauty of eXp- it allows you to have leverage. We all want the L-word in real estate. The L Word can be Love, Listings, but it’s also Leverage. That’s why we start with teams because we know that there are only so many deals that we can do personally.
We bring in team members, share those leads with them, close them, and then cut. I have been in real estate for six and a half years and know what I know now, and I cannot envision myself selling anywhere else.
Here at eXp, we have the culture and the leadership in the entire company..I interviewed some of them in my podcast, DreamNation.
4. Take Advantage of the Opportunity
The last thing that I would say is if we want the opportunities, then this one’s for you. Think about the man in the boat story. I’ll give you the condensed version.
There was a flood, and a man was stuck. The water was coming up high. He was sitting on top of his house and was about to drown.
One guy comes by with the boat and invites him aboard. The man says no, “God’s got me.” A second guy comes along with a ship and tries to get him to climb in, but the man says the same thing, “God’s got me.”
A third guy comes and says, “Hey, man, I see you’re about to drown. Hop in this boat. The man still says no. In the end, the man drowns and winds up at the pearly gates.
He asked God why He left him out there alone, to which God replied, “You dummy! You had three people coming to save you.” This story stresses the importance of recognizing when you have an opportunity before you.
How many people have been sending you boats? Maybe not in real estate, perhaps in something else.
Bottom Line
There are 1.5 million agents or active licenses according to the National Association of Realtors, and eXp has over 48,000 of them. These figures show you how big we are and how fast we’re growing, but how small we are still in the grand scheme of things.
We’re in 12 different countries now, going to 30 by the end of the year. There’s so much opportunity left, so don’t block your blessings, all because you fear the unknown. If you’d like to discuss more about eXp, you can schedule a free call with me. Hopefully, my experience can help someone else out.
There are no strings attached, and I’ll tell you everything else that I’ve learned about the numbers and personalize that for your business.
Remember, in the dream, we trust whatever your dream is, but you’ve got to take action because otherwise, that dream will only merely be a fantasy.
