Nicki Gregory Joins EXP -EXP Value Proposition, Revenue Share, Equity and Growth Possibility

In today’s we have Nicki Gregory from Amarillo Texas. Nicki was previously with the franchise system first starting as Mom and Pop and further working with keller Williams. As a team leader she runs a real estate team. Nicki talks to us about her decision to move to EXP, why she did, she touches on equity and revenue share and explains how much of a game changer her transition has been to her life and business. 

Learn More about eXp Realty – Click here to watch a quick 7 Minute Intro Video.

Remember our disclaimer: The materials and content discussed within this podcast are the opinions of Kevin Cottrell and/or the guests interviewed.  This information is intended as general information only for listeners of the podcast. Listeners should conduct their own due diligence and research before making any business decisions. This podcast is produced completely independently of eXp Realty and is not endorsed, funded or otherwise supported by eXp Realty directly or indirectly.  

In this episode

• EXP as an Exit Strategy
• The EXP value proposition
• Equity and revenue share opportunities
• Marketplace disruption

Want to Learn More about eXp Realty?

If you are interested in learning more about eXp, reach out to the person who introduced you to eXp or contact Nicki to inquire or ask questions.

Contact Nicki:

Phone 806 316 4498

email. Nicki.Gregory@exprealty.com 

Links: www.EXPCloud.com

Takeway

Everyday we say that we’re just blown away. We say mind blown every day.  It’s been a big blessing for my team and for my family. Now we’re happy. Nicki Gregory

Transcription

Kevin: Welcome back to another episode of In The Cloud. The EXP Realty Explained Podcast. I am host Kevin Cottrell and joining me today is Nicki Gregory from Amarillo Texas. Nicki was previously with the franchise system and as a team leader she runs a real estate team made the decision to leave the franchise system and join EXP realty. It’s going to talk about her decision to do that. What drove it how revenue share and equity in the EXP realty model is making a game changer difference in her business and her family’s life and the ability for them to fund some charities they’re interested in. I think you’ll enjoy the conversation as Nicki shares why she made the decision to join you EXP realty. Stay tuned for my interview with Nicki Gregory. Welcome to the show Nicki.

Nicki: Hello.

Kevin: I’m looking forward to chat with you today. For listeners that may not know your name and where you work why don’t you give us a little bit of background in terms of her real estate history.

Nicki: Ok my name’s Nicki Gregory and I’m in Amarillo Texas. I went to real estate school in 06 and I did not get my license until 2011. My husband and I flipped houses for landlords and I didn’t want to get it until 2011 so I started selling houses for other people at that point. Started as a Mom and Pop here in town. And then I moved over to KW in 2012 and I’ve just been selling ever since.

Kevin: We’ve actually had a couple of people on the podcast that started out in the investor side flipping property and working on that side of the business and that went into residential production. So let me just ask you some questions about your business because I know a lot of people listening to this will be real estate agents. Do you have a team. Are you an individual agent and kind of volume do you have.

Nicki: I do. I have a team here. The Red Door group and we do about around 10 or 11 million.

Kevin: Excellent. So you mentioned that you were with Keller Williams most recently before joining EXP. What led you to the decision to take a look at the EXP tell me about how that happened.

Nicki: I kind of you know you start thinking should I look elsewhere or should I be looking at other options actually really exit strategy was probably the biggest thing that was coming into play with conversations with my husband and I and so we have a friend who does some mission work in Thailand and we have been fortunate to be able to bless them and help them a little bit. There she has homes for orphans. Well rescued kids from their rescued from human trafficking. And so we had been able to help her some but we really have been discussing more and more how could we do more. And also our exit strategy on same conversations and we were looking and thinking or towards us maybe opening our own brokerage me getting my broker’s license. So I started researching that and looking into whether that would be a good fit for us and not just always seems like where everybody thinks they’re going to end up. And so I started looking into that and in the process of looking into it I saw a video with Jay Kinder announcing that he had to EXP and Gene Frederik’s video about him owning the blockbusters and several of those videos were coming across my news feed and I’d stay up late watching those and realized I don’t think at my age that this is you know if this is what’s happening to people who already own brokerage’s that’s not the right direction for me. And so I don’t want to be in a year or two you know having to make the same decisions right after I just started up a startup you know brokerage so that is how it happened. So I just signed up under Jay Kinder where we are.

Kevin: Excellent excellent. Well you know you echo what a lot of people say especially if they’re in a franchise system you know if you’re looking at exit strategy or what the next steps are usually it’s sort of unidimensional and I’m sure you went through some of this challenge which is if you’re coaching with somebody they want you to do more production and eventually figure out how to get out of that and have a team that you just lead and I think that that’s sort of a challenge for many people. Right. You know I certainly had a team in St. Louis previously and we did like 250 transactions a year and I had lots of volume but it wasn’t something that was going to be easily converted to me running it passively or just leading only. And you know what. So when you talk about exit strategy I wanted to tie that down for a lot of the listeners because there’ll be plenty of them that are out there thinking “well I don’t want to be doing listings” if that’s what they do which a lot of our listeners will. “And I want to just be listening and selling houses 15 years from now” so exit strategy in my parlance and I’m assuming it’s the same for you is trying to figure out how to not be so dependent on others if I stop working my income goes away or it dramatically reduces because team members are not as proficient as me and or if I want to start setting more money aside and net more I going to really ramp up my production and I would assume that’s part of your challenge as well when you were looking at that initially.

Nicki: That was the challenge that was presenting itself and that I was seeing people who were actually moving over to EXP because they tried to sell their brokerage’s and or surprised at what they were the offers they were getting were not you know sufficient for retirement and so that became a concern for me.

Kevin: So you’re heading on another topic we’re actually seeing and I’ve interviewed several of them lots of independent brokers who are decided to become powered by the EXP and so what Nikki’s referring to is lots of the independent brokerage community is looking at exit strategy as well in other words. There has never been a time in which independent brokers unless they’re enormous have gotten great offers. Right? You have to be of huge size to get anybody that excited and interested in you and other than that your margins and your income are to the point where you’re going to get basically just somebody who says I’ll do and earn now or I’ll give you some nominal amount of money and you can stay around for five years and help us run it. And most people don’t want to do it right?

Nicki: Right. No thank you.

Kevin: Yeah exactly so because of the branding and and you know Mitch Riback is an episode that somebody can go listen to out of Florida. Mitch had a huge multimillion dollar offer on his brokerage and he still elected to become powered by EXP. So what Nicki is talking about is something that’s sort of an industry dynamic right now. You know if you own a franchise and you listen to this you’ve got a little bit of a different challenge right. You’re going to have to make your own best decision on what to do. But everybody that was excited that I’ve ever met that actually opened a franchise location unless it’s coming up for renewal and they’re in the window in the last six months where they can get out. They’re not very happy right because they’re are sort of stuck with it unless they can find somebody to buy it. So we don’t have a lot of great advice for you of your franchise so that although we would tell you that there are plenty of them who have decided to sell and cash out who have come over and join EXP. So there is a path for you to get out of it you’ll have to do your own due diligence and figure out how to make that happen. But you’re in a little bit of a different spot than an independent broker. So you know just work your way through that process will probably at some point in the near future have somebody that was a previous franchise owner and they’ll talk a little about how they were able to unwind there by selling their operations. So Nicki I want to talk to you about the EXP value proposition because you know you you came through the process and you looked at wanting to be able to work with that organization and you know make donations and help them with that awesome thing they’re doing to get people out of human trafficking. And then in addition to that you wanted to look at retirement. So how long was it before you kind of analyzed the equity opportunities and the revenue share that had kind of hit you up the side of the head and you went hmmm. This is completely different than when you know what I’m in now..

Nicki: A day or two. I mean it’s like Jay says all the time when you see it you can see it. And I was one of those that had the EXP Somnia you know watching the videos the first night and thinking I mean I can think of a reason that you would not do that and then also to see that opportunity for the people on my team which that does exist really you know elsewhere for team members not just team leaders to the same level. And I wanted to be able to offer my team members more. And so yeah it didn’t take me very long.

Kevin: And what Nicky is talking about is the EXP insomnia or sort of just diving off the cliff into the information is a phenomenon we’ve seen. I’ve interviewed another independent broker who joined EXP where he was a previous client of mine on the consulting side. And I didn’t go to him because of the way he ran his business. He wasn’t potentially a good prospect. And his quote when I talked to him about it was he came to me on a Thursday. He knew I acquired a lot of independent brokerages and asked me who I knew that might be a good conversion fit. And I got a email from him and a text like midnight on Sunday and he’s like I haven’t slept. Can we do a chat tomorrow. It’s interesting because as Nicki said the phenomenon is that once you get into this it’s hard to fathom not digging into it and figuring out validating how you actually the world and I want to come back to something she said because we hear this a lot from rainmakers of teams. One of the challenges in addition to the one we already looked at is it’s hard to think about an exit other than people and the this goes back to the star power days right. Everybody talked about will how much did you get for your business and what was in that era was selling your list than your database and they would sell them and they would potentially get the effectively referrals or referral fees or other fees on the back and based on that volume and everybody a few years into that figured out that that wasn’t very much money. But by the same token there wasn’t anything available for team members. Right? You know if you’re in a franchise system and there are some of them Nicki and I come from the same one right there all about teams. But what they don’t talk about is sort of the dirty little secret which is it’s all about conflict right. The Rainmaker owns the team the the team members are there. And there’s a built in conflict if they get to be what you two like to be attracting which is talent. And now you can’t offer them the huge opportunity in those cases that they want to go start their own thing. Then one of two things happens they either leave the market center and go do it on their own somewhere else in the marketplace or they stay there and there’s a little bit of strife and conflict. Well in the EXP value proposition because of revenue sharing equity and the ability for teams to actually develop talent from within. We’ve seen people tackle this a couple of ways. I mean certainly with revenue sharing stacking I’m sure this is the direction you went Nicki which is you were able to actually create wealth for them in the process of attracting more and more agenta and well we’ll get into sort of your success with revenue sharing a quick period of time in a second but the second thing that we’re seeing people do and this is just meant to be a comment for people from the outside. And this may or may not surprise you. Nicki there are a lot of people across the country that I’m talking to that are going to above market average meaning typical for market splits with agents and this is one of the ways of rewarding agents in addition to revenue share because they can afford to pay it right there are some in Houston Texas where over time as their revenue share grows they’re doing a retention strategy with team members where they’re paying higher splits and this what’s just keep going up because their primary wealth over time is not dependent on getting as much money as possible on their team production.

Nicki: Yep. There’s So many different opportunities that we can cover probably enough that we find new ones every day. I can tell you that.

Kevin: It’s something that in a production business and these are some of the things that are not intuitive to people while we have this podcast from the outside is not only do you have the non conflict right in other words there is equity opportunities and if you watch some of the information and there’s a link in the podcast notes the shows an intro video when we’re talking about ways that people are in equity and revenue share. Team members can actually start to create some wealth by helping attract agents to the company and they do that because they interface with a lot of agents so you have a prolific team. They’re out there doing transactions with their agents on that on the team’s business and or are meeting agents at events networking events or just out in the marketplace. And now is that a retention tool but it’s a wealth tool for them isn’t it.

Nicki: Yes which is the exact opposite of what you were just talking about that we’re finding now making friends with no direct competitor are now were able to work together as even a larger team in our community. And it’s been pretty amazing to watch and to experience people that you’ve known for years but now it’s a different thing it’s a different relationship a different environment that we are all helping each other. It’s pretty pretty cool it’s fun. We’re having fun..

Kevin: And that’s something that if you listen to Gene Frederic or about 90 % of people that I interview on this podcast everybody uses the same phrase which is we’re having fun again and again. And because it’s disruptive and we’re all owners of equity in the company we’re agent owners if you will. It’s causing a different dynamic. One the politics are gone and you know she just talked about this in her marketplace. I had a guest on that I interviewed recently and she was the number two team in a Dallas Fort Worth market center. The number one team came over like a week or 10 days before her. Right. So she made the comment she said We are collaborating so closely now in our marketplace and for the years that I was in that market center we didn’t ever hardly ever talk if at all. And it’s interesting because that’s a dynamic that occurred moving from a franchise system and their culture and the way the business operates to the EXP system where people are all pointed the same direction. It’s a culture that you shouldn’t ever let anybody from the outside convince you doesn’t exist. It is in one of the things that every guest on this podcast talks about is doesn’t matter where you were introduced to the EXP by. If you listen to one of these episodes and before we wrap up today Nicki will give her contact information. Like every other guest does. It doesn’t matter how you heard about it. If a guest resonates with you you want to talk to them and you want to get that you know and dive in a little deeper on it. It doesn’t matter it’s not a matter of you being sponsored by them or you being in their revenue share group. Everybody is pointed the same direction we all want to help each other and I’m sure as you said in your marketplace that’s what’s happening we’re overall whether you were previous competitors or not you’re disrupting the marketplace aren’t you.

Nicki: Yes we are. That’s why we call yourself the disruptors club here. So that’s exactly what we’re doing.

Kevin: And that speaks to the point of somebody listening to this podcast will be in a market you know whereas we’re recording this the company between active agents and people and process onboarding is way north of 10000 agents. So we get a lot of well joining you might be on a state or a market where there’s a handful of agents maybe looking around going well you know there’s not a lot going in my market and I’m not sure what’s going to happen. And I wonder if it’s going to work here. You know it doesn’t matter if you looked at two and a half three years ago in Dallas where Sherry Elliott talked about being the 16th or 14th agent when they have over 800 now. It’s a matter of time in your market and I’m sure in your market things have started to accelerate since you’ve come over versus where it was when you first looked at EXP. It starts to go fast doesn’t it? I know you said you’ve started to collaborate your marketplace. So with that as sort of a precursor to the conversation about revenue share even with the EXP for only a few months.

Nicki: Right. Just under four months.

Kevin: You came from a system like I did where you were and profit share system and it was hard to figure out you know when and if you’re going to make money because it’s a more complicated formula and it really varies by whether the franchise location is profitable and the person does production now in a revenue share model you and I first connected because I happened to notice that you were talking about the fact that you were blown away from your revenue share checks compared to what you used to see in the other world. Let’s talk about that for a couple minutes.

Nicki: Yeah my post that I made that I think your are referring to is.. I’m a little shocked because I you know I was at KW all these years. And the first couple of years I was there I worked really diligently on recruiting and I got a couple of good checks and then you know lead dwindled down to I think my biggest one last year I can’t remember. It was like 120. I think under 150 most checks are my last one I got was 18 dollars. OK. So this system works a little differently in which you’re getting paid off the top that’s the revenue share. And honestly I underestimated what my checks would be. And my last I don’t remember what it was when I posted it but it ended up at the end of the month being about 14.44. Right at that. So the way I’m looking at that. To me I’m working at EXP for free. It’s you know you take your cap and you figure with that is per month. Again why would somebody not want to do it now. You know anything more than that they’re paying me to work there to be there. To me he brokered by them so I was amazed.

Kevin: Most people don’t realize and people listening to this may not have a good perspective on and I come from the same franchise system and there’s nothing wrong with Keller Williams it’s an excellent well led company they have great agents there but they live by the formula and the structure they’ve set up. So the story you just heard is not an outlier. There are plenty of people even people with large amounts of people in profit share that don’t make very much money. You’re dependent on the particular market center or market centers to be profitable person and not be capped at it all to occur at the same time and it doesn’t mean you won’t receive profit sharing or certainly not representing that. But what I can tell you very definitively is there are plenty of people that have success in the profit sharing system that now come over and been around longer than Nicki has and they are typically at about 10 times the pay out. And you after a couple of months are already at ten times what you were making before. And it goes up from there. In other words because it’s so much of a larger number off the top and it’s certainly not representing that everybody gets the same results. Right. You know you have to have an agent. They’ve got to be in production. But this is not a typical right. You can look at the formula and you can make your own calculation. Her comment of it being a surprise as to how much bigger it was and how quickly is not anything other than her success in attracting people to the company and people asking that question because I’m sure your phone rang when you made that announcement you’re moving in they’re like whoa wait wait you’re going to be why? And then that resulted in some initial retraction and then because you’re visible in your market you have influence more agents came over and that number will typically for most of the people including everybody we’ve interviewed on these podcast episodes grow over time. But for tying this down it’s not unusual that it doesn’t happen very quickly right. If you’re influential in your market or you are active in your market production you’re going to have people right off the bat don’t be surprised if it’s not the first week or two that they ring your phone and say I want to talk to you. I don’t know how quickly it happened for you but I bet it was quick.

Nicki: A day.

Kevin: I have another guest it’s coming up in an upcoming episode. He’s on the East Coast and he said if I didn’t have a conversation with somebody in the first couple of days I was getting a text or another message saying well you don’t like me how come you’re not going to call me and talk to me about why you went over the EXP.

Nicki: Yep. Well I don’t know if it’s typical but that is what happened to so. Exactly.

Kevin: It’s a pretty interesting and fun dynamic. And you know just for comparison I gave you the examples listeners that you know people were joining EXP in Dallas a couple of years ago and there were you know 16 14 15 agents something like that and now it’s over a hundred you know they have markets like San Diego they went from somewhat the neighborhood of 15 or 20 to 100 in 30 days. So it tends to accelerate quickly. Don’t get confuse that if you’re a particular market whether it’s large or small it doesn’t have a big presence of EXP agents. That’s not the norm for it to stay like that very long. In terms of any other things you want somebody to know about EXP and sort of what you know now that you’ve been here for a couple of months. Any other takeaways that if somebody… doesn’t matter if they are at Keller Williams and a franchise like you and I were or they’re just an independent agent what would you suggest that from a due diligence standpoint they should be paying attention to.

Nicki: I mean probably a little bit more for team leaders but also solo agents and that’s the fact that you are not you know with the profit share we weren’t really you know geographically limited but it did have that going on as far as my experience a little bit more but the opportunity here where I think it’s going to really.. I mean it already is taking off but I think.. I keep telling my team you watch when everyone starts to understand that they can grow that revenue share anywhere. They’re not limited to their market. So yes the market locally here is growing fast and this is a huge opportunity for us. But the fact that we’re not limited really to this market and that we can… I mean there’s we can.. any agent anywhere you know you can put in your revenue share so. When people start to get that I think it’s going to blow up when they really start to get that.

Kevin: Absolutely I was a team leader like Gene Frederic in the Keller Williams system right so I can speak to this directly. I mean the norm for how I would receive an agent that would I’d be in discussions with me as a team leader was much more heavily weighted in the local market and in the process was set up and oriented around that. Right? I was in South Florida and I would from my own agents in my market center get the vast majority of any kind of referrals. Every once in a while they be somebody coming in that was referred from somewhere else. But that was certainly not the norm. Now if you listen to interviews on this podcast it doesn’t matter if it’s Pat Hayes or Mitch Riback or Gene they’ll talk to you about the fact that their revenue sharing group if you will is now multi state and also in the provinces of Canada and in the case of many of them they didn’t have any direct relationship with a lot of those agents. In other words Pat said I haven’t directly interfaced with any of the agents although I’ve helped people that are in Canada for example or a lot of these states and he’s that I think in his case he was in you know some worries about 800 agents now and his revenue share and they’re in like 33 states including two provinces of Canada in addition to that. So what Nicki is talking about is a phenomenon that EXP is very distinctly growing agent agent. In other words the islands of a franchise system like I used to run of the market center where the vast majority of the opportunities are presented to a team later and they convert and it could take a while right. Or it may not convert. It’s very different than for example Kevin or Nicki having somebody that we’ve done a referral with in Nebraska or Florida and or we know them from a C or S training event or some other thing or Gnomon line. Right. And they’ve they’ve heard about EXP and now they see that Kevin or Nicki announced they’ve joined the company and they ask questions. They’re much more likely because of the process by which they’re onboard it at EXP to convert. And it’s a whole different thing than what occurs in a franchise system and so what what I’ve done is kind of restated the dynamic that Nicki is talking about and it is something that until you see it start to happen agent agent and sort of virally from a social standpoint I don’t think you’re going to have a good perspective on it. It is not unusual for somebody to be with the company for a year or two years at least half if they have a decent sized revenue share group. They’ve been purposeful about it. They brought in their own set of some number of agents. They then will have agents in multiple states. It’s almost like they have their own little virtual region as a Gene Frederic and I like to call it anything else we haven’t covered today and then I’m going to have you get your contact information in case anybody wants to reach you.

Nicki: I mean again and or just everyday we say that we’re just blown away every day like we say mind blown every day because there’s so much more we could cover but we’re talking about mostly revenue share right now. But I mean just the fact that they make the splits to where people can afford to be on a team you know which is where some people need to be to get the idea that they need you know to learn the business. I could go on and on. It’s been a big blessing for my team and for my family. Now we’re happy.

Kevin: Great. I mean some of the stuff that like you said we can go on and on about is the company is highly highly focused like you are on productivity and lead generation right they’re set up to support either solo practitioners or producers and teams both from the standpoint of the CAP system the splits and the ability to structure correct and then the tools right. As a matter if it’s the technology tools including things like conversion are core or anything else is in my opinion second to none. So if you’re an agent out there listen to this and you are productivity based and you are serious about your business you owe it to yourself to dig into it you know and go back to the person who introduced you to EXP. If you want to talk to somebody within the company ask them to find you somebody that’s a peer producer whether you’re a solo producer or a big producer or with a team you’re a rainmaker or listen to this. There are plenty of us right does matter if I get the call. If Nicki gets a call or Gene Frederic or Pat Hays no matter who it is you’ll hear it on every one of these guest episodes. We’re all here to help you make the right decision. We’re not perfect for everybody as far as a fit but we certainly are perfect for a large majority of the real estate producers. All right so once you give them your contact information just somebody listens and they want to reach you.

Nicki: OK. You can reach my cell phone 806 316 4498 and you can reach me by email. Nicki.Gregory r@exprealty.com Those probably the best two ways to get me quickly.

Kevin: Excellent well thank you for coming on the show.

Nicki: I appreciate it. Thank you so much.