Sean Purcell – Former Keller Williams Productivity Coach & Independent Broker moves to eXp Realty

Sean Purcell – Interview

In this episode joining us is Sean Purcell. Sean started in the real estate market back in 1987 when he was in college and has been in most aspects of the industry including home building, loans, residential real estate and moving on to becoming a coach and a productivity coach with Keller Williams.

Sean talks to us about his decision to leave the franchise system and becoming an owner of a fast growing company. He gives us his prospective on EXP from an agent stand point and an independent broker that made the decision to move to the agent centric model of EXP. 

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:

• How to become an owner of a company that is getting bigger
• EXP is agent owned and agent centric. 
• EXP brings phenomenal technology to the forefront for the agents to use.
• Income, wealth building opportunities and equity differences between the EXP and the franchise system.
• Advice and steps on due diligence.
• The power of EXP is most times not apparent from the outside. How to really get informed about EXP

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 Sean to inquire or ask questions.
Contact Sean via email at Sean@thriveestate.com
Contact Sean via phone at 619 993 9888.

Noteworthy

“Before EXP when you stopped showing homes you stopped making money. This is an actual retirement equity building company you could be a part of.” Sean Purcel 

PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

KEVIN: Welcome to the show Sean.

SEAN: Thanks Kevin it’s great to be here.

KEVIN: While I’m looking forward to our conversation I’ve certainly have always watched you and your career in San Diego area and was excited to see you make the decision to come over DXP realty but before somebody who’s listening maybe doesn’t know your background hasn’t heard of you before. Why don’t you take a few minutes and give your real estate history. In other words your background in some of the work you’ve done right.

SEAN: Ok. For the people who have a hard time sleeping at night. I started in real estate out of college back in 1987 and I’ve been in pretty much every aspect other than Title. I’ve done the loans I’ve done home building, primarily I’ve done real estate residential. I’d say about five or six years ago I started coaching agents more than I was doing real estate itself. And about three and a half years ago joined Keller Williams and became what’s called a productivity coach there and really starting up with the job of coaching agents that became my career. Until we left Keller Williams my wife and I was a team leader and started our own brokerage. We want to do things a little differently and we thought we’re the only ones who had this idea about it should be about collaboration and it’s about helping one another and having ownership in what you do and in the community. And along comes the EXP was a fantastic surprise.

KEVIN: Well it’s excellent so you’re a productivity coach. I was a team leader at Keller Williams Your wife was a team leader. You know one of the things the whole industry has always touted right? Everybody said it but I want to get your perspective on it now that you’ve been an independent broker which you and your wife launched in 2017 but when you look at an agent centric business this truly agent centric an agent owned this is different than what the franchises call an agent centric business isn’t it.

SEAN: Absolutely. The matter of fact I think what EXP is doing is the second major disruption in the industry. This is just my theory but the agent centered model that really Gary Keller brought to the forefront. That disrupted the broker centric model to a large degree and changed Real Estate and I see EXP coming along and saying it’s not just agents centric it’s owners the agents should own the company. That’s a massive disruption.

KEVIN: Well I would agree with you. You know for those of us… and I was with Keller Williams for a long time and had a career there Gene-Frederic was there for a long time. And so we spent a lot of time talking about the franchise model and you know kind of dissecting the moniker around agent centric business. Now you can say you’re an agent centric national franchise or global franchise allow the agent to have their brand right the Kevin control team and that’s what it says on my sign. But at the end of the day if a top down… you know the franchise or parent company and all of the things are driven from the top and none of the agents own anything in the business it’s not really an agent centric business. You can call it what you want but when we were there we certainly espoused that. I’m sure your wife did as well and it was a moniker and a message that was well-received in the market. I agree with you it was highly disruptive right. We saw them open a tremendous amount of market centers and they’re a great company. But I think that what’s going to become clear and it’s already clear is they’re not really age centric right. People that just went to family reunion got to hear a three hour speech where Gary Keller told his vision of the world and what he’s doing that wasn’t based on Agent decisions. It’s not an agent owned business and again it’s a great company. There’s nothing wrong with that but if you’re under that flag and you buy into that just know you’re not an agent centric business. Gary Keller and others are making decisions for you and you get to live under the decisions that they make right? He announced they are a technology company I think. Up till that point in family reunion the vast majority of the agents thought they were working for a real estate company. They also had a focus on consulting and coaching and training. Well they were told they’re working for a technology company. The EXP realty is not confused. The founder of our company is not confused. We’re a real estate company so I think the acceleration of the disruption is going to occur because many many many agents especially in that franchise system are going to realize that they don’t want to run their real estate practice in a company that’s confused about what they do and it is heading down the path of being a technology company and they want to do that the go work for Amazon right? That’s a technology company. Or work for Google. With my real estate practice I know with yours, we didn’t go seeking a technology company to hang our license with. We want a place that we can grow. Sean from your perspective you’re a productivity coach. You look at sort of the next evolution you talked about it being the eruption right in the market. What was your thought as an independent broker right. Your wife was a team leader you were a productivity coach out there in the marketplace. You had a great launch of your independent brokerage. Walk me through what the decision was to say you know what maybe we need to make a change and become powered by the EXP as an independent broker.

SEAN: Well we had obviously heard of the EXP. This is how it happened so often the number of large teams here in our area moved over to it and that really made us take a hard look at people I respect who are doing a lot of business success are joining EXP. We need to look at it and the more we got into it it’s satisfied at the surface two things we really wanted to do which was give our agents the best chance to do business and our industry is being squeezed by technology. If you’re not using the best tools you’re going to get the hot new EXP brings phenomenal technology to the forefront for the agents to use. So that’s what opens in a door. But after that once we really started exploring the revenue share is a model that creates a new stream of income for agents that doesn’t exist in any of the other large brokerages. And then the really important part of this the part that it takes time sometimes to really get an agent to see it but it’s the ownership.. You know you said that the agent centered model was really agent centric and you’re putting a very very fine point on that. It’s something that I hadn’t thought about when when they came along and disrupted with it came a lot with the agency model, it was with the look backwards. It meant the brokers aren’t going to make all the money now. Out of the real estate transaction but it didn’t really put the agent in control of the business and certainly didn’t give you a reason to cheer and work with the help of their agents. Were as here anybody in the EXP world does better by definition we do better. We looked at that and said this is going to change how it’s being done. It’s coming through as a force and either we’re going to get involved and be a part of this or I think we’re going to get it right.

KEVIN: And those are points that as an outsider right you said something that’s important for listeners to hear. And I’ll repeat a couple of the points. One is you knew about the EXP but until you dug into it you maybe didn’t know anything other than the observation that in the Kellems parlance cappers and Magas and big teams are moving and other people outside of even the franchise systems are moving and it wasn’t until you dug in that you start to see about that. I’ve had every independent broker I had come on and I’ll ask you the same question from a competitive landscape standpoint because we have a number of independent brokers that are like this podcast interview. How concerned were you and your wife as a former team leader about email to recruit as an independent against the value proposition.

SEAN: Once we got into it. One of the primary questions I asked her and my wife she was a teenager like you. That’s a professional recruiter. I said Can you recruit against this. She said no what they’re offering agents I can’t recruit against. That was a big eye opener.

KEVIN: What’s interesting now and we have example after example of this I’m not going to be a number of episodes that people ability to listen to and Sherry Elliott is one of them that they’ll see if they want to search for it and look for it was a mega agent with a team from Keller Williams she’s in Flower Mount outside of Dallas and she has huge success with it right. She was a very very high producing successful agent and when she found the value proposition I think she was the 14th agent in Dallas. We have 800 agents in Dallas now. So if you’re listening to that and you’re in a market like Sean’s market in San Diego there aren’t 800 agents there yet but certainly it’s pretty easy to connect the dots now in Sherri’s case, she’s built a revenue share business that’s in the mid six figures and growing in less than two years. The thing that blew me away when I heard this quote is She takes 5 % of her commission and buys EXP stock and she’s been doing that since month 1 when she joined and she gets it at a discount that’s offered in terms of the value proposition you get as the EXP agent buy her 20% of the market. This is so strategic and most agents are like well that sounds interesting right? I’ve had agents tell me this. Well let me tell you what it’s done for her. And then we ask you how interesting it is after less than two years. She just announced that without paying attention to it just automatically diverting the 5 %. And here’s the reality most agents wouldn’t even save that 5 %. Thats is the Achilles heel of real estate. We’re all busy and we don’t save what we should be saving. She has seven hundred thousand dollars in her equity account in the EXP stock in less than two years. So I would ask anybody for a franchise system either the one we just discussed or another one with a balloon or where you are independent have you accumulated seven hundred thousand dollars in equity in two years. The answer is no. If you don’t like that figure you’re like oh that’s an aberration. I was in a lunch and learn in Austin yesterday another agent less than two years here in Austin. Not nearly the producer at Sheri as you and I have a big team she said. I have a one hundred fifty five thousand dollars in equity in my account less in two years so I consider that the big game changer. If you’re a franchise system the system is not set up to provide you with equity. That’s certainly why Shawn were you and your wife look at this and they’re like you want to and your passion about accepting your messaging changing the lives of agents. You want to help people create wealth. And I think that you’re new enough to EXP that frankly your job probably drop when I just recited those 2 numbers. But those are one of hundreds of them now. And so the game changer in the industry that I expect will happen is there’s plenty of people now just like you and your wife will be on in another couple of years they’re going to be able to show the actual numbers. We got plenty of the show the numbers now. But now imagine recruits looking out and going well I’m in this franchise system. I’m not sure oh well why don’t you go talk to Sean why don’t go talk to Sherri. Why don’t you go talk to Chrissy. Why don’t you talk to whoever you want to Pat Hays in San Antonio and you have demonstrable numbers where people can go well this is what my life looked like when I was in the franchise system. This is what it looks like now. You’re at a decision point. We’re not right for everybody but if you like your net worth and your streams of income to look like mine I don’t know how you do it where you are. And that is frankly… the technology makes it happen but that’s the game changer. There is no other wealth creation business and Gene Frederick and I met with somebody who is been on the Hall of Fame in Inman and she made the comment she said I teach Wealth to Real Estate and Mortgage Professionals in my opinion. This is the only value proposition meaning EXP realty that I would ever endorse.. ever.. as a wealth creation vehicle because that is frankly my frustration of trying to teach real estate professionals how to build wealth. There hasn’t ever been a model that allows them to do it.

SEAN: Completely agree. I think from an independent brokerage model. Just the just the EXP alone in real estate is enough that agents should be joining the between the technology and the fun and I didn’t even mention the support on the back it mean to have people standing behind a desk in the virtual world for technology for Broker questions for agents services for accounting. You can’t even get that in a lot of large agencies. So just those tools the alone makers come aboard support your real estate business. Then you start realizing what you can do with revenue share or what you can do with the ownership. I don’t want to recruit agents. That’s great. You’re a phenomenal Real Estate Agent. Be it. Take 5 %. What most companies would charge as a franchise fee. Take that money and invest it yourself and grow with the company. Otherwise… we have a great agent on here named Mary Maloney who is part of a large group that came to EXP and she was doing a luncheon and she got up in front of a bunch of agents and said I don’t want to die on a listing appointment. I want to be able to retire at some point. And that’s the problem. Before DXP when you stopped showing homes you stopped making money. This is an actual retirement equity building company you could be a part of. There’s nothing like it.

KEVIN: Absolutely I would agree with you. So if somebody is an agent or a team leader which is the kind of people as a productivity coach you work with. I mean what would your advice be if you were a friend of yours and you knew them whether they were in the previous franchise system or not. What would you advise them to do. In other words they’re seeing their peers moving what’s the right steps as far as due diligence.

KEVIN: Well the first step is if you see people you respect moving check the time to explore. Don’t close your mind. I would then come to one of the luncheons or the classes where we’re laying out what this is about. Because when you first hear of it there’s so many levels and layers it takes 10 or 15 minutes even get it all into agents. We’ve met with every one of them walked away saying my mind’s exploded. I have to go do research. That’s the next step. Now you’re going to want to go do your own research. That’s great. We just listened to Jason Guessings CEO said “I don’t want any agent come aboard and so they’re absolutely ready”. And this is such a new model and so such a vastly improved model but I really think it needs to go and wrap your head around it. It almost sounds too good to be true. The first time you tell them what’s happened.

KEVIN: And that’s a good point. So for agents that are potentially or even if you’re an independent broker or a team lead for a team the more complicated your business right a solo agent can get introduced to EXP. Talk to whoever introduced you to the EXP or as Sean said go get in touch with somebody that you’re peers maybe you’re at a franchise system you saw somebody you respect completely lets join the EXP you can certainly reach out to them and ask them about it regardless of who introduces you to the EXP. One of the great things Shawn said about the agent centric agent owned culture is anybody in the company from Gene Frederick to myself to Sean to whomever will be happy to help you with your due diligence. Doesn’t matter who introduced you to you EXP that so you’ll be involved with from a revenue share standpoint right there the ones that made the entree and got you involved. But don’t ever confuse the fact that you can’t say look hey I want to talk to Sean. I want to talk to Kevin I want to talk to Pat Hays in San Antonio you’ll listen to some of these interviews. At the end of every interview is contact information we want you to be able to reach out and get the right information. The market is getting more abuzz with misinformation misdirection from some of the franchise systems. We want you to do it best the best available facts we want you to make the right decision. It’s not a perfect fit for everybody. So in order to do that whomever introduced you EXP if you have a medium to highly complicated business let’s say you happen to have a team and you’re doing a fair amount of business it’s mission critical. You do it right. You may want to talk with somebody else. It’s a rainmaker. It could be Sherry Elliott and Dallas you could be Brent Gove in the Sacramento or in Northern California. We will get you in touch with the right people. Just ask whomever introduced you to EXP to make an entree to somebody that is a peer of yours or somebody that’s taking the path before you. You’re an independent broker we have plenty of independent brokers that are available to tell you about how they converted their business and best practices for a powered by EXP solution. Now if you’re a franchise expansion team leader and you’re in 5 10 markets and we’re starting to see a lot of contact from them we want to get you in touch with the Gene Frederick so the world or myself that we can bring the sea level executive team in so we can help you understand because at that level you’re like a C level executive yourself running a big business. We expect a lot of them to convert in the next six to 12 months based on market conditions. If you don’t take a quick pass. I have somebody who’s a Harvard educated guy who has a seven market expansion team. The comment was well he’s going to go look online and get some information and I told the CEO of this company he’s a smart guy. I said What would you venture capitalist tell you if you said him I’m going to move my multi million dollar business and I’m going to do a little research online. He laughed and said I know I’ve got to get him in touch with Gene.

SEAN: I am a Princeton graduate I’m not surprised the Harvard Graduate doesn’t figure it out. You do have to do your your due diligence. This is your career and I’ve been amazed by the number of people that I’ve been able to reach out to like you who will take the time and say here’s how it works. Here’s why it works no matter what level you are. Like you said whether you’re a single agent or you’re running a 150 transaction huge company there’s somebody EXP who’s been at your level and who made the move and it would explain why it benefited.

KEVIN: And that’s something that’s not apparent from the outside. Right?. People are thinking well I can look at a video other I’ll do a google search and I’ll see a video of Gene Frederick they’ll look at the link and they show notes for this episode and see the seven minute intro video just know that whether you’re an agent a team lead for a team and expansion leader or you’re an independent broker. We’ve already taken plenty of people through the due diligence. We’re going to help you understand whether it’s a good fit for you then that’s ultimately your decision. But as Sean mentioned here’s the reality. There are plenty of people to help. It doesn’t matter how you came into the EXP. We’re going to respect the fact that somebody introduced the opportunity to you and we’re going to offer you… because we’re all shareholders and that’s different than a franchise system that’s different than if we’re individually owned and operated a location where they’re almost islands. So I just know that that’s the case so Sean before we let you go any final thoughts before we have you get your contact information out there in case somebody wants to get in touch with you.

SEAN: Just this one I’ve been to a lot of different conventions for a lot of companies including realty brokerages and when they announce an expansion they announce how many new agents they’ve brought on every one cheers. Think that’s great they look like they’re a part of the team. I can’t wait to go to our convention. And when they announced the latest aging count or the expansion going on you’re not just cheering because it’s great news you’re cheering because it benefited you directly. You’re an owner of the company that’s getting bigger. That’s a change.

KEVIN: I agree completely. So if someone wants to get a hold of you Shawn how would they reach you.

SEAN: They can reach me by phone call or text. 619 993 9888. Or they can email me Sean@thriveestate.com

KEVIN: Perfect Sean thank you so much for coming on the show.

SEAN: Absolutely. Kevin It was a pleasure. Thank you.