Brandon Brinningham (4:44)

I said that today, by the way.

Glenn Sanford (4:49)

So I recognize this. But I also ran a very high production real estate team. So I'm sure a lot of people watching are also run real estate teams. And teams generally they've got way better since I was running teams. But back then you typically didn't see many teams that got above about, you know, 12 to 15 agents. They get there and then there'd be a defection of a group saying lead generation must be way easier than I think it is. I'm going to go start thing.

Brandon Brinningham (5:15)

Yeah.

Glenn Sanford (5:15)

And they. And of course they'd all crash. Crash.

Brandon Brinningham (5:18)

Yeah.

Glenn Sanford (5:19)

But. But I ended up with six teams all that would sort of run up against this. And I'm like, this is this revolving door of agents. Doesn't make sense. And so I did say if we ever built something, I would build it so that agents would have an incentive to continue to build an income for me as a team leader even after they graduate off the team. So that was kind of in the mix.

Brandon Brinningham (5:45)

That was the early idea.

Glenn Sanford (5:47)

Yeah, yeah. But a lot of times you can't put early ideas into motion until there's an opportunity. And the opportunity was the crash.

Brandon Brinningham (5:57)

Right.

Glenn Sanford (5:57)

So the crash came. 0808.

Brandon Brinningham (5:59)

Yeah.

Glenn Sanford (6:01)

So I had four physical offices. We were getting ready to open a couple more and then the crash happened and we quickly had to close three of them. Fortunately, we had good terms on our leases because we were expecting to actually add office space, not reduce. But we kept our leases really short. So we got out of all the leases and at that point, I look at my cell phone. In 2008, you finally had 3.3G. Right. Which was actually fairly fast. Back then we had cable Internet in every home in America. And for the prior five years, six years in the industry, all these real estate gurus talked about the virtual real estate brokerage and the agents would be entirely mobile. But nobody built that platform. I loved Keller Williams in that I love the promise of profit share, meaning they have a seven level profit share system. We have a seven level revenue share system. But the problem was is the bricks and mortar eats up all the profit, kills it. Yeah, yeah. So there was no profit really being shared in the system. But I said if we can get rid of the physical bricks and mortar, we can go entirely mobile. We can give agents a better split and cap. We can share a portion of that savings back with agents and brokers, the leadership. I really think that fundamentally the reason why we continue to win is because we're incenting 1099 independent contractors to take on the leadership and recruiting component that you can't scale through W2 employment very well. And that was the premise that I think this will work. I think it would work for me. I got rid of the teams because I didn't want to be competing. So we just, we had lots of great SEO generating tens of thousands of leads a year. But for me, it's like this was kind of the next iteration of what I thought it was going to. What was going to work. And knock on wood, it was a total science experiment, but it worked.

Brandon Brinningham (8:08)

Yeah, that's fascinating. But you had to go through a period of beta.

Glenn Sanford (8:15)

Right.

Brandon Brinningham (8:16)

But there had to Be a time in that where you were doing this, where you were kind of like, I don't know if this is going to work. Right. Like, maybe your back got put against the wall, you're having some problems. Like. Right. Because it was kind of. It took some time before it caught on.

Glenn Sanford (8:30)

Right or wrong. Yeah.

Brandon Brinningham (8:32)

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Glenn Sanford (9:14)

I'm an optimist, so I always believe in whatever I'm doing. So, you know, I'm sometimes to a fault.

Brandon Brinningham (9:21)

Yeah.

Glenn Sanford (9:22)

And you don't know if you're right or wrong until you crash and burn. So for me, I knew it had all the ingredients for people like me. And I call myself a focus group of one to get excited about it. My back against the wall like we burnt the boats. I told the team, if we're going to ask our agents to work 100% remote, we have to work 100% remote. And I went to the team late September, we launched the XBN.

Brandon Brinningham (9:57)

And when was this?

Glenn Sanford (9:58)

This is 2009.

Brandon Brinningham (9:59)

2009.

Glenn Sanford (10:00)

So late September, I said, you guys are taking your computers home with you. We're going to work entirely remote. This is going to work or it's not going to work. And if it doesn't work, we're all looking for work. So that was my motivational speech to the team. Everybody showed up in our virtual office as avatars on October 6th, and we started just knocking it out. And we never had a month where we had fewer agents than we had the month before. We had two months where we had exactly the same number of agents, but we grew and I'd done my projections and I knew that with the model that we had at that point in time, if we get to 300 agents, then we could be sustainable on that model. And so we worked at it, added agents every month, and a few years later, we're getting up into really didn't even pass 300 agents till like 20. 2014, 2013. So from.

Brandon Brinningham (11:01)

So it took you from 2009 to 14 to get to.

Glenn Sanford (11:04)

Yeah, 13 or 14.

Brandon Brinningham (11:06)

Yeah, yeah.

Glenn Sanford (11:06)

So it was a bit of a grind.

Brandon Brinningham (11:09)

Right.

Glenn Sanford (11:11)

And I had other small businesses around it that one of them. We were probably the number one SEO team in the country. So we started to market SEO services to other agents around the country. We didn't want to because we were really good at it, but that's. That's how we sell that. Then we funnel the money back in.

Brandon Brinningham (11:36)

Got another profit center.

Glenn Sanford (11:37)

Yeah, yeah. And so that we could get to. To some sort of scale. And then eventually the infrastructure got enough infrastructure got in place that, you know, then we started to attract some people who saw what this infrastructure meant for their abilities to come and join us on the journey. And then, you know, 20. 2015 was the first, you know, you know, we went from 400 to 800, 800 to 20, 420, 400 to, you know, 13 or 16,000. So I mean, we did this like, super, super rocket ship.

Brandon Brinningham (12:08)

So the. You went 2400 to how many?

Glenn Sanford (12:12)

Like something like. Well, 8000.

Brandon Brinningham (12:15)

Yeah, 8000. And that was in 12 months?

Glenn Sanford (12:17)

That was in 12 months.

Brandon Brinningham (12:18)

So some stuff broke, I would imagine.

Glenn Sanford (12:20)

Oh, yeah, we, like, everything was broke. Like anytime you double something in size every six to nine months, like all the systems that used to work don't work anymore. So we were continually having to either break it early because we knew it would break, or it broke and we needed to fix it. So it was a lot of duct tape and baling wire.

Brandon Brinningham (12:42)

So do you. Looking back, do you ever. Did you ever think it would be as big as it is?

Glenn Sanford (12:49)

I don't think. I. I didn't know what the number would be because in my mind at that point we, as a single brokerage, no single brokerage, had grown over about 40 or 50,000 agents. And almost all of those were done through acquisition.

Brandon Brinningham (13:06)

Right.

Glenn Sanford (13:06)

So that was nrt, Berkshire Hathaway Home Services, and. And then you had some organic growth, Home Smart, and a couple others that got up into the 10,000 plus range. So for me, I was thinking, you know, that, you know, anything over 10,000 was a home run. Right. And so that was. That was a number I felt good about. And. But as we start, you know, approached it fairly quickly then in 2020, actually 2019, I think we went over. But. But by the time we, we, we got there, we knew that we were on this hockey stick. So we knew we're going way past it, but 10,000 was, for me, a number that, you know, obviously still was a game changer in terms of just size.

Brandon Brinningham (13:52)

Yeah. Yeah. So obviously you probably learned, you know, how many lessons, but if you could go back to, I mean, I know, and you could speak for hours on this, but what do you think is one of the biggest lessons you learned that was either in a failure or a pivot towards your success, where you were like, I can tie something back to this decision I either made good or bad.

Glenn Sanford (14:18)

Yeah. So I think So I started exp when I was 42. And I only mentioned that because I think by the time you're 42, if you've been a diligent entrepreneur, you've probably made most of the mistakes before you got there. Yeah, okay. No doubt. So, so, so by the time I got to 42, I'd figured out motivations P and LS. Like, I, I, I'd figured out a lot of the stuff that would need to be in a successful startup. And it wasn't really a startup because it was really, you know, seven years in the making from the time I got in the business till then. But, but some of the decisions that I'd made earlier in my career was if you have a vision, don't get distracted by smarter people.

Brandon Brinningham (15:12)

That's good.

Glenn Sanford (15:14)

There's a lot of people who have experience and they're experts. If they've never done what you want to do, there's no way they can advise you.

Brandon Brinningham (15:26)

Really. Well, that was going to be my question. So is that in the sense of you came to people with your, with this idea and you had the vision, oh, that's not going to work.

Glenn Sanford (15:35)

Yeah. Like countless experts told me, this won't work. It can't be done. Nobody's ever done it. And I hired a number of experts. Really. I hired some experts, really, starting in around 20, 15, 16. And I figured out that I really wanted generalists, not experts. Now there's certain you want some domain expertise, but you don't want, like, for me, having somebody who'd come from traditional large brokerage, this just so outside of.

Brandon Brinningham (16:17)

It, they didn't understand. Yeah, they didn't get it.

Glenn Sanford (16:18)

Yeah, yeah. So, so we churned through a bunch of experts and then realized that we really needed, we needed generalists that were willing to be creative and learn on the go.

Brandon Brinningham (16:32)

Yeah, yeah, that's, man, that is, that's, that's, that's a piece of gold right there. I've never heard someone frame that the way you did. I'm a believer of a lot of times the biggest strides I've made in business is when people told me it was a bad idea.

Glenn Sanford (16:49)

Right. Because they were an expert. Right.

Brandon Brinningham (16:51)

Yeah. If you were to think about something, what do you think is the biggest mistake you made in growing this company?

Glenn Sanford (16:59)

Well, some of it was hiring experts, so certainly that ended up causing some challenges. I wouldn't say there's been a lot of, like, major mistakes.

Brandon Brinningham (17:15)

Yeah.

Glenn Sanford (17:17)

You know, we. But we've had definitely growing pains. Like we. We got early on in our history. You know, we ended up getting somebody pulled the authority scam on our. Our accounting team. And so we wired money to some scammer that we never got back.

Brandon Brinningham (17:32)

Yeah.

Glenn Sanford (17:33)

And I. And there may have been like, you know, some agents that were with us that we kept on too long, so. Because they caused us reputational damage, that type of thing. So they're just. Just general stuff. But I think for the most part, there wasn't any major, major mistakes. Now it's stressful as hell building something, you know, to this.

Brandon Brinningham (17:59)

Yeah.

Glenn Sanford (18:00)

Yeah.

Brandon Brinningham (18:00)

100%.

Glenn Sanford (18:02)

The one thing I can tell you is that if you're doing something really radically different and people start to recognize that it's grow, there's a ton of people who will try to strip parts of it away from you.

Brandon Brinningham (18:14)

Sure.

Glenn Sanford (18:15)

And try to take credit for it.

Brandon Brinningham (18:17)

Yeah.

Glenn Sanford (18:19)

And. And even though they had nothing to do with it.

Brandon Brinningham (18:22)

Yeah.

Glenn Sanford (18:23)

No.

Brandon Brinningham (18:23)

100%. Do you think that you're. Do you think your answer to that is partly because, number one, how you. How you. Your outlook of being an optimist. And then number two of this whole thing was a beta until it wasn't.

Glenn Sanford (18:35)

Yeah. Well, we still talk about this still being in beta because I think the idea is how do you continue to be a day one company the moment that you're out of beta and your product is fixed, your product starts to get stale. So for me, I'm still every day playing with a new tool, technology, idea, brainstorm, and I'm a huge mind mapper. So I mind map, like everything. Yeah. And now I would say because of AI, now I'm not mind mapping as much because AI is now my sort of strategic business partner.

Brandon Brinningham (19:15)

Sure.

Glenn Sanford (19:16)

But being able to take ideas and mix them together in unique ways that haven't been done before. At some level, everything's been solved by somebody else. But usually not in the thing you're trying to do. But if you can look at a different industry. Just the other day I was just reading an Article which they asked this to a business school student. So I don't know the exact. But what are the slaughterhouses in Chicago? What does quick drying gloss have to do? And what is the Singer Sewing Company and how they sold their sewing machines? What do they have in common? Yeah, it was the model T car. It was the slaughterhouse, the factory line. It was the quick drying black lacquer on cars. So basically the idea that you can have any color you want as long as it's in black. And then it was the franchise system to sell the automobiles and that was what, what Ford was. They took three different things that were being done and combined it and that's what created his, his, you know, massive success.

Brandon Brinningham (20:38)

Yeah.

Glenn Sanford (20:39)

So for us it's like, hey, the cloud's coming. So it's not like any, anybody didn't know it was coming. Right. You know, so everybody and, and, and Keller had already sort of proven up that profit share is a driver of attraction for agents. People want to be included in, even if it's the illusion of profit. They like the idea of being involved. And then where does all the various other tech pieces that can kind of get in the mix there and then nobody had ever taken the approach like if you think about it as a team leader, you are doing all the things that a broker owner does. You're recruiting, you're training, you're supporting compliance, doing compliance, the whole nine yards. So why not turn all those things over to the people who are probably better at it than the broker owner?

Brandon Brinningham (21:30)

100%. Yeah.

Glenn Sanford (21:31)

So. And nobody had done that before either. So those are, you know, you bring those three things together and all of a sudden you've got this new model. And now every new model that's come out in the last five years has been basically a copy of EXP Yeah.

Brandon Brinningham (21:45)

I want to ask you two more questions and for those of you that listen to this, you know I always ask the same question last, but I'm going to change it today because I think it's important. So you said your vision and obviously visions change, but did EXP AS exist today? Maybe not by the numbers of scale, but does it look like what your original vision was.

Glenn Sanford (22:12)

Generally speaking? Generally speaking because the thing we were trying to solve for was the revolving door for agents, for the teams recognizing that agents are entrepreneurs and are attracted to ways to leverage their abilities through sort of a network marketing style comp plan of attracting other agents, other like minded folks. So I think that all, like, I think most of it is actually very aligned with the original vision.

Brandon Brinningham (22:45)

Yeah. Hey. This next segment is brought to you by Paramount Property Tax Appeal. And these are guys that I trust. My good friend Wes over there.

Glenn Sanford (22:53)

There.

Brandon Brinningham (22:53)

If you're overpaying for your property taxes, Paramount Property Tax Appeal specializes in helping commercial property owners and homeowners reduce their tax bills, ensuring that you only pay your fair share. These guys are going to fight for you. And these are the guys that I trust. You can reach my good friend Wes. Their contact information is 310-897-5056 or Wes pptaxappeal.com that's wes@pptaxappeal.com so I mean there's, I mean there's no, you can't debate this. Right. Like, it's facts, it's data. So you change real estate forever. Right. Like, I mean you were the. It's cemented, it's your, like it's your. You've cemented a legacy. Think about how many people and like you've made wealthy.

Glenn Sanford (23:41)

Right.

Brandon Brinningham (23:42)

Agents. Right, right. That never would have had this opportunity. Like, do you, have you actually taken time to sit in the, like, part of your legacy as you've changed real estate in the United States forever?

Glenn Sanford (23:57)

Yes, I have. I work home office like everybody else.

Brandon Brinningham (24:02)

Yeah.

Glenn Sanford (24:03)

And I think that the one significant benefit to that is it keeps me pretty humble relative to those who are sort of surrounded by a whole bunch of people in an tower somewhere.

Brandon Brinningham (24:17)

Yeah.

Glenn Sanford (24:17)

Telling them they're, you know, whatever.

Brandon Brinningham (24:20)

Yeah.

Glenn Sanford (24:21)

And so for me, I just, I go to work every day like everybody else. Like it's not, there's not like my day really probably doesn't look that different than your day now. You might have an office or something. But. Yeah, but, but the work's still the same. But, but then I will hear people and they'll come up to me and they'll tell me those stories of, you know, somebody got in a car accident, somebody had this happen. They were able to put their kids through college, they were able to do some, some major thing. The, the, I mean, obviously we've got people who, who are making money. That's just crazy, crazy large that even for Rev.

Brandon Brinningham (24:58)

Share.

Glenn Sanford (24:59)

Yeah.

Brandon Brinningham (24:59)

From Revshire, to be clear. Yeah.

Glenn Sanford (25:00)

Yeah. That, that even they're blown away by. And they were successful in some other thing. But for me, it's the, it is the, the agent who normally would not have had the opportunity to scale a business because they aren't wired to build a business. Right. And, and yet they need the benefits of a business in order to create legacy for Their family.

Brandon Brinningham (25:26)

Yeah. And correct me if I'm wrong on this, but just being here for the short time that I've had and the experience I've had, I feel like the lens that you've looked at it through the entire time is how do we improve the life of the agent?

Glenn Sanford (25:38)

It is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get some heat from different people, even board members, quite frankly, that think I don't pay attention to the Invest the Street, Wall Street. We've never taken money from Wall Street.

Brandon Brinningham (25:55)

Right.

Glenn Sanford (25:55)

We've never raised money through an IPO or anything else. They can buy our stock and you can look at the cap table. There's a lot of institutions now that own EXP stock, but they did it by choice. I didn't go pitch them to go buy our stock so that we could fund some initiative inside the company. But the, for me, the nice thing about it is I'm not. One company right now is rumored to be selling a big portion of their company to private equity. And I won't mention it. It'll come out in the news. But they're supposed to be agent centric. And when private equity owns you, you know they're going to change what your company does 100%. You look at other companies and, and the, the people running it own such a small percentage and they've never sold real estate and they're supposed to be building an agent centric company. And I don't know how they do that when they raised $15 million from this person and $25 million from this person and they've got some of those people on their board and they're going to be sitting there focused on profit maximization rather than agent experience. And the best way to kill long term profitability is not take care of your most important asset, which is your customer.

Brandon Brinningham (27:12)

Yeah, I cheated. I said I was only going to ask you one more question, but I'm fascinated by listening to you. But this will be the last one. What gets you excited now? Like what, what gets you excited?

Glenn Sanford (27:23)

So, you know, right now I'm working on international, you know, and so we're adding, you know, three, four, five countries. You know, this year we've announced three. We'll probably have another couple that will announce pretty soon. I'm excited about changing the lives of agents who even have it worse than agents in North America, US and Canada. If you're an agent here, we're blessed.

Brandon Brinningham (27:49)

You compared to the rest of the world. They don't understand. Oh yeah, yeah, I get it.

Glenn Sanford (27:53)

Yeah, yeah. And, and so really focusing on, you know, taking back control of their ability to market properties internationally, giving them a platform where they can actually build long term retirement income and residuals and equity ownership. Like, you know, we're, we're just, you know, we grew this last year by 72% in Q4 over Q4 internationally, you know, and, and that's. So we've got this acceleration that's starting to kick in internationally. And so we're just on the front end of the hockey stick that we had in the U.S. canada. Yeah. And we're getting ready to do that internationally. So I'm excited. It's, it's a lot of work, but it's, it's also my, it's also what I enjoy doing. Yeah, I've got a few, few hobbies outside of work related activities, but I enjoy building, impacting people's lives, being of service and that's just kind of what I do.

Brandon Brinningham (28:50)

Well, thank you so much, man. I'm probably going to have to go home and like listen to this again because I'm listening to it in real time, but I want to absorb it. I mean, there is no question, it's not debatable. I mean, you've changed real estate forever and I thank you for that. And I know there's a bunch of people in my audience that will thank you for that. And I really appreciate you being on the show today. Thank you.

Glenn Sanford (29:11)

Awesome. Thanks, Brandon. Appreciate it.

Brandon Brinningham (29:15)

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Glenn Sanford (30:04)

We sure do appreciate it.

Brandon Brinningham (30:05)

If you haven't done so already, make sure you're subscribed to the show wherever you consume. Podcast this way you'll get up to updates as new episodes become available. And if you feel so inclined, please leave us a review on Apple podcast and tell your friends about the show. It is how new people find us. Until next time.