So you started a brokerage brand and you want to see it grow. But how do you know if it can even sustain the growth you desire, and more importantly if you can?
This article came out of a conversation with Aiden Fishbein had about working together at my old agency. We learned loads about the pitfalls of scalability. And we’ll ultimately discuss how we discovered our previous direction was not ideal.
Not all brands are scalable and not all owners want to assume the role that a scaled brokerage brand requires. Before you blast off and build your wings on the way, it’s essential to take a moment and really think about your brokerage. What stage is it in currently? Where you want it to be? And most importantly, how are you going to it get there?
Sit down with your brokerage brand partners and ask yourself these 3 questions:
- Is your business scalable?
- What’s the best way to scale your brokerage brand?
- Is the way in which your brokerage brand is scalable the way you want your life to look?
It’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of building a massive real estate brokerage with hundreds of agents, but what would that mean for you?
When your brokerage brand grows quickly laterally, it is easy to burnt out, become spread too thin. But when you grow vertically, you maintain the core company structure and the growth is easier to manage.
Beginning without the end in mind can easily put you in a position you never intended to be in when you set out.
“We created jobs for ourselves that we never wanted to do.” – Aiden Fishbein
Are the activities you’re doing, serving your highest purpose?
Before you back yourself into a corner, take some time to get clear on the following things:
- Get intentional and set specific goals to meet – For example “In the next year we want to have agents at x/y% commission split.”
- What type of real estate agents do you want and who isn’t a good fit for your company?
- Do the simple math and forecast what it will take to meet your personal requirements. How are you planning to provide for your partners, employees, agents? Is what you’re doing going to get you to your goal and support your lifestyle?
- Once the monetary demands are met, are the time demands astronomical?
Identify the biggest priority and evaluate if it is getting you closer to your goal. If you don’t have a goal, get one. If you’re having a hard time getting motivated, then your goals aren’t big enough.
We dissolved and sold my agency because we essentially created a monster we could no longer control. But through the growing pains were invaluable experiences that we could move forward with. It became very clear what we didn’t want our brand and our ourselves to become.
You can’t make an educated decision on where you want to go if you can’t see where to begin. It’s easy to lose control when you have no direction.
Get in the habit of setting informed intentions with clear direction before you begin, and systematically reflect on your progress so you’re never in the dark.