Brett: 

I'm excited about our next guest. He is a 15 year veteran in the residential and commercial, mostly the commercial space for brokerage as well as the business brokerage space. And it happens to be an insurance professional. And we're going to be talking about not being put in a box, right and finding ways to collaborate and help your clients by offering multiple solutions. So please welcome the show with Harold McGee. Hey, Harold, how are you doing?

Harold:

I'm doing great, Brett. How are you?

Brett:

Hey, I'm better than I deserve, excited to get the show going with you here. So for our listeners out here, learning about you for the first time, would you give our listeners a little bit about your story and your current focus?

Harold:

Sure, yeah. I got into real estate, and I got my real estate and insurance licenses, both in the year 2005. Life at that time had just kind of led me into real estate with some connections I made. And I met a great referral broker. And in California, she started referring me over clients out of California. And after I closed my first deal with them in 2007, they asked me to take over their property management. And at that time, I didn't know anything about property management, but I did know it was a residual-based business. I just kind of jumped in with my broker at that time, and just kind of jumped in and started doing it and started learning about it and things were going well then 2008, 2009 came along, and we just kind of worked along in that time, maintaining what we had, and then about 2010, 2011 I started getting calls from the investors and saying, hey, we're ready to buy more. And I had one client who had taken over their trust, took it away from their advisors, and said, I'm coming to Austin, I've got a million dollars, let's see what we can find. She couldn't have timed it any better. I think it was in 2012 she bought between I think nine properties, nine properties all cash and, and just started growing and growing from there, I had brought on an associate, and then in 2016, 2014, 2015 is when I learned about infinite banking and on the insurance side I just happen to have an insurance license that I kept renewing every year and not practicing in it and I decided that time I was going to take that on I sold my management company to the agent now broker who was helping me run it build it and really had been involved in teaching and infinite banking to all my real estate investors and agents and professionals and then also started picking up some business brokerage and helping entrepreneurs sell their businesses.

Brett:

Amazing, so much there and I love that you didn't allow yourself to be put in a box, right? He sold some real estate, it's in property management. And then as well, insurance professionals and looking at infinite banking in different aspects. I think it's important for Business Brokers, right? I think it's important to be able to specialize but also at the same time being able to be adapt and or find others who are specialists in that area so that you can serve your client so I'm curious the eXp part of the conversation now has eXp help you to collaborate, help you to connect with more folks and into and also to grow your business?

Harold:

I'll tell you what. Joining the eXp has been the best thing that my wife and I have done professionally. Well in ever. We had a franchise brokerage back in 2010. After we first met she was my broker. I was an agent licensed at that time she was the broker And and that the franchise was an upstart went there for a couple of years. It didn't quite make it. So then we had to decide what we were going to do where we're going to go independently. And one of our contexts said, hey, why don't you go talk to KW was like, okay, fine in. So we went in, and we were introduced to the team leader that time was Jean Frederick, in the northwest market center. And Austin sat down with Jean and made a deal with him and decided to come on board. We were there for just over two years, renewed into our third year, and said, we were brought on a couple of people, there's a little bit of that profit-sharing trail to it. Let's just go ahead and finish out this third year, and then we're going to go independent that way we're best off so if anything good happens, we can take care of that. And Jean had already left kind of retired. And then in May, with the May of 2013, jeans daughter, Nicole called us, said, hey, just want to let you know what Jean's up to since he retired, and we'd love to sit down and talk with y'all. I said, yeah. And that was on Friday afternoon in our office. I said, What's the name of it? And so I'll look at it over the weekend. And so we were gonna meet on Monday morning. And she told me the name I wrote it down. I did some research. I went, oh my goodness, this is it, this is exactly what we're looking for. Because I love recruiting. And so when we met Nicole and Jeanne on Monday morning, I was like, uh, give us the paperwork. We're ready. So yeah, we came in in 2015. We've been taking advantage of the stock purchase plan ever since then when it was a penny stock. And so that, I mean, just, you know, I watched your videos, we pulled out the CashFlow Quadrant, which I'm a huge believer in and started applying that between the revenue share and the stock purchase. And now the value of the stock, as you know, over the last nine months has just been over the top.

Brett:

Let's pause and make sure I emphasize a few points there. And so if for those who listen for the first time, I don't know about eXp or eXp commercial was just launched. Essentially, they're making the model they're making owners of the agents by every deal that you close and if you train and coach other people to close deals as well. And as they close deals and they cap you get what's called stock. And that stock itself, I did a video you can go to YouTube and experts care secrets podcast, YouTube channel. And literally, I looked at my last number of years between the years when I first got approached about five years ago with ESP and I said no to it, cuz I thought it was too good to be true. I thought it was MLM. I thought it was just kind of crazy. I said no, that stock would it be worth right now about 740,000 or something? Dollars? Just the deals that I closed, right? And so Harold was smart enough to get in there sooner than me when it was a penny stock. And as he's closing deals, he's getting stock in the company. And so fast forward, that stock is worth $120 or we're recording this in February of 2021. And so that's a phenomenal rate of appreciation. Any other thoughts on that, Harold?

Harold:

Well, to kind of follow up on the first two transactions that we closed in August of 2015. Because of the price of the stock, right? We were able to buy 1800 shares at about 60 to 65 cents, and you can equate to whatever those two, it's like that's a trial on commission.

Brett:

And that was a 10% discount, right?

Harold:

No, it was 20% It was such a small dollar stock, right? Not even $1 and when they told us about that, we thought oh, well that's cute, right? It's a penny stock you don't think about much now it just so happens after college in the 90s I got my series 763 so I went into the investment world with Fidelity Investments in the call center. So I knew I knew about the stock market options and trading and all that so I just thought oh, that's neat. I know about penny stocks over the counter. And so yeah, let's take what 5% of our Commission's and start buying and if something happens, well, something has happened.

Brett:

Congratulations. Harold has the discipline, right? And also not to oversight. Jean Frederick, is a Hall of Famer when it comes to eXp. There's a few Hall of Famers out there. And he's an inspiration just to say the least. And so and by the way, Harold's in the Austin, Texas area, that's he, Jean is I think he's one of the probably one of the biggest teams in the eXp now. So back to just the actual beyond just the stock and the revenue sharing. Let's talk about culture and leadership. Okay, cuz, like when you said the beginning, it was the best professional decision I've ever made. And I know that goes beyond, just the stock. And I've been with eXp now for about seven, eight months now. And the commercials just launched, I'm part of kind of the initial kind of commercial guys. I'm an ex, Marcus and Millichap guy. So we never got stock, right? And a lot of the loyalty just wasn't there. Talk about the loyalty, the camaraderie, the collaboration, and the leadership, which to me is why it went from a penny stock to where it's at. It's not just a, you know, we do stock sharing and revenue sharing. That's a big part of it. But it's literally, we're all in this together. So just talk about that. That piece of it, Harold.

Harold:

It has been in the genius mindset of Glenn Sanford to fill in that little, that little gap that was always kind of left between the companies that did give you some kind of override or profit-sharing in KW case, right? That you didn't, you still just own your little practice business. And that's all it's ever going to be. With this, you're now coming to the mindset where you want to, whether you're a recruiter or not a recruiter, whether you're an icon agent, or your camper, or you're getting new, and you're able to, you know, just sustain yourself, maybe you're just getting up to your cap, but not quite, right? Whether you're fit into any one of those, you're still an owner. So now you have the incentive to want to help any other agent owners out there, because the more that's in there, the more the value drives up for the company. And so it is just when you start thinking about that way, that's why you see so many leaders out there openly sharing, you talk about it, especially in the commercial world, your training your future competition. If this becomes an untrained somebody in your revenue share group, you're like, okay, when you're ready to go out on your own, go write to me. I still have my revenue share from what you're doing. So I'm incentivized to help you grow and move on.

Brett:

I'm on a 10x, right? And let's face it always felt 50-50. I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine, maybe do three or four or five deals together. But then now I'm your competition, right? Or now I leave the firm completely and not even just like Marcus and Millichap their internal when like what happens when the person goes to see Richard Ellis like now they lost everything. They just poured blood, sweat, and tears for 2,3,4,5 years to somebody. And now they take all the secrets and they compete directly against you. It just was stacked against you. And in this model. We're saying no, I want to give you all my secrets. I want you to be tech successful. Because I know that in the future, you'll be a good leader. And you'll be able to coach and train more people to be as successful as you and then we all get to share in that revenue, which is the genius of it. And it reminds me of the rich broker, right? So we touched on that a little bit ago, which is the cashflow quadrant. It's Rich Dad Poor Dad, Robert Kiyosaki. And this one I call the rich broker, pro broker, right? You have the E quadrant, you're an employee, the S quadrant where you're self-employed, it's kinda like where most real estate agents are, they're self-employed or need somebody else. But then you have the business side of it, and then the investor side of it. So an eXp does say, hey, instead of being on the poor, poor broker side, and by the way, most successful brokers are not poor. So don't take it like that. But just think of it on the cashflow part, why not go on the rich side and be a business owner and an investor and by the way, still sell real estate as you've always done it before, right? It's not even really just changing what you're doing. Although you can recruit, you don't have to, but it's just basically taking it and moving it to the other quadrant. And now you become a business owner and you're building out your team and your dream, right? Brent go says it well, it's one team one dream, right, versus the big box Corporation where it's their dream and it's their upper management. It's their short shareholders. They're the ones that are on the rich broker side. So any thoughts on that?

Harold:

Oh, absolutely. I agree with you. 100%. Again, it takes all the good business balls thus far. Have worked and just kind of annexed that, right? So if you have someone who's gone on to build maybe a small boutique, with some good agents and some good inside support staff, and they're doing great, right? But it's just that now you plug that into this model. And that can just go to next. Because if you have a great team, invariably, or inevitably, one of those of your good or great salespeople are going to go off and start their team. Correct? In this system. He's like, okay, that's fine. How can I help you? What can I do to help you?