Brett:

I'm excited about our next guest as she is out of the great state of Maryland, and she is passionate about community outreach and education. For the past 19 years, she has held a career as a real estate agent. As a visionary leader and self-improvement coach in the greater Baltimore area. She emphasizes education, collaboration, and wealth building. She currently serves a group of over 72 agents at eXp Realty and as an independent contractor. She previously worked as an employee who tripled the productivity in her office by growing that office to 83 agents. Please welcome to the show with me, Nakia Evans, Nakia, how are you?

Nakia:

I'm doing good. Hello, and thank you for having me today.

Brett:

Absolutely excited to get to know you a little bit more and to have you hear your story.for our listeners who are just getting to know you a little bit, for the first time, would you give us a little bit more about your background and your current focus?

Nakia:

Sure. I've been a real estate agent since 2002. I am a teenage parent of three children who are now grown, and they are accountants and general contractors. Right now I spend most of my time assisting real estate agents at eXp Realty. I provide support. I provide encouragement, I encourage. I provide motivation, and I partner up with about 73 agents right now at eXp Realty.

Brett:

Before we dive into your journey, and your story to building wealth, eXp Realty, and some of the ways in which you and your team are fine, to grow business and build wealth. I want to take one step back Nakia. I think we've all been given certain gifts in this life, and I believe these gifts are God-given gifts. Some people call them superpowers or strengths. But I'm curious, maybe go back to those high school days, those younger days? What are those, maybe one or two gifts you believe you were given, and how does that help, how do you help and bless people today?

Nakia:

I think one of my gifts has been to be able to build a business and to run it a long time, maybe leave it just a little bit and come back to it. team building, always creating a team within a business. I like businesses when there are teams or when there are multiple people who succeed together, and just looking back and thinking back, I've been doing that for a very long time, whether it was with network marketing, direct sales, or small businesses, a hair salon had private partners at a hair salon to run a hair salon, and even now at eXp Realty and within the real estate itself, just generally working with a group of people like-minded people, people who have goals, like mine, or people who are going for the same thing that I'm going for collaboration is key. But putting that piece into this into the business world makes a big difference, and I think I was born with that. I've done it multiple times.

Brett:

Love building teams, collaborating, connecting individuals, and all doing it together. Is that a fair summary? Good summary, and by the way, you can learn more about Nakia Evans by going to nakiaevans.com, it's nakiaevans.com for those who want to make sure you're spelling that correctly. If you're listening to it's not watching it and N, A, K, I, A, and then evans.com. Nakia, now let's dive right in. Talking about life before eXp, what brokerage were you with, and what did that look like, and what were some of the challenges that you were facing there?

Nakia:

I was at Coldwell Banker, and I was a broker-manager in the Baltimore City area, and I managed 83 agents. I partnered up with 83 agents. That's key in the world of real estate and brokerage. I partnered up with 83 agents, and when I first went to that office, there were 24 agents, and maybe eight agents were active. I had to rebrand, restart, regrow that office and change the dynamic in the office, and I could do that, and under three years, I've really under two in two years over two years by recruiting, so simply recruiting, getting some new blood in there, getting some new people in there, making chipmaking change to the office, changing the dynamic of that office and changing the way that things were done within that office and make it exciting and fun again. I was a noncompeting manager. Basically, I came out of production. At first, I was an agent at Coldwell Banker, and in a different office, and they had a need for a manager in their city office, and I was from Baltimore City, born and raised all my life, and so they approached me and offered me the position. After a while, I did take the position, and I loved it. I loved running an office. I loved running the business. I loved partnering with agents. But we outgrew that position, almost outgrew the office, and that office we had, it was a small office; Baltimore City downtown. It did not fit 40, 50, 60, 70 80 agents. But I was still testing with bringing in more. I got stuck at some point in time, and then COVID-19 hit and I had time to think, and I just had to change something. I had to make a change, and during COVID-19, Rich Tomasini was a guest on your podcast, by the way.

Brett:

He is phenomenal, check out that episode. Keep going, keep going.

Nakia:

He approached me and told me I found you in a magazine, and they were celebrating that you bought all these agents to Coldwell Banker, and if you decided that Coldwell Banker didn't work for you, and you wanted to do the same thing for yourself, I think this business model XP would work for you. He saw that I recruited 56 agents in my very first year of being a manager. I didn't even know what I was doing. But I knew that I knew how to attract people and get people and help people build their own business, and then the second year was 53. By the time I talked to him, just in just going into my third year, I was already at 22, and so when he mentioned this to me, I was, I don't have time for this. Nobody wants to hear anything. I didn't know anything about eXp at all. I was like, but I listened. I attended a live zoom. I got some information, and I ran some numbers, and just, not at that point. But later, it became a moment where I knew that I may not stay at the old brokerage and I may need to do something different, and I pulled out a notebook where I took some notes from talking to rich and I was like, give me, give this guy a chance. Let me talk to this guy and see what exactly he has gone over at eXp, and then I had a hard decision to make because I was. I went from employment to independent contractor, and um, that was rough, and that was tough, and that was hard. But I will tell you now, 11 months later, it was worth it. It was so worth it. I'm 11 months and one day affiliated with eXp, and it was worth it. Everything that he told me was the truth, and I definitely say he told the truth.

Brett:

Love that I'll just want to encapsulate a little bit of what you said there that really stuck out. You (A) underwrote it. You looked at the numbers and digested them. (B) you heard him out. He spent a little bit of time going through the model, going through what it is, and then, of course, you digesting it. I took a little while to see what it was and get a feel for that, and then a moment came up. I don't know what that moment was, and if you want to share that, but something happened where I want to take a more serious look right at this thing.do you want to share what happened there? What was the moment that pushed you over the edge to saying, I really want to take a peek at this?

Nakia:

I'll say I did not agree with what upper management had in store for me. They had one plan for me and I had another plan and we couldn't meet in the middle. That’s probably exactly what and could probably be in one sentence frame. We just didn't agree on the vision that I saw for an office that I was running, or for my broker's license, or for where we wanted to go myself and the agents who were in its office. We wanted to go, but we were stopped, and that didn't work well with me at all.

Brett:

Yeah, and I find that when we're, one of the things that eXp, which I love about eXp, and I'm a commercial broker here in Sacramento. I love the eXp, move my brokerage, my brokerage business over to there, even though I am a broker myself, that if you're not the owner or part owner or something you have like stock then and when you feel like the corporation is not putting, their agents first, they have different needs different challenges, such as a lot of overhead and a lot of middle management and, and a lot of big lease payments and individual franchises even have their individual, insurance where when you can consolidate and build a model with eXp or it's, it's worldwide, but then on a national brokerage level in the United States, and cut out the answer to insurance and cut out a lot of the overhead. A lot of that savings can be fuel back into the agent owners versus having to make tough decisions, and again, I don't even know the details of those other things. I just know the challenges that I had to with mine, and so I appreciate you sharing that and, and then having the courage to say, okay, something new, something different. Besides that kind of trigger to look at it, what was the other biggest challenge for you to overcome as, as someone who's running over 80 agents, like coal banker, very successful doing great? What was the other thing that made you that rich? Maybe he really helped you overcome that thing that you thought was either too good to be true or what was that?

Nakia:

It was the vision. Rich contacted me and I had to become a private investigator. I went online, and I did a lot of research. I watched every single YouTube video that he had on YouTube, and then I found people that he was connected. I did a Facebook search. I did an Instagram. I did his websites. I did you, too. I just really investigate, investigate and him more than the company to be honest with you, because company companies, but business partners or business partners, and that's the one challenge or one thing that real estate agents don't really look into, they go on to a brand and then they want to brand themselves with that brand. But really, your partner is your partner no matter where you go. If you have a real estate partner at brokerage and that same real estate partner at a brokerage, the same person.

The brand is secondary, but a lot of people don't understand that. Even though eXp gives us everything that we need gives us our benefits gives us everything, even agents who aren't affiliated here yet have a tough decision to make to say who's going to be their partner who's going to be their sponsor, but eXp is eXp at the end of the day. The research really came into Who am I partnering up with? What is his vision? Can I share his vision? Does he have the same vision as I have? Can we go to the next level together? Will we be together in the three years that you know it takes for your stock to invest, and or is it just a dream is it just, something he's selling, but I believe after watching them and talking to him several times, and just following him, I believed in him just as much as I believed in eXp, I mean, I feel confident enough that I could have made it anywhere I decided to go, but I felt and I believed in Rich Tomasini that he could help me get to the next level where I want it to go.

Brett:

I want to unpack that a little bit. I believe this is to be like a truth that multiple leaders have said, that everything rises and falls on leadership. Whatever brand it is, Coldwell Banker, eXp, Keller Williams, Marcus, and Millichap, Richard Ellis, everything rises and falls on leadership. Who is your mentor? Who is your business partner? Who is the person who's going to help you level up? That's based on their character, their track record. I love that you became a private investigator and youtube facebook stalked him for a while because yeah, you should, like. Who is this person? You're about to get into a business marriage if you will, and in the long term, this is a big deal. You did your due diligence, you became a private investigator, and then you've been able to see that leadership be delivered. Is that a fair summary?

Nakia:

That is a great summary. I couldn't accept it. I love it.

Brett:

Now let's talk to the agent that you're attracting or that you're trying to encourage. Trying to, let's say, sell, or be encouraged to consider the eXp model. what's their biggest objection that you're seeing today in Nakia?

Nakia:

Today, the biggest objection I usually get is a physical space, which I overcame physically, the need for physical space when we were all working, forced to work from home by the government. I mean, the federal government, the state government, the local government all told us that we had to stay home. We adapted it to not having a place to go not having to get up, get dressed, get in a car, and drive I almost fought right now, I almost really refuse to go to meetings unless I really have to, unless I really need to, because I've been adapted to working from home. That's the number one objection I get. Generally, the tools, the systems. Or the other objection I get is that there's so much I just don't understand. But what people don't understand is that here's what we do. We split it up into three lanes lane one lane to lane three, you can simply drive in one lane and get to your destination or you can swing back, and forth, change lanes, five minutes in this lane, two hours in that lane or you can just stay steady in this lane.

These optional lanes help you to build future wealth, and not everybody wants richer wealth, and that's my challenge is like, hey, I want to give this to everybody. I want everybody to partake. But if that's not their objective or not their goal, I have to calm down a little bit. I have to sit back and I have to help them with what they want. The biggest challenge is figuring out for other agents is figuring out, can I just be a real estate agent, isn't the kid. Don't look at me differently. If I'm not driving in all three lanes. But the agents to 73 that are with me will tell you I respect where they are. I help them when they are. I talked to them about where they are. I'm never going to force someone who wants to just sell or be a buyer's agent to go out and list because they want to be a buyer's agent. I'm never going to force a buyer's agent to partake in revenue share. I will encourage them. I'll mention it. But we aren't going to sit down and have an hour-long conversation about the third lane when you only want to be in that first lane.