Background in Real Estate

Andrew Franklin out of Houston, Texas is one of the top teams of eXp globally, the founder of multiple ancillary Real Estate Businesses. He has a background as an investment banker on Wall Street and this gave him the experience of seeing the merit of owning multiple types of businesses. 

His dad started a Real Estate business and has carried it through 41 years to date. Andrew graduated college around 2008 and followed his peers to Wall Street with his dad’s encouragement to go beyond Real Estate. Investment banking for 100 hours per week at 22 years old in San Francisco and then New York City gave him a strong start to his experience. This afforded him the background knowledge in Profit and Loss, growing businesses with the right people and systems, and where to spot opportunity. 

Scaling out of Real Estate production 

Traditionally, Real Estate agents approach the business with the mentality to sell one house at a time, but Andrew entered the arena with a “big business” mentality. His dad’s business was relationship-focused and gave him a foundation that he combined with his knowledge of how to scale with systems and a keen eye on profit and loss. He started as an agent with leases, then buyers then listings and grew his own production quickly, but it wasn’t the end goal – he didn’t have the desire to attend the listing appointments in perpetuity the way his father had. 

The mindset to scale beyond what you can do for yourself in a transaction-focused business model applies directly to the Upstream Model. 

Andrew’s dad created intentional relationships with home-builders from whom he earned referrals and today continue to send him 15-20 deals each year. He found these clients would most often start looking into the plans for building a new home before they had made any plans to sell their existing home. He created programs to make their job easier, and the referrals were a natural bi-product once these clients were ready to sell. In Andrews market, these are non-licensed sales people, so check around in your market who the best person would be in rank in order to create a relationship you could serve without conflict of interest or other powers that-be in the way of the referral. He found a relationship with a sales manager to be the key in Texas.

The bottom line: you need to come in asking how you can solve their problems. To scale, you need to lead with value first, and work into relationship + value. You will not scale on a relationship alone. 

Building Ancillary Businesses

To see beyond a single Real Estate business, your focus shifts to the kind of production that goes beyond covering your day to day, and is set up to take care of generations to come. 

When you are in the position of advisor as a Realtor, you find yourself referring your clients to vendors in varying circumstances (example: by 1pm, out of Production, Andrew gave referrals for his title company, an insurance company and an inspector). Where can you take ownership over some shares in these without a lot of time overhead? This can make one address profitable for you on multiple accounts. 

Making sure the “entrepreneur bug” isn’t a virus

Sometimes big vision and seeing opportunity in multiple businesses creates a web of being overworked and to borrow the colloquialism, the “Jack of all trades, and master of none”. What Andrew has done has been intentional and focused, and has created immense profit because of his eye for opportunity. He shared with us that his key is to have an integrator. Based on the concept from the book “Rocket Fuel” by Gino Wickman, every business he had a vision for has what he calls “an integrator”, allowing him to remain the vision-caster, out of the day-to-day.

Key: do not get hung up in Operations. Working more hours isn’t the answer, and it is not sustainable. Every visionary needs an integrator in each business. 

Whether ownership or a percentage of the profit, Andrew keeps his integrators loyal and operating with these payout structures:

• Equity 
• High salary + bonus + % of profits 

Value Proposition 

Most Real Estate Agents do not create enough space in their calendar to think bigger, nor to create additional cash flow because their first revenue source takes up too much time and manpower. They become too busy creating an income, they never create an empire. 

The builder program Andrew’s dad implemented in the 1990’s earned referrals in Texas by offering to list for free or at discount (freeing equity and money back to the homeowner in order to purchase a New-Build) and earned his commission from the New Home Builder on the backend. Now they guarantee the sale by offering a buyout to the client in the event of a selling challenge. This opened up an opportunity for them to flip and sell, and made a win for homeowner, home builder sales, and The Franklin Company, and ensured referrals. 

Andrew shared his company’s value proposition and his journey to owning ancillary businesses, and if this is attractive to you, consider this: 

“Everything I’ve created has come from a podcast, a mastermind or a book.” 

Keep the thirst for new knowledge and new association and GO THINK BIGGER!