 Here I was thinking I was doing amazing in the industry. You tell me you've been in the industry for 19 years, the same amount of time as me. You're on the other side of this thing. I'm over here. Where did I go wrong? Well, here was kind of the thing for me. If EXP had existed when I was an agent, you know, when I was sort of evaluating what I was going to do with my career, I wouldn't have started the XP. What's up everybody? Welcome back to another episode of Rowe to 10,000. I'm your co-host. I'm here with Juan. And today we're talking past, present and future of EXP Realty with the founder of EXP Realty and self-made billionaire, Glenn Sanford. What's up, Glenn? Hey, Ricky. Yeah. I am down in actually Miami, looking at the beach right out there. And it's been a lot of fun, but thanks for thanks for having me on. Yeah, 100% man. Glenn, you doing a lot of traveling nowadays? Trying not to. I mean, you know, COVID's put a little bit of a quash. The second time I've traveled in, since March last year. Well, I did take a motor coach though. I mean, if you call that traveling from October through the end of December, we were October 22nd through the end of December. We did a little driving around and I did one flight during that trip. But for the most part, I've been kind of home base. So let's take a second, man. Let me like, let's take a moment. And I just want to know what it feels like to be Glenn right now. Like on top, you're completely, I would say you're probably at the high, you're probably the top guy in the industry. I mean, I mean, one, I mean, you Glenn, what you've been able to do over the last four or five years, it defines exponential growth. And the fact that you've created this platform and you had the vision for it what 15 years ago, 12 years ago. Yeah, it's nothing short of incredible. So so tell us, let's just soak it in for a second. But what's it like right now? What's life like for the self made billionaire in the cloud based brokerage industry? Yeah, no, it's good, you know, more than anything, we've got such an amazing team behind us. You know, we've got almost a thousand people on staff with with the various EXP world holdings companies, primarily EXP Realty. And with such an amazing team, it does allow me to work on the things that I find interesting and impactful, rather than in the beginning days, it was literally very much of a directive role. Go do this, go do that, you know, that type of thing. So now it's very much of a, you know, I feel like I'm in my my element, you know, a lot of flow and as a result, you know, able to think strategy long term and which is pretty is really fun. I don't really think, you know, while I take that back, I try not to let that the B word go to my head. You know, I live well below my means by significant margin. And so for me, it's really about making an impact and the bees nice to have. But it's it's not the reason why I do everything that I do. Well, 100 percent, 100 percent. Well, I mean, it's when you take that out of the equation, that's when the bee kind of appears, right? It does. Yeah, it's I say, you know, most people don't do the right things for the right reasons. They might do the right things or they might do something for the right reason. But doing both of them, that takes a lot of sort of intestinal fortitude over time, because it's always tempting to shortcut the process. It's always tempting to go, you know, if I do, if I do this, I could make more money in the short run and then and then pretty much you're done. Like that's that's it, you know, as opposed to thinking about the long game, which is always just continually staying in right thing, right reasons, right time and trying to stay in that zone. Because what I found is that everything works out better, takes longer to get to each milestone, but you get to each milestone, which is you don't do when you try to shortcut the process. Yeah. So you're down in Miami speaking at 10 X this week, huh? I am. Yeah. So Sunday morning at 9 a.m. I'll be actually on stage, I think 30 to 45 minutes. Grant and I will be having a one on one talking about the EXP, the journey, so the platform, you know, he's he's become really, really enamored with the EXP model, especially now that he knows it. Initially, you know, we started talking back in early January and then and we circled around a little bit to have a potential conversation, maybe a year or so ago, but never actually talk. But once he started to understand the model, he's like, initially it was just going to be, hey, let's get you involved with spokesperson role and let's do this, let's do that. And he started looking at the model. He goes, man, I want to build a revenue share line. I'm like, well, you're going to have to get licensed. He goes, oh, man, well, I'm doing all this other real estate stuff. I said, well, you know, Elena could get a license. And I guess Elena and Grant were sitting together at the same time. And Elena's like, I'll get my license. And so so she literally passed her exam on Saturday, her national exam. So we're in the process of bringing on the newest agent. We'll we'll eventually be Elena for a moment. And then there'll be somebody else to be the newest agent. So Glenn, it's incredible because you're at 47,000 agents worldwide. I think we're in about 11 countries at this point. And it sounds to me like you're still attracting yourself, aren't you? Yeah, well, I don't the last person I I sponsored into the company was was Debbie, my significant other. So everything else I do is on behalf of others. So in this particular case, I was supporting Lisa Copeland, who had a relationship for the last 10 years with Grant and Elena, good friends with Elena. And so I supported her in the agent attraction process. But I've, you know, I've kind of made it up, you know, at this point, I have the CEO role. I don't want to be in competition with any of our agents and brokers. And so I just want to support anybody who's out there attracting. So I had conversations yesterday with with probably two different attraction conversations with different people that were that had some big players that they're trying to get over the over the hump. And so I probably have one or two of those calls a day supporting agents. But me personally, you know, I've just made it. I think prior to that, it was Ian Marshall, who I've known since 2005. So he, you know, and he ultimately brought in Gene Frederick indirectly. So he carried Lucas, Elizabeth Riley and then Gene Frederick. And of course, that blew up that whole portion of the organization. And but those are my last two recruits. And then the other probably outside of that's all the people that were with me in the beginning, Dale Kreiser, Brian Colhane, and some others that are still on my front line from day one. That's amazing. So real quick, I just want to touch on this for just a second because I want to get your take on this whole because there's so many agents worried about Zillow taking over kind of thing. I just want to get your quick take on that situation. One, I think it's wise to be a little paranoid of Zillow because I think it will change up your decision making matrix for you as an agent. Because I think what you want to do is you want to be aligned with a company that ultimately, you know, can in fact have your back. And there's probably only, you know, two or three of them that are out there in my mind that could have your back as an as an agent. EXP certainly in my mind is the number one, not just because it's the company I started, but because as one national brokerage platform that we don't have to deal with all the issues that that franchises have to deal with, we can actually pivot, we can create new products and services. You know, in the last two years, we launched a platform called Express Offers so that you can generate your own ibuyer style offers. We bought an IDX company, which was going to create a really great consumer experience. We've got some some interesting companies we're talking to right now about having our own exclusive data products that consumers will be interested in. So we're working on sort of some things that would make us one of those sites that consumers would use. But I think if you're not with the right company, you'll eventually need to move because you're the company you might be with maybe out of business because of the types of pivots that Zillow continues to make. Yeah, yeah. But you don't see you don't see Zillow monopolizing the industry or wiping out agents or all these things everybody's saying out there. No, I you know, there's I think the the challenge that I see is that is Zillow would have to in fact start to employ agents themselves in order to really change the change the entire landscape of real estate. Now, they may they may get, you know, five to 10 percent on the on the the I buyer side of the equation. They may end up getting another, you know, five to 10 percent of real estate transactions going through their platform. So maybe they they end up being 20 percent of the marketplace in some capacity, but they'll still be using agents that are affiliated with other brokerages for most all of that business. And and if you think about, you know, it's buying a house or selling a home is not the same as ordering an Uber. You know, once you've done, you know, you order an Uber once and you don't need, you know, anybody to help hold you through the process or help you through the process or download the app or whatever. It's pretty easy to push a button. You get a car, takes you to where you want to go buying a home, selling a home. And that's it's an expensive proposition. Even me as a, you know, somebody who has been in real estate now for 19 years, I still wouldn't buy or sell a home without the assistance of an agent, even though I certainly know the industry. You know, there's just too many things to keep track of. And, you know, I'm a busy guy. There's lots of busy people out there. Why the heck would you want to accidentally make a mistake if you can have a trust of professional help you through the process? Now, here I was thinking I was doing amazing in the industry. You tell me you've been in the industry for 19 years, the same amount of time as me. You're on the other side of this thing. I'm over here. Where did I go wrong? Well, here, here, here was kind of the thing for me. If exp had existed when I was an agent, you know, when I was sort of evaluating where I was what I was going to do with my career, I wouldn't have started the exp. Like there would have been no need. I would have been exactly where you are. And by the way, I guarantee that, you know, once your organization, I know your organization is in a good place. But once you're in a good place with your organization, your quality of life is going to be way better than mine. Like my quality of life, because I have to keep track of thousands of people. I've got SEC stuff, all this other stuff that goes along with it. You know, I probably you just just on that note alone, you'll probably live an extra one or two years. I've read the data like CEOs running companies. I mean, they they give up a couple of years of life at the end of their life. But yeah, I enjoy it. I'm not complaining. But I think your quality of life will probably be better in a lot of respects than my quality of life. And I think that I think it's incredible you bring that up, Glenn, because a lot of people are always thinking more is more. Right. And if we just amass all of this wealth, it's going to be for the better. But at the end of the day, it is about the quality of life and what you've given back to these agents in terms of this opportunity to grow their business and really have an asset that's going to continue to grow and grow and grow as time goes on. It's really incredible. So I love to hear the story from day one in terms of the first day you got your license up until the point where you had this idea to create EXP. You want us to take it back on this journey and explain how it all started. Yeah, so you know, 2002 was interesting. I had I created an internet company and a company called eShippers.com. We were an outsourced e-commerce logistics company and we partnered with United Bandlines, Mayflower Transit, a credit card clearing service company called Card Service International. And we were basically building kind of like an Amazon fulfillment style company for small to mid-sized manufacturers and retailers. And so we it was really a great business model by had an idiot business partner. And and he basically made the statement to me that he who has the goals make gold makes the rules. And he had the gold and I had the business plan. And he wouldn't even, you know, sign checks to put put furniture in our offices. He was an avid golfer. So he wanted to put our put our corporate office in Phoenix, Arizona, when Unigroup and in Missouri had offered us space in their actual offices for free so we could be connected and aligned and really working together. And anyway, ultimately, the end of the day, I became a dot bomber out of that. And and so in late 2001, I moved back to Pacific Northwest. I had launched a some some websites for the local chambers of commerce while I was doing the e-shippers project. And it was just my give back to the community because I thought that there would be some value in having these chamber sites. Both the chamber sites got given back to me right about the same time that I moved back to the Pacific Northwest. And so I started to sell some ads on these websites to local businesses. And I was running around doing website development work. And one of the people I sold an ad to twenty five dollars a month was a local realtor and his email didn't work. And so I it hadn't worked for, I guess, months. And so I got it fixed in like 10 or 15 minutes. He said, hey, can you can you do work for me? I started working on his website, started generating some leads for him as an agent. And his name Hugh Brofford. And he goes he goes and he's sixty five. I was thirty or he was sixty sixty two, sixty three. And I was thirty five. He says, Glenn, you need a real estate license. I'm like, I need my real estate license like I need a hole in the head that, you know, I was not super excited. I was getting paid 60 bucks an hour to to do website development work. And and I was looking for my next technology project. But I sort of needed a job. And and at the but I told him, hey, I don't want to wear a realtor pin at the grocery store. I don't want to be, you know, hitting up my friends and family. I'll help you on the internet lead gen side and work those leads. And and and he said, fine, fine, fine. And then and then I didn't get my license for about a month. And he approached me and said, hey, Glenn, how come you don't have your license? I said, well, I get paid sixty dollars an hour to to do website development work. And he said, I'll pay a sixty dollars an hour. Go get your darn license. So I got paid sixty dollars an hour to study for my real estate license exam. So I got paid thirty six hundred dollars, I think six times six. So thirty six, thirty six hundred dollars to actually study for my real estate license exam. And then he guaranteed me three grand a month, you know, as an agent on his team. And so he basically took every objection away that I had. And so that's how I got into business. The cool thing about it was that I I put my blinders on because I really wasn't at the beginning really excited about real estate. But I'm going, this guy's paying me. I better kick ass and take names. So that was because I had a responsibility just because he was taking this risk on me. It was certainly outside of the box. And so that year I I ended up from April 29th till the end of the year. I sold 17 properties just to clients that I met online. My first full year it did a little over two hundred and ten thousand in commissions in 2003, you know, twenty three, twenty five properties, seven point three million dollars in production. And then he and I had a two year deal. And so that came up in in March of 2004. And at that point in time, I had actually had numerous websites generating leads around the Pacific Northwest. And and we were actually looking at how do we build a team? And so we were looking at we looked at remax. Actually, we're getting ready to go to remax. And then then I met somebody, the guy that was with he was with remax. He was one of the guys that was running sort of a team function for me. And oh, no, he was at General Scott. We were going to go to remax. And he said, hey, check out this Keller Williams thing. They've got kind of a team friendly program. And so I looked at Keller Williams and I looked at the red book and looked at their profit share program and go, OK, this is this makes sense. I can recruit agents. I'm generating tons of leads. I can do this anywhere in the country when I use this as a platform to do something. So that's how I got into the business in 2004. I was the number three team in our region in Keller. I was actually number one team in my office, but they ended up recruiting a team in December to join and that had better production. And so that that team got the top team award, which is pissed the hell off that pissed me off big time. But the next year did about 60 million in production. Two thousand five or two thousand no, two thousand six did about 60 million. And then then went independent in 2007 with a team based brokerage model and did about seventy three million that year. And then we were on track to do about a hundred million in 2008. And then, of course, everything changed, you know, July, August. And then Lehman Brothers, you know, declared bankruptcy and all the other stuff. And then literally the whole game changed by September of 2008 and had to close a bunch of offices and and then figure out what we were going to do next. And that was that that was interesting, too, because my assistant at the time, she kept on telling me that everything was fine, everything was fine. And then she up and quit one day in October. And I'm going, this is really weird. You don't quit when you've got a job in, in, in, in, you know, I wasn't parent huge, but still it was a job when the whole everything's cratering. Logging the bank accounts, no money, credit cards are totally maxed. She didn't have the heart to tell me the only thing that she she could she do is she just left and literally wouldn't answer her phone, wouldn't answer her emails. And because I think she was like I messed up here because I didn't tell how bad things were. And I funny thing was as I solved it like a week later, if I would have known, I just I went and gathered a few friends and family around, raised a quick hundred and fifty thousand, got us through to 2000, 2009. But it was it would have been nice if she would have told me before I had to find out on my own. Wow, wow, wow. So and then that brought you to coming up with the the idea of exp. Yeah. So 2007 was kind of an interesting year because I 2006, I was in the top 50 nationally with Keller. And so and that was my fourth full year in the business, I think it was. And so and and and I was recruiting a lot of agents. In fact, I was jumping on planes, recruit agents to both my team and to Keller Williams in general, just because I wanted to build some passive income for myself and my family. You know, something happened to me. I wanted something, some sort of nest egg. And so I was doing whatever it took to sort of grow that part of the business because I thought that was going to be my retirement plan. And and then I got my 1099 in 2007. And in January and I got for 100 on 184 people, about six thousand dollars in profit share. And I'm gone. I was totally deflated because I'm like gone. This this is not penciling for me. And so that's why we left. That's why we ended up leaving, leaving Keller and going independent. And but I at that time, I said to the team, I walked down the hall and there are a couple of guys there, Lauren and Rob. And I said, guys, if we ever build a company, we're going to do revenue share, not profit share. And so mentally, the thought process for me was that if you figure out what your business constraints are or your business model is, if you can put in just a decent management team, they'll figure out how to at least break even. That was sort of mentally the game plan. And and if they're good, they'll actually figure out how to make a profit. So that so I'm like, hey, you know, everybody, you know, almost anybody can break even I figured I can find some folks that can break because even we'll put a revenue share plan in place. I'll get revenue share company will grow all of us right in the world. But so we talked about that in 2007. And so in 2009, after the housing downturn, we we got an opportunity to sort of almost start with a clean sheet of paper and take everything that we had thought of from 2002 all the way through 2009 that we thought was broken about the business or could be significantly improved. We just said, hey, let's do that. Like let's do that model that we knows the future model of real estate. And let's not wait for somebody to create it. Let's create it ourselves because, you know, all the stuff that we're doing in EXP and it might be a little naive on my part. But I actually believe that most people saw a version of this model in their head that there's going to be a company that will do something like this at some point because it just makes sense. I mean, the fact that you don't have to have physical bricks and mortar offices, the fact that you're sharing some some some revenue with your agents and brokers who are helping you grow. You're sharing some of the ownership with the company. You know, all these things, you know, and you know, makes intuitive sense. And if you were to ask somebody sort of just what do you think the future real estate looks like, they would describe some version of what EXP looks like, you know, in terms of what the future future state would be. And I'm like, why are why don't we just build what we know is going to be the future? So did you when you when you came up with it and you got started working on it, did you actually visualize it like in your mind, you know, as the founder and, you know, becoming the figure you are in the industry at this point? Did you see it going to this point back then? Well, we're we're quickly approaching a number that I talked about back in about 2012, 2013, which is. I felt like if we could get to 50,000 agents over some period of time, like 20 years, that that would be a home run. Like that would be like the the the the holy grail of a brokerage. And and now we're, you know, 47,000 plus agents. Mighty, who knows, we might even be I'm not looking at the numbers right now in real time, but, you know, based on how fast we're going, might even be 48,000 this week. So so we have a potential of being, you know, 50,000, you'll buy, you know, end of March, early April. I mean, that's sort of how fast we're growing up from 41,000 at the at the beginning of the year. But I thought that would be a home run in 2012 as well. I think Jason Gessing and I sat with Stepan Swannapool. And so you probably know no step on. He of course, he's a, you know, a futurist and an industry person, a coach, a mentor, all kinds of stuff for the industry. And Jason and I sat with him and said, hey, we'll be 10,000 agents by by 2020. And and and I was funny because, you know, Stepan's like, bullshit, you know, he's kind of like doing that. And he says, I don't believe you. I said, and Jason and I were like, we've done the numbers. Like we knew what we saw our spreadsheets. We saw how many agents were joining every month. And we saw that we were growing, you know, between five and nine percent month over month. That was kind of our growth rate from the basically the beginning. And we knew the value prop just made sense. So for us, it's like, I'm pretty sure we'll be there in 2020. And of course, in 2020, we ended up at would we end up so it's 20,000, I think, by the end of the year. Yeah. So we we way undershot that that that that number when we said 10,000. So the answer is no, you didn't think it was going to go because you you said 50,000 is a home run. Right. Here we are. You got several agents in the company predicting we're going to 100,000 by the end of the year and even a million over the next. Whatever. I mean, there's so there's so the answer is no, you didn't see it going to the to the to the extremes that it is. Yeah, the short answer is no. I was pontificating. Yes. And now and now, Glenn, now that you know, kind of you've penciled in the numbers now, I'm sure you look at these projections all the time. What do you see it going 10 years from now? If everything works out at the same growth we're having now? Yeah, you know, I'll do some quick math. So so the let's just say we're 47,000 agents right now. We've been growing since inception by over 50 percent year over year, but I'm going to I'll moderate that to 40 percent. So one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10. Yeah, big number like over a million agents is what I'm what I'm coming up with on paper here. So so I think that, you know, over the next 10 years, we certainly have the potential to be over a million, a million agents. I'm showing 1.359 million in in in in 10 years from from today on a moderate growth rate. But this is, of course, worldwide, of course, that was just in the U.S. We'd have every agent in America working for right. Right. Right. So I was looking at the numbers. You guys release some early numbers, right? We're not reporting for another couple of days. Right. On Thursday, we'll have the we'll do the actual reporting. So how so how accurate are these pre? Yeah, top line revenue and net income. And those are those are all accurate. I think what would we do? Like six hundred million dollars in the quarter or something like that. Six hundred and nine million in the fourth quarter. And just just to compare Remax did seventy two million. Let's see. Yeah. Seventy two million versus six hundred and nine million. Yeah. And you have to sort of normalize that a bit because, you know, Remax is really they're just generating franchise fees. So they're and where we're actually reporting commissions, because we're actually the broker of record. Remax is is is just a franchise or so they don't they're not the broker of record. So they're not able to report all the numbers. From from from all the transactions. Oh, that's interesting. That's interesting. So do you think that gives us an advantage or disadvantage when it comes to reporting earnings and so on and so forth? Yeah. So I know you're you're a bit of an investor, Ricky. I've watched some of your videos, but, you know, are you familiar with the peg ratio? Peg, no. So peg is price, price earnings over growth. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So it's you know, a lot of people talk about a PE ratio, but a PE ratio, you know, doesn't really mean much unless you actually look at the growth rate of the company. And so for us, you know, we we put in the growth rate of the company compared to a remax or real G, you know, whoever, you know, compass just filed their numbers are getting ready to potentially go public and we're the fastest growing company across the entire real estate landscape from from a growth perspective. So when you when you just those are the numbers I kind of look at is like we want to keep the the pedal on the growth curve and to make sure that we continue to to power through it, you know, 50, 60, 70 percent year over year growth rates because, you know, we'll be able to, you know, two, three, four years, we start to add other services in a in a major way, mortgage, title, escrow, all those things. It starts to really play into a highly profitable enterprise by having, you know, so many agents on the platform. Yeah. And just to go ahead for all the audience that's listening to Nangana, I just pulled up the the investor presentation that was as of March 2nd, 2021, updated. And it's it's impressive to see the growth. Where were we at at the beginning of 2016? 2016. Well, that looks like a pretty small number. I'm looking at the graph myself. Yeah. That's like a thousand, a thousand. It looks like something like that. Actually, 2016 we passed on February 29th, I think it was, because that was a leap year or whatever. So we we actually hit a thousand agents on February 29th, 2016. Wow. And from 2008 to 2016, what was that like growing the company, being a part of really a group of innovators that said, you know, what we think this is the future, but what was that like? What was the culture like? Yeah, you know, it's it was similar to what it is today, just smaller. You know, you know, the difference is when we were under, let's just say under a thousand agents, you know, I felt like I knew everyone. So our last major event that we did, that was EXPCon in 2019. And that was in Las Vegas. And so, you know, Jason and I are there. We're doing the awards. Of course, there were others there as well. But of course, Jason had been with with EXP since early 2010, so almost from the very beginning. And literally, he and I are commenting that we know nobody here. Like we don't know, like in comparison to when we were under a thousand agents, we like almost knew everybody. Anybody showed up at events. We knew everybody because, you know, 20 percent, 200 people might show up in an event when we're under a thousand. So so that would be sort of the the peak of it. And and now we have, you know, three, four thousand to that. Well, twenty five hundred people in the room. And we know less than one out of every 10 people in the room. That's what I think is so amazing, to be honest with you, because it's like the companies have all the middlemen, right? The franchisees, the regional owners, the broker owners and all that. And we basically got rid of all that and go straight from the company to the agent, let them have the ability to basically be in sense, a CEO of their own brokerage kind of deal. Whereas, you know, you build your network and at the end of the day, like some of these guys, like like Brent and Rick, like there's I thought about it. There's no way that out of the 10,000, 12,000, whatever agents they have, that they probably only know a hundred or two or 300 or 500 at the most if they have a memory of an elephant. It's just amazing, but they're making a huge revenue share on 10,000 agents. Not that they don't have influence and are doing everything they can do to help their entire downline. I mean, I talked to Brent and it was really interesting because he said something that really hit me hard. And he was talking about how, of course, he took time out of his day to talk to me for a while. But and I have four completely different sides of the road there, except for the fact that we're both owners in the company, right? That's what makes this whole thing work. But he was talking about how he will go out of his way to help people on his 18th level and his 19th level. And I said, yeah, that's cool because then maybe your guys on your, you know, your seventh level are benefiting because the guys on their seventh level, that's people on there and it's helping everybody all the way up. And he said, Ricky, it's not even about that. You know, it's like you said from the beginning, Glenn, it's about helping people who can't even help you or don't even have a chance. It's about helping everyone, not just because they can help you in return. So that that's what's so incredible about what I think about this company is because I could have started my own brokerage, right? When I left Remax, I could have started my own brokerage. I looked at that. But this is way better, way better. Like you said, if it was around, you wouldn't have started it. It takes all the liability off of this. We can literally build a company that's as large as one of these large brokerages, right? Have zero liability ownership in the company, sharing the revenue. Yeah, let's just take a moment, Glenn. Oh, you thank you. Oh, no, you're welcome. No, it was interesting, you know, back in 2008, 2009, I mean, I was looking around at the industry going, okay, where could we, you know, plug in that would provide all the benefits that we were looking for as a team, as an agent, and it didn't exist. And we're going, this blows, because we're thinking, you know, with this big of an industry, there's got to be a company we could be aligned with that we wouldn't have to build it, but it didn't exist. And so you're going, okay, if it doesn't exist, then we better build it. What year did you actually become licensed in all 50 states? Uh, probably 20, 16 or 17. Yeah, something like that. Man, I just, I just imagine everything you went through and your team went through to, to go through all that, you know, to get, to get to this point. It's, to me, it sounds rough. To me, it sounds rough. Well, you know, it probably is. And one of the things I actually thought about when we launched it is, well, there's a couple of things. One, Tom Peters was one of my people, somebody I studied for a long time, just, you know, he wrote a book with another guy, Robert Waterman, back in the 80s called In Search of Excellence. And, and, and one of the, and I used to listen to his audio tapes and just a lot of business insights and ideas. And he talked about this whole idea that, you know, it's just, it's, it's all about making things and selling things. Like, like it's, it's, you know, if you over complicate it, then, then it might overwhelm you. Like nobody even knows how to make, like no one person knows how to make a pencil. But if you decide to make a pencil, you can pull a bunch of people together and they can figure out how to make a pencil, build the lead, you know, wood, whatever. So the, but the flip side of it is, is that when you think about real estate brokerage, it's so fragmented. I just imagined that nobody in their right mind would ever consider getting licensed in all 50 states and, and all the different MLSs. And, and so for me, I'm like, go on. That's like, that's like awesome. Because if, if nobody else will do it, that means that it's sort of like blue ocean for, for, for us to go do something that everybody else would say is absolutely crazy. And so I kind of simplified in my mind. I'm going, you know, how tough is it to get licensed in a, in a state, join an MLS, find a managing broker. And, and, and for me, I kind of just simplified it. And so it reduced the stress, but I know most, you know, business owners, broker owners, or people who are thinking about going that direction. If they don't sort of have that mindset there, go, man, this is a ton of liability. You know, this is crazy. Why the hell would I ever do this? And I'm like, go on. That's right. You're not going to do it. I am. And Glenn, what's so interesting is that when I was joining back in early 2018 at this point, I'm in New York City. And I remember New York City being one of the final markets that you were opening up in regards to the MLS and opening a market share. And I just remember at the time, everyone around me said, one, you're going at where? I don't even know. I've never heard of this company before. And I don't even think they have a brand here. Why would you ever go out there and join there? And it's because of the opportunity that we have. And if you look at it now, a lot of the objections we get with the agency we speak with, it's EXP is too big. We see it everywhere. And it's at that point where everyone's joining. And I wish I got in three years ago. But when you look at it from the 10-year perspective, right, the opportunity that we have the chance to hit a million agents over the next 10 years. Well, at that rate, we're not even at 5% of total market shares. So I think people's mindset really holds them back when they look at this from a long-term perspective. And the other thing I think you have to think about is that real estate is a high turnover industry. So when we think about a million agents 10 years from now, think about how many agents will have joined and how many people who would have left the industry in that same period of time worldwide. We're talking about tens of millions of people. So even if we were at a million agents today, let's just say we were a million agents, you think about the idea that you could still join today and you still could build an organization in my mind that could be 10,000 agents over the next five to 10 years as an agent and be totally set based on the value you're providing to the marketplace. So if you're providing value to agents and brokers and you're helping them grow, they'll want to join your iteration of the platform. And there's no reason why somebody couldn't build a 10,000 person organization, 20,000, 50,000, potentially even 100,000 given enough time and given the type of value that they bring to the marketplace. Just to clarify, I want to go back to the earnings real quick, just to clarify for people that are listening because when you mentioned about the commissions being figured into the revenue, I just want to make sure that listeners don't think we're cooking the books over here. So I want to bring it back to the actual net profits 2020, which for EXP was 31 million. That's what we have reported here in this article I read. And for Remax, it was 11 million. So you got Remax making profit-wise, profit-wise after all said and done, less than a million dollars a month as a company, profit-wise, and we have EXP, 12-year company versus a 40-something-year company at 31 million in profit last year. Just amazing, man. Just incredible. Yeah, no, it's pretty cool. I mean, we have five profitable quarters in a row. I can't make any predictions. We don't provide for guidance, but I'd be hard-pressed to figure out how we wouldn't continue to be profitable for the foreseeable future because our model so is designed in such a way that all of our costs are variable. So if you think about somebody who owns a bunch of offices, so you look like compass, I'll pick on them because they just filed their S1. They lost over 200 freaking million dollars. Yeah, they did more revenue than us. They did whatever they did, 3.9 billion in revenue, which is, again, commissions generally over the last 12 months. They grew at a slower rate than we did, but they lost, I think, something like 236 million dollars or something. The reason why they're going to have challenges where we won't is they've got so much fixed asset, bricks and mortar, leases, and all the other stuff that goes along with it. They've got to go public just to raise enough money to make sure they've got another three to five years of runway, and then they're going to hopefully, probably hope to get acquired by someone else who wants to be in the space. I have no clue how their model is going to scale. What was our biggest, our largest loss for a year? I'm not sure. Prior to 2017 or 2018, one of the ways we calculated our stock options expense was using what's called the intrinsic value method, which I objected against, but our auditors at the time said we had to use this methodology, but basically every time the stock went up, it would, in value, you take the number of options we had out that were all set in 2012, and they'd multiply the delta times the number of options. So we might have a 20 million dollar artificial loss in some quarters just because of the way the stock options were valued. So we ended up, I think, last year or the year before, our newer auditors actually made us go back and redo all of our books because they said that was the wrong way to calculate options. I'm like, I know. And so we ended up having to redo them. But we, you know, probably 10, 15, 20 million dollars, and then we sort of work it out, but even then it really wasn't, we were still cashflow positive that pretty much the whole time. I think we sort of in terms of meetings and meeting with your staff and things of that nature. Yeah. Hey guys, internet went out. It was crazy. It just completely dropped for a second. Let's go back because it's recording on my end. Let's go back. The last thing I heard you say was that you were, you were, you were cashflow positive for the year. Yeah. So we were, yeah. Cashflow positive pretty much since inception. And we had, we had 2018, you know, cash got a little tight. And so we had to raise a little bit of money just to make sure we had had a little extra cushion. I think we raised like $800,000 or something like that. Agents and brokers were able to take advantage of that accredited. So that worked out really well for them. And but for the most part, we've been, you know, getting cashflow positive since the day we started. Cool. Cool. And then what were you guys chatting about? I was just asking Glenn. So what's the day-to-day look like now that you have such a large team, you're employing more than a thousand people, and obviously you have to deal with a lot more things than you had to deal with back in 2008? What's your day-to-day look like as a CEO? Yeah. It's actually a little easier today that it was in say 2016, 17, 18, because we have such a great team. I mean, Jeff Whiteside, who joined us a couple years ago in 2018, he's been just phenomenal. He had a lot of experience back from the GE days, but just a really smart guy when it comes to sort of organizing and finding the right people and that type of stuff. So he's been awesome. Obviously, Jason, Dave, Stacey, Courtney, Michael Valdez, Kurtz Dixon, we've got so many people that are in great positions in the organization just making sure things work well. I still answer every single workplace chat that I get in workplace. Starting to get a little bit, I'm getting hit up quite a bit. How many hours a day do you spend on that? You know, I probably spend about 30 minutes to an hour answering workplace chats from people outside of my direct management team. So these are agents and brokers that are sending me notes and saying, hey, thanks for starting the company or have you thought about this or this is what's going on or we just had this thing happen. So there's some crisis management in there, some just making sure I connect people to the right people. But I spend probably 30 minutes, 45 minutes, maybe an hour, depending on the day on that. And then the rest of it's with the team. And I'm working right now with Success Magazine pretty significantly, helping them sort of think about how they're going to scale and how they're going to make the biggest impact they can make. And then also thinking about how does that lend itself to EXP because it's really another competitive moat that nobody else has. I mean, like Ricky, you and Juan, you guys are owners in Success Magazine. And I think to the listeners out there, I don't think many people are aware that you acquired Success Magazine just a few months ago. And it's really just a huge value add to everyone that's already an owner in the company. Where do you see that company kind of playing a part of in the future with our growth and what you're trying to do? Yeah, I mean, we're already starting to leverage a little bit. I mean, we've got some keynotes that are coming because of our, because of Success Magazine inside of EXP Realty. So Jamie Kern Lima is going to be, well, probably should wait to announce it. But she's going to be one of our keynotes, but she's also going to be on the cover of the magazine. And there's just a lot of interesting people that, you know, Success Magazine just means so much in the personal development space. And if you think about, I mean, real estate happens, we sell real estate, but we're really in the personal development space, but we monetize it through helping buyers buy and sell our cell. And so the more that we can sort of lean into, you know, improving ourselves, making ourselves better people, better individuals, better at business and life, we're just going to be able to help more people. And so it really is foundational from that perspective. Do you, the stockholder events, you guys, we do those twice a year, right? Correct. Yeah. See, I'm so learning this because I came in right at COVID. We did it virtually. Then we did the next one virtually. And we're doing this one in May, right? Virtually. We are, yeah. So we're doing this one virtually. In all likelihood, we'll do EXPcon this year virtually. And then my guess is that 2022 will be back to in real life events, which I can't wait to do that because... Me neither. It's a, and my guess is, is, you know, if you think about it, we will have had one, two full years since we did our last company event. And we will have went from whatever 15,000 agents or something, actually 25,000 agents at the end of 2019 to somewhere, you know, 70, 80, 90, maybe 100,000 agents by the end of this year. You're going to have to get the Miami Dolphins arena. Yeah. I mean, we could literally have 10,000 people show up at our next event. Yeah. A lot of people are hitting me up talking about Vegas and fall. They're, I guess, people are kind of wishing and hoping and they really want it to be an in-person shareholders meeting this fall, I guess. A lot of people are hitting me up about that. But I guess it's kind of a wait and see kind of deal, right? Yeah. EXPcon, well, we'll see. I mean, I'm doing an in real life event this week with Grant Cardone and, you know, Grant, I was just talking to him yesterday and he had lots of people reach out to him and say, hey, it's big risk doing an in real life event and all of that. And I think, you know, at some point, we're going to have to pull the band-aid off and with the vaccine getting out there and people able to make more educated risks on their own part. But I think we'll have definitely more liability waivers if people come to an in real life event. Oh, yeah. There you go. That's all you got to do. You know, I mean, if they feel like, you know, they want to take the risk, then why not? You know, if they're willing to take the risk and they want to, then why should we hold them back? Right. So who knows? You might have just sold me on doing the in real life event later on this year. We'll see. So as we start wrapping up, we'd love to learn more about just personal hobbies, right? Business aside, what do you do for fun over there? Yeah. So a little bit of a boater. So we've got a boat we just bought last August. We've only actually taken it on one trip. So that was, we did about two, two and a half weeks on it. But since we, and that was right after we acquired it. Then it's been getting tons of work getting it ready for this next boating season. So we've got it now wrapped and up top. And we've got a bunch of, we upgraded the battery system and did a bunch of stuff. So we're excited about that. I've been a runner most of my life. So like this morning I got out for a little over a six mile run, 6.2. I did 10K this morning. That's not a little run. That's not a little, you're not, that's not being a little runner. That's six miles is, that's, that's a big runner. Well, it's, it's, yeah, it, I used to run a lot of half marathons like 2015, I think I ran six half marathons that, that year. And, and I like that distance, but right now there's not a whole bunch of road races to do. So 6.2 is about the longest I've run so far this year. Do you go to the gym or just run? No, I need to start, I was trying on some clothes a couple of days ago and put, had some short sleeves on. I'm going, man, I do not have any guns right now. I need to, I need to spend a little time lifting some, doing some biceps. Ricky and I are going to fly down and start training you on the weights. There you go. Cool, man. Well, Glenn, hey, listen, appreciate your time, man, with your busy schedule and down in Miami and your hotel room. And we just really appreciate you, you know, building this company, this amazing company, spending some time with us today, sharing a little bit about your story and everything. I know you don't have Instagram, right? Did you have finally pulled a plug on that? Did you rip that mandate off yet? Yeah, I'm on Instagram because I joined, I joined Clubhouse. I've been doing the Clubhouse and Clubhouse, you know, is highly connected to Instagram. Right. So that's, you know, you finally got one, huh? Yeah. So and since January, I'm up to like 2,500 followers or something. Yeah, I'm going to go ahead and share it really quickly just so everyone could go ahead and reach out to you. Do you answer all of your DMs like Ricky and I do? No, I've got somebody starting to check my DMs and I'm looking at, it's, I don't know, it's called Instagrammer or actually there's like an automated bot to answer messages because I got, I have a lot of people writing me. Every time I go on Clubhouse, my Instagram blows up on the DMs. I love it. I love it. So I have everyone listening. Yeah, look at that stud, man. Yeah, check them out. For everyone listening, Glenn's going to be speaking live at the 10X Growth Conference. So definitely check in on them there. If you want to go ahead and reach out to me and Ricky, you need any help, whether you're an agent locally, nationally or worldwide, and you need any assistance collaborating and growing your business, reach out to us. You can find me on Instagram at LatinoAgent. Ricky, where can they find you? Yeah, I'm still answering all my DMs. So that's why I asked you that, Glenn. I answer all my Instagram DMs personally and I spend about 2 hours a day on that. So that's kind of why I was wondering how many hours you spend on that because I spent a lot of time there just going back and forth one-on-one with people that just need help or asking questions or, like you say, reaching out and saying thanks and stuff like that. Well, maybe I'll do an auto reply and say, hey, I don't have time to answer you, but if you write Ricky, he'll get back to you. Yeah, no, I know. I actually had some auto reply stuff there for a while, but you know, I do so much business in there. I bring so many agents over, help so many agents do so much business, you know, in there. So it's time well spent for me until I get to the point where I can't, right? There'll be a day where it'll be way too much, way too overwhelming, and there's no way I could do four hours or five hours a day. There's just no way. You should think about doing a zero to diamond clubhouse if you haven't done it already. We've got one going. I've got my team. They're kind of running one and stepping there every once in a while. So yeah, you know, the sad part there is they're not on Android yet and I'm an Android lover. And so I actually took my wife's old iPhone and I literally, it's just for clubhouse for me. So I don't get on there as much as I would if it were, if I was getting notifications and, you know, if it was right there on my phone, you know, so I don't know if I haven't even checked to see if it's on Android yet. I don't, I don't think I still think they're, they're, they're working, they're working on it. Yeah. But you've got an iPad or you've got, obviously, and I, uh, somebody else's old iPhone, you can, uh, you can jump on it, but it's pretty, it's pretty cool platform. That's how I, that's how I met Grant and I've met a bunch of people, you know, on, on that, that platform. Oh yeah, I've been on there. I've been on there and done some events and talked to a lot of people. It's incredible. I mean, it really is, but you got to have some time set aside if you're going to go on that app, right? There you go. You got to really be locked in and ready to spend a good chunk of your time. So that's the problem with me a little bit, but no, I'm going to spend a lot more time on there over the next couple of months because I think it's, I think it's really, really powerful, especially now where you can't have these live events, you know, it's kind of takes place of it a little bit. Yep. A little bit. Well guys, hey, thanks for, thanks for having me on and, uh, and, you know, let me know if there's anything I can do to support you guys on, um, in your business. You guys are obviously knocking out of the park, but, uh, just, uh, let me know. You know how to get a hold of me. Absolutely, man. We're just glad to be partners with you. We'll talk to you soon, bro. Okay. Awesome. Take care. Thanks guys.