From Poverty to Prosperity: Cory and Milly Kammerdiener's Journey to Building HOMEROCK Realty

SSS Podcast (00:03.0) We're live? We're live. All right. So you guys wanted me to make a little video of the opportunity with Home Rock Realty. And the question was, what are five things that would attract an agent to Home Rock Realty? So we just put them up on the board over here, but let's go ahead and talk about a few of them. So one of the main things that I believe that real estate agents being independent contractors are looking for, obviously, they want to make money. Why else would you leave a job and go be independent, starting your own business if the financial reward wasn't going to be greater than what you were leaving behind? So I do believe regardless of your brand new agent, if you're new agent and you're going to put in work for yourself, you want to make the most money possible directly tied to your effort. So at Home Rock Realty, we do have a pretty, I believe it's a unique cop plan. We start off at a 90-10 split. So what does that mean? If you're a real estate agent and for example, you make a $10,000 commission, then 90 % is what you're gonna put in your pocket. So if it's $10,000, you're gonna make $9,000 commission. Now, that 10%, that's gonna come to the brokerage, Home Rock Realty. But here's the thing. Our model, we also have a cap. It's a $10,000 cap. So imagine that $1,000 came to Home Rock Realty and you had 10 sales that you did. $1,000 per sale comes to the company. Once we receive $10,000, we cap the amount of income that we take from your commission. Okay? So what this does is for those that are going to be top producers that are going to sell a lot of volume, they will get to a position where their income is going to start to explode once they no longer have to share the commission with the brokerage. Remember that number is 10,000. You'll never pay more than 10,000. Now, why did we do a SSS Podcast (02:04.912) 90-10 versus an 80-20 or 70-30 or even a 60-40 like a lot of our competitors. It's very simple. Being a broker for over 20 years in the business, I know that even we have agents that may only do one, two, maybe three transactions per year. For that type of person that's not going to do a lot of volume, they're never going to hit a cap. So for that person, they would like to get more money per transaction, knowing that they're never going to be able to keep 100 % of their commission because they're not doing enough transactions. So this is why we went down to a 90-10 to be able to help the majority of agents that are not out there closing, probably eight or more sales in our market. So in 2024, NAR did a survey as the National Association of Realtors. And in that survey, It said that 79 % of realtors across America sold zero. They didn't sell a single property, right? So we know that in this time of economic distress in the housing market, a lot of people's sales are down. We believe that we should probably give more money to those folks that are not doing the volume, right? So getting higher commissions or better commissions, this is something that we're seeing a lot of agents, they're reaching out to us and they're saying it, hey, I'm on an 80-20 split with a cap of 15 or 16,000, but based on last year sales and the previous year sales with your compensation model, we would have put X number dollars extra in our pocket if we would have had that 90-10 split. For the top producers that are at companies paying $23,000, in cap, they're saying, wait a minute, why would I pay $23,000 in my commissions as a cap when you guys have it at $10,000? So better commissions, I believe right now in this particular market, that is one of the main reasons why we're getting a lot of people coming over to the company. SSS Podcast (04:10.134) So a second reason, this is data we're getting from agents that I'm speaking to daily about the opportunity. The second reason is training. So let me explain why. So I've been at this for 20 years. A lot of the brokers that were in the business when I was in my 20s and they were probably in their 40s, 50s and 60s, they're gone. These were the people that were around. to train people like me 20 years ago. So the problem is a lot of the great brokers of my day back then, they don't exist and there is a gap between their generation and the generation that's coming into real estate today. See, there's more people that have their real estate license in the last five to six years than there are people that have their license 20 years. And I'm picking up this data from all the realtor events that we're doing because I asked, been in the business for 20 years and out of 30 people I might see one. But if I say who's been in business less than five years, I'm going to see 75 % of the people are going to raise their hand. So there is a gap in between the experience level. And to be someone that can train another agent to be successful, typically you should probably have about a decade of experience. Why? Because real estate does this, it's cyclic, right? Seven years up, seven years down. So you're able to teach someone this is what you need to do today to make money, but also to prepare for the next few years. So training, I'm seeing that a lot of agents are with brokerages. They have thousands of agents, maybe they're with brokerages that don't have offices, you this virtual office type deal. And from my experience, what they're telling me is they don't have people in an office that they can glean from. SSS Podcast (06:02.03) You know, it says iron sharpers iron, right? If you don't have an office, how are you going to be around superstars that are getting the job done if there's no physical office location, right? And it's great. You can do the virtual thing and you know, probably hear people's testimonial things that they're doing to sell homes. But I personally believe that if you want to be awesome in sales, you got to duplicate someone else that you literally can go out in the field with them, hear them how they speak every day and just duplicate. that. So when it comes to training, a lot of people have their real estate license but they've never been trained to sales. In Texas, the first license you get is called a salesperson's license. Do you need to be taught sales? This is something that I'm hearing, it's just they don't have this in a lot of brokerage. So training is very important to a lot of people. And any person, even if they're successful, they will tell you that I will never stop learning because you don't know what you don't know. So even successful people that are superstars are still out there trying to learn more, okay? So the third thing, which a lot of people will say probably is the first thing, is leads. How are you gonna make a sale if you don't have a prospect? You see, it starts with a lead that you're gonna prospect to see if they're gonna be a buyer or seller. If they're qualifiable, then you wanna make them a client. See, so it all starts with the lead. Prospect and the lead. Find out if it's someone that you can work with. Then you're gonna ask them to become your client mutually. You're gonna agree. I'm gonna do this for you and then you're gonna be loyal to me as your real estate agent. And then we're gonna go out there and we're gonna sell something, right? You're gonna buy something or you're gonna sell something. So with the advent of the internet, more people are on the internet looking for homes and services than they are in the street. Hey, do you have a real estate license? I'm looking to buy a home. That doesn't really happen anymore. And even if you're in church, SSS Podcast (08:02.188) And you're like, hey, I'm a real estate agent. Maybe I can help people in my church. Well, guess what? You're not alone. There's like 10 of you in your church that are licensed real estate agents. So NAR statistic every year says in their questionnaire to buyers, when you thought about buying a home, where's the first place you started? Overwhelmingly, 98 % will say, started with the internet. Real estate agents. are not really digital marketers. They don't really teach that in school, right? So you got to be connected with a brokerage that understands the power of the internet when it comes to how do we do lead generation on the internet. Now, even though I do believe in millions of people being on the internet, so my odds are greater that if I run an ad, I'm probably going to get a thousand people look at the ad, but I'm still old school. I like to stop people in the street and say, Hey, you come here, you got a house? Yes or no? you No matter what they say, I'm gonna come back with a script, right? So having things like a simple business card, which we went through training today, right? Business card with a QR code. If you're interested in buying or selling, book a time so that we can talk about your future, right? So lead generation is something that is not being taught, but it's the number one thing I believe that people really are chasing after. And when they find a brokerage that was built off of lead generation, I believe that's probably one of the reasons the number one reason is honestly that they're coming. So do we have leech most definitely but here's the thing I can give you fish or I could teach you a fish. SSS Podcast (09:40.746) I'd rather teach you how to generate your own leads using the same technology that we've been running for about 20 years. Because if you can get out there and market yourself and you can generate your own leads, then you're going to enjoy the 90-10 split. If you get your leads from OpsCity, Realtor.com, Zillow Flex, then guess what? Remember the number one reason we want more commissions. You get less commissions when you take the referral from an outside party, right? So it's better that you learn how to do lead generation yourself and we can teach you how to do that. Now, the fourth thing, coaching. Sometimes people get coaching confused or mixed up with training. No, training is let me show you how to do a contract. Let me show you how to put that listing in the MLS. Let me show you how to log into your database and let me show you how you make the phone calls. That's training. That's something that could be taught one time. You pick it up and then you roll with it. Coaching is different. Coaching is what are you trying to accomplish in your career? How much money do you want to make? What type of life do you see yourself living? What are you trying to get out of this opportunity? Okay, great. If that's what you're trying to accomplish, let's put together a plan, but more important than the plan, anybody can have a plan. It's the accountability piece. Will you actually do the plan? This is where the coaching comes in. If you need to sell X number of houses to make X number of money so that you can send your kids to private school or maybe go on a vacation every year because you might be a full-time, let's say school teacher, and maybe you just don't have enough money being a teacher for a vacation. and you can sell one house and be able to finance a $10,000 vacation, that may be your goal. Okay, great. We need to coach you on how to get that one sale. And coaching is not just saying, let's put together a plan, it's the motivation piece. Because at the end of the day, yes, you are in business for yourself. SSS Podcast (11:41.954) but never be in business by yourself. This is why you need to be part of a tribe, you need to be part of a group, you need to be part of a team where you can have motivation from one another. You so you gotta have the company training, you gotta be around people that are making this happen, and you gotta let people know, this is what I wanna do so that they can help you become accountable. That's really what coaching it is. Now, number five, this is something that people don't believe that they need, especially if they're in the beginning part of their career. See, my beginning part of my career, I'm like, I could sell a house and make thousands of dollars. This is awesome. I'll just keep doing this and repeating it, repeating, repeating, Until now, I'm 50 years old. And I'm like, wait a minute. I've been doing this for 20 plus years. Why am I still doing this? It's because this. I didn't have an exit strategy. I got the rental properties. that's going to be my exit strategy. When I get old, I'll live off the rent. I didn't like dealing with tenants. I didn't like dealing with placing the rules and replacing the AC units and the evictions. That's not for me. Anything that has to do with negativity. That's not for me. So exit strategy. We have what we call a rev share system that's put together that if you were simply to come work with us and you think that this is a good opportunity. Other people should know about it, right? You talk to them about what you're doing over here. They come and join the company and whatever they sell and make commission from the 10 % we receive as the brokerage, we share with you 50%. So let's do the math real quick. You bring in your friend, they close the transaction. It's a $10,000 GCI, gross commission income. They get 9,000. The brokerage gets 1,000. SSS Podcast (13:31.202) The brokerage shares with you 50 % of the revenue, which is $1,000. Congratulations, you just made $500 by doing what? Just telling your friend how awesome Home Rock Realty is. They join, and every shell that they make, up until their cap, you get 50 % of the company revenue. If their cap is $10,000 and you get 50%, you make $5,000 a year for every person that you bring over to Home Rock Realty. But listen to this, it gets better. If you bring in two people, you now get paid two levels down. So if you bring in your friend, two friends, and then they bring in people, we give you 30 % of the revenue on people on your second level. See, this is a system that