4.5 years = 566 units for $498m
Here is what building my business, Onyx Homes, looked like to this point.
Year One – 2020 Selling like crazy!
We all know 2020 was a wild year for a ton of different reasons. I was about 6 months in the business at this point, and up until this point, all my business came from open houses. I was so busy with appointments on the weekends that I wasn’t able to host open houses anymore. Great problem to have, but my lead generation was gone.
This is what led me to find online lead generation. Between running our own ads and buying leads through sites like Zillow and Realtor, my lead gen problem was fixed. The next problem sounds obvious now, but back then, it didn’t feel obvious. I had more leads than I could handle myself. The first step was to build systems and processes around what I was doing so we could do more.
The second step was to start to grow a team. Teaching other agents to do exactly what we were doing that was working.
Ended the year with a total of 74 deals for $54.5m in volume
Year Two – 2021 The year of scaling and hard (expensive) lessons
2021 was a really hard year for me as a business owner. We did some crazy numbers as a team but there was very little feeling of accomplishment. We chose our business model, scaled our lead generation, and added a lot of agents with no standards. Oh and btw, we opened an office (exactly three years ago today as I’m writing this).
We attracted a lot of agents to our team, but not necessarily the right ones. We added a ton of staff to make up for added work. Also, not necessarily the right ones. I was still selling like crazy from 8am – 7pm and then running the business from 7pm til I couldn’t work anymore.
This was also the year I made the least amount of money since my first year out of college (in 5 months).
2021 ended with letting go of a ton of staff we couldn’t afford.
Ended the year with 130 deals for $111m in volume.
Year Three – 2022 the huge shift toward long-term thinking
After a long conversation with my coach (shoutout, Tausha) and previous business partner, we decided it was time for me to make the decision to either grow the business for the long term or keep selling. I decided to make the first true long-term decision and stop selling. The hardest part was finding out where the revenue I was producing was now going to come from, about $500k per year.
We implemented clear benchmarks and standards. Most of our team hated it, but the top producers loved it. All the agents we shouldn’t have hired in the first place quit. Our team was about half the size and way better off. The clear standards and benchmarks we rolled out improved our agents, which improved our company. All our decisions from this point on have been long-term decisions.
So many things are going well, except the most important thing—a clear vision and focus. My business partner and I were no longer aligned on the future of the company. I honestly don’t remember much of the first half of what was considered a really good year. The second half was finding out what the future of the company and the eventual buyout would look like.
Ended the year with 111 deals for $101m in volume.
Year Four – 2023 aligned goals and focus
Another really hard year in business. Finding the path forward… the team was crushing, which made the decision hard. It would have been easy to fold and close the doors and start over… but what we had built up until this point was something special.
Before the halfway point in the year, my ex-partner and I fully agreed on a buyout.
From that point forward, there was a crystal clear path forward, and the team was focused.
We opened our doors to adding new agents, the right agents, in May of 2023. We had 16 agents at that time. We knew (still know) exactly what we were building and moved forward, building brick by brick. We’re building the best team for agents who want to
- Follow a proven process
- Put in the work required to be successful
We ended the year strong, having our best year ever, even without either founding member selling.
Ended the year with 144 deals for $134m in volume. (this was the first year the business itself was actually profitable. Meaning without owner commissions)
Year Five – 2024 A Clear Path Forward
The most boring year of my business career. You have no idea how exciting it is to say that.
I’ve locked onto two favorite quotes in the last two years.
- Do the basics. At a high level. Consistently.” – Phil Jones
- “People overestimate what they can do in a year. And they dramatically underestimate what they can do in a decade.” – tons of people
We are so focused on what makes our team (company) successful that we say no to almost everything. Pouring back into our agents, adding things that matter, subtracting things that don’t.
This has attracted a ton of agents to our team, and we only hire the ones that fit what we’re looking for. We can be extremely picky because we know we offer a lot to our agents, and we have high expectations in return.
We are on pace to end this year by hitting our goal of 200 deals for $200m in sales volume.
YTD – 100 Closed deals for $97m in volume.
The reason I’m sharing this…
There are two major reasons that I’m sharing this.
First, I’ve found that it’s helpful to share my story because it’s not what a lot of people assume from the outside. Being an agent is hard. Building a team is hard. Wherever you’re at in your business, there are lessons to learn from. I share this so you can learn from some of mine.
Second, I’m considering sharing more about what I’ve learned from building my business. Not the story, like this… I’m talking about the tactical ‘how to’ stuff. The stuff that I’ve either learned the (very) hard way or paid a ton of money to learn from those ahead of me.
Things like…
- How to recruit agents to your team (we went from 16 to 50 from May 2023 to May 2024)
- How to scale accountability (I manage 50+ agents without a sales manager)
- How to create processes (for literally everything)
If that sounds like something you’d be interested in, fill out this form so I can save your info. I’ll put a waitlist together. If enough people are interested, I’ll reach out to you personally.
Join the waitlist for team building – click here
For those that aren’t building a team, follow along for more content to help you sell more and make more money.