Most brokers, from my humble experience, were good sales people but weak in the business building aspect of owning an office or a franchise. No franchise ever made a known jerk successful.
You know I know!

Given the state of failed franchisor/franchisee relationships, private branding is becoming ever more popular. For good reason. The Squeeze being put on Franchisee’s is braking the back/bank.

Selling another same brand franchise two blocks away does nobody any good. Look what happened to my Starbucks! I say mine because I own their stock and work out of Starbucks all over the country. They are my offices.

In closing this response to your statements I am seeing a continued demise of Real Estate Franchising. With technology as plentiful and inexpensive who needs a real estate satellite TV station when Apple has the iPhone.
I recently got a call from a women who once owned the home I have in Lehigh county. She said Mike I see your house is for sale. I said it was not and where did she see it. She saw it on an iphone under the Zillow site. I looked at it and thought wow, how cool is that. My home and it’s was still standing. Who really needs an office, an MLS, but a Broker YES!

Stay well!
Mike

When I was still taking my licensing classes, every day a new broker would come in and bring us lunch and tell us why we should join them. I never heard much about how they would help me be a great agent all I could hear was how much money they would ask for in return for their “services” and how great they were. Needless to say I didn’t interview any of them. I looked for a broker who would put their faith behind me and be there for me when I had a question, not just someone who told me how low their fees were.

A broker isn’t just the guy who gets in trouble when an agent screws up. They should be the guy (or gal, sorry ladies) that is there to answer your questions to keep you from screwing up. They should be willing to watch you stumble and struggle a bit in the beginning, but know how to encourage you. My broker and I don’t see eye to eye on some things, but he does know how to say things to me in a way that gets me motivated. He answers my calls and loves to help me out when I’m stuck. He praises me when I’ve done it right and shows me where I went wrong when I veer of course.

If a broker is willing to help nurture a new agent and push them to exceed their goals, they will reap the rewards. If they just fill the office and see what sticks, they will spend all of their time chasing the agents and not enough time building better ones. We could be a world full of agents who know what they’re doing and have the confidence to do it, but the warm body mentality will never allow that to happen. When those agents eventually leave that broker they will go to the next office that is looking for a butt to fill a seat. Passed around from broker to broker and the agent still knows only as much as they did the day they took their test.

(Alright, this is completely off topic, but a spider just jumped past me and as I went to shoo him away – he jumped into the CD drive on my laptop. That was incredible…and a little gross. At the moment there is a spider living in my computer.)

My words to brokers – nurture me and help me become the agent I want to be and I will generate more business. More business means more in your pocket and a happy agent who doesn’t feel the need to try “somewhere new.”

Personally, I think the days of the large brokerage with massive office facilities and 50% splits + franchise fees are nearly done. That worked in a time when the brokerage could provide new agents with leads and advertising support. Around here, those relics of the past claim they offer the agent “more” than the other models. But they don’t. To me – they are not practical…for a newer agent they are simply a pyramid scheme that lops off the lions share of commission and gives all the benefits to those who pay the least. The high splits make it nearly impossible for the newer agents to get enough money together to finance their own marketing plans. This is at the heart of a great deal of the animosity. Some models have outlived their practical lives and are running around desperately trying to justify their cost to the agent by using straw man arguments.

If you opened a brokerage here I would be the first to sign up no matter what business model you worked under.