Pat Hays is a serial entrepreneur, real estate agent, and team leader of the Pat Hays Group at eXp Realty.
Pat started out hustling like every other Realtor and sold $12 million his first year.
He then started a real estate team to grow his business.
When he found eXp Realty Pat also built a revenue share team which now has over 4,000 agents that sells more than 1,200 houses a month!
Best of all, even with such a large team Pat does not have to manage the agents or transactions in his revenue share team.
Transcript:
Chris Bounds 00:02
Man, 1200 houses a month. We’ll get to that because I know that probably got a lot of people’s head spinning like, “How in the world is that possible?” You started out in real estate really, like it was every other agent.
You’re out there just hustling it. But the topic of today is how to grow successful real estate team. You went from the individual agent to a team leader. How did that happen? Why did that happen?
Pat Hays 00:29
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Great question. I started my real estate career in 2014 as a single agent. My first year, I sold about $3.2 million in production as a single realtor and I wanted to leverage myself back then. And the only way for me to do that was to become the traditional team leader.
So I created the Pat Hays Group. I hired two buyer’s agents. I focused on the listings. Of course, whoever wins the most signs in the yard is gonna win at listing. I focused on listings and made the phone ring with a lot of sign calls.
Our second year, my second year in real estate which is my first year as a team leader, In 2015, we did $12.5 million in production and 61 transactions here in San Antonio. It’s been a fun ride. It’s always great to leverage yourself. That’s the whole reason why I became a team leader and created the Pat Hays Group in 2015.
Chris Bounds 01:27
Awesome. Yeah. That’s a pretty quick trajectory. Seems like you were following the path that most real estate agents that want to be really successful long term in this business. That’s what they do.
They started as a successful agent, learn the business, start networking, create a team, get top talent on the team, grow and develop them and just keep crushing it. You can start a team, anyone can do that.
Pat Hays 01:55
That’s right.
Chris Bounds 01:56
You’re gonna be successful. Your team closed $12 million. Was that the team’s first year?
Pat Hays 02:03
Yeah. That was the first full year for the Pat Hays Group. Yep. First year, we did $12.5 million in production 61 transactions here in San Antonio, Texas.
Chris Bounds 02:11
You don’t do that by accident. How did that happen? Like, how did you go about choosing the right team members? The folks that you knew were going to be successful. They’re going to be hard charging.
And also, it was also going to be that good working relationship. If you don’t want to work with everyone, you don’t work with folks that are gonna work well with you. And it’s also going to grow them and develop them over time.
Pat Hays 02:34
That’s right. Yeah. I was looking for a hungry agents. I was looking for agents that were just starting out as well, too. They didn’t have any bad habits and I can kind of groom them, teach them, guide them and coach them for what I wanted. And so I hired to a fairly new successful realtors and they were hungry.
And so they didn’t really have a lot of money to spend on lead generation. Right. That was my responsibilities to generate quality buyer and seller leads. That’s what I did. Yeah. We crushed it our first year. Yeah. $12.5 million and 61 transactions on our first year. Then actually, that’s whenever I found eXp royalties at the end of my second year 2015 in December.
Chris Bounds 03:20
Yeah. So eXp Realty aside that your plan was to grow that production team, how many agents did you have that at the end of the first year?
Pat Hays 03:32
So I had three.
Chris Bounds 03:33
Okay, three. Yeah. If you were to go back to that moment, what would your 10 year projection have been? How large is the team? What were you trying to do? Are you just trying to hit a certain level and just kind of coast?
Pat Hays 03:47
Yeah. I was really wanting to grow a big team. I had a goal about eventually 10 or 15 buyer’s agents. Hopefully, doing the 100 million dollars a year in production. But after my second year, that’s whenever I found eXp Realty.
I started growing another team. A revenue organization that just like you said that we closed over 1200 houses, just alone last year. 4100 agents meaning 47 states, five Canadian provinces and 10 countries.
Chris Bounds 04:15
What was the difference in those? Because there are a lot. If you haven’t grown a huge mega team and there are plenty folks that do that and it works great. But if you were to grown that hundred plus a million ton of transactions versus you end up going to the revenue share route, which is what eXp offers growing a team. What are the differences between a production team Pat Hays Group and revenue share team which you have?
Pat Hays 04:46
In honesty, as a team leader, there comes a lot of responsibility. A lot of babysitting as I call it. You’re the one that’s actually out there spending all the money and generating all the leads. The agents don’t really have a vested interest in the leads because I’m the team leader.
I’m the one that’s responsible for spending money on the leads. I found it kind of difficult in really trying to scale and grow a real estate production team, just because of a lot of the headaches in the background. A lot of the babysitting. A lot of agents have obviously are not a W2 employees.
They’re 1099 employees and so they don’t have a base salary with commissions and bonuses. That’s not the structure that I had. They’re really just kind of working them as they pleased. And so it got a little frustrating whenever I was the one that had the big goals and spending all the money on generating all the leads and some of these agents just didn’t really take it so serious.
.Not as serious as I was. I was really trying to scale that I had met some other team leaders that had already done that and I was kind of following their pace as well. They had hit over $100 million a year in production in heir fourth or fifth or sixth year as a team leader. But they did say, “Hey, it wasn’t easy.”
There was a lot of headaches. A lot of babysitting. A lot of agents that they had to get rid of. They fired a lot of agents and they hired a lot of agents. And they did the disc profile to figure out the, you know, the best hire and, and who they wanted as their team leader or who they wanted as their head buyer’s agent or their head listing agent. There’s a lot of different ways to scale a team. But I found it very difficult back in 2015 2016 to really scale a large real estate production team.
Chris Bounds 06:31
Yeah. It’s not easy. Otherwise, everyone would do it. And the folks by you, I mean, they’re rewarded very well. But you’re serial entrepreneur. You’re entrepreneurs, business owners, look for leverage where investments come in and starting businesses.
You found a very unique one with the eXp to the revenue share plan to build a team that’s different from the production team, but instead build a team that grows back exponentially without your work. Almost like rental properties but even better. Right. So we got maybe 60 seconds left. Can you kind of explain how that has worked for you and the bit that you see over the past few years with revenue share?
Pat Hays 07:18
Absolutely, yeah. It’s been a game changer ever since. Ever since I saw eXp in December of 2015, I saw that they had a beautiful revenue share model where you can attract agents to the eXp model and get compensated very handsomely for helping grow a organization that you’re a shareholder of. Right. We’re a publicly traded company and I saw the opportunity that eXp had to offer and I ran with it.
So fast forward, I’ve been able to personally sponsor 50 agents to the organization and out of those 50 agents, it’s grown into 4118 agents, as of just a little bit ago. Spanning the 47 states, five Canadian provinces and 10 countries. Pay me six figures a month in revenue share. My whole organization closed over 1200 houses, just alone last month. It’s a fun different way to scale a massive team.
I’m not responsible for the agents. I’m not responsible for generating the leads. I still have my my small production team here in San Antonio, the Pat Hays Group. But I love growing a revenue organization. I love growing the company that I’m a shareholder of. And my organization is actually growing by about over 230 agents are joining my revenue share organization every single month. That is leverage right there. I can’t go do that anywhere else, other than eXp. So it’s been a lot of fun.
Chris Bounds 08:43
I love that, man. I’m also blessed to be a part of that. So do you have your core production team and you’re able to now have that at a level that’s fun and enjoyable for you. It’s not stressful and hard work. I mean, things happen but for the most part, you’re selling houses when and how you want to. You’re just pouring into thousands and thousands of agents to help them grow their business and ultimately achieve the success that you have with the revenue share team. It’s amazing.