So if you are a REALTOR®, with Keller Williams or not, here is our story (to the best of my ability anyway) – so continue reading if you wish and you may find something that inspires or resonates with you. At the very least you’ll understand who we are at a deeper level, and as the saying goes “there is nothing more expensive than an open mind”

1) They said wanted to keep more of their money – So a Capped commission model was created that put a limit on how much an agent could pay to their office each year before they moved to a 100% split. As top agents grow their business, they now NET more money as a result.

2) They said they wanted access to the best training in the industry – So Gary developed Boot Camp, then Keller Williams University and later, after years of research with Jay Papasan and Dave Jenks , he wrote and published the first of many New York Times best selling books, The Millionaire Real Estate Agent. This book laid the framework for proven models that build a successful real estate business and to date has sold well over 1 million copies and is the top real estate training book ever published. Kellerink, a publishing company, was later formed and Gary has since co-authored and published several other best selling books including SHIFT, Millionaire Real Estate Investor, The ONE Thing, and more. In recent years KW has also been recognized as the #1 training organization in the world (across all industries) on 3 different occasions by Training Magazine, an honor in which no other real estate company has ever achieved. You could say “we wrote the book on real estate”.

3) They said they want a share in the profits – So Gary set to work on a Profit Share formula that would treat his associates as stakeholders in the business without any risk or responsibility. Then associate Bob Gibson made it his life mission before his passing to write this model that would allow Keller Williams to share up to half its profits back with the agents in any given month. To date approximately $1.5 BILLION has now been paid out to our associates in completely passing income, passive income which is also willable (without penalty) to a beneficiary upon an agents passing, so that the legacy of profit share can even survive past death to benefit the families of our associates.

4) They said they wanted to “see the books” and have a say in how the company operates. So Gary created a standardized Chart of Accounts that every franchise would later use to transmit their financials monthly and developed the Associate Leadership Council (ALC) which operates similar to a board of directors and focuses on areas including growth, productivity, profitability, and culture within our offices. Today, financial statements for every franchise are made available to its agents and each office in the world has an ALC, while all 30 regions in North America have a Regional ALC, and there is an International ALC for all of Keller Williams. KW, as Gary likes to say, is TRULY built BY agents FOR agents.

Fast forward 20-30 years and numerous accolades and accomplishments later and those initiatives have supported Keller Williams growth from one office of 30 agents to more than 800 offices in 30 countries with more than 180,000 associates worldwide – the largest real estate company in the world by a wide margin.

While many would consider the mission accomplished and enjoy this success, Gary continued to push forward and be a visionary not only for our own company but our industry as a whole. He has been approached by corporate Wall Street to sell Keller Williams and go public – his answer was no because “once we start answering to our shareholders we stop answering to our agents”. Remember his belief, the company works for the agent, not the other way around.

After a number of years out of the CEO role in the 2000’s (a decision he made at the advice of a consulting company he paid thousands of dollars to help him grow the company) he stepped back into the role of CEO in recent years seeing a need for a clearer vision into the future of real estate, and in 2017 made a BOLD decision to turn KW into a technology company. There was no shortage of people, or media, who laughed or criticized this statement and proclaimed he was crazy to consider such a bold statement. The reality is that he saw the tech disruption in other industries such as Airbnb to the hotel industry, Uber to the taxi industry, Expedia and others to the travel industry, Netflix to the entertainment industry, and knew there was no shortage of companies pending billions vying to become that tech disruptor in real estate, Zillow in particular. When tech companies offer a service or access to information that is more convenient to the consumer compared to what they are used to, the consumer is always willing to move toward greater convenience and access. Gary understood there was a difference between “agent enabled tech” (essentially tech that needed the agent in order to exist – ie Zillow which needs data from real estate boards / MLS to exist) and a “tech enabled agent” (the agent who can continue to provide the level of service and value desired by the client by utilizing the best technology in the industry). Both will access the same data, the latter continues to offer industry expertise, local area knowledge, fiduciary responsibility, and not only data.

So the vision of what is now Command was born- a $2 Billion brainchild by Gary Keller and new President

For nearly 40 years Gary has proven time and time again that he will do whatever it takes advance our industry and go to bat for his people. It’s all he has ever done. In recent months, due to the COVID pandemic, KW developed an online learning dashboard that hosted the largest real estate event of the year, Mega Camp, with more than 30,000 attendees worldwide. In a commitment to take a stand on social injustice, the company’s belief system was re-written to include Equity, equality and inclusion and a National Social Equity Task Force was created – both were unanimously passed by the International ALC in record time – I am not aware yet of any other real estate company who has moved so quickly in such an important time.

So while our competitors try and tell our story and say that our models are broken or no longer relevant, the truth is the evidence continues to speak for itself. September for example was our best September in our nearly 40 year history with over $19 Million in Profit Share in one month. More than 6,000 agents made the move to KW in September alone.

As the next step in the KW journey begins, Gary has recently announced he is stepping in to a new role as Executive Chairman at KWx, a holding company that will represent a collection of all KW affiliates and subsidiaries including Keller Williams Realty, KW Worldwide, Keller Mortgage, Keller Covered, Keller Offers, and more. While change is never easy at first, and usually messy in the middle, the one thing we can be perfectly certain on is that future of our company has never been brighter and has never been in better hands.

So if you’ve made it this far and are curious about what KW can offer you and your business, or perhaps you are considering a career change and have always been interested in real estate, I would encourage you to have an open mind and just lean in a little bit further. I’d be happy to share why we’ve become home to more agents that any other brokerage office in Newfoundland, and our vision to become the real estate company of choice for REALTORS® in our province.

It costs nothing to have a coffee and a chat, and who knows, it might just be the best business you’ve ever made!