5 Questions to Ask Before You Join Any Brokerage

Most agents choose a brokerage the way they choose a gym. They take the tour, they like the person showing them around, and they sign.

Then, a year in, they’re doing math on a commission check and learning what the fee structure actually does to it. Or the leads they were promised turn out to carry a split nobody mentioned. Or the training that sounded so good in the meeting turns out to be a recorded library nobody has updated in years.

None of that is bad luck. It’s what happens when only one side of the table showed up with questions.

So before you take another recruiting meeting, get this straight: you’re not applying for a job. You’re deciding where to run a business. The person across from you should expect hard questions and should be able to answer them without getting cagey. These are the five I’d want answered before I moved a license anywhere, including here.

1. What will I actually net, after everything? The split is the headline number and the least useful one. Ask for the full list: cap, franchise or royalty fees, desk fees, transaction fees, E&O, technology, marketing, anything billed monthly, and anything billed per closing. Then ask them to run your last twelve months through their model and show you the net.

A high split with a stack of fees underneath it can pay you less than a lower split with none, and you won’t know which is which until somebody does that arithmetic in front of you.

2. Where do the leads come from, and what do agents actually convert? Every recruiting conversation mentions leads. Far fewer get specific. Ask where they originate, what they cost the company, what the split is on a company-generated lead compared to one you source yourself, and how many an agent at your production level sees in a month.

Then ask what agents there actually convert, not what’s possible. And ask to talk with someone who’s been on the team eighteen months rather than the newest hire, because the newest hire doesn’t know yet either.

3. What does training look like on an ordinary Tuesday? Not the version in the presentation. Ask who runs it, how often it happens, whether it’s live or recorded, and whether it’s built for brand-new agents or for producing agents trying to reach the next level. Those are two different programs, and plenty of places only have one.

Then ask what happens at seven at night when you’re stuck on a contract question and your client is waiting on you. That answer tells you more about the support structure than the training calendar ever will.

4. Who’s accountable for my numbers, and how often? There’s a real difference between a place to hang your license and a place that grows your business, and accountability is usually where it shows. Ask whether someone reviews your pipeline with you, how often, and what happens when your numbers slip.

If nobody can name the person or the cadence, then the honest answer is that you’d be accountable to yourself. That’s fine if it’s what you want, and expensive if you assumed otherwise.

5. What happens to my business if I leave? Ask while it’s still hypothetical and easy to answer. Who owns the database. What happens to your CRM data and your contacts? How pending transactions get handled. What happens to your listings. Whether anything you sign limits where you can go next. Every agent should understand the exit before the entrance, and the reaction you get to the question is informative all by itself.

There’s one more, and I’d save it for last. Ask why agents have left.

Every brokerage and every team has had people go, some for perfectly good reasons. A place that can tell you plainly why, without getting defensive and without running down the people who left, has thought honestly about itself. A place that tells you nobody ever leaves is either not paying attention or not being straight with you.

Ask all six wherever you’re interviewing. And if you want to run your answers by someone who isn’t trying to close you, I’m glad to be that call. I’ll look at your numbers, tell you where I think your business is leaking, and give you a straight read on whether a move makes sense at all. A good share of those conversations end with an agent staying right where they are and running a better business, which is a fine outcome.

Call or text me at (254) 535-8792, email me at jesse@themylesgroup.net.