Jon’s Story Continued-

I was born in 1991 as the youngest of three brothers, and grew up in Falls Church, Virginia, a suburb of Washington, D.C. As a kid, I played the Pokémon strategy card game in local, regional, and national competitions, and, at age 10, beat a player from Belgium to become the World Pokémon Champion. My two-year Pokémon adventure taught me the importance of preparation, and strengthened my confidence that I could achieve any goal I set for myself.  

In high school, I was into sports, music, and investing. With money from part-time jobs, I opened a Roth IRA with a stock index fund, fascinated that my money could work to make me more money. In 2009, I began studying business and finance at Virginia Tech, and learned more about investing as a member of Bonds and Securities Investing by Students (BASIS), an invitation-only group of top-performing students allowed to trade bonds through sponsorship from Virginia Tech’s Endowment.

In summer of Sophomore year, buoyed by my 4.0 GPA, membership in BASIS, and – no lie — Pokémon World Champion status, I landed the mother-of-all-summer-investment-internships at one of the world’s most prestigious investment banks. Although my lack of experience left me an utter failure as an intern, I learned a lot from these brilliant bankers, including the importance of systems and methods.   

The next summer, I interned at a Big 4 accounting firm, but declined their offer for a post-graduation job in order to look for my coveted Wall Street position. I didn’t land one, but did take an offer from a quantitative tax policy think-tank in Washington, D.C., the Quantitative Economics and Statistics (QUEST) group at Ernst & Young. I started there in 2013, after graduating Summa Cum Laude with a B.S. in Finance, and loved it. But after a year of frugality, including living in my parents’ rent-free basement, I still had significant student debt and no savings. With the cost of living in the Washington, D.C. area so high, I didn’t see how I could dig out from under the debt and start building wealth there. 

In 2014, I moved to Jacksonville with my college girlfriend, Brittany (now my wife), to take advantage of the beaches, low cost of living, and good job opportunities. Brittany, a CPA, transferred to the Jax office of her Big 4 accounting firm, and then to an investment firm. I eventually ended up in investment banking with a Jacksonville office of Deutsche Bank. 

My Relationship with Real Estate.

It was with Deutsche Bank that I learned about real estate on a larger scale. My tasks included re-underwriting loans for the largest single-family rental operators in the United States, and underwriting loans for Small Balance Commercial. It was an incredible learning experience, but when the bank came under investigation and implemented a pay freeze on its Jacksonville employees, it was time to find a job that would give me more direct control over my compensation.

At that same crucial time, Brittany and I were buying our first home together, and had a very poor agent experience from both sides of the transaction. When I examined the settlement statement, I realized that being a real estate agent was an entrepreneurial job with unlimited earning potential. Plus, I was highly motivated to help others avoid the poor service we had received, and confident I could change how real estate was done in Northeast Florida. My favorite mentor at Deutsche Bank encouraged me to risk starting my own business with this wise advice: “You’re either an owner or you’re owned.” 

I came up with a business plan and presented it to Brittany. Despite having student loans, car loans, a new mortgage payment, and virtually nothing in the bank, Brittany was supportive, and we agreed I would have six months to earn a living selling real estate.

In September 2015, I joined a big-box brokerage and built my solo agent business the old-fashioned way: manning the front desk, cold-calling, and door-knocking. My first customer, Nancy, needed a home under $70,000, and it took six months of viewing 50+ homes to find her the right one. Considering gas money, I probably netted zero, but I learned a lot about foreclosures, helped someone who really needed it, and built a strong relationship with a woman we now call our “adopted grandmother.” A few months after closing, Nancy referred me to a family member selling a $350,000 home, reinforcing my conviction that real estate is all about relationships. That belief has formed the core of my business.

Within four months, my business had taken off and I was living the wild life! OK, maybe not. But I was able to buy a ring for Brittany, who, luckily for me, agreed to take the leap with her newly minted, 24-year-old fiancé entrepreneur. Before long, though, I was in the weeds. I was able to maintain my 5-star customer service, but realized that if I took many more customers, I wouldn't be able to scale any further on my own. That’s when I ran into a friend who introduced me to Keller Williams. 

I liked KW’s focus on education, training, coaching, and team building. But I was in an aggressive contract where I had already paid $44,000 in broker commissions and would lose all the outstanding commissions I had already earned if I left. I hadn’t crunched my numbers and sufficiently analyzed the agreement before signing. But I resigned myself to paying a high price for not doing enough homework, and moved to KW in late 2016. 

KW was a great fit. I learned their excellent systems and models, and attended conferences around the country to absorb everything I could about the industry. By the end of my first full fiscal year, I had served 60 customers, and closed $12,100,000. I was named a 2016 “Top 100 Most Influential Real Estate Agents in Florida,” a Realty-Builder Top Producer, and awarded a Keller Williams Growth Award.  I finally had control of my earnings; the only person who could get in my way was me.

Growing Pains.

In early 2017, I formed The Brooks Group KW team, but, unfortunately, turned out to be a less-than-stellar team leader. I hired and fired several members, unable to understand why they weren’t as committed, responsive, and careful as me. I hired a KW MAPS coach and slowly developed training skills. I was still a mediocre front-line manager, but was able to train people sufficiently for them to provide the required 5-star service.

Business grew exponentially, and in July 2017, I convinced Brittany to leave her investment job to join The Brooks Group as a Buyer agent. Around that time, I was featured as a “Rising Star” in Jacksonville Real Producers magazine, self-describing my model of responsiveness as “the Jimmie Johns of real estate.” And it was true: by the end of 2017, The Brooks Group had served 74 families and closed more than $20,000,000.  I was KW’s 2017 “Agent of the Year,” and The Brooks Group named “Top Producer Team - Closed Units - Northeast Florida Region.”

Brittany and I married in October 2017, and brought on several agents and admins, but our team was not coalescing. We eventually realized that instead of hiring based on our values, priorities, and method of operating, we were hiring people we thought would be enjoyable to work with, and that didn’t work. Yet, despite our hiring failures, by the end of 2018, The Brooks Group had served 143 families and sold more than $36,000,000. We were the #1 KW Team in Northeast Florida for our size, received a Platinum Award from Keller Williams International for Gross Commission Income in Excess of $1,000,000, and I was named a Top 10 Agent by the Northeast Florida Association of Realtors. We felt we had finally broken the code, and discovered a leverage system that worked for us.

Finding A New Passion in Real Estate.

In 2018, I reached out to KW’s CEO, Gary Keller, to share how we had bolstered our lead generation by actively pursuing online reviews from customers who had benefitted from our 5-star service. I was invited to be a panelist at KW’s summer 2018 Mega Camp. It was hugely exciting but terrifying. I was a kid with three years in the business, telling 10,000+ agents, nearly all more experienced than me, about our Review and Referral program. And this kid, who was onstage with his business idol, Gary Keller, had a huge fear of public speaking!

My passion for our program, and certainty that other agents could benefit from it, kept me going. The presentation was well-received, and I enjoyed sharing what I had learned. Other Market Centers asked us to teach classes on our systems and models, and we enthusiastically agreed. I also indulged my newfound passion for teaching by becoming one of KW’s youngest paid MAPS coaches.

In February 2019, when our daughter was born, The Brooks Group was down to Brittany, me, and an admin. Life was wonderful but chaotic, as I tried to handle my Sellers, Brittany's Buyers, extended visits from excited family members, and a debilitating slipped disc. No longer invincible, I pulled back on the business, as we calculated the minimum sales needed to pay our bills, and how to build our rental portfolio to live off its passive income. We even considered starting new careers in Raleigh, closer to family. 

Yet, despite these hurdles, our business remained booming, we were still getting referrals, and agents continued to contact us about joining our team. I was again a panelist at the KW 2019 Mega Camp, this time speaking on the profitability of our small team, one of the industry’s most profitable for its size. We also led well-attended KW Market Center seminars on how, within four years, we had built a net worth of more than $1,000,000 after starting with a net worth of negative $80,000. Our feedback was that agents loved our unfiltered and common-sense approach to real estate.

It became clear that Brittany and I both loved real estate, our customers, and running our own business. So, instead of giving it up, we hired independent contractors, including two excellent agents, Michelle and Stephani. I no longer needed to call upon my weakest skillset – front-line managing — because Michelle and Stephani were great culture fits, performing well with little guidance. But when our business and our perspective continued to grow, we knew that to remain in this business we loved, and still have a rich family life, more change was needed.  

Momentum is Born. 

I believe KW is the best of big-box brokerages, but we began to question the value of remaining there. We had taken leadership roles and were teaching KW classes, and more agents were coming to us for business advice, which we loved to provide. Then, one of our agents approached us about commission splits. We, as team leaders, got 50% of her commission, then KW took another 36%, leaving her with a small piece of the revenue pie, even while working long hours. We had been so focused on our own goals that we had thought little about the bottom line for our team members. Now, we wondered: Was the big-box model still viable? 

I spent a month talking to various agents about their brokerages. They liked education, training, and professional camaraderie but virtually all complained about the lop-sided team and big-box commission splits eviscerating their profit. To us, they confirmed that the big-box model is, for most agents, broken. It was time to evolve again.  

In January 2020, Brittany and I left KW to open Momentum Realty, a new brokerage combining major value-adds of a big-box brokerage (education, mentoring, professional community) with the agent-centric structure of a 100% commission brokerage. We founded Momentum on the principles of 1) putting more money in agents’ pockets with a 100% commission platform; 2) associating only with professionals who provide 5-star customer service and have the demonstrated ability to earn sufficient income to support themselves and/or families as agents (generally full-time, experienced agents closing 10+ transactions a year at our average sales price and commission percentage), and 3) teaching our agents how to develop as entrepreneurs to build their business, wealth, and net worth. We seek to build a community of passionate, like-minded entrepreneurs who are service-focused, have fun together, drive results together, and support each other.

As Momentum’s co-founder, I focus on teaching, mentoring, and growth opportunities for our business and agents. I now play mainly to my strengths, no longer managing others, but teaching highly motivated agents how they can grow their own businesses in whatever way they deem best, and build their best life.