In this coaching hot‑seat session, Chris Prefontaine, Nick, and Dr. Avi discuss how Avi can run his real‑estate business while relocating to Israel. They explore practical ways to maintain a local presence without being physically present, such as leveraging trusted agents or brokers as "boots on the ground," establishing referral relationships, and using conference rooms for buyer meetings. Compensation models are examined, with a focus on a 10% deal‑split for on‑the‑ground partners and how that integrates with existing realtor referral fees. The participants set a timeline—ideally June 2025, with a hard deadline of August 2025—to have the remote structure in place. Concrete next steps are outlined, including selecting a handful of reliable brokers, drafting referral agreements, communicating the plan via their private channel, and documenting the compensation structure. Throughout, the tone remains collaborative and instructional, with an optimistic outlook toward successfully transitioning the business overseas.
Chapters
You probably can take $800, you get the difference, or whatever you want to give them. You can give incentive by price range. There's no wrong answer there. Just tell them it's a working process. You want to get this going, and either way, it's positive. Dr. Avi, what do you got for a constraint or a—
All right.
So mine's going to be a little different than— a little different direction.
I'm—
a year from now, Um, I want to be in a position where I'm working my area without actually having to be there. And we talk a lot about getting in front of the sellers, being in front of them to talk to them, build rapport and all that. But if I'm not here to do that, how do I get— how do I need to build that out?
Okay, can we dig into this a little bit? Um, yeah. Is this from a personal standpoint? You want to travel a little bit?
It's a personal standpoint. We are looking, uh, looking to move to Israel.
Would you, with the kids?
The kids are already there. And yeah.
Sweet.
Okay.
So you would do what we did on some of ours, and we didn't make it a practice because now we're separated geographically with Zach's doing his own deals. Um, and that is you'll have trusted boots on the ground because you're a realtor. You probably have a whole bunch of people that'll do this with you. Because if you hypothetically were in Israel, instead of paying them a flat fee to be boots on the ground, you might want to give them a percentage, like pull them in as a quasi-non-owner partner. I'm just giving you an idea. There's no wrong answer here. That's going to be how you gain, because then you have— you'll have face time and they'll be there. Just my knee-jerk. If someone else has another idea, fire away, but that's how I would do it. As far as going Israel.
Okay. And, and another thought that I had, or direction I had, was to try to build more relationships with realtors, with wholesalers, and, uh, so that they could bring me deals and they would essentially be the boots on the ground.
You can do that too. They'll get more than referral fee, they'll get a piece of the deal. You're probably going to have a nice handful and you don't need more than, I would guess, Over the course of 2025, even up through June, if you could put in place maybe pointedly going at it, we can help script it for you. Put in place maybe 4 or 5, maybe half a dozen referral sources. You're not gonna really have to pick up the phone much. Uh, that's how Zach's been doing it.
Okay.
Hey, Avi, and I, I just have some thoughts here when it comes to, um, on the buyer end of things. Your, your situation is a little bit different. You have an office, right?
Currently, yeah.
You have like a brokerage, right? Okay, well, you have hypothetically, uh, people, trusted people who can meet with said buyers if, if and when you get those, meet with them for a buyer's meeting, uh, meaning just be, uh, a face, uh, and then they could bring me in on the phone or on Zoom So there's not a problem when it comes to, when it comes to the buyer end of things, getting a buyer, just because you have a little bit different situation where you actually have agents or you have someone who can be a warm body there that I will be able to communicate with.
Hold on one second. Are you keeping your office?
I'm actually— may not be. I'm selling my physical building. I put that up for sale.
Okay.
I'm not sure about the direction I'm gonna have with my actual office. So it's a great idea, Nick, if, if I do keep it, that I have people. But if not—
It actually makes it a lot more difficult. I'm sure we could figure it out, work our way around it, but it makes it a lot more difficult if you don't have somewhere where they could— and an appointed person that, that could meet with them. Well, let's just do that on the phone or Zoom.
Let's just do it.
It's—
how many agents do you have working with you right now?
Right now I have 4. 1, 2, 3, whatever. I have 4 working for me now.
Okay. So when Nick and I were in Rhode Island and we were doing a crapload of deals in Mass, we used a friend's— he's an attorney, he's passed away now, but we used his conference room. I just call ahead and say, is it open? And we had a nice legal office. It was small, and we did our buyer meetings there. And could you not have one of your 4 or 5 Be the boots on the ground?
Yeah. If not, I can get somebody.
So that's why I talk to them now, though, Avi. If there's someone out of that 4 or 5, you go, yeah, they'd be like the one if I could have that. Like, are they sharp and you want to use them? Why don't you cut them in on the deal then? Okay.
Okay.
And then because you're a realtor, you have attorney contacts, you have all the contacts. Just find a conference room that they can use in a nice office setting.
I'm not telling you what structure or anything to do or what to pay, but I mean, 10% of the deal for someone just to be a physical body and—
That's where my head was.
Just to be a face that buyers can meet with, even though you and I will be on the phone and running everything, to motivate them to want to stay in the game here. That's where my head was at.
And help you with other stuff. But 10%, they'll do all this stuff with you. Just have it like— I'd get excited about having that meeting with them. Avi, what is your goal time-wise if everything goes perfectly?
If everything goes perfectly, by the end of August 2025.
Okay, so we have plenty of time.
Plenty of time.
Yeah, the coaches heard this, so we can help you. So you got ideas from Nick and ideas from the seller side. I was saying June, but you tell me August, so that's great. We can do that with you.
June would be even more ideal.
Well, let's do June. That's 7 months.
It's fine. Okay. All right. So what are my next steps?
Um, why don't you, uh, send— you can put on the High 6 channel if you don't care, or you can send it to me and the coaches on the private thread that we do on your— give us the dates you just mentioned because I'm not gonna remember all these hot seats we did. Okay, by June, ideally, I want this to happen. When this happens, I want to be able to Do this kind of business, and then put into your plan what we all just said. Okay, I have this office. I'm going to have three meetings with my four brokers. I'm going to pick one, and then structure. See if ten percent works for you. When Nick left brokerage and came with me in 2014 fall, it was ten years ago. We did. I think we did twenty at the time, Nick. Did we do twenty percent of everything at the time? It was just me and him.
I thought it was. I thought it was 10%.
Maybe it was 10.
That's how I started. But I didn't, I didn't let my license go until January of, of, uh, 2016.
So yeah. So obviously similar situation. I said Nick was busy. I'm like, can you just help me with buyers? Can you just help me with this? And it just grew because even payday 2s at that time were small enough for us to track and he would get 10% of everything. And then that just grew into other stuff. But that was before Kevin and Zach even came on board. So you could set one broker in motion and just be honest and say, I don't know how long-term this will be. Maybe we'll come up with a better profit sharing arrangement, but for now, I give you 10% of all these paydays. You set yourself up with an annuity. Tell them, because they get payday 1, they get 2s. That's a pretty cool income stream. They're not getting that as a broker. I don't remember.
Maybe, maybe my memory's, uh, wrong here, but I don't remember getting payday 2s, just 1s and 3s.
No, I remember because I remember the whiteboard. It was grueling to try to keep track of it. Okay, so yeah, 2s are tough to track, so you may not— but 1s and 3s are easy.
Okay. And in parallel, if I bring in, you know, if I have realtors who are feeding me deals who are not currently in my office, but they essentially have that same deal with them, they get 10% of the deal. I mean, and—
If they're giving you referrals, Avi, I'd stick with the realtor video. And so let's just say a $10,000 check's coming in. The realtor off the top before you and your 10% partner, the realtor would get their 20% if that's what you tell them they're getting.
Right.
And they usually only get one payday, but that's up to you if you want to do 1 in 3. And then you and your partner split the— so 20% is gone. You and your partner split the $8,000.
Okay.
Your partner gets $800. You get the difference or whatever you want to give them. You can give incentive by price range. There's no wrong answer there. Just tell them it's a, it's a work in process. You want to get this going. Either way, it's positive.
Okay. All right, thank you.
Is this where it would be? Tel Aviv?
Where are you going? Uh, Jerusalem. Jerusalem? Yeah.
Very cool for you, Avi.
Very cool.
Thank you.
Exciting.
Thank you. Oh, I see thumbs up. Thank you.
That's very cool.
Cool.
I'm glad I was able to get there when I did get there.
Well, you can—
All right, I'll be helpful for now, and then we got work to do. But Rick could also help you with that. I'm thinking just because of his transition plan, he might think of stuff like in between what we just said.
