The Average Realtor Makes $58,000 a Year. Here's How I'm in the Top 0.3%.

So last night, interesting, I watched a lot of Mike Cisnero on Liquid Death and how he just created a billion-dollar brand out of attacking the water industry. And what Mike started to do was play with an industry and take a marketing idea to it and bring water in a can. Where do you stand amongst the water industry in the real estate industry? Are you loud? Are you more than a realtor? Are you standing out amongst the other 12 realtors that your clients know? If you don't step out and become more than a realtor. Your commission is going to continue to be depressed. Last night, interesting, I watched a lot of Mike Cisnero on Liquid Death and how he just created a billion-dollar brand out of attacking the water industry. And it's actually one of our favorite brands around here. So we're gonna drink some Liquid Death. But then we talk about the water industry and the average and what everybody was, This is what I got out of the video last night. Everybody's vying for position in the water industry. Where it came from, better springs, it tastes better, the bottles are better, all the things. And what Mike started to do was play with an industry and take a marketing idea to it and bring water in a can. And one of that things was the death to plastic because most plastic isn't really recyclable to where cans really are. And it's a cool story where this ended up in my hand, but that's not the point. The point is, is Where do you stand amongst the water industry? In the real estate industry, are you loud? Are you more than a realtor? Are you standing out amongst the other 12 realtors that your clients know? And this is a weird anomaly right now happening in the market where if you step back from working in the business and you look at the noise, the brokerages, Zillow, all the deals and things that are happening right now, all the mergers, all the acquisitions, All the big companies— Compass, Zillow— they are vying for data control. They're buying more companies. The new and latest thing is buying home inspection companies, right? Because they're buying all this data thinking that they're going to control the consumer. And here's what I know. If you are a realtor, they're absolutely right. They're going to control where your business comes from if you don't step out and become more than a realtor, which is really becoming very relational in this business, in a noisy business where we're trying to speed to lead, which is not really relational, and that's where you continue to be a realtor. So let's just look at the stats, and this is why I'm bringing this to your attention if you want to be more than a realtor. And I'm going to show you where it started for me in being more than a realtor, because it ends up with— I don't know, I had a client in my office yesterday. We sat right here at this table talking about buying a $4 million golf course, and it's not because I'm a realtor. It's because I've done things outside of being a realtor that have opened doors to other opportunities. And the reason he reached out was because I'm more than his realtor in his world. He knows that I raise capital. He's bought a couple of flips from us. And so he knows that we have more insight than just real estate. And he wanted to understand my version of the golf course. Was there any real estate plays in it? What were the exit strategies? What are the things that I saw that he didn't from real estate perspective? It brings me to believe that I'm more than a realtor, especially to my clients and my relationships. How do you rank? Because I'm curious, right? Like, drop some comments below. Where do you rank up or down on this? The national average, $58,000 a year, 10 transaction size for $2.5 million with about $8,000 a year in expenses. You can get a pretty regular job. In fact, my community manager in my office makes that much money without selling a house or without stressing it out. So I wouldn't do that business if that was going to be my average. And it's one of those pieces where this is like really the hard part to look at the data. When you start looking at income rankings and you start looking through, okay, the top 1% elite operators, okay, so these aren't realtors, these are operators, these are people that are building businesses, these are people that are more than realtors. They have taken it to a different level. Of course, these are going to be some teams and some different things, but they're making $300 grand a year. This is the top 1% or more. I fall in that category. Top 10%, $125,000. So the top 10%, I'm going to shatter some dreams here because there's a lot of real estate agents that I meet that they want to make six figures a year showing houses. And that's in the top 10% of the average realtor, right? Top 10% makes $125,000 a year. Top 25% makes $89,000 a year. Medium, $56,000 a year. Bottom 25%, we start getting into negatives. Like you're not earning any money, you're going into the negative. It might be time to get a job or get around somebody that can train you in the environment to be better or be more than a realtor. Experience multiplier. Here's the hard thing. I'm going to go to more of the bottom of the list because if this describes you, it's not that you're behind. It's the fact that you've had a lack of exposure to what's possible. And I really believe that the brokerages, the teams, they keep lids on the investing principles and the sides that really matter, that create strategy, that create you being more than a realtor at the end of the day. So let's just look at this stat. By the way, congratulations if you made it to year 3, because about 89% of people drop off from there. But when you get to 6 to 15 years— so I've been doing this for almost 30— when you get to 6 to 15 years and the average person is making $60 grand for 11 transactions, a total volume of $3.2 million, there's nothing wrong with that. That's a good living. But there's things that are missing that can contribute to your success in this. And I just think that you've been limited on the education. Like, then you go to 16 years, you're like, 16 years in this business and you're barely scratching the surface at $100 grand a year. And this is where most people start out and say, I want to start in year 1 and 2 and make $100,000. Now, of course, there's some anomalies in here with people. And if you're one of those people, cool, comment below. How'd you do it? Right. What, what is your claim? Like some people, it's a hustle and grind. Some people, it's sales, it's transactional. I get all that. But what are you building at the end of the day? You see, if you get up 0 to 3 years, you're a hustle and grind. Are you getting up to resell yourself every day? And is that what's happening to the people that have been in the business 6 to 15 years? Is that are we just getting up and grinding to try to find somebody new to sell something to? Or did we take those 6 to 15 years and really build solid relationships that take us to being more than a realtor? Because it puts us in different position. I'll give you an example as we keep coming down here, right? Because I'm going to get to where my stats are. And this is where More Than a Realtor comes into place when you need to change your career and your directive is understanding what's going to change. I'm going to show you that. So right now it's April 2026, and my reset date is August 1st with Real Brokerage, and that's how we track our year. So year to date, we are $500,000 in total commission, 58 transaction sides. So I'm in the top 3%— sorry, 0.3% 3% of earnings and in the 0.5% of transaction size. Plus, over the last decade, we've owned as many as 120 doors. We're down to 58 because we're restructuring our portfolio. That puts me in the top 0.1% of people in the country that own rental properties. The average landlord owns 1 to 2. The average real estate agent owns zero. So here's where people ignore different categories, and this is a result— my stats are a direct result of these things. And this is where I want to get you to cut through the industry noise and start to look at who you are and how you want to show up and where you want to take this career. Because there's a lot of knowledge that you've been underexposed to or exposed to that you haven't gone deeper on. And we're in an age of technology where you can go deeper on things. I'm going to show you that in just a second. So this is not to brag. This is saying where I've come from and how it's built, not bought, through experiences. And that's one of the things that's really interesting here, is that when you look at the average stats, your experience after 15 years at 10 transactions a year is a total of 150 transactions. That's your experience level. When I look at my experience level, because I'm more than a realtor, because I learned how to invest, we learned how to flip, we learned how to do different business strategy, we learned all these things, which my experience is like 100x the average realtor because of life experiences that we've brought into the business, because we've taken the knowledge. I say we because my wife and I have been at this for 27 years. She was our general contractor. We go back down here. So let's, let's look at some of the categories where I'm really winning as more than an agent because of my personal choices and what we're building. So today I am 48 years old. I have a six-pack. I am the healthiest I've ever been. That puts me in the top 3% of Americans. 72% of American adults are overweight or obese. That's just a tribute to my discipline and the things that I've been through. And who I'm becoming. Question is, who are you becoming? Are you one of those 72%? That's not to knock you because I was there, right? I was that person. But if I wanted something bigger and more, I had to change some things personally. 26 years of marriage. My wife and I have been married 26 years. It has not been all freaking puppies and rainbows. It has been hard shit. We've separated, we've gone through battles, and we've pulled it back together, making us in the top 25% of married couples, 'cause most people end at 8 years. We got married in our 20s, like I was 21 when I got married. Survived rehab. I'm in the top 5% of people that go to treatment, come out, and build bigger and better. Because I wanted to be more than a realtor. I wanted my career to be bigger and better, and I wanted to impact more people through the experiences that I've had. You see where this came from, all of these stats, This is what it came from. It came from a twist in my life where I said I would not end up like my dad and watching my dad work for investors, work for clients, people that he didn't like and didn't care for. And he just became the realtor. So he traded time for money his whole life, even though he was with a lot of wealthy people. He never got into being more than the realtor. He never got into being their partners. He never got into bringing them opportunity and sharing in the wealth and saying, I am going to help you build wealth, which in turn you are going to help me build mine as well, because I'm going to be more than your realtor. At the end of the day, I'm going to be your guide. I'm going to navigate you through waters that are uncharted because of my experiences. So do you see where all these experiences add up to being more than a realtor? When I start looking at this, I get really proud of what I've accomplished But more importantly, I want you to understand something. What I've accomplished in these stats, what it doesn't reflect is the thousands of people I've impacted in their wealth journeys, in solving their problems, in saving them from foreclosure, in getting them the cash offer that they needed for whatever family struggle was going on at the time. We continue to work through this. Same thing with my wife when she was our general contractor. We were able to partner which you can still partner with a general contractor to help your clients solve more problems, understand the value that they can add to a property, and then start to create more business and opportunity. And this all leads to this. If you're waiting around for the next 100 leads to come in or the next call that you have to sell yourself to somebody, it's gonna be a long ride. And your commission is going to continue to be depressed. By the referral fees and the people that control you in the business. And the only way to break free is to become more than a realtor. Think about anybody that's succeeding in this. By the way, it doesn't mean you have to build a massive team. It doesn't mean you need to flip 1,000 homes. It means you need to be exposed to more ways to do the business that fit in your authenticity and the things that you know. And the things that you love. So I'm going to ask you to join me in the Built Not Bought community because we are building with you through my day-to-day experiences. I'm in this market day to day with my team at the RIG, the Real Estate Investment Group, because I want to be more than a realtor, because I want to provide more than realtor solutions to my clients. And you can do the same. You know, we're going through different trainings where every Wednesday at 9 a.m. I'm literally just sharing with you ideas of what's possible, maybe what you've missed, and things that you can take practical, tactical, and applicable that week to go deep dive with Claude and start to figure out who you are and where these things apply, because you could increase your transaction count and your income by double in a year, guaranteed, by just seeing different ways that we have learned to serve and solve with our clients. And so I love the real estate game, but what I love more than the real estate game is the people game. Because when I get to— I'll share a quick story with you. The gentleman that's in here buying a golf course, what's awesome about that is I literally met this man at a bar 10 years ago with my wife. We were having breakfast on a Saturday morning and he overheard us talking about flipping homes. This is when we just started. He leaned over, eavesdropped, said, hey, can we interrupt? We were really excited about flipping a house. We've been talking about buying a house. We've been renting. The week later, he's in the car. We're qualified and we're looking for a house to flip. And then it's the first house that I got outside the box and I knew the agent that was selling it. She was owner. I said, hey, what if we raise the price to pay my wife the contractor fees to help them renovate the house? And we worked it all the way through for them to have a credit to their contractor to make the repairs that were needed. Wendy helped them remodel the house. It was actually kind of a disaster because of the concrete flooring that this client found, but we worked through it. And then opportunity struck. That concrete company— Wendy tried a side gig with a couple of firefighters for about a year. It was kind of cool, but it didn't work. It was too porous. So again, opportunity opened. But then they kept that house as a rental and they've done really well with it. And then we sold them another flip that we bought off market that Wendy renovated with them and their ideas. And then we sold it to them all completed and we all won and we all made money. But today it's taking him to the 1% Club, which I'm involved with, with Cambodian, which is a service company which I'm learning again, opportunities to meet other people. And I brought him with me to a freaking competitive putt-putt golf with 150 other entrepreneurs. What's awesome was taking him and exposing him to something that he didn't think was possible because he's trying to capital raise for a new part and a new beginning in his life. This is more than a realtor because that is life-changing all the way through. So the cycle of that person, it's not because I sent him a bunch of emails. It's not because I sent him a couple of text messages. It's not because I remembered his birthday. It's because of the authority that I am in the conversations that I have, and I continue to learn and excel, which is what I want you to do in the Built Not Bought community. You can excel through other people's experiences and do them better. It's what I did with my dad's business. When I saw my dad get sick and I saw all the money that he was making for investors, I didn't take his position. I took the investor position and I said, what's it take to be those guys? For them to buy the houses, what resources do I need? And I'm going to show you that. What resources do you need? What confidence do you need to buy a house at the kitchen table from your good friends? This is what More Than a Realtor is, because a realtor becomes a problem solver. There's nothing you have to sell anymore because you have resources. You've built resources over time that allow you to solve, serve, and create business. This is where you become more than a realtor. So you have an advantage over the other 12 people that your friends know because you're creative, because you're outside the box, because you're learning things different. And I'll end with this. I know the difference in creating relationships over sales and strategy over sales and relationships over transaction. Because this is what I saw growing up. My dad was a salesman. There was always the next thing, the next real estate deal that he would take to his different groups. So he was always on. One of my dad's best friends is my capital partner today. He's 83 years old. He lends me a ton of money, allows me to make a ton of money. And we've been partners on the racquetball court, at coffee, and then in buying houses and flipping houses together for a decade. He did business with me because I didn't pitch him on anything. We had a relationship that I offered him an opportunity to create income through what I was doing. He could have said no. We worked through that. We continue to work through it. But that was the reason he never really did business with my dad, because my dad was always trying to sell him something rather than building the relationship and allowing him to be curious of what my dad was doing and would he be interested in it. There wasn't enough talking about it. So if you think about when you get in your circles, are you selling at the barbecue or are you talking about the creative things you're doing for other people, creating interest? And then when you get to that point, you're then building a relational business. People are calling you, asking you questions, and then you get to decide how you're going to take control of that conversation because you become a dot connector and you become full of resources. You see, I can't help my buddy buy his golf course, but I can give him my insights in what I see, which there were definitely some real estate plays there. And I loved where his vision was going. And I gave him a book by Cameron Harold, Vivid Vision, because I think it's really important where he's going. And then I made a phone call when I was done because lo and behold, I got my good friend Blake and he's the only dude that I know that's got a buddy that just bought a golf course. I'm like, I know a guy. So it's a resource conversation and connecting the dots to make his dream come true. What does that do for me as a human being, for my business? It drives more relationships from him because we're in conversation and he's like, hey dude, freaking, you need to, you need to get with this guy. He's really smart. Let him like look at the house, let him look at what you're trying to accomplish and let him come up with a strategy from what he sees in the market. This is where you want to go. Our market is changing. The real estate market is changing and more people are going to be looking for guides and outside-the-box real estate agents that have more experiences through different markets. And it's your goal to jump in and start learning more than just being a realtor. So if you want to be more than a realtor, jump in stevedvalentine.com. Let's, let's start some conversation below. Like, where are you at in these stats? Are these stats full of shit? What part of the country you're in? What do you want to learn next that would make you more than a realtor? What would excite you to know that these are opportunities? These are places for you to grow your income even without selling a house. You know, it's really interesting when you look at the stats, my 58 transactions, about half of those transactions were created through relationships with other agents who had inheritance properties needed a solution. I didn't go and hunt for those. I did it through relationships. I did it through seed planting. So jump in, 9 AM, Built Not Bought, Steve D Valentine. Follow me on Instagram and subscribe here, don't forget. And let's keep jamming about real estate and the ways that we can make it better.