Mitch Ribak on Building a Real Estate Business That Runs Without You

Mitch Ribak (00:00)
you have to devote the time to it. And that’s the most important thing. So how do you do that? You need to replace yourself as the team leader. Now can still be the team leader, but you need to not be doing the team leader work because that’s the biggest time suck. That is being a broker, right? You also have to look at your family.

And look at your life. Now I’m going tell you, I deal with teams every day. I just talked to a 25 agent team the other day. They made $50,000 profit last year. Most of your team’s not making any money. So where’s your best value of time?

Scott Bursey (01:57)
Welcome back to the Real Estate Pros podcast powered by Investor Fuel. I’m your host Scott Bursey And today pros we’re stoking the engine and adding some serious rocket fuel to your fire. We have an industry Titan who has mastered the art of leverage, scale and longevity. Our guest, Mitch Ribak of EXP Realty is in the studio and the fuel he brings is a strategic mastery that comes from over 45 years of running businesses and leading a colossal.

2,200 agent organization with eXp. Get ready pros because we’re about to unlock the systems that drive massive success. Mitch, welcome to the show.

Mitch Ribak (02:38)
Thanks for having me. very excited. I always love doing these things with you guys.

Scott Bursey (02:41)
We are absolutely pumped to have you here. And for our listeners who may not be familiar with your journey, please give us the front row seat on how your career ignited and where you’re putting your fuel now.

Mitch Ribak (02:52)
Okay, sure. Well, you know, I go back a long way. My first business, was six years old and I used to charge kids, I think a nickel to ride on my back of my boxers I had. Then I started, actually real business was 19 years old. I had a module home business for about a month and I just didn’t like it. First big business was paintball. It was the third paintball business in the country, the largest paintball business in the country. I grossed million dollars a year working three days a week. Not a bad gig.

Did that until my partner stole couple hundred thousand dollars from me bought a flower business Yes, I have marketing company bought a restaurant managed to lose everything in the restaurant. That was fun Got into the dating industry just needing a job to feed my kids as a cold-called telemarketing manager at local dating service

And yet opening my own dating service a year later and then started the first online dating service in nineteen really ninety five ran that through nineteen ninety nine two thousand dollar and Had to under contract itself for a ridiculous amount of money brought me down to Florida And then in 2000 April 2000 if you remember the internet bubble burst If you’re under 40, you may not remember that but I do I managed to lose 82 82 million dollars in about six weeks

And then I had no money three months of revenue in the bank of cash in the bank before I went bankrupt

And my buddy convinced me to get my real estate license. the rest is history. sold 36 homes my first year without knowing anybody. 50 my second, 80 my third, 80 my fourth. Started a team, then started a brokerage, built that to 120 agents. And then we merged with eXp in 2017. I just had my anniversary, nine years. And now running an organization of 2,200 agents, but I also own parts of 15 title companies with many more coming on right now.

And my coaching business and I do a little dabbling of other stuff here So I’m always entrepreneurial always trying to look for What’s the most fun I can have with the least amount of time to make the most money so I can have the biggest impact?

Scott Bursey (04:53)
That is such an incredible path, from taking a huge financial hit to rebuilding and being at the level that you are now. You know, what really caught my attention about you was the way that you’ve been able to leverage 45 years of profound business experience to build and lead a 2,200 agent organization with eXp Realty, mastering

the complex dynamics of modern brokerage growth and agent retention. That’s pure Investor Fuel.

Mitch Ribak (06:11)
It’s important. mean, that’s the whole thing that is leverage, right?

Scott Bursey (06:11)
Mitch, let’s ⁓

Yes, that is just incredible. How were you able to give us a little bit of the inside version on some of the strategy that you employed?

Mitch Ribak (06:23)
Well, there’s a couple of things. First of all, you have to identify your leaders of your organizations, like who are your leaders? And then you have to empower them to be part it. I can’t possibly manage 2,200 agents. That’s not even a realistic opportunity. I manage probably about 130, 140 here locally. And then I work with my leaders. have, I have. We just had a meeting in Nashville. had 48 of our leaders there.

So we all get together and you know, how do we structure this to be a little more organized and all with the same? May ⁓ Reasoning is to retain your agents because that’s the story of every brokerage every team every organization is how do you retain people and it’s all about You know empowering other people also have existing someplace for recognition and you know picking up the phone and calling you people’s Hey, you’re awesome. Thanks for thanks for being you and things like that

Scott Bursey (07:10)
Mitch, let’s fire up the engines and dive into the framework specifically focused on leading and scaling an organization of your size. What is the greatest competitive advantage your 45 years of experience provides to your newest agents?

Mitch Ribak (07:26)
Well, I teach people how to run businesses from day one. So the problem in the real estate world is they don’t run businesses. They own crappy jobs. And why do I say that? If you can’t leave your business for 30 days or even two weeks, you don’t have a business. You got a job. It’s a crappy one. A good friend of mine went to a

Took his family to the Bahamas or one of those islands somewhere if he arose and his daughter is a huge successful realtor. That’s about a million dollars a year in GCI and she he gives me to see the whole time they were there for 10 days. He goes visara for dinner and that was about it.

She was in the hotel room the entire time dealing with deals and so therefore, you know, she doesn’t have a business She owns this crappy job. There’s no freedom, you know, the one thing I talked to when I talked to realtor’s are always like I like why’d get in business first question asked well, I wanted freedom then I have my good laughing session and And then realize the only way you’re gonna have freedom is you build this as a true business and not as a hobby or a job

Scott Bursey (08:27)
That legacy of wisdom is priceless. Having the systems in place is everything.

Mitch Ribak (08:32)
Yeah, yeah in the other thing is you know a lot of its mindset so, know challenge with the real estate spaces especially the investment is so low Like it’s so easy to be realtor. You have to go to school from $1,500 to be a hairdresser. I think that’s what I heard and 63 hours to be a realtor Right think how stupid that is

You know the day one when I sat down at my desk for my first day. I started September 10th 2001 next day was 9-eleven Then I wrote fake contracts the next three days, but did my first open house on Saturday And I wrote my first contract on that day. So I have my first deal in five days They told me if you if you’re successful if you do five or six deals this year You’ll be successful as if I do five or six deals is you’ll be bankrupt Again, I didn’t want to be successful. I needed to be successful

So it just comes down to mindset so I sat down my day I go what would I do if I was starting one of my companies and I invested 250 500 thousand dollars What would I do today? Cuz I was good. I got a zero training where I got the real estate and the reality is first thing I do is write a business plan Which is what I

Scott Bursey (09:38)
Let’s, and that,

I must tip my hat to you. Let’s look, let’s go down a different path here. What is the biggest challenge in maintaining a unified, high-performance culture across 2,200 agents?

Mitch Ribak (10:30)
The hottest part is you’re not gonna make everybody happy and You’re gonna have the negative people and I’m unfortunately positivity is very contagious. But so is negativity And so when I talk to my friends there, I coach brokers because I talked with a lot of brokers and help them ⁓ I said look if you’ve got a cancer, okay, how much money they’re making you get rid of them

So we’ve had to do that with a few people. I’ve been very blessed. have an amazing organization, great people. But I’ve had a couple of people that we kicked off the island. ⁓ They brought no value and they were constantly complaining. And I’m like, you want to do it, you do it. It’s not fun. It’s a lot of work. ⁓ So it’s all about.

Everything comes still comes to mindset. You know, you can keep positive people around you and keep moving in a positive direction You’ll never see me not happy. Okay, literally smile all that so I have all these wrinkles So I smile all day long because you know life is good. And by the when I was dirt poor I still smiled all day long because I’m a big believer that you attract what you put out there if you attract, you know except I’m ultra positive probably to a dilemma my wife says

I’m the only person she knows that like Lee smiles all day long smiles all night long Goes to bed with a smile and wakes up with a smile. That’s true. I just like I’m just happy to be alive at 65 years old so ⁓ But attitude and positivity I think so I think the challenge for anybody is People who do not plug into whatever you do will not succeed at what you do

And that’s just what I’ve learned over these years and it’s not just real say that’s every business, you know plug in people There’s no culture. Nobody plugs in And I’ll be honest out of my two thousand plus people, you know several hundred plug-in I Can’t make people live in 50 states in nine countries. I’m not gonna fly to them say hey, look at believe, know One of the things I’ve learned and this has been a thing for me. I cannot change people’s lives Can’t do it

I can change their directions if they choose to change their life But if they do not choose to change their life, I will have no effect on changing their life I can’t tell you how many people say bitch. I need I need to talk to you. I need I need to get motivated You know, get on I get all pumped up. They’re like, what are you gonna do tomorrow? Like what do you mean? go you’re gonna be right back to you tomorrow

One of my favorite lines is if nothing changes nothing changes right and what I see with most people nothing changes They don’t plug in They want to be successful. They do not need to be successful. So therefore they will not put the effort in I love working with like single parents. They need to be successful Right. I love that. Do it. I’ve had a rough life like I said big millions lost millions

Need to be successful people get their life. I just want to have some freedom and sell some home They’re never gonna sell more than a couple homes a year if that many So I’m looking for the people that really want to create a freedom life there and I’m not talking about attracting agents That’s fine. I can show you how to do a freedom life just through the way you run your business today

Scott Bursey (13:31)
That is really good insight. And Mitch, speaking of insight, you wrote a book, The Big Lie. Could you tell us more about that?

Mitch Ribak (13:39)
Yes Sure, so So when I turned 60, which is always this is always hard for me to talk about But when I turned 60, you know every 10 years we do an evaluation of your life. Everybody does it So 60 was probably the profound two things came out of that one was I Analyzed every moment of my life sucked really bad

Almost died in get burned really badly. My parents died young You know, I’ve lost millions of dollars. I’ve lost everything twice three times I added up all those times and it was 3 % of my life So that means 97 % of my life’s been pretty awesome the challenge there baby people always go to the 3 % The other thing I did when I turned 60 I look back at my life with my kids

⁓ I cannot tell you five things I do with my kids when they grow up and my kids are in their mid-40s That’s so painful losing 82 million dollars in 2000 sucked Knowing that I can’t tell you five things I do with my kids is heartbreaking now The reality is was I there probably was I present definitely not and the challenges we We tell ourselves it’s because we want to do this for our family. That’s bull. That’s a lie

The lie is you were just to yourself in your ego and I’m telling from experience. That’s who I was I like I’m five foot six I wanted to be taller. So I had a big I had a big ego. I have no ego down there so much more free So hey, so when I realized I didn’t spend that time I started with my kids I started looking at my friends And I taught people well you work 80 hours a week just like my mentors taught me you’ll be successful and they were right I was successful, but I wasn’t successful in life And that’s way more important. You see your most important job is mum or dad

father son or father or a son daughter You know sister brother. Those are your most important things all this other stuff is how we pay your bills So get ready ego instead of actually doing this for your family not so I wrote the book to give people another system On how to work 30 hours a week 25 hours a week, but still sell 40 50 60 homes a year 100 homes a year and so it’s very streamlined and That’s why I wrote the work. In fact, I wrote this book my other two books. I wrote in two years each

This book I wrote in four months because it was that important I got it out and it’s changing lives people reaching out to me all the time Hey, I read your book. I want to talk I need help It’s all about free. If you don’t build a business for freedom. You did not build a business. You built a crappy job

Scott Bursey (16:38)
Mitch, beyond a market crash, what internal friction point or process failure is the largest threat to execution in a huge agent organization like yours?

Mitch Ribak (16:49)
⁓ Firstly, I keep going back to mindset because it is everything. understand there’s no such thing as a market crash. There’s a market change, right? There’s a market, things go up and down, they always have, right? It’s just different conditions. Yet there’s people I know right now that are having the best years they’ve ever had.

And so I think what happens when you have this, things that I struggle with mostly is getting people to understand that this is just a little blip in time. Right. And what you have to do is adapt. So, for instance, to me, if you’re currently in a buyer’s market, you don’t need listing. That’s contrary to what everybody says. I know that in 2006, when the market started crashing here originally, I we had 100 listings that hadn’t sold for months.

And all the owners were calling me and yelling at me. So I made a really strong decision. So, you know, we are not taking on any more listings and we became a buyer brokerage for four years. It was four years while everybody else is going out of business. I grew 20%. So it’s like if I had a loaf of bread, you know, sitting on the shelf for six months. Am I going to put another loaf of bread up at that first one isn’t now. So to me right now, like if you’re in a obviously if you’re in a buyer’s market right now, which is most of the country, not everywhere.

I would be really focusing on getting pre-approved

Scott Bursey (18:04)
That proactive approach is why you continue to make big moves in the market.

Mitch Ribak (18:11)
Well, yeah, I mean, it’s the thing that, you know, it’s, again, ⁓ I’m not anything special. I’m just like a funny bald guy that happens to have a little bit of a brains and common sense when it comes down to running companies. Again, 27 companies over 45 years, kind of helps you get there. But it’s just understanding that you can use excuses and blame the market, blame your broker, blame me.

your father or your mother. I I get everything, right? And it’s all bull. It’s you. It’s all you. So if you want to use these excuses on why you’re not successful, I’m sorry. I don’t have any patience for that personally. You know, I, I look, we all have tough life. I grew up getting beat up by kids because I was, was five feet tall in high school. Right. You know, so all I did is my dad taught me how to fight. And after a year of fighting everybody, everybody loved me again. So, you know, I’ve been through tough times. I was a Jewish kid growing up in an old Irish neighborhood.

That was fun. But my point is you can go back and use that as excuse or you can go back and use that as fuel.

I choose to use that as fuel. I remember talking in front of my mom when I lost my restaurant. I lost my house, my vacation home, my cars, my condo, my kids and I lived in a rental that I had to borrow money from my mother to pay up and buy me a couch and a couple of beds. When I say I lost everything, I lost everything. A lot of people can look back and say, my God, that was horrible. You know what happened? I’ll look on bad things.

is my dad went on the heart transplant list the same day that I lost my restaurant. So for next four months, I spent every single day with my dad until he died. And those four months are the foundation of most of my life now. I’ve learned more about my dad as a 29-year-old kid with those four months with my dad. But if I had my restaurant, I worked 130 hours a week at the restaurant. I don’t see my dad die.

So I get to, so here’s what I’ve learned. Everything happens for a reason. I lost some restaurants so I could have that time with my dad. Way more valuable than money. Even losing the $80 million, I wouldn’t be with my wife right now. I wouldn’t have three of my four grandkids. I mean, the stuff that drives me to do everything right happened because of things that have happened. They didn’t always turn out the way I wanted them to turn out, like very seldom does. But.

It’s how you react to that. We’ve heard that before, right? It’s not what happens to you, it’s how you react to that. But that’s the truth. So I remember when I lost the 80 million dollars, I literally stayed home for three days drinking vodka. I didn’t shower, I didn’t even know if I ate, because I don’t remember much about those three days. But I remember walking by my mirror, I full light mirror in my bedroom, and I just looked like crap. I I hadn’t shaved for a few days, I just looked like crap. And I just started laughing at myself. I’m like, what are you doing?

You’re not gonna sit here and drink until you’re dead go back to work I still have the company the company didn’t disappear even though we lost all evaluation Company was still there. I still run the company for a year. So That’s kind of how you have to do things, you know You’re gonna get beat up life beats the crap out of you And if you don’t take it by the balls pun my French and say screw you I’m not gonna succumb to your badness I’m gonna beat you and you do and you win you will always overcome and then going back to my statement of the 97 % and 3 % all the bad things

in your life. Such a small blip in time and I will say it every bad moment I had in my life was the beginning of amazing. So but most people dwell on the bad. I have a five-minute rule. This is an important rule that I you listeners will pay attention to. I give myself five minutes to get mad, pissed off, sad, cry, whatever. Five minutes.

That’s it. Now, not with my parents dying and stuff like that. that’s a different game. I’m just talking about life. I do not carry anything more than five minutes. And that was a hard thing to do. The other thing was expectations is I learned how to manage expectations. What I’ve learned is almost all your disappointments in your life are based on your expectations of others. Right. And by understanding that

Knowing that I don’t have expectations of my family. I don’t have expectations of my agents I don’t I said I don’t have expectations of my employees, but they need to do their job to look at fire. I get somebody else But everybody else in my life, I have zero expectations, you know, I don’t I don’t have any disappointment I don’t I don’t wake up worrying about things because I Don’t anybody drama in my life is gone. I cut out drama. We talked about again Mindset stuff. I’ve got the drama people will bring you down

Positivity is just as contagious as negativity that negativity is probably more contagious than positivity and if you live be like positive positive things happen gonna get knocked down sometimes but you know

Scott Bursey (22:51)
That mental toughness is paramount. Now let’s open up the throttle here, Mitch. What is the most critical system needed to ensure agent retention is valued over peer recruitment volume?

Mitch Ribak (23:02)
Well making sure Because if nobody’s you know, we’re paid on my referral fees, so nobody sells houses. Nothing works, right? So the cool thing is trying your best you can again You’re not gonna get everybody do it is to plug them into your system. You already have you know, so and then Don’t make huge changes for one person. I’ve seen that a lot A lot of people make changes for one person. I can’t lose that person. You’re going to lose that person everybody leaves everybody

They either quit you fire them. They die or they retire one of those four things gonna happen every single person you work with So make your decisions based on your family, but if you want retention again Give them recognition when they when they do something good calling them to be a leader People love that calling them to teach a class right now one of the things we’re looking at in our group We just did a survey. We’re trying to find your base superpower

And we want to have multiple times a day someone teaching a class. Right now we have multiple days. I want multiple times a day. Someone teaching a class on how to grow your business. EXP rolled out FastCap recently, which is the best program in world. The average agent going through that six week program walks with 3.9 contracts. Plug them into that. So we’re plugging all of our non-producing agents into that. So it’s just a matter of plugging people in, but also not chasing people.

So I see a lot of people chasing people I give you one one great line to change my life This is right before we joined the XP in 2016 my one of my top agents came to me She goes Mitch, you know You spend so much time money and effort on new agents that will never sell a house and you’re forgetting about all the people that pay your bills

Don’t do that. You cannot fix weaknesses and I learned anything over these 45 years 46 years means I’m boy I cannot fix your weaknesses However, I can take your strengths and put them on rocket fuel to use your language, right? So so I don’t believe in fixing weaknesses. I replace P I have people who do my weaknesses Like I don’t write contracts, right? Don’t like to write constantly. I don’t like doing social media. I pay people to do stuff

Except my personal post it all right here on there, but all the stuff that my team does behind me I pay people I don’t want to do that. I’d rather make 500 thousand dollars a year instead of six hundred thousand dollars seven thousand dollars a year, but have freedom Because at what point do you need more money?

Scott Bursey (25:18)
That is pure rocket fuel for our listeners. Now, Mitch, it’s time for the money question, where you supply the high octane fuel. For a pro running a successful smaller team, let’s say 50 agents, who wants to build a long-term self-sustaining organization of 500 agents or more, what is the mindset or principle they must adapt to to successfully transition their role from an operational agent leader

to a true CEO and organizational builder.

Mitch Ribak (25:53)
Easy. So first thing, replace yourself immediately. Whatever you’re doing, you cannot be doing. Now, realistically nobody’s going to do that because I’ve been dealing with realtor’s for lot of years. So what I would recommend is you carve out two hours a day to reach out to people.

Just I’ve done two hours a week. I don’t you need to have a two hours a week I first did my first five years I work two hours a week on the attraction part of business And then figure out how you can plug them into your business. Like how does that work? you know, talk to people all the time and People generally talk at people instead of with them. So when I talk to someone about joining exp, it’s not about me It’s not about exp exp is a great business platform. It’s about you like what?

What are you, what is your issues? Where do you want to go? I don’t care about me. I’m already there. I’ve already been successful. I’m already there. How do we get you there too? And sometimes you’re not the right fit. And I tell you that.

You know, ⁓ so if you want to really grow an organization first of all, the team model is the biggest time suck model besides a broker So I highly recommend that you either replace yourself or change your team structure I talked about that team different team structure in the book If you’re a lead generation business supplying leads to your agents, and that’s how you’re making money Worst business model in the world. All right, there’s a better way secondly

You’ve got a time block. I mean everybody said earlier I work 50 hours at a 25-hour block I am a master. I do 45 minute meetings. I do 15 minutes to either Answer email check phones and check texts and play my guitar. I try to me to have a five minutes every hour and But time block is what changed my life dramatic time lucky and understanding you have to hire people

Mitch Ribak (27:36)
Alright, so there’s a couple of things that are really important if you want to do it, accomplish what I’ve accomplished. One,

you have to devote the time to it. And that’s the most important thing. So how do you do that? You need to replace yourself as the team leader. Now can still be the team leader, but you need to not be doing the team leader work because that’s the biggest time suck. That is being a broker, right? You also have to look at your family.

And look at your life. Now I’m going tell you, I deal with teams every day. I just talked to a 25 agent team the other day. They made $50,000 profit last year. Most of your team’s not making any money. So where’s your best value of time?

What I’ve created, and by the way, some people say it’s too late. It’s not too late. Anybody can do it. We have an agent that joined last year, and I already had 600 or 700 agents under them.

The problem with being a team leader or broker if something happens to you, it’s over Right a friend of mine’s team leader died. She was the biggest producer and the team is disbanded I’ve seen two brokers died friends of mine die and their relatives leave immediately like within days So

You have to really build in the mindset again, I keep going back to mindset, but it’s everything, that you’re building an organization that is going to take care of your family for the rest of your life. The reason why I gave up my brokerage, because the ego part was huge, the money part sucked, was because if I die today, my wife takes over and our income does not change. So you’re building a legacy for your family. My wife and I both died, my son’s license.

My kids take over my granddaughter just graduated college. She’s gonna take over when she she’s getting her license now, too And she’s gonna take over all for my kids die. So so we have a succession plan Unfortunately, is a realtor. You don’t have any succession plans a team leader. It’s worse So you have to get yourself out of the babysitting part, right and put people in place. Yes We take a financial hit to do that Probably but you’re gonna grow something sustainable. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve taken two steps back to go 20 steps forward

And you have to do that. Well, if you’re stuck in that transactional grind, it will never happen So again, are you a CEO of your business or you just say are you just a sales manager? Which one are you?

Scott Bursey (29:42)
Mitch, this has been a pure clinic. And listeners, as Mitch highlighted, remember this, true scale is not about working harder. It’s about making yourself obsolete in the day-to-day operations, adopt a CEO mindset, and focus on building systems and culture that thrive without your constant presence. And Mitch, before we let you go.

If our listeners would like to follow your journey or collaborate with you, what is the best way for them to reach you?

Mitch Ribak (30:12)
They can get me on social media. I’m on Instagram Facebook. Just my name just put my name you’ll find me YouTube I have a ton of training on my YouTube channel. It’s all free. I don’t I don’t charge anything for anything anymore. I just want to people

Scott Bursey (30:23)
Mitch, thank you so much for joining us today.

Mitch Ribak (30:26)
Sure, my pleasure. Thanks for having me. It’s great.

Scott Bursey (30:27)
And to our listeners, we appreciate each and every one of you. If you got value from today’s episode, please subscribe. We’ve got a lineup of exceptional guests, just like Mitch, who are making huge moves in the market. Until next time, keep your standards high and your vision clear. We’ll see you on the next episode, everyone.