Why Your Real Estate Brokerage Isn’t a Retirement Plan | Jenny Wemert

Jenny Wemert (00:00)
Our own home plus 22, 23 other doors outright. We’re very conservative investors. We could probably BRRRR-method that to death and, you know, have how many doors? Who knows? But who cares? We, we realized that we wanted to live below our means so we could set up our family and our kids who have some special needs comfortably. We didn’t want to have to argue about money. And we didn’t want to really have to talk about money. So we have—we have set ourselves up for if we had to shut the doors tomorrow, we could retire today and live very comfortably, not dependent on a real estate business itself.

Cody Crabb (02:12)
Welcome back to the *Real Estate Pros* podcast by Investor Fuel. I’m your host, Cody Crabb, and today I’ve got Jenny Wemert with me. She’s the founder of Wemert Group Realty in Orlando, Florida, and she’s built one of Central Florida’s highest producing real estate teams, closing hundreds of transactions each year. And today we’re going to talk about scaling a brokerage and building a strong team and creating long-term wealth with real estate. Jenny, thanks so much for coming on today. I really appreciate it.

Jenny Wemert (02:39)
Thank you, Cody. I’m excited to be here.

Cody Crabb (02:41)
Happy to have you. So take us back to the beginning. How did you get into real estate in the first place? And what led you to build Wemert Group Realty?

Jenny Wemert (02:50)
Gotcha. Well, I was a teacher coming out of college and loved it and it was very noble profession. But once I got in, I realized I needed immediate feedback. I couldn’t wait 18 years for kids to come back and tell me I was amazing. So I’m like, I need to be selling something. So what should I sell? My fathers were in real estate. I went into real estate and came out of the gate strong, 55.

Cody Crabb (03:07)
Or not amazing, yeah.

Jenny Wemert (03:18)
Homes sold my first year in Houston, Texas. Wow. Had triplets, moved from Texas to Orlando, Florida, started over and farmed my neighborhood with the kids in the stroller, got up to eighty percent market share in that neighborhood and then just rinsed and repeated. And here we are today.

Cody Crabb (03:37)
That’s awesome. Holy cow. That’s that is a wild story. I, I feel like was there like some kind of pressure for you to enter real estate and it just kind of never happened? And then once you got back into it, it was just like it clicked really well. Or like what how did that happen exactly?

Jenny Wemert (03:52)
Yeah, probably the opposite. I went—my mother was a teacher. So I went the teacher route and you know, I thought I was, you know, I thought I’m gonna be a stay-at-home mom and I’m gonna blah blah blah. I married my high school sweetheart, who’s now my partner in real estate, by the way. But you know, I thought that was gonna be the route. And then I quickly learned more about myself in the twenties and I was like, I am competitive, I am ADD, I’m not built to be a stay-at-home mother, I am not built for teaching. I, I cannot do this bell every hour for any longer. So I knew I had to sell something and it was just a path of least resistance to go into real estate. Never worked for my dads, but I say dads—father, stepfather—but you know, I was around it, felt comfortable in it. And so just went from there.

Cody Crabb (04:42)
Hmm. So, yeah, I, I think that’s interesting. I think there there’s there’s something about a path that kind of calls to you and just kind of never lets go, even if you’re kind of trying to do something different. So, something that you, you brought up before we were starting the podcast was that you feel like a lot of your success has been through kind of team and retention. How did that kind of begin and, and how have you discovered that throughout the years?

Jenny Wemert (06:03)
Sure. So, like I said, I got a great start in real estate. And every time, no matter where I started, it took off quickly. And I got to a point where I had to either break through the ceiling and get help or fall back and get very selective about who I was working with because I wasn’t willing to sacrifice time with my kids or, you know, losing out on family time. So, instead of falling back, I felt almost obligated to go through the ceiling because I realized I could take care of others doing so. And I didn’t want to leave talent on the table. And it really does fulfill me. I love this business. I’ve never felt like I’ve worked a day in my life. So, going through the ceiling, hiring that first assistant, and then you know, getting up and running with that assistant, and then realizing, okay, I can’t be in the field showing homes anymore. Hiring that buyer agent. And my first buyer agent stayed with me for 15 years. And because she stayed with me and had success, I now had evidence of success as a leader. And then other people wanted to join. But I’ve never built this team outside of the team members we had on board. So, like, what I mean by that is I would never just threw a goal at the wall and said, you know, I’m going to hire a hundred agents this year. I didn’t want bodies. I wanted people that were committed to the mission that I knew I could feed their families. And so if we had enough leads, we would hire. If we had too many agents and we were too busy, we would hire admin. And so it went on like that, and it’s still going. That’s exactly how we are still running our business. We lead with revenue, like Gary Keller taught us. We—when we have leads, we hire. And when we don’t, we don’t. Like I’m not just trying to accumulate bodies. I wanted a team that I was proud of that I knew if I gave somebody a lead, they would be better at this job than me and take care of the client better than I even could. And so just by making those decisions along the way, our agents have trusted that we will always put their needs first and or at least take them into consideration when making any decisions in this business. And, you know, what we were doing when we had two agents, 10 agents is different than what we’re doing at 90 team members now. And we’ve had to change models along the way. We’ve had to make maybe some uncomfortable decisions in difficult markets that we’ve been through. But they’ve stayed with me because they trust that we are looking around the corner. We’re doing everything we can to protect the business and protect them.

Cody Crabb (08:56)
So I have worked at a lot of companies throughout the years and every single company I’ve been at has said very similar things to the things that you’re saying. So I’m just curious, like this is no, no disrespect to you. I’m sure you’re doing things differently. But every time they’re like, you know, we’re a family, we do things together, we look out for our people. And I’m like, yeah, you say that. But like what is—what do you think you do differently that a lot of these places don’t?

Jenny Wemert (09:24)
I mean, we, we walk the walk. So, you know, it’s not just talk. And I mean, we’ve been through weddings, divorces, like I mean, you know, everything with our people, like literally in the trenches with our people, in life, because we understand that, you know, one, people get into this business to have some flexibility. So I’m not trying to bring in my agents at seven in the morning and ringing a bell and setting goals for them. I let them set their own goals. They get to pick what they want to do. And then as long as they don’t take their unfair share, then everything is fine. And so we can control opportunity through leads. And then we just expect everybody to be a good team member back. So I think that’s one. We’re not trying to—I don’t want robots. And I also understand if somebody’s mother is in the hospital and they need to step out for 60 days. They can, they can turn the faucet off, go do life, and then come right back and pick up the ball where they left it. So that’s important to me that we’re taking care of people in real life. I mean, we’ve bought homes for people. We’ve bought—like, I can’t—we’re—we’re really doing—we’ve, we’ve been in business with, I don’t know, at least 25 of them for 10 years or more. 50 of them have been with me for more than five years. And that’s just because, you know, we’ve just gradually grown over the last 20 years.

Cody Crabb (11:23)
Yeah. I feel like you know some businesses I feel like go, yeah, well, you know, you gotta work your people, you gotta make sure—you, they, they just kind of don’t think about them being a person as much. Right. But the funny thing is, like the more you do that, the less likely like if somebody’s gonna be super unproductive because of such and such situation in their life for thirty days, why do you even want them working? Like, yeah, exactly. Yeah, do—

Jenny Wemert (11:49)
Support them. Care about them. If you really are walking the walk, support them. Give them a loan for that 30 days if you have to. Yeah. That’s who we are.

Cody Crabb (11:59)
I love that. I love that. You don’t want robots, you want people. I like that. So the, the freedom, and like you said, I think the freedom is what people look for a lot of times in a business like this. And so that’s, that’s gotta be huge. You mentioned trust a few times. So looking back, like what are some of the specific things that you’ve done over the years that kind of built that trust, both, both from your side and from the employees’ side?

Jenny Wemert (12:24)
Yeah. I think that, you know, it’s, it’s built just by daily actions, by showing up and, and truly doing what we say. So that just builds trust. But, like, you know, for our long-term agents, again, we, we go to them first. I don’t—I wanna honor the loyalty and I wanna make sure that I am giving them everything that they need out of the business first before I go. And hire another agent, for example, right? So because we go to them and we say, Are you getting enough? We, we, we get their—we, we get their feedback. And then we know, okay, they, they’ve got what they need. We’re not trying to make them any more than what they want to be. Everybody is set. And now we, we have room to hire. We can hire, and then we have to decide. Are we hiring new agents or older agents or experienced agents? But I think it’s just those, those daily—like the small things, the small things, walking the walk, like doing what we say we’re gonna do. I think we’ve all been, you know, we’re probably all trauma bonded in life because we’ve gone through life together and they know that when things are gonna get hard, I’m gonna be by their side. And so they trust that. And I trust them. I’m not, I’m not sitting around worrying about my agents getting picked off and recruited. I’m not acting in fear. I’m, you know, so— We’re all—we all come from abundance and I trust that if somebody does want to make a move and there’s a better opportunity for them, that they will come to me and I’ll support them on that. Like, great, go. I don’t, I don’t need hostages, you know. So no one’s a hostage, but we all trust that we’re gonna be there for each other when shit hits the fan.

Cody Crabb (14:14)
That’s such a great mindset, I think, because so many people think of like you said, they’re kind of possessive. But really if you’re if you really want the best for your people, part of that sometimes just means like maybe we’re not the best fit for you anymore. So, yeah.

Jenny Wemert (14:27)
Happens occasionally, you know, I mean, especially, you know, some newer agents come in and they think it’s going to be, you know, an instant fix to all their problems. And, you know, they don’t they, they may not be a fit. They may not understand the culture we’ve built because they’re coming into the middle of a story.

Cody Crabb (15:25)
Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. So one thing you mentioned before we started really stuck out to me. So you, you’ve built this brokerage, but one thing that I found interesting is that’s not your entire strategy. You, you said that you know, the dream of building a brokerage and selling it isn’t really your plan and you’ve invested in buy and hold properties as a way to sort of build wealth around that. Can you kind of tell me a little about this? Because I think that’s something that a lot of people in real estate kind of think of like real estate agents and then also investors or separate things. But I’d love to hear kind of how you’ve used both to your advantage.

Jenny Wemert (16:08)
Yeah. So I should say, you know, I, I mentioned that I married my high school sweetheart and he is now the broker of our business. He was a partner at a CPA firm before he came over and took over this business. So he’s, you know, if you were to look at *Rocket Fuel*, you know, I’m the visionary and he’s the strategist or implementer or whatever it’s called. And so, you know, he is the—he’s the money guy, but—and I’m the worker bee. I’m—I love to—I just love to work. I haven’t touched a paycheck in I don’t know how many years. But what we’ve realized is, you know, we’re—we’ve been in a seventh-level business. I’ve been—if you if you follow Gary Keller, that’s that real estate agent, or *Red Book*, we called it. But I’ve been out of the field for 10 years. So my husband and I both have been just in management for the last 10 years. And so, we’re living a great life, but what we’ve learned is, you know, building up this team or or brokerage for somebody to come in and buy it is a little bit of a pipe dream. I mean, what are they going to give you? Three, four percent or three, four X, and then they’re gonna tell me, because it’s my face on everything, that I have to stay for three years. I mean, we might as well keep it. And what our hope was that we were going to be able to do an employee-owned business and have our agents take it over and they couldn’t wait to run a brokerage and absolutely none of them want it. They just want to make money in real estate. So I don’t know what our succession plan is at this point. However, sidetrack—like, we have—we’ve kind of known this for a long time. And we’ve lived very, very frugally in our lives because, you know, material things just don’t really matter to my husband and I. So, you know, instead of buying that next big house or the first big house, we bought investment properties. And so, we own, you know, our own home plus 22, 23 other doors outright. We’re very—we’re very conservative investors. We could probably BRRRR-method that to death and you know, have how many doors? Who knows? But who cares? We, we realized that we wanted to live below our means so we could set up our family and our kids who have some special needs comfortably. We didn’t want to have to, you know, argue about money. And we didn’t want to really have to talk about money. So we have—we have set ourselves up for if we had to shut the doors tomorrow, we could retire today and live very comfortably, not dependent on a real estate business itself. So, long story short, my husband drove—we had a Wemert-mobile car with my face on it. My husband has zero ego. He drove that car for the last three years because we did—we have bought it for a runner and we—the—and the—we hired the runner and then he drove this car for three years. So

Cody Crabb (19:10)
Yeah, that sounds like a situation where my wife would be like—my, my wife would be like, We, we could get another car. I mean, it’s okay. I’d be like, No, why? What’s the point?

Jenny Wemert (19:18)
Yeah. He’s like, I’m just driving it to work. I’m like, God bless you, I can’t drive it. You can’t make me drive.

Cody Crabb (19:23)
Well, to be totally fair, it might be worse if your face is on it. I feel like I couldn’t drive a car with my own face on it, but someone else’s whatever.

Jenny Wemert (19:30)
Completely mortifying.

Cody Crabb (19:32)
Yeah. So if you were starting over today, do you think you would kind of start buying rentals earlier on? I mean, do you do you feel like it was kind of you did it at the right time or do you looking back, would you rather have started earlier?

Jenny Wemert (19:45)
I wish—I mean, I totally wish we would have bought in eight, nine, but everybody was just so gun shy, right? And, and I was selling for the banks at that time. So we couldn’t because of arm’s length, but man, we made a lot of people, a lot of money back then. But we started—we bought our first investment 2010, 10, 11, somewhere in there.

Cody Crabb (20:06)
Wow. Okay. So one thing that I one thing that I really liked about what you talked about is when we were just chatting before this started, you said—I said, our audience is real estate investors, and you said something about, like, well, it’s just a business, you know, it’s all, it’s all business. And I, I think I really liked the, the framing of that because I think when a lot of investors get into this, they aren’t they don’t necessarily think of it as buying a business. They think of it as, like, it’s just a thing that you have. It’s like a side hustle thing. But it’s a full-on business. And so, what, what would you what advice would you give somebody that is trying to build build a real estate business that’s actually sustainable? So maybe they maybe they’re trying to make sure from the get-go that it’s something that they can handle.

Jenny Wemert (20:56)
Yeah. Well, I think, one, it takes time unless you have a lot of capital to invest up front, you know, and it still takes time. But it also takes consistency. You have to do the same—you, you know, the same things over a long period of time to have that, like, longevity. You know, I’ve had a lot of friends in this business that have built built big businesses for short periods of time. And they’re they’re working the market of the moment. Let’s say that was like an REO account and they had one seller, and then all of a sudden Fannie decides to sell to investors and Realtors are out and they’re out of business. Or during 2011, when they were all working with just investors buying all this stuff, like the institutional investors. As soon as they stop buying, they’re out of business and they have to start over and reinvent themselves. Where, you know, we have been consistent. So I’ve never taken our eye off the ball about our repeat/referral and our relationships and our clients. And by retaining our agents, our database isn’t going out the back door every, you know, sale. So, because we retain, those relationships stay in the house. So, out of our 700, we’ll do 900 transactions this year, 60% of those are repeat/referral. So, even though you see we do Zillow Flex and we have Realtor.com and we have Google and all the things, 60% of that is repeat/referral because we’ve never taken our eye off the ball off relationships because those people, whether they’re buying or sellers, still need us. And where a lot of people and a lot of friends, you know, they just got really focused on the thing that’s bringing them the money today and not seeing that long-term picture and what those relationships can bring. And they, you know, they’re just constantly reinventing themselves. And that’s expensive. It’s, you know, the cost of leads these days, it’s expensive. Like, really, Zillow Flex and Realtor.com, those are loss leaders for us. Those are to get new agents out of the gate. Some, you know, allow our agents to fill their pipelines if needed. And then they have the ability to turn that on or off. But we don’t really make any money on those. It’s the second and third deals that we actually make money on. And, but if we’re not retaining, then what is the point?

Cody Crabb (23:21)
Yeah, yeah. That’s a really good way to put it. Yeah, it sounds like the strategy’s, like, don’t just chase whatever is making money now. Like, it’s—you kind of look at the look at the much wider picture and

Jenny Wemert (23:34)
And you can do it. You can do—you can have that as a leg of your stool, but it can’t just be the only leg, you know, or you’re gonna tip.

Cody Crabb (23:42)
Yeah. Yeah. Well put. Well put. Well, thank you so much for all the insight you’ve given us today. This has been a really interesting look at the, the inside workings of a brokerage and, and this just the, the business you’ve set up around kind of team and, and heart as you mentioned, as you put it. So if people wanna find out more about what you do and get in touch, what—how can they do so online? What—how—where can they find you?

Jenny Wemert (24:12)
Well, I’m definitely not a secret agent and my last name is easy to find. So it’s Wemert, W-E-M-E-R-T. So Wemert Group Realty. You can find us at wemertgrouprealty.com. You can find us on Facebook, Instagram—Jenny Wemert. My cell phone’s there, you can call. I’m not a secret agent.

Cody Crabb (24:31)
Awesome. So who should give—who should be getting in touch with you? Who would—who would you be interested in having someone get in touch?

Jenny Wemert (24:38)
We welcome agent-to-agent referrals. We will take excellent care of everyone’s clients and make sure you get paid. And, you know, we’re always open to new relationships and learning. Pretty techie team. So we’re always looking to learn.

Cody Crabb (24:54)
Awesome. Well, thank you so much. Once again, this has been really great. Thanks for your time. And listeners, thanks so much for your time too. And we’ll catch you on the next one.