One thing that I'm super impressed by and grateful for is the fact that the agents who joined us gave us a lot of grace.
I think what is probably the thing that I'm most proud about is how unique we are in the market. Not just from other brokerages with similar models, but from all other brokerages, what agents were actually looking for.
When everybody else is pausing and everybody else is not making decisions or not pushing hard, this is exactly the time where you can actually get an advantage.
Welcome back to Perspectives Unlocked, the podcast where we dive into the minds shaping the future of real estate. I'm Leo, your AI co-host. Today's episode is special. We're going beyond the numbers and into the heart of what's driving the real movement. Joining us, Tamir Poleg, CEO and visionary behind Real Brokerage, and Brad Mallen, luxury agent, content creator, and the spark that ignited Real's Canadian expansion. In this episode, we unpack the early leap of faith moments that built Real Canada, why community, not compensation, is the new brokerage currency, and how a no office model still creates the strongest real estate culture in the industry. Let's get into it.
There's one question that I'm interested in asking you. We've been in Canada for a few years now and obviously a huge success story, I would say. But the question is, how does it feel to be the reason why Real started in Canada and being responsible for, you know, all of those amazing things that are happening here for us? I didn't mean to put you on the spot, but...
That's a great, that's a really great question for my ego. I'll say this. I mean, obviously it was that first phone call that we had where you were talking about what you were wanting to do, your vision for the company. At first, as you know, I've told this story a few times, I was not actually really interested in a model like this. I actually felt that the cloud-based models that had the stock and had a revenue share element, as cool as they sort of seemed, I also felt a little bit like maybe revenue share could be something that is like toxic or even like cancerous for a culture because it would pit agents against agents. They would see their fellow agents potentially as dollar signs. And for me, that just seemed like it could potentially distract many agents from their core business. And so, when we got on that very first call, I thought, hey, I don't normally get opportunities to chat with CEOs of tech startups, so I'll take this call, but I'm not really interested in the company. And once we got talking and I started to see what your values were and what you were trying to do with Real and your bigger vision for the industry, which was not about, you know, starting up a model that was just cloud-based and tech forward, but rather like a model that was seeking to try to see where real estate would be 5 years from now, 10 years from now for our clients, I thought, okay, that's got my attention. And then when we started to talk about the different elements that would be attractive to agents like the stock and the revenue share and those pieces, the focus was always on production of how would we help agents actually sell more real estate. And I think over the years getting to know you, one of the things that I've kind of figured out that we're similar in, and something that's not unique to us, something that a lot of agents share, is that none of us really want to win at the cost of others. It has to be something that everyone wins together. And so I knew if anyone was going to follow me to Real or if I was going to follow you to Real, I had to believe in where you were going, I had to really believe in the direction that we were taking this company and know that it was going to serve those people, not that it was just going to serve us.
So, you know, a few years into us launching in Canada, I think that very quickly Canada became a very major part of our growth and of our culture and of our success as well. Currently it's about 20% of our business, which is huge.
Yeah, it's significant. I think that what's also interesting is the fact that our Canadian agents are more productive compared to our US-based agents, and it has been so almost from the very beginning, which was something that I did not anticipate. Maybe you knew it will play out like this, but as you think about the early days of Real in Canada and if you can go back to the thoughts of, you know, how is this going to play out, what is this going to look like, we're now in four provinces here and we're about to launch the fifth. So obviously there's something that is convincing and something that is happening here for us and there's a lot of demand and we see the growth here. But going back to the early days, if you think about this image that you had in mind of how Real is going to progress in Canada versus what reality turned out to be, what would you say?
So I had a hunch that there was just a lot of agents that were looking for what I was sort of looking for as well. I was starting to notice as a team leader the challenges of the traditional model and I think COVID really exposed a lot of that. All of a sudden, it was like, 'Okay, wait a second. I need more support and more community around me. I need more training and help to grow as a team leader so I can support the agents on my team.' And the traditional models were more set up to pit agents against each other to have them much more, I would say, protective of their secrets. And so I had already seen from the real estate video community, the creators that were out there, that people were actually very giving and they were actually willing to share what worked for them. And so what I saw about this model was that there were so many agents that were looking for just a better split, a bigger opportunity, to feel a little bit less alone in a really lonely industry, and to have some community around them. And I actually always believed that that was something that most agents would want and that it would take maybe some time for people to really see that. And I'm really proud of where we've came from because in those beginning days I thought, you know what, I think people will kind of sign on to it. And I think there was definitely a few people that were early adopters, saw the opportunity of course, but almost everyone signed on for the bigger vision of what we were hoping to build. Almost everyone showed up and contrary to I think what most brokerages believe, which is like, hey, let's attract an agent by signing a check or offering them a package or offering them some special splits or this person's a bigger deal, so let's give them a special deal. Everyone kind of signed on for an opportunity to contribute to this culture. And so what I found out really quickly was, man, we're just tapping into something like a much bigger zeitgeist of what agents wanted. And so I think that's where the growth came from.
Obviously the growth in the early days was super challenging. I remember I felt like, hey, I'm doing what I'm supposed to do, we're getting the word out, we're bringing great agents. I think within a couple days of announcing, actually the day that we announced, we were having a rooftop sort of announcement that Real came to Canada, I got a call from Darren Langil, a great local agent who had ran Red Line Brokerage, about 75 agents there. He was actually the first agent that I had ever interviewed with to maybe join his brokerage when I got my license. And he was in for the exact same reasons that were attracting me to this opportunity, was attracting him and his agents. And then it was some top producing agents and agents from the full spectrum. It was not just the brand new agent or the flashy young agent that was attracted to tech. It was the established agents in the city. And so after three or four months, we had some growth challenges. A US company trying to learn how to operate in Canada. But yet everyone sort of stuck around. And I had those evenings where I would have some agents call and say, it's been a week or two since we've been paid. What's going on? Is this company going to last? And all that sort of stuff. And I was like, oh my gosh, these are people I really love and respect. I think it's all going to work out. But Real came in, leadership came in, stepped up, talked to the agents, and said, we're making this a sole focus and priority of the company to tackle these issues. But I think because all of the agents here in Canada were so bought in to the vision of what we could build together that they understood, hey, we're kind of like building this rocket ship in flight and there's going to be some bumps along the way, but they signed up for it and they stuck around for it.
Yeah. I remember those days and when we opened up Canada, we felt that we were ready. We felt that we've went through the process of understanding the market and how it works and bringing in the resources. Obviously when agents started joining and deals started coming in the door we realized that there's so much more that we should build and the experience was subpar for sure for a long period of time. But one thing that I'm super impressed by and grateful for is the fact that the agents who joined us gave us a lot of grace and they said, you know, we understand that those are growing pains and we are here and we stick with you and we want this to be a partnership. So, we will teach you, we will help you. And I think that as soon as they saw the commitment from our side, and there was a point in time where I told everybody we just put everything aside, we focus on Canada, like this is the only thing that we care about. And it was a period of a few months that we focused solely on solving Canada-related problems and building Canada-specific technology software products. And I think that once agents here saw the commitment and saw the progress, this is where people had a little bit more conviction because at the beginning I think it was a little bit more shaky. But I'm grateful for this group of agents that really was there for us at the beginning.
I'll add to that, I think two really cool things come out of that, the challenges from that time. First off, our transaction management software, right? So a big part of our tech platform is this super innovative way for agents to process their deals, to communicate with their brokers, to get support, all of that. And in the challenges faced in Canada we realized like, okay, there has to be market-specific software built so agents can get the proper support that they need rather than using third-party software and creating patches and workarounds. So it's like these challenges created Real and its tech platform as it is today. And the biggest reason why I think it's so successful for agents is because the only way for you guys to build that was to actually listen to the challenges that the agents were facing. And so one of the other wild things that came out of that time is the agents felt like they had their fingerprints all over this company. They felt actively invested in creating the brokerage that they always wished existed, and so because of that they have so much more ownership in it.
Yeah, it's a true partnership of, you know, building a company together. As you think about the persona of agent that joined us a couple of years ago when we launched versus today, do you see any difference in the people that are now more interested in joining the company versus the people that joined us early on?
Yeah, you know I think real estate's extremely entrepreneurial but even entrepreneurs have different degrees of risk. And so there were many agents I would say in years two and three that I spoke to and a few other our initial agents spoke to in the first few weeks of us being open. They were interested and intrigued and probably rightfully so were like, 'Okay, let's see if you guys go and do the thing that you said you were going to do.' And it wasn't so much about like, 'Will you guys process transactions? Will you guys grow?' Those sorts of things. For a lot of them, they already had a preconceived concept of what a real estate brokerage that was cloud-based, stock, revshare would be like, what that culture would be like, what the reputation would be like. And they wanted to see like, are you guys going to be different or are you just going to be a 2.0? And I think what is probably the thing that I'm most proud about is how unique we are in the market. Not just from other brokerages with similar models, but from all other brokerages, what agents were actually looking for.
And so I would say the agents that are coming today, we're attracting, you know, we've got some newer agents that are definitely intrigued. But we're getting some of those agents that have been curious for years now, starting to come and make moves. And like I've got a great friend up in Edmonton. Edmonton's been a market that actually grew very slowly for the first few years while Calgary was just blowing up. And then all of a sudden a few key respected agents in that market decided to make the move. A few great team leaders, they started to make the move. And just the way that that created this momentum like, okay you're taking that risk, I'll take that risk. And then soon the risk felt greater for the agents that weren't moving. And a good friend of mine, Michael Wedell, up in Edmonton. This guy sells like 105 homes a year. Like I don't even know how he does it. Doesn't even have an assistant. And he called me up right before the Christmas holidays and was like, I can't stay where I'm at. I have to come. I have to come be a part of this thing. And he's loving it. But I get calls like that. I know you see the growth and it always comes with little asterisks like how's it going? Are you guys enjoying it? I'm glad to see the growth is here, but how's it going for you? Are there things we could do better? Things we could work on. And the cool thing is everyone's got like, 'Oh yeah, no, this is great. We could do this a little better.' And then we go work on that thing. So it's cool.
