So this will be somewhat repetitive, but the reality is that we went on a mission really in 2009. In 2002, I got a real estate license, so I started as an agent on a team. Most of you probably heard this story, but I started really while I was looking for my next project. I really wasn't super excited about real estate, but I was doing websites, actually community-based websites for Chambers of Commerce.
In 2002, I was selling some ads for $25 a month. And one realtor that I was trying to sell an ad to, his email bounced. And so I sent him an email a week later, it bounced again. So I called him up and said, 'Hey, your email bounced.' He was a top agent in the area, and he said, 'Well, it hasn't worked for like three months.' I'm like, 'How are you the top agent if email didn't work?'
So I said, 'Well, let me take a look at it.' So I actually fixed his email so I could send him an email. And then he said, 'Well, you know what you're doing. Why don't you come work for me?' And I said, 'Okay, sure.' So I started to do website development work for him and started to generate some leads for him. At the time, I was 35 and he was 62, 63. And he started generating some leads and he goes, 'Glenn, you need to get your real estate license.' And I'm like, 'I need a real estate license like I need a hole in the head.' That was literally my opinion, but he said... I think I actually said that to him. And he said, 'What would it take to get a real estate license?' I said, 'I don't know. Guarantee me three grand a month.' He said, 'Fine.' Like, 'Crap.'
So then I said, 'Okay, well, here's the deal. I'm kind of an internet guy. I'll generate leads, but I won't be sitting open houses. I won't wear a realtor to the grocery store, and it's either going to work or it's not going to work.' And he said, 'Fine, fine, fine.' And then another month went by and he said, 'Glenn, why don't you have a real estate license yet?' And I was doing website development work, and I said, 'Well, Hugh, I get paid $60 an hour to actually do website development work.' And so he said, 'I'll pay you $60 an hour to study for your exam.' So he was not taking no for an answer. So I got paid like whatever that works out to, $60 an hour times 30 hours. So I got paid to actually get my real estate license.
And I came in. One of the cool things about it is I had some business constraints, and I'm really big on business constraints. You'll see it a little bit in how we built the EXP model. But the business constraints I set up right up front was I was going to build the online site, and so I was really focused. And so as a result, even though I was doing the lead gen, I was on his team, I'm paying him a split, but I was getting three grand guaranteed. But I ended up being the rookie of the year that year. That was the first full year. The next year I was the top buyer agent, number three in the office on his team.
And then 2004, I was actually building websites for another buddy of mine to generate leads. And we were looking at where we wanted to go with our business because I had a two-year deal with Hugh. And so we were interviewing with different folks and read the red book. And as a result, you know, went over to Keller Williams and built a fast-growing team. 2006, fourth full year of the business, top 50 nationally with Keller. But all along that journey, I was realizing that I really didn't yet have a business. I had a business that owned me because I needed to be so involved in the business.
And then the team structure was not as profitable as it looked on paper. You know, it looked like all these people going across stage and they're doing millions of dollars of GCI. And I was doing, you know, in 2006, I was doing about 1.5, 1.8 million in GCI, which was great GCI back in the day. Nowadays it's kind of like just the starting point for a team, it seems like. But back then that was a big number, and my net really wasn't that big. So eventually we stepped out of Keller, partially because the profit share for us didn't really work. But we also built this team-based brokerage, and so we did that. We ran that in multiple cities, and then 2008 hit. And then 2008 took us down.
And then we came into 2009. I remember it was actually February 14th of 2009. It showed up in my Facebook feed as a memory. But we had a meeting, and one of the agents said... At that time, we got rid of all of our offices except for just a basic administrative office. And one of our agents said, 'When do we get our offices back?' This was one of those types of agents that when they ask, they'll never stop asking, and you just know that you got to shut them down right then or else we're just going to have to deal with this for a long time. And so I just said, 'Edie, we're not getting our offices back. We've got to build a defensible business model that's not dependent on bricks and mortar.' And that was the statement.
And so that was kind of... and so we're still in that kind of team-based mode at that point in time, but that was the formative statement that was like, 'That sounds actually pretty good. Why don't we do that?' So we went ahead and started to brainstorm from February, March, April, May. By June, we actually had the business model figured out. We actually laid out all the models, you know, Keller, RE/MAX, Coldwell Banker, there was a company called Connect back then. There was all these companies, and we just laid them all side by side. We said, 'Okay, how do we beat them at every level?'
And the one thing I loved about Keller Williams was the idea of the profit share. I love their seven-level model. And I remember it was 2007 when I got my 1099. And when I got that 1099, I found out I got six grand in profit share from the previous year with 184 people in my profit share group. I was like, 'This doesn't work.' And I literally... this was another one of those formative statements. I said to the couple guys in the office when I came in, I was frustrated. I said, 'Okay, if we ever build a company, we're going to do revenue share, not profit share.' And so that was like...
So I kept on making these little formative statements because I think one thing is, you know, when you're in business, a lot of times if you're in a business that's not quite working, you'll make notes of 'I would do it differently next time.' However, usually you're making too much money to actually go and do those things because it takes a big step back. And so the gift of the downturn in the housing market is the market sucked so bad that we literally had no choice but change the entire model.
And I always looked at, you know, using the Bill Gates thing, but I always looked at all these tech companies and how they actually approach things. They always approached it by basically giving things away almost for free. You think about Gmail, you think about all these things that we get exposed to online, and a lot of this stuff you basically get for free and then you upgrade over time to more premium, so it's called premium services. And so we said, you know, how do we build the most agent-centric brokerage on the planet? And I really thought about it from the perspective of what would the brokerage need to look like for me to be there as a lifer.
And so I looked at, you know, the revenue share was just a natural, right? We had to do that. Then the other piece was equity. I had went into my Coldwell Banker office. I asked for some equity when I was there with Hugh. I was turned down even though I was the number three agent in the office and that was going to grow. I went to Keller. I asked for some equity. I was offered a 1% token interest even though we did 30% of the office volume. And then when we left, literally, there was a small team that was coming up below me at the time, and he was given the office because they needed somebody to just take over the bills. So if anybody wants to know how Ben Kenny became a broker-owner, that's actually how. He was actually in my office.
And so that was kind of that historical portion, but equity was a big deal for me. And so we just literally said, how do we make the most agent-centric real estate brokerage on the planet? And it really comes down to how do you build a scalable business. A truly scalable business solves a big problem that hasn't been solved before. And for real estate agents, real estate agents up until, you know, really EXP's mentorship program... I think that was brought up earlier. You know, there was not a retirement program in real estate. And so the big need was how do we build a real estate brokerage that actually creates a true meaningful retirement, and how do we make sure that this thing wins over the long haul.
And so that's one of the reasons why you always hear us talking about building the most agent-centric real estate brokerage on the planet. That's what we go and do every day. Jeff, Michael, Jim, Amy, Jen, who else here is on leadership? Dave. Dave's here somewhere. Dave. Okay. But you know, that's the mantra that we have is just how do we build the most agent-centric real estate brokerage on the planet? It really is the rallying cry. The purpose of an organization is not to make money. It's a byproduct of doing something well.
And so when you think about building the most agent-centric real estate brokerage on the planet, some of you guys asked me about the slide yesterday when Dave put up there, NPS. Like, there's something called NPS, like you don't know what NPS is. And I'm sure most of you probably don't know what it is, but it's called Net Promoter Score. And it's on a scale of 0 to 10, how likely would you refer a friend or colleague to join EXP? And that actually gives us meaningful data around how do we continue to be the most agent-centric real estate brokerage on the planet.
And I love the numbers too. I think he had 74s up there for most of the stuff in terms of NPS. And I've actually been thinking about in the background. I used to use this, and Jason Gessie and I back in 2014 and '15, we started to play with NPS. And then '15, '16, it sort of got implemented, then it fell off, and then got implemented, and it fell off. And then Jeff joined us. Jeff made it part of our ecosystem, like he really made it part of how we measure the organization. So NPS allows us to continue to be super agent-centric. But we used to have the thing that when we're over 70, the company's growing. When we're below 70, it's struggling a little bit.
And I'm starting to think about the fact that we need to strive for 75, 76s, 80s, which would be unheard of. 70 is already world-class. I'm thinking, how can we go from a 70 to an 80, something that would be entirely unheard of? How do we do something crazy and audacious? Because that's actually what it's going to take to be 500,000 agents in five years, you know, and that's our commitment, our goal.
And when we think about things like our revenue share plus program. So a few years ago, we said, 'Okay, we would need to make sure that the revenue share doesn't kill the company because it literally was getting a little crazy in terms of the percentage. It was getting up to 75% of the company dollars getting paid out. We're having to hire staff and do all the things that we needed to do, and we're showing losses like crazy.' And it was kind of scary trying to figure that out. Finally figured out, oh, if we just do 50% of the company dollar, the company has enough money to run on, and we've got enough money to build out forever in the rev share program.
And then here recently we started to think about, okay, we've got all these other services that we want to be part of the ecosystem, and how can we align the compensation on these other services. So we started to look at, you know, how do we think about mortgage, title, coaching, and all these other things. We started to play with the idea that what if we took 50% of the net profit from those things and actually added it and enhanced the revenue share program at 50% of company dollar. We actually enhance it so that literally that number can just go up, and as Dave said, can go up pretty much unlimited. It's really how creative can we be in terms of finding products and services.
So I wanted to bring up also, right now I'll bring up Glenn Stearns and Shauna Patriquin. But, you know, Success Lending has been growing. You know, we've been growing that footprint now. We started working on really last year at this event was the first time that we brought our leadership teams together, Kind Lending and EXP got together here at Cabo for the first time to actually chat about what this might look like if we could put it together. And a year later, I'm going to have Glenn and Shauna come up and actually talk about what has happened in the last year, where are we at, and then I'll jump back up on stage after they're done.
