If you’re building a real estate business that’s growing but still feels dependent on you, this conversation will likely hit close to home. I sat down with Brittany Brooks to talk through what actually happens behind the scenes as you scale, the breakdown points most people don’t see coming, and the shifts required to move from doing everything yourself to building a business that can truly support your life.
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Welcome back to another episode. I’m Adrienne Green and today I have with me my longtime friend Brittany Brooks. Brittany, thank you for being here with me.
Happy to be here!
And on the podcast, we help real estate entrepreneurs escape the grind to actually create the life of freedom that they usually got into real estate for in the first place. So Brittany, I’d love for you to share with our listeners, what does your real estate business look like right now?
Well, after a long journey of breakdowns and breakthroughs, we are living a life by design, a business by design, very intentional monthly annual reflection. I own a real estate brokerage. My husband and I used to have a top real estate team in the city of Jacksonville. So we’re in Jacksonville and it’s called Momentum Realty. We house and manage about 280 real estate agents now and helping them live incredible lives and build big businesses. What we say all the time is you get into real estate to get out. We are helping them build their businesses to scale and potentially find freedom and get out of real estate. I know it’s crazy to say, get into real estate to get out of real estate.
Right, well, real estate gives you so many opportunities that if you’ve been in real estate, you don’t question that phrase. It makes sense.
Yeah. You love it, but you’re like, how do I get out of this? And why did I choose this? But I love this. It’s like this toxic relationship that you see the light, but you’ve got to get there.
Right, exactly. And there’s going to be ups and downs along the way. That is what we will share in today’s call. What I love about having Brittany on for our listeners is a lot of our speakers are in the investing space. But this podcast is for all real estate entrepreneurs. Brittany, while she is a real estate investor, her primary seat was as an agent and is now as a broker. I’m loving her coming on and sharing that part of the story. But Brittany, how did you get into real estate in the first place?
So this is a fun one. I forgot to say, real estate investing. This story will involve mainly real estate investing at its start that led into creating a business and multiple businesses and streams of income within real estate. The quick version is we went through the home buying process ourselves.
John and I were both working in mergers and acquisitions, real estate M&A, and I was doing small cap company mergers and acquisition activity as an analyst. We were living the grind for corporations and doing exactly what we were supposed to be doing from college to graduating and getting prestigious jobs.
We were telling ourselves that we should want that and that this is what you’re supposed to be in. We went through the home buying process for the first time. At the time we were like, this is not okay. John eventually ran the show, went to the seller himself and delivered our offer. Our agents were not as active as we thought they should be.
We come from a place of demanding excellence and standards and professionals doing professional jobs and they weren’t. With our background in accounting and finance and John in real estate activities through his corporate job, we were like, there could be something here. I think the first thing for every entrepreneur is they say, I think there could be something here. Then you wonder if things could be different. Then you wonder if it can be you and you have an identity crisis.
So I’m pretty conservative in terms of risk, playing the safe game. The thought of going into real estate and quitting my job, I was a CPA at the time, I had done everything I was supposed to do, was very daunting. So John is like, I think I want to quit my job and become a real estate agent. At the time, the premise of having the title of real estate agent has a certain connotation to it.
You’re going to become a real estate agent? What are you doing?
Yeah, I feel like it’s maybe a step above ambulance chasing attorneys. It has a certain vibe.
Yeah, you’re like, okay, we kind of get the feel of who you are. He decided to get his license. I said, you’ve got three months. We were not engaged at the time. We were just living together. We had moved from Washington, D.C. to Jacksonville. Even just that, following a boy to Jacksonville, for me, I was like, what are we doing? Already we’re entering crisis mode.
Now my boyfriend wants to quit his job and become a real estate agent. I said, you’ve got three months to make money and I’m not going to be anybody’s sugar mama. He made it work. Pounding the pavement every day. We’re in Florida summer heat, knocking on doors, dropping off flyers, trying to get his name out there, buying leads. He said, I’ve got nothing to do all day. I’m trained to work 10 to 12 hours a day or more. I’ve got nothing to do but sit here and dial.
He started the business at the end of 2015. We did get engaged. He bought my engagement ring with the first house sale commission that he made. It ended up working out well. He sold about 65 homes his first year.
This is working.
Then he was knocking on me to come over and join the business. I said absolutely not. This is your thing. I’m still in tunnel vision of doing what I’m supposed to do and living in the corporate path. Then he showed me the numbers. He said, I make three times what you make and I work half the time.
You can’t deny the data. We are financiers at our core. Data tells the story. When he showed me the numbers and the profit, I also saw the joy he was having with clients every day. It was a different experience. He said, I’m either going to hire someone or I’m going to hire you as a buyer’s agent. The business had gotten too big for him to handle on his own. This was our first moment of leverage.
Eventually I did it. It was painful because I loved my job and my team. But there was a bigger picture being played out. That was 2017 and I joined him. I sold 66 homes as a buyer agent.
So I came on as a buyer agent only. I did not touch listings. We decided very early on to have separation of duties. You do not cross into the other person’s swim lane unless you ask for permission. We were not allowed to give each other feedback unless we asked for it. We had to get individual coaches because you’ve got two high drivers that want to help each other grow, but it can collapse into resentment.
Working with your spouse can be amazing and it comes with its own set of challenges.
Exactly. We thought we would kill each other at the beginning. But you can do it the right way with the right systems and coaching. We became the number one Keller Williams team in Jacksonville in 2018 and it took off. It was amazing.
We were just married, no kids, and we dove head first into everything. Then we had our baby in 2019. That was when the first big breakdown happened.
We became a two person, $40 million sales team selling hundreds of homes a year between the two of us.
Two high drivers just demanded levels of excellence from our programming and training for so long that we couldn’t see outside of that. No one could do it better than us. You go into it with that mindset, and then you crash down and burn.
All of a sudden, I have our first child in 2019. I can’t go out on showings. I’m sleep deprived. John is trying to handle two massive businesses as a solo agent and trying to cover me.
At the time, we had an operations manager. We had hired an operations manager and then two showing assistants. This was the first start of being so desperate that you have to find leverage.
Because sometimes you have to get to a place to realize that you need something. But it would be a lot better if you prepared for it ahead of time and didn’t have the storms that came.
And that’s something I always want listeners to hear. How many stories have we had where someone says they were at a low point and had to build systems or delegate or leverage other people? We’re giving you the shortcut. Do it before you get to that point of chaos.
So you had the operations manager, you had the showing assistants. What happened from there?
From there, we were going to burn it all down.
If you haven’t gotten to that point, you start thinking, am I just going to sell this, burn it, and walk away? That’s a natural thing that happens.
You get to a place where you can’t face it anymore. You can’t have any more stimuli coming at you. Especially in client services, you just want to turn it off.
We got there through years of figuring it out along the way. But the goal is that people can learn from these breakdowns and not repeat them.
Ego is a very interesting thing. When you believe you can do it all yourself, you don’t see outside of yourself. Ego can drive a business to a point, and then it all comes crashing down.
John broke his back. We had a newborn. We had no family nearby. They came to help for a few weeks, then went back to their lives. We still had this massive business and people needing us constantly.
Eventually, we started resenting the business.
We were going to sell it. We were going to sell it to our showing agents and just collect referral fees.
At the same time, we had started house hacking. We moved every six months, upgrading homes, using commissions to acquire properties. We built up four to five homes and started doing BRRRR deals.
So at the point of breakdown, we had rental properties producing some passive income.
That was also the first year we made a million dollars in commission.
We thought we could live off rentals, shut down the business, and live minimally.
We started selling everything in our house. We thought, how minimal can we live?
But that’s not a life of purpose. That’s a life of scarcity.
We decided to move to North Carolina. We made eight offers on homes and couldn’t get one.
That was a turning point.
It was like something was telling us to pause.
We realized we were running from the problem instead of solving it.
We used a whiteboard and mapped everything out. What do we love? What’s broken?
We realized we loved mentoring. We loved people. We just couldn’t handle the volume.
We were also paying massive splits to our brokerage, and our team members were struggling financially because of it.
We looked at everything and realized we were already building the foundation for a brokerage.
So in 2020, we launched Momentum Realty.
We created a lean, virtual model. No unnecessary overhead. Focused on top producers.
Over time, we expanded to include newer agents as well, because experienced agents needed leverage.
From 2020 to now, we’ve grown to 280 agents.
That growth came with breakdowns and rebuilding systems.
When we started delegating, it was out of necessity.
What I started doing was tracking my time.
Instead of jumping straight into time blocking, I tracked everything for a month.
Then I asked, am I the only person who can do this?
If not, who should do it? An owner? A hire? A virtual assistant?
Then I grouped tasks and built job descriptions.
That’s how we started hiring VAs.
The first round of leverage actually started at home.
Cleaners, meal prep, basic things that free up energy.
Then we moved into business leverage.
You start thinking about your dollar per hour.
Even if you enjoy something, you start asking if it’s the best use of your time.
We also did this with each other. What are our strengths? What should each of us be doing?
It’s about questioning everything.
Delegating sales is the hardest.
Lead generation is the highest value activity.
We outsourced recruiting for the first time.
It didn’t work the way we expected.
The message got diluted.
Our close rate was much higher than the recruiter’s.
We tracked everything. Calls, appointments, conversion.
There was a gap.
Then we looked at ROI.
Our model is lean. We charge less. So the numbers didn’t support hiring a recruiter.
That was a hard realization.
We’re still navigating what roles can be delegated.
We have a lean team, about five to six people supporting 280 agents.
The question becomes, how lean can you go?
And what is the next role to hire?
There’s a belief that someone can do something 80 percent as well as you.
I don’t agree with that.
You can find people who do it better than you.
That’s the goal.
We learned that leverage can work incredibly well when it’s aligned.
Don’t be afraid to hire leverage.
There is a version where the people you bring in are better than you.
That’s when things really shift.
They elevate the business beyond what you could do alone.
That’s when you step aside and see what’s actually possible.
Thank you for sharing that.
And for our listeners, I would love for you to think about what real estate entrepreneur you know who could benefit from hearing this and send it to them.