What One Year of Building a Brokerage Taught Me

I just hit my one-year anniversary at ENRG, and I almost missed it. I found out the morning of, looked back at what we built, and realized the most useful thing I could do is write down what the year actually taught me. Not the highlight reel. The real notes.

I have been in real estate for more than 30 years. I started selling million-dollar condos on Fisher Island when I was 22, which meant walking into rooms full of people who had every reason to wonder why this young guy should guide their investment. I am 58 now. I no longer do transactions. What I do is build, and what I have learned is that building a brokerage in 2026 is mostly about deciding what to ignore.

Here are the things I am not ignoring.

1. Let agents be agents.

AI is the loudest word in every room right now. Walk into any conference and the first question a colleague asks is which AI you are using. The gap between how people answer that question is startling.

Our answer is quieter than most. We do not want our agents learning one more app or remembering one more password. An agent's job is talking to people and being present in their community, and every tool that pulls them away from that is a tax on the thing they do best. So we put almost all of our AI on the back end, with the teammates who support our agents, not on the agents themselves.

A real example: we use a tool that reads through transaction files and emails, state by state, and surfaces what is actually happening in a given agent's business. It lets a state broker reach out before a problem exists. "I noticed you are doing more listings than usual. What do you need now that you did not need at five?" Or the reverse, gently: "You have missed the same addendum a few times. Let's fix that so every deal is defensible." That is data turned into a human reaching out. The agent never sees the software. They just feel supported.

2. We are zagging where the industry is zigging.

Real estate right now is a world of mega-mergers, and those players have real firepower. But look at who is designing them. That is Wall Street building brokerages and making business decisions for agents at very high volume.

We went the other way on purpose. We are bespoke and personal where the giants are big and uniform. That is not a slogan, it is a structural choice, and it shows up in who we are built for.

3. The metric we are proudest of is not agent count.

Every brokerage tracks headcount and transaction volume. The number we care most about is transaction volume per agent.

When the founders first described ENRG to me, I saw the gap immediately. There is a specific professional out there who says, "I sell 12 to 15 homes a year, and I know I could do 20 with better support and better personalized backup." That agent is not looking for a platform and a split. They are looking for a brokerage that pays attention. Year one proved the model works, because the agents who joined are rising. Year two is about getting the message to the rest of them.

4. Year one was the build. Year two is amplification.

We spent year one quiet on purpose. Senior people in the industry were watching, but we were not loud about it. All the brokerage essentials are built now, and it is working, so this is the year we get our voice out there responsibly.

That word, responsibly, is the hard part. In Florida the running joke is that more people have a real estate license than a driver's license, and it is not far off. In March of 2021, during the pandemic migration wave, there were 6,000 new license applications in a single month. So the question is not how to get loud. It is how to stand out as a genuinely different offering when the market is this crowded.

The part nobody can plan for

I was at an AI conference in Austin recently, and the keynote drew a parallel I have not stopped thinking about. We are in the 1993 pre-internet phase. In 1993 everyone knew the internet was coming and that it was exciting, but no one could responsibly tell you where things would land in two or five years. That is exactly where AI sits today. We know it will change our business and make it better. We cannot honestly build a five-year plan around it yet, because nobody knows the speed or the scope.

So we are all on the same ride. The brokerages that come out ahead will be the ones who stay steady while it plays out: never too high, never too low. After 30 years, that even keel is the thing I would protect first.

A year in, here is where I have landed. Let agents be agents. Build for the professional who wants to do more. Stay personal while everyone else gets bigger. And keep an even keel through a moment none of us can fully predict.

One more build. I am glad I said yes to it.