April is Teams Month here at Inman. Adding nuance on top of our weekly Teams Beat email newsletter, we’ll serve up top insights from the best team leaders across the country as we dig deeper into what it takes to build a team, scale it, and even leave one.
In this column, real estate agents across the nation share stories of the lessons they’ve learned during their time in the industry.
As the founder of Goldbar, an online training community, Juan Carlos Barreneche organizes training events and workshops throughout the country, including a luxury real estate conference called Goldbar Live.
After building out a team and scaling out of production, all by the age of 28, Barreneche created and grew his platform to 10,000+ agents by the age of 30. Find out what he’s learned along the way and how he’s seeking to help agents break into luxury real estate and grow their businesses.
Name: Juan Carlos Barreneche
Title: Founder of Goldbar
Experience: 7 years, Licensed since 2016
Location: Florida and New York (Reside in Orlando, Florida)
Brokerage name: eXp Realty
Team: Scaled out of production after 2022
Transaction sides: 164 (2022)
Sales volume: $77.6 million (2022)
Awards: Realtor Magazine 30 under 30 Class of 2023
What’s one big lesson you’ve learned in real estate?
The biggest lesson I’ve learned in real estate is that anything you want to achieve in this business someone already has. If your goal is to become successful, all you have to do is find the person who has achieved your goals and model their success.
I was able to learn this after hiring several coaches and consultants to personally walk me through the model they used to reach their goals. The results were incredible. Hiring a coach or consultant for three months was able to net me years’ worth of time that I would have had to spend figuring the path out on my own.
What’s the best advice you ever got from a mentor or colleague?
There are two ways to run a business, reactively or proactively. If you choose to run your business reactively it often leads to stress, constantly putting out fires and potentially burning out. If you choose to run your business proactively, it can lead to you getting the income and lifestyle you desire. Running a business requires building and implementing systems.
What would you tell a new agent before they start out in the business?
Change your relationship with failure from fearing it to loving and appreciating it. Failure is a good thing. It’s an opportunity to learn and improve so that we can get better results in the future.
What do too few agents know that would make their lives easier?
If they spent the majority of their time on building and nurturing relationships with sellers, it would solve 99 percent of their problems when it comes to generating new business. Most agents have a goal to increase their production and make more money, yet only a few agents spend the majority of their time on income-producing activities.
What is the one thing everyone should be doing to make their business better?
They should implement systems into their business. Systems will provide you with more control, peace and certainty in your business, which often leads to more happiness in your life.
Proper systems include having the right staff and software working together all to achieve the same end result: closing more deals. If implemented correctly, a business with proper systems can operate with little to no time on behalf of the owner.
Troy Palmquist is the founder of DOORA Properties in Southern California and director of growth for eXp California. Follow him on Instagram or connect with him on LinkedIn.
