Broker JP Piccinini Talks Growth Principles to Build Your Franchise

You don’t become one of the top 100 independently owned brokerages in the U.S. by guessing your way to success. At J.P. & Associates REALTORS, we’ve grown a real estate empire from Dallas, TX, riding the last decade’s real estate boom across 17 states—and counting.

How did we do it? Here are some of the principles that worked for us:

Fueling Expansion with a Growth-Oriented Approach

Expansion isn’t something that happens by accident. It happens when you take the reins and make expansion your key goal.

We did this by choosing an agent-oriented approach. With incentives provided through generous commissions, we knew we could attract the right talent. Initially, the agency gathered just 25 agents, but eventually grew to a force of 2,000. A thousand of those are franchise-based agents.

We consider talent attraction to be a unique skill, and one that JPRAR possesses. If expansion is going to happen, you need the talent in place. You need the talent to be happy and productive, while still staying engaged with their local environment. As you’ll see in the following sections, that can happen by making talent a priority and providing a proven business model.

Find the Right Talent

You can’t expand without putting people in a position to succeed. But it’s not just about hiring people. You’ve got to identify and hire the right talent for each position. Here are a few key points:

  • It’s worth the investment. Let’s be honest: finding the right people in the top positions is hard. Most talented people have already found great jobs. But if you’re willing to be patient and invest in your people, the returns can be even greater.
  • Expansion is all about talent. Put succinctly, you can’t expand unless you have the right people in place. It may take a while to identify the right people for the right positions. But when you have a match of skills to the challenges that come with expansion, it’s well worth the journey.

Simply put, we believe a productive, friendly environment of high-achieving people is the future of our industry. We build our company with top producers because we want to work for top producers.

Build a Working, Scalable Model

JPAR’s focus was on building a working model that could be employed with new brokerages as they opened. With each new franchise that opened, we would provide detailed startup materials.

The goal: to get each franchise up and running as a full-time brokerage. With the right governance and mentorship, franchisees had access to firsthand knowledge of how to run a successful brokerage.

Since talent is key, we encouraged anyone who wasn’t happy with their current job, or working at another brokerage, to join in.

Franchise Guidance: The Key to Exponential Growth

It’s not enough to pay lip service to building a scalable model. You have to provide the guidance that franchise brokerages need to create the kind of expansion you’re after.

JPAR opened its business to franchising in 2018. Our expansion took place over the course of only a couple of years. At our current pace, we hope to reach all fifty states by 2023.

How do we forecast this kind of exponential growth? Franchise guidance.

  • Put together a clear business model that works in multiple states. Franchising without guidance is like trying to navigate without a map. Make sure your franchisees have everything in place necessary to achieve growth and success—in any market.
  • Be adaptable to local trends and market governance. Can success happen “in any market”? Sure. But it helps to be adaptable to local trends and market governance. Give franchisees the flexibility to adapt to local conditions while still focusing on a proven business model.

The Results

What happens when you put these elements together? With the model of building a full-service and quickly profitable brokerage available to new franchises, JPAR earned recognition as one of the top 10 franchises in the U.S. It was the fastest-growing brokerage in 2019.

JP pic with cap bgGiuseppe “JP” Piccinini is the Founder of JP and Associates REALTORS® (JPAR) as well as the CEO of Vesuvius Holdings LLC, the parent company over JPAR Brokerage, JPAR Franchising, and other holdings from tech to commercial properties. He is a real estate agent turned entrepreneur, author and philanthropist.