The American Dream Debunked: Independent Brokerages by Diane Tuman
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own brokerage, you work long, crazy hours and carry eal estate agents are a unique breed of a lot of risk, but you don’t make much money,” says entrepreneurs. They work for everyone Ribak, leader of Tropical Beachside, brokered by eXp and no one—all at the same time. The Realty. “This is not something you learn from agents who are the most driven have big other brokers because the same ego it takes to be a great salesperson or motivational dreams about hanging their own shingle. leader doesn’t easily get shared when it An independent brokerage, after all, is comes to the downside of owning your own regarded as the crowning success for brokerage.” building a winning team and starting your The Boston native is a self-described serial Ribak entrepreneur who has owned 22 companies own company. It signals “you’ve made it.”
Mitch Ribak of Cocoa Beach, Fla., is one such person. He opened his own indie in March 2005, only to find out the business is layered with plenty of challenges. “I discovered a dirty little secret. If you own your 24 November 2020 RISMedia’s REAL ESTATE
since the 1980s, including a restaurant, a paintball business, flower business, ad agency, dating service, online dating site and affiliate marketing agency—he was also host of a radio dating show out of Universal Studios in Orlando. But once the 1999 dot-com bubble
