"Our company continues to grow exponentially, and the old-fashioned way -- we're on target to become the fourth largest real estate firm in 2005 with over 55,000 agents by the end of this year," said Mark Willis, president of Keller Williams Realty.

"Most of your traditional real estate companies are growing only through mergers and acquisitions; specifically they are buying other real estate businesses to increase their size," Willis said. "Unlike our competitors, Keller Williams Realty is growing purely by a grass-roots effort; agents are joining our family by word-of-mouth, which is truly an anomaly in today's world of real estate."

A value proposition for Keller Williams Realty has been its willingness to "share the wealth" through its unique profit sharing model and an agent-centric business model where the belief system is that agents should be treated like partners. This unique and innovative philosophy has propelled Keller Williams Realty into the forefront of the industry. In 2004, the company profit shared approximately $28.2 million, a 120 percent increase over 2003. In 2005, the company anticipates that it will pay its associates close to $50 million in profit share.

Another reason associates are coming to Keller Williams Realty is the unparalleled learning initiatives that Keller Williams Realty provides through its training arm, Keller Williams University. Training is an integral part of the Keller Williams Realty culture, and it is exemplified during Family Reunion, the company's largest training and consulting event of the year -- held in February in Las Vegas.

"Last month we experienced a real tribute to the culture of our company, almost 20 percent of KW agents attended our Family Reunion. We greeted 7,400 people in Vegas to celebrate individual and team successes and to share best practices," said Mo Anderson, chief executive officer.

Also contributing to the phenomenal growth of the company is that in February 2004, Co-founder and Chairman of the Board Gary Keller authored "The Millionaire Real Estate Agent." Keller developed this step-by-step guide to transforming a real estate sales practice into a business that generates a million dollars annually in net income as an answer to meet the needs of thousands of real estate professionals frustrated with the lack of training and information on how to grow their business.

"The goal from the beginning was to fill a void," Keller said. "This book is truly a business plan that provides models and systems to become a mega-producing agent, and is founded on extensive research and interviews with the best agents in our industry."

For months in 2004, "The Millionaire Real Estate Agent" has been on BusinessWeek's bestseller list, steadily climbing from the 12th to the 8th bestselling paperback business book. In 2003, the self-published edition of "The Millionaire Real Estate Agent" sold over 100,000 copies and was ranked as the number one real estate career guide on Amazon.com before being acquired by McGraw-Hill. Keller Williams Realty has grown 12 times larger in just six-and-a-half years, and its 10-year plan envisions 600 market centers with 150,000 associates and 15,000 millionaires. The company is on track to meet these goals. In 1983, its first year, Keller Williams Realty opened with one office and 32 agents and an annual sales volume of $28 million.

The company began franchising its offices -- called market centers -- in 1990. Today, the company has an annual gross sales volume of $50 billion.

Posted March 23rd 2005