Tom Truong Turned to Real Estate and eXp Realty With a Promise to Help People (VIDEO)

Tom Truong has been in real estate in the greater Boston area since 2005. But how Truong arrived at real estate and eventually, eXp Realty, is attributable to his desire to help people. Two significant life events got him there.

First, he was a self-ascribed “Wolf of Wall Street” when he was CFO for a publicly-traded insurance brokerage firm, where he helped oversee mergers and acquisitions. After watching one too many loyal employees be callously discarded during a merger, he had enough.

“During one transaction, I gave one agency owner a nice, fat check and moments later, I handed a pink slip to the 56-year-old right-hand man who has zero ownership. Two months of severance. He started to cry and asked, ‘How can I start a new career now?’ That was it. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” said Truong.

At age 32, he quit the company, sold his stock and started investing in businesses, including a bagel shop, laundromat, dry cleaning, a country club and real estate where he was flipping houses. He made some money, lost some money and learned a lot about entrepreneurship and especially real estate.

Long Hours, Costly Overhead, Low Return Leads Truong to Sell His Brokerages

But what motivated Truong to eventually move to eXp was to get out from under lots of risk and overhead and to fulfill a promise he made to his mother in her final dying days, which was to help people. 

At the time, Truong was running three real estate brokerages out of brick-and-mortar offices with a team of 120 agents. For all his leadership and hard work, Truong was startled to see his own net income was $100K below that of his top agents who had no liability and lots more freedom. He knew he had to revamp his brokerage. So he consolidated it, trimmed his agents to 90 of the top producers and eventually sold his franchise. He was free. 

Soon, Truong was being courted by top real estate brokerages in the country, including eXp. When the question was posed to him whether he was helping people, as he set out to do, he couldn’t answer yes. But once he learned about eXp’s business model, he knew he could. Truong joined eXp in late December 2017.

For all his leadership and hard work, Truong was startled to see his own net income was $100K below that of his top agents who had no liability and lots more freedom.

“I decided to partner with eXp Realty because after thorough research and comparing and contrasting all the major models, no other platform beats what eXp Realty has to offer,” Truong said. “Plus, the most satisfying thing for me as a friend, coach and mentor is to help so many agents succeed and create the lifestyle they’ve always dreamed of; so we can walk the beaches of the world together.”

Click here or the video below to hear how Truong balances managing his real estate business and growing his revenue share business at eXp:

Truong cites plenty of benefits to joining eXp:

• Best live comprehensive sales training
• International collaboration from real estate professionals all across the world
• Access to cutting-edge lead generation tools
• Power of agent ownership
• A path to revenue share income
• Culture of sharing

And lastly, “building a business that I can leave to my kids and grandkids.”

Truong Fulfilling Promise to His Mother

Truong continues to sell houses along with his wife, Marissa, and a buyer’s agent, in 2020 doing about 25 transactions for approximately $9 million in sales; by design down from $15 million as he is shifting his attention to his revenue share group where coaching and building agent careers is the most important to him.

And in his mission to give back, Truong is also very active and dedicated to several groups, including:

• 2019 President of the Asian Real Estate Association of America (AREAA.org)
• Member of eXp’s diversity and belonging initiative ONE eXp
• Several National Association of Realtor (NAR) groups, including Joint Budget Review Team & Finance Committee, Conventional Financing & Policy Committee Member, and Multicultural Real Estate Leadership Advisory Group
• State Director of Massachusetts Association of Realtors
• Board Director of Greater Boston Association of Realtors

“I am fulfilling my mother’s promise. That’s what keeps me going,” said Truong.

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