Behind the scenes: Operational insights from scaling The Agency

Everyone wants to go global, but very few people talk about what that actually requires.

In my six years at The Agency, we have grown to more than 150 offices across 14 countries. That growth has been one of the most rewarding and humbling experiences of my career, and it has come with a set of lessons that no domestic playbook could have prepared me for. Here is what I have learned.

Rewrite your playbook for every destination

When you expand domestically, you are working within a shared framework. Licensing, compliance, transaction structures, consumer expectations: They vary by state, but they exist within a recognizable system. Internationally, that foundation disappears.

Every market has its own regulatory environment, its own transaction norms, its own version of what a brokerage is supposed to look like. What that means operationally is that you cannot export your systems and expect them to land.

You have to be willing to rebuild. Not your brand, not your culture, not your standards, but the infrastructure that delivers all of those things in an entirely new context.

The brokerages that struggle internationally are often the ones that assumed their domestic model was the product. It is not. Your values are the product. Everything else has to be rebuilt from the ground up.

Find partners who know what you never could

The single most important decision in any international market is not the city you choose or the timing of your entry. It is the partner you choose to operate with.

In a domestic franchise model, a weak operator is a problem. Internationally, a weak operator is a liability that can unravel everything you have built, because you have far less visibility and far fewer mechanisms for course correction.

We look for partners who understand their market at a depth we never could from the outside: who have existing relationships, local credibility and a genuine alignment with how we believe real estate should be practiced.

The brand provides the platform. The partner provides the context. When that equation works, the result is something neither could have built alone.

Build infrastructure that transcends borders

Technology, compliance, training, communication — none of it is glamorous, but it is the difference between an international presence and an international business.

When you are operating across a dozen markets in multiple countries, the question is not whether your systems can handle the volume. It is whether they can handle the variation: different languages, different legal requirements, different ways agents access and share information.

We have had to make significant investments in the operational backbone that makes consistency possible at scale. Not uniformity, but consistency.

Uniformity means every market looks the same. Consistency means every market reflects the same values and the same commitment to the client experience, even when the expression of that looks different from one country to the next.

Respect the timeline

Every step of international growth takes longer than projected: licensing, hiring, onboarding, building local brand recognition, earning the trust of agents and clients who have no prior relationship with you. The brokerages that struggle globally are often the ones that went in with a domestic timeline in mind.

The other thing most people underestimate is whether their own internal culture is strong enough to travel. If your culture is dependent on proximity, on in-person leadership, or on the energy of a single office or a charismatic figure, it will not scale.

Culture has to be systemic to survive distance. That means codifying your values, investing in training and communication infrastructure, and building leadership at every level of the organization, not just at the top.

What we have learned

Global growth is not just a growth strategy. It is an operational commitment. The brokerages building something real internationally are the ones that understood from the start that planting a flag is the beginning of the work, not the end of it.

The agents and operators who thrive in this environment are genuinely curious about markets that do not look like their own. They are willing to adapt without abandoning what makes them excellent, and they understand that the opportunity is not just to sell real estate in a new place. It is to raise the standard of how real estate gets practiced there.

That is what building a global brokerage actually looks like. It’s complex, demanding and often underestimated. But for those who are in it, there is nothing more rewarding. 

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