We were lucky to catch up with Ladd Gasparovic recently and have shared our conversation below.

Ladd, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Often outsiders look at a successful business and think it became a success overnight. Even media and especially movies love to gloss over nitty, gritty details that went into that middle phase of your business – after you started but before you got to where you are today. In our experience, overnight success is usually the result of years of hard work laying the foundation for success, but unfortunately, it’s exactly this part of the story that most of the media ignores. Can you talk to us about your scaling up story – what are some of the nitty, gritty details folks should know about?

In hindsight, I’ve learned that virtually everything with me starts with VISION. It starts with me spending time THINKING, getting clarity on what it is that I want. At first, it was being an entrepreneur as starting my own law firm instead of continuing the path I was on as a prosecutor. It was getting that idea, picturing the success, the growth, running my own business, and then just taking ACTION and figuring it out.

in 2009 after practicing law for 8 years, it was time for a change. I had a different vision, and it was being more of an entrepreneur in real estate, and I joined my wife in running her real estate team when we just found out she was pregnant. We grew that business inside another company – a franchise – then in 2013, the VISION struck again where we just had a picture in our mind of building something bigger, something different, something that didn’t exist at the time. So in 2013, we left our large regional brokerage, and took a risk and started our own Keller Williams franchise. Here, it started with a VISION again. We had 8 people at first, we met and talked about it. We got clear on what we wanted, where we wanted to go. We wrote down our MVVBP, and we went around in our market, growing our sales business and simultaneously pitching the vision – who were were and where we were going – to other likeminded individuals. That Vision attracts likeminded people who care about the same things, and when they see and feel that we could help them get where they wanted to go, they’d join us. So really asking people questions about who they were, where they were, what they wanted, and whether or not they knew exactly how to get there.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I’m an entrpreneur in the real estate space. Started as a practicing North Carolina attorney, first as a prosecutor then started my own firm focused in real estate in business. I always had a passion for real estate so in 2009 I sold my law firm to my partners, and partnered with my wife in building out her real estate team. From 2009 to 2013 we built that to one of the top real estate teams in the region, and in 2013 we decided to launch our own Keller Williams franchise. It started with 8 agents, and 10 years later we serve over 600 agents and 10 locations as Keller Williams Innovate, with our 2 main franchise locations in Wilmington NC and Myrtle Beach, SC, with a total of 10 offices spanning from Pawley’s Island, SC all the way up through Wilmington to Jacksonville, NC. Being a part of the Keller Williams culture has been impactful in my growth and the way I think. I’m very focused on becoming a better leader, a better version of myself, as a husband, father, business owner, member of church, member of my community. I’ve learned that we put God & Family before Business, and that the only way to truly lead is to serve others.
We are essentially a coaching and training company disguised as a real estate company. The Mission we developed is to be the most Vibrant, Attractive, Diverse & Agent Centric Real Estate Company on the Planet, to Profit Share $1M back to our agents, and to create 100 Net Worth Millionaires. The problem that we solve for most of our customers- the real estate agent – is helping them learn to MAKE, MANAGE & MULTIPLY their income and their wealth. Entrepreneurship is hard, and we serve hundreds of independent contractor 1099 real estate agents. Each of them is different and they bring unique skillsets and visions to the table. We’ve been successful in attracting them to our vision, and helping them with the process of building their businesses on a stable foundation of systems to help them achieve and handle the growth. Our company provides systems and models, and what we’ve found is that our intuitive entrepreneurial approach to business isn’t always the most effective, so we help coach and train our agents to build the businesses they each want.
I’m most proud of starting this company with 8 people in 2013 with a clear vision to build something different and amazing, and building a platform that has helped hundreds and hundreds of real estate agents build better businesses and lives.

Let’s talk M&A – we’d love to hear your about your experience with buying businesses.

Yes, I’ve bought and sold multiple businesses, and I think it’s a great strategy on both sides. The vast majority of businesses fail, and they fail for different reasons. The first business I bought was a law firm. I wanted to grow and expand and another lawyer wanted to go do something different. I learned to evaluate the business, the cash flow and revenue it generated, what the expenses were. I didn’t have formal training, but I realized that the new firm location had some new fixed expenses, but it had alot of expenses that I was already paying for (insurance, software, E&O, technology, etc). So I realized that I could essentially quickly more than double my revenue , with expenses only going up approximately 40-50%. The new firm location had different clients, was a truly different market that I wasn’t tapped into, and a great team that was already in place. As far as value, neither of us had a clue. The attorney who sold it said “I think it’s worth X,” and intuitively we figured out a way to pay out of the profits. So I gave him his price and basically said, if it’s worth the X you think it is, then you won’t mind if I just pay you out of the monthly profits? He agreed, and it was a true win win. This structure was so intuitive, so fair and it worked so well, I used it later when I sold my law firm to my two business partners, and I’ve used it to buy other businesses in real estate. There are so many businesses out there, and the vast majority fail. Often it could make sense to sell, partners, JV, join forces, etc. And often times it’s just the best time for one person to go do something else which creates a huge opportunity for someone else and a true win win.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

I love this question because looking back when we’ve started businesses, we started with VISION and belief in ourselves, and probably alot less cash than we should have had! My wife Stephanie and I moved 250 miles away to the coast in 2004 for me to launch my law firm, and she launched her real estate career. We had just renovated and sold our first house, so we had a little money. Bet essentially, we went all in and bet on ourselves. I literally started my law firm with credit cards, and I remember for the first 18-24 months we’d get the credit card offers in the mail, and I’d do 0% balance transfers to new credit cards! I definitleey do NOT recommend that, but that’s what we did. We took alot of risk, but we bet on ourselves, and I just don’t think we would’ve failed. We never would have given up. The next time we started our business, it was Keller Williams. We learned to LEAD WITH REVENUE. We had the vision, we started small and lean. Thankfully KW has rules in place that disallow debt, require leading with revenue, and keeping low fixed expenses. So we’ve kept our fixed expenses low and led with revenue, and it’s been a very safe and sound growth strategy. We’ve gotten carried away at different times and overspent on people or things, and learned our lesson.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://kw-innovate.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ladd.gasparovic/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ladd.gasparovic
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laddgasparovic/