Watters International Realty Year in Review

Watters International Realty had a smashing year in 2018, with several major initiatives put in place that will help set the brand up for success in the new year.

The real estate franchise company saw major internal growth, launched a successful master class program and signed its first franchisees, both of whom have already grown tremendously in their respective markets.

Watters International Realty CEO Christopher Watters and President Bradley Pounds spoke about the major milestones the company met in 2018.

Company milestones

For one, they garnered a lot of attention from the book they co-authored and published in 2017, “The Million Dollar Real Estate Team: How I Went from Zero to Earning $1 Million After Expenses in Three Years.”

“2018 was a real whirlwind,” Pounds said. “We knew that ‘The Million Dollar Real Estate Team’ was going to resonate with a certain niche of realtors who don’t want to practice real estate forever and want to build businesses. But we didn’t anticipate the sheer number of emails and Facebook messages and copies of the books that were sold. We made many new contacts just because of publishing the book and we were invited on more speaking gigs to talk to conventions and groups than we could possibly fulfill. This was easily affirming and a giant honor.”

Watters International Realty also created a 90-day master class called “Leadership and Scaling.”

“In our book, we talk about seven key pillars, and the one pillar that will cause others to fall if you don’t get it right is leadership and scaling,” Watters said. “You have to hire the right people and in the right order. There are very specific roles you need to be filling as you hit certain revenue benchmarks. That’s the essence of the leadership and scaling master course.”

The master class has been a success, with more than 50 large organizations and their corresponding brokers and owners going through the program just in the last three months, according to Watters.

“We’re agnostic and offering it to people across the United States, regardless of brokerage,” Watters said. “It’s been a great source to get people introduced to us and it’s been a great way to create brand awareness around how we’re differentiating ourselves from every other real estate franchise system in the marketplace.”

This master class is about instilling leadership principles and practicing the art of leadership, Watters said. So far, 47 business owners across the U.S. have taken the class, and out of that, Watters International Realty has five teams who will be announcing their franchise openings in Q1, including the newly-announced operation in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

“Through the master class, we’ve been able to connect with people whose goals are in alignment with what we’re offering,” Watters said. “Their goal is to build a real estate brokerage.”

Internal growth and development

Watters International Realty also met some major internal benchmarks in 2018.

“We expanded our marketing team for the franchise business to test new marketing funnels,” Watters said. “Our goal is always quantitative and scalable lead generation that generates a high ROI for franchise partners. We came up with new strategies like a new AI-powered bot to help filter through the garbage which has been working very well.”

The company also launched a peer coaching development program.

“This is a proprietary program that helps agents learn how to coach others and level up into leaders that can help franchisees go from captaining everything to having more of an ownership mentality by being focused on helping the right agents get into a position to run the company at a certain point,” Watters said.

This was also the company’s first full year to have approval from the Federal Trade Commission to sell the franchise model, Pounds said. “We’re incredibly excited about Albuquerque and are eager to announce the other locations very soon.”

“Our main focus was on slowly and deliberately building relationships with people who might be good partners for us,” Pounds said. “Some of that was organic, but a lot of it was from the 90-day coaching program we created. That allowed us to work closely with people who were interested in building teams and spending some time in the trenches teaching these guys.

What came of that was this group of people who are now in the process of applying for franchises and so 2018 was really about telling our story and finding our stride. Now that there is a lot of momentum behind that we’re really happy to announce that we have about five teams that are in various stages of the process of obtaining their franchising license.”

Pounds also noted that existing Watters International Realty teams are breaking records.

He specifically cited the teams of Watters International Realty Texas franchisees Lori Horner and Desmond Graham. Horner’s Amarillo team was named the number one team in their city in North Texas, and Graham’s Killeen location has exceeded expectations in a challenging market.

“These two team owners have matured so much and grown that now we have sort of our first emergent leaders in the franchise system outside of me and Chris,” Pounds said. “Lori and Desmond are growing into titans not only within their markets but within the Watters International Realty network. We now have more people who will approve a concept and are about to turn around and help others in our system.”

The startup costs for a Watters International Realty franchise range from $49,260 to $192,650. The franchise fee ranges from $15,000 to $35,000. To learn more about franchising with Watters International Realty, visit