Justin Allen, CEO and Founder of eAgent, and President and Founder of MS Coast Real Estate Investor Association (REIA), has embarked on a remarkable journey toward creating his own Real Estate Franchise, Investor Club and according to some, is currently revolutionizing the Real Estate Industry through his personal experience, innovation, office culture and the spirit of sharing true opportunity to those willing to take the journey and do the work.

 

“I sold candy to my friends in middle school. I found a way to buy candy by the case from a local store and would then sell them individually. I guess I’ve always been entrepreneurial. I don’t remember myself as being that way (entrepreneurial), but it’s the first moment I can remember coming into my own as I look back on all things. Or maybe it was the loss of our family home due to a fire that cultivated all the grit and determination. We lived on the back porch of our burned-out home for months until it got too cold, forcing us to clear the lot beside us for a temporary mobile home, which ended up being not-so-temporary. I don’t remember having a ton of ambition before that. The adversity our family faced during my 7th and 8th grade years provided me with a perspective far beyond my age, and only fueled my newfound ambition,” he recalled.

 

In 1993, 20-year-old Justin stumbled upon an infomercial for Tony Robbins' Personal Power, which sparked his interest in business and personal development. After completing this course, Justin became a voracious reader and was constantly immersed in books. His newly adopted "fail-your-way-to-success" mindset drove him to persevere through his rookie mistakes of the 1990’s, an up-side-down real estate market during 2008-2010 and adapt to rapidly changing technology going on to this day and beyond. “I remember when I started investing in real estate and the MLS was just a huge paper catalog bigger than a phone book. Today, the MLS is easily accessible from any smartphone. Real Estate offices don’t even need filing cabinets these days due to all the software readily available to Agents. I love having a paperless office. Everything that once fit into a filing cabinet is now neatly filed into my cell phone wherever and whenever I need it,” he explained.

 

As mentioned earlier, his entry into the Real Estate Industry came in the early 1990s after he completed a home-study course by Carlton Sheets, The No Money Down System. He was 23 years old when he bought his first house as a foreclosure through all that he learned. Many more investment properties would follow through the next few years, however after the events on 9/11, the casino industry was suffering, and he was part of a massive lay-off at the Beau Rivage. He and his wife were full-time table game dealers, and this split their steady income by half. To make things even more unpredictable, they simultaneously learned that they were finally expecting their first child. This clearly created immense pressure for him, as he also wanted her out of the casino due to smoke inhalation among other things. He began searching for various options to secure his family's financial future and Real Estate Investing continued to be promising, entertaining, profitable, and diverse.

 

Eventually as a seasoned investor, Justin sought to set himself apart from other investors in the community. He and his wife became Licensed Real Estate Agents in 2002, focusing on flipping investment properties, wholesaling, and creative buying and selling techniques. His wife was quickly able to leave her income from the Beau Rivage and return home to be Mom and Agent and had their son in 2003 and their daughter in 2004. In 2005, Justin became licensed as a Broker. He opened his own brokerage, but their plans took an unexpected turn when Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast. The aftermath of the disaster led Justin to shift his focus from predominantly investing to conventional real estate. Good times were had by all, as any new Broker-Owner will confess!

 

While he couldn’t foresee the banks wouldn’t be lending as the market was shifting slowly into a recession, he had seen plenty of other writing on the wall and was rightfully concerned about the stability of the real estate market. “We sold all our investment properties in mid-2007, putting real estate on the back burner. I opened an automotive internet business called VinSupport, sending technicians to do all the prep-work for processing new and used vehicles for auto dealers. I grew that business into servicing seventy dealerships over four states within 2 years,” Justin explained.

 

After selling VinSupport in 2009, the Allen’s were enticed by the Real Estate bug yet again, and so in 2010, they joined the new home builder, Adams Homes until 2012, when they opened another brokerage and collaborated with their good friends at Elliott Homes, running the sales and marketing departments,” Justin says.

 

“In 2016, we were first in the state to purchase the rights to open one of the newer nationally franchised real estate brands, but three years into a five-year agreement, it just wasn’t working out. We ended up reaching an amicable agreement to separate and we moved forward with our own ideas. I personally wanted to do what I love, which is open offices and build win-win relationships. We wanted to create a better Agent to Broker path with guidance, empowerment, and opportunity for Agents beyond the Broker/Owner role. We wanted to build something that had no exclusivity (you’ve got to earn it, not squat on it), with no ceiling. We wanted to level the playing field. Offering Agents, the ability to responsibly open their own office when they were ready was part of the challenge, but we figured it out. Rather than foster negativity that somehow Agents are chattel of their Broker, we created a culture where Brokers encourage their agents to go out on their own,” Justin added.

 

“During weeks of research, I wrote down all the problems an Agent faced in the industry, then the ones a broker faced, then with franchisees, and then franchisors — I wrote it all on a yellow pad and filled it up and then began structuring a new business plan. If we can figure out a way to solve half of these problems, we should create our own franchise,” he remembers thinking. “I ended up solving all of the problems I wrote down, discovering once you solve one problem, that same solution could solve two or three more.” His new approach started with the question, “How do we reverse-engineer the brokerage of the future where an Agent is encouraged to go out on their own?”

 

That question led Justin to create a new real estate franchise, eAgent. It also created a new style of management at the local market level. “Very rarely do you have a Franchisor that understands every local market, so we created the Regional Partner to do just this,” he explains. “It’s like having a corporate representative at the local market level.” Regional Partners can make franchise sales, provide franchise training, and still would be able to take Agents and Brokers to lunch, like a local eAgent ambassador. “If a franchisee becomes a Regional Partner, they want you to succeed because they still benefit, just at another level,” Justin says.

 

When he’s not busy investing in real estate and building eAgent, Justin enjoys spending time with his family. They all enjoy running, playing tennis, and they are totally in love with the Mississippi’s Gulf Coast and Florida’s Emerald Coast. The couple is proud of their son, Emrik (20), who is also a licensed Real Estate Agent with eAgent Nexus, and their daughter, Evelyn (19), who is a cook and baker, making macarons from scratch. “Emrik was named eAgent’s Rookie of the Year for 2022. Our ‘Spirit Animal’ for eAgent is Evie the Elephant, short for Evelyn because she inspired us with her transparency at a time that it was much appreciated,” Justin says proudly. “It’s a family effort, and I’m grateful that Darlene and I get to stay so close with our children and each other.”

 

Welcome to the eAge. Interested in opening your own eAgent franchise in the USA? Reach out to Justin Allen at 228-697-4636 or go to www.JoineAgent.com for details.