Parent Company of eXp Realty Buys Troubled SUCCESS Magazine

Editor’s note: Shelby Skrhak joined CandysDirt.com from SUCCESS magazine, after a mass layoff there in 2018.

The headline should be, “Thriving Real Estate Industry Helps Save Local Magazine Focused on Personal Development.” And yes, on the surface that’s true. But this is more about the evolving needs of today’s real estate agents and the unusual technology platform that takes a page out of the video game Roblox.

The parent company of eXp Realty, Washington-based eXp World Holdings, announced last week the purchase of Plano-based SUCCESS magazine and its affiliated media properties. eXp Realty is a cloud-based residential real estate business with more than 1,200 real estate agents in Texas and approximately 15,000 nationwide. According to the media release, the addition of SUCCESS will amplify eXp’s existing efforts to teach personal development skills.

“From inception, eXp has valued personal development as a key underpinning of the success of real estate professionals. We began distributing SUCCESS magazine to every eXp agent and broker as a part of this commitment to help them succeed at the highest level,” eXp World Holdings CEO and Founder Glenn Sanford said in a release. “When the opportunity to acquire SUCCESS was presented to me by Stuart Johnson and Success Partners, I was all over it, because of what the publication means to me and to so many salespeople and entrepreneurs.”

SUCCESS Partners, originally VideoPlus, was founded in 1987 as a marketing and resource development company for network marketing and multi-level marketing companies. The once-Lake Dallas company produced custom magazines used as recruitment and education tools for MLMers, and later evolved from B2B to B2C with the purchase of defunct SUCCESS magazine in 2007.

Real estate isn’t a new vertical to SUCCESS. During my time there, SUCCESS partnered with another real estate brokerage, Austin-based Keller Williams, to offer a SUCCESS on Demand product that provided a private, personalized portal for personal development articles, videos, and online courses.

Brokerages seeking professional development tools for their agents is nothing new, either. Real estate agents, operating as independent contractors, have a natural alignment with personal development, says Mark Johnson, CEO of JP & Associates Brokerage based in Frisco.

“The importance of personal development is well established,” says Johnson, author of Up In Your Business: The Art of Productivity and host of the YouTube show “Success Superstars.” “For agents, self-development can drive motivation and satisfaction in this very tough, competitive business. With approximately 1.4 million real estate agents in the U.S., there is one agent for every 64 households in America.”

Studying the success rates of approximately 600 agents who read books, took courses, or engaged in a comprehensive mentorship program, Johnson found that agents who used personal development averaged 32 closings a year. Agents who didn’t averaged only eight closings annually.

“Through SUCCESS’s established print and digital platforms and eXp’s immersive 3D Virbela technology, eXp plans to create an ecosystem to support content, coaching, training, and events in the entrepreneurial, personal development, and leadership space. One of the first initiatives is to create on-demand coaching and best-in-class digital courses for business leaders across the country.”

eXp World Holdings press release

This purchase by eXp essentially brings their training in-house (well, in the cloud) as a company-owned resource, similar to how the publicly-traded company came to own its Roblox-like virtual environment, Virbela. eXp purchased Virbela in 2018 after becoming its largest customer and uses the platform to access their virtual home office, eXp World.

A couple years ago, eXp via top agent Cliff Freeman invited CandysDirt.com founder Candace Evans on a VR tour of its virtual home office that likens itself to an immersive video-game experience. “This is the headquarters you don’t have to pay for,” she says. “Adios brick and mortar. Plus, it’s very engaging to a generation raised on video games.”

As we’ve reported here on CandysDirt.com, the real estate sector is stronger and busier than ever. Dallas-Fort Worth home sales are up 19.6 percent over last year and home prices are up 10.3 percent, according to a RE/MAX National Housing report.

By contrast, SUCCESS magazine, like so many other newsstand publications, has struggled to keep its head above water.

SUCCESS CEO and Owner Stuart Johnson took on a large amount of debt when he purchased a 49,000-square-foot building in 2015 as SUCCESS headquarters and completed a multi-million dollar renovation. The property is worth an estimated $11.5 million, per 2020 tax rolls, down $4.5 million from 2018.

In January 2018, Johnson laid off more than 50 percent of the company’s employees overnight by phone call without severance. A group of laid-off employees sued Johnson for WARN Act violations, a labor law that gives employees the right to advance notice of mass layoffs. (Full disclosure, I was represented in that lawsuit, which was settled.)

Dunn and Bradstreet estimates the company’s 2019 total annual revenue, including the magazine, custom publications, online learning courses, and an events business, at $50.88 million. Sanford, the eXp founder and CEO, told the Dallas Morning News that SUCCESS generates $3 to $4 million in annual revenue from its magazine operations.