‘RE/MAX Has the Fresh Ideas,’ Returning Agent Says

From the beginning, he called it Jay’s Big Adventure: After 22 successful years at RE/MAX – and roughly 10 years before that at other large real-estate firms – Atlanta-area agent Jay Voorhees was feeling a bit restless.

“I’m good at what I do, and I love what I do,” says Voorhees, a RE/MAX Lifetime Achievement Award winner who has served 5-plus years on the Atlanta Realtors Association Board of Directors. “But I’ve reached a stage in my life where there’s a little bit less lone wolf in me than there was. So, I was looking for different scenery for myself professionally to try to find what my next steps were going to be.”

That new scenery turned out to be a boutique firm that appeared to have sophisticated tech tools and a young vibe. Voorhees remained financially successful at the new company – “I worked extra hard and did well on the business side,” he says – but within nine months, he returned to RE/MAX Around Atlanta, the four-location, 115-agent brokerage where he’d been since 2012.

“About two-thirds of the way through my time at the boutique firm, I realized some of the headwinds I was up against,” Voorhees says. For starters, the tech tools were “missing some cylinders,” as he puts it. “They had a good glossy, but once you got into the inner workings of it, the maturity of those services for experienced agents wasn’t there.”

Voorhees also missed the energy and agent synergy he enjoyed at the RE/MAX Around Atlanta office. But perhaps the strongest obstacle, he says, was the lack of brand recognition. 

“With RE/MAX, I always appreciated that it was a given that I was legit because of the brand,” he explains. “I recognized that I was giving that up when I walked out the door of RE/MAX, but I had never experienced firsthand what it takes to sell without it.”

The booj factor

So, instead of continuing to ride into the wind at the boutique brokerage, Voorhees explored various firms – including his former one. 

“He left on good terms, and I told him I would keep in touch,” RE/MAX Around Atlanta Co-Broker/Owner Megan Wyatt says. “When we reconnected, the booj Platform was a lot further along than when he left, so we scheduled a meeting to look at what it has to offer.”

The potential of the booj Platform – the RE/MAX custom CRM and digital-products suite – impressed Voorhees. 

“It’s pretty sophisticated stuff,” he says. “I may have been in business for 32 years, but I’m into social media and I’m a student of tech. When we met, I was blown away to find the fresh ideas I had taken off in search of were actually now back at RE/MAX.”

Coming home

The fresh tech solutions – combined with what Voorhees describes as the “excellence and professionalism” of Wyatt and Co-Broker/Owner Kristen Jones – lured him back to his previous firm. But while Voorhees had left RE/MAX Around Atlanta as a solo agent chalking up $6 million to $9 million in annual sales, he came back as Team Leader of Traditions Home, his own team. Along with building his team, Voorhees is developing a coaching platform called “System 7,” designed to teach seven key elements of real estate success. 

“Jay is a giver,” Wyatt says. “If another agent is trying to figure something out, he’ll share. He’s what you want in a Team Leader; he doesn’t hold his knowledge close to his vest.” 

Voorhees, who also gives back as the director of the nonprofit Real estate Agents in Need (RAIN), which financially assists real estate pros in the event of catastrophic illness, asserts that RE/MAX provides an ideal environment for a team. 

“You want to be with the best cost structure you can get,” Voorhees says. “And in this case, the cost structure of RE/MAX allows me to grow a team and allows those people to make more money.”

In retrospect, Voorhees is thankful for the perspective he gained during his detour from RE/MAX. 

“To be able to get outside of the envelope, and look back in, and look elsewhere, and then come back with really a renewed satisfaction and excitement about what RE/MAX can offer me turned out to be a good thing,” Voorhees says. “It’s just a breath of fresh air to be back here.”