By Keith Dunham, Founder & CEO of Empower Transactions. Keith built Empower after running operations at HomeCity Real Estate, where he helped scale the brokerage to hundreds of closings a month before its sale to Better Homes & Gardens Real Estate. He also co-founded Opcity, later acquired by Realtor.com.
Every brokerage that has outsourced operations badly has the same story. The partner arrived with their checklist, applied it to files that did not fit it, and six weeks later the broker was doing the work again on top of paying for it.
That failure is almost never about effort. It is about a partner who never learned the brokerage’s actual process before running it.
A 90-day pilot is a fixed evaluation period at the start of an operations partnership, during which the partner learns and documents the brokerage’s own process, runs it under live volume, and either party can end the engagement at any time without penalty. It is not a discount and not a trial account. It is the period in which the process gets written down correctly.
We run one with almost every new partner.
Why 90 days and not 30
Because of how long a file actually lives.
The median transaction in our reviewed work runs 21 days from intake to closing (n=554). A 30-day pilot therefore observes roughly one file cycle — enough to see whether documents arrive, not enough to see whether the process holds. Files that open in week three do not close inside the window at all.
Ninety days covers a full quarter. Three closing cycles, three month-ends, and the beginning and end of the same files. That is the shortest period in which a broker can see the thing they actually care about: whether the work stays correct when volume moves.
What happens during the pilot
The sequence matters more than the timeline.
- We learn your process. Not ours. Which documents your brokerage requires, for which transaction types, in which states, and what counts as complete. This is the step most partners skip, and skipping it is why the checklist-first approach fails.
- We write it down. The requirement set becomes a documented standard that belongs to the brokerage. If the pilot ends, you keep it.
- We run it under live volume. Real files, real agents, real deadlines — not a sandbox.
- Exceptions go back to your agents directly. The chasing moves off the broker’s desk in week one, because that is the part that consumes the hours.
- Patterns come back to you. Which agents submit late, which document types go missing, where the process itself leaks.
The terms, plainly
Three things are true of the evaluation period in our service agreement, and they are worth stating because they are the parts that protect the brokerage:
- Either party can terminate at any time during the pilot, in whole or in part, on written notice, without penalty or further obligation beyond work already performed.
- Standard service level commitments may be limited or modified during the evaluation period. We say this out loud rather than promising day-one perfection on a process we are still learning. A partner who guarantees full service levels in week one is telling you they intend to run their process, not yours.
- If it is not terminated, the agreement continues automatically under the standard terms at the end of the period. There is no second negotiation.
Why the process is the product
Most operations vendors sell capacity. The pitch is hours, headcount, or a platform.
What actually breaks in brokerage operations is not capacity. It is that the requirement set is conditional and nobody has written it down. Across the four states in our compliance manifest, 309 document requirements apply and 66% of them are conditional — they fire only when something specific is true about the transaction: the property was built before 1978, the seller is an entity, there is an HOA, the buyer is financing. A partner who has not learned which conditions apply to your files is guessing, and guessing at scale produces a lot of confident, wrong work. This is the same conditional rule set behind our broker file review work.
The pilot exists to remove the guessing before the volume arrives.
Is the pilot only for small brokerages?
No. The structure is the same at any size; the volume ramp is what changes.
Empower works with partner brokerages nationwide, and has supported a single national brokerage through a full year of enterprise-volume review. Larger engagements phase the volume across the pilot — a portion of files in month one, more in month two, full volume by month three — so the process is proven before it is load-bearing. This is how multi-state operations and fractional operations engagements normally begin.
Frequently asked questions
What is a 90-day pilot?
A fixed evaluation period at the start of an operations partnership. The partner learns and documents the brokerage’s process, runs it under live volume, and either side can end the engagement at any time without penalty.
What happens if we stop after the pilot?
The engagement ends with no penalty beyond work already performed, and the documented requirement set belongs to the brokerage. A future in-house hire starts from a written process instead of from scratch.
Do we have to renegotiate at the end?
No. If the agreement is not terminated during the evaluation period, it continues automatically under the standard terms.
Why do service levels change during the pilot?
Because we are still learning your process. Committing to full service levels on day one would mean running our standard rather than yours, which is the failure mode the pilot exists to prevent.
Can a large brokerage pilot without moving all its volume?
Yes, and it is the normal approach at scale. Volume phases across the three months so the process is proven before it carries the whole operation.
What do we have to do during the pilot?
Less than most brokerages expect, and the effort is front-loaded. The heaviest lift is week one, documenting what your brokerage requires. After that the work moves off your desk.
Considering an operations partner? Schedule a consultation and we will walk through what your first 90 days would actually look like.
The pilot is how a partnership starts. Broker and enterprise operations covers what it grows into, and do brokerages outsource compliance covers the question that usually comes first.