The GreenStats Story

Real Estate success came fast and simple for me. I passed my test and obtained my license in 2013 as a 19 year old aspiring to be a writer or an FBI agent.. not a Realtor. My Father pushed me to get my license as he recently did because he saw I had stalled in terms of a direction in college. I changed my major a half dozen times and really just wanted to write. Yet, I didn’t have a burning passion for it and it never materialized. My Father probably thought Real Estate would eventually intrigue me knowing that he and his Father both had entrepreneurial mindsets. I too carried that same mindset early on in life. I remember scheming up ideas with my Papaw to make money as a 10 or 11 year old and we struck gold around Kentucky Derby time every year. My Papaw lived walking distance to Churchill Downs and gold was a $100-200 day for me. While my parents went to the Derby, my Papaw and I would park cars for cash in front of the house and have water and food fresh of the grill for sale for their walk to the track. That entrepreneurial spirit resonated with me whether I realized it or not and once I felt that first bit of success as a Realtor, a flame was lit. 

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I came to my Father after a year into the business and asked him if he thought it would be a good idea for me to depart his team and go out on my own. Deep down I wanted him to say no, I had thought long and hard about quitting all together if he said no. Yet, he said yes. My eyes lit up and I felt some sort of survival mode kick in. Instead of quitting, I knew I had to prove myself. With every word that came out of my Fathers mouth about how hard it was going to be for me.. I further felt the need to prove I could make it on my own. He knew what he was doing, I had no clue but man.. it sure did work. He knew pushing or testing me would ignite that flame that he and my Papaw had always possessed. He knew that allowing me to step up to the challenge would push me further than I could dream. My first full 12 months on my own I sold 35 homes and made a little over one hundred and fifteen thousand dollars. My Father likes to joke and say “I wouldn’t know one of those clients if they hit me over the head with a bat”. I never asked for his help and wouldn’t take it if he offered because I knew I had to prove it. I grew to love Real Estate on my own. I loved helping others, doing something new everyday, owning my own business, creating my own schedule, and making money of course. One hundred and fifteen thousand dollars is a lot of money and for a 20 year old who hadn’t completely grown up just yet, it was too much money. 

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No one taught me how to manage the money I had made and kept making. No one taught me how to navigate taxes and no one seemed to really care. My Father had his own struggles and we both ran thru tax advisors like days of the week searching for answers. The result of our ignorance shocked us both to the tune of twenty and thirty thousand dollar tax bills. Luckily I saved enough to pay and yet I became so afraid of future taxes. 

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Over the next 12 months I doubled my income and still had not fully understood taxes and had not received great advice from  professionals. This resulted in a mountain of tax debt to the tune of fifty thousand dollars. I truly did not know where to turn. As a 21 year old making over two hundred thousand dollars with a fifty thousand dollar bill hanging over my head I panicked. I took out a loan to pay off my taxes. The loan just so happened to have a 18% interest rate. With every payment I made my total amount due seemed to climb. The payment was more than my mortgage and car note combined. I had recently bought a home with my soon to be fiancé and wife and I struggled to show her how lost I truly became. Through all of the hopelessness I made more and more money and it seemed to only further my problems. 

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One night, the depression kicked in further and I thought to myself.. I have to leave the industry. I thought that would solve all of my problems. I started looking at indeed for jobs around 2 or 3 in the morning and settled on Starbucks. They had an opening at my local store as an assistant manager boasting a salary that was exactly one hundred and eighty five thousand dollar LESS than what I had made in the 12 months prior. To my surprise, Starbucks had no intentions of even reaching out to me. In fact, they sent an email 12 hours later letting me know I was not qualified enough for the position. I had worked in retail before, managed people, sold homes, and ran a real estate team with my Father that made 10-12x the amount of the salary and I was not qualified enough? Instead of sinking further into a hole, this news lit another fire under me just as my Father did when he told me how tough real estate would be for me if I went out on my own. Turns out he was right and I not only experienced success quickly and kept experiencing it, I felt the need to leave. 

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Over the next 12 months, I let Starbucks fuel my comeback. My Father and I hired a Coach, let go of most of the agents under us and got to work. I slowly climbed my way out of the largest hole I could imagine and I did it with maximum efficiency. I learned how to budget, how to handle taxes, and started to pay down this ridiculous amount of tax debt sitting on 18% interest. Learning to budget and handle taxes quietly sparked a new passion for me that led to an idea for all agents. At this point, I am 25 and just sold 65 homes over the 12 months prior. My Father and I had 3 agents under us and hired a talented admin to help us grow. My Father also ventured out into leadership leaving me to run the team and keep the business afloat. 

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Not only did we float, we started to fly! In the next 12 months our team, Impact Homes Group hit a new personal record of 163 homes sold and 34 million in volume. I made enough money to pay off my mountain of tax debt and stayed out of tax debt! From Starbucks to revival. I felt whole again. Feeling whole made me wonder about all of the other agents in our industry who may be experiencing the same troubles. The troubles always started and ended with money. Yet, the money itself wasn’t the issue. What we do with the money is. How we manage the money, spend the money, track the money, is all relevant to your success as a Realtor. Knowing this, I set out to help others learn what I had learned by creating an app for agents to successfully track their income, sales, profit, expenses, etc. The idea wasn’t complexity put together and needed some work yet I had the passion and thought I still needed to push. I met with a web designer shortly after who told me “I don’t think it will work”. Those words hit me hard. If you have read until this point you know what is coming. 

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24 months went by as I kept fine tuning the idea and quietly thinking about it every day. I had little time to work on it as I had sold 75 homes and 100 homes in back to back years while our team cranked out 165 and 180 deals in those same years. Yet, on a drive home from a long day of showings I remember telling my Father “I need GreenStats“ (the idea). I told him that because I had planned to go home and spend a few hours sifting thru bank statements, spreadsheets, commission statements, and our deals to reconcile the month. The amount of effort it took was enormous, yet had to be done. I uttered the same sentence to my wife when I got home and she said “ Just create it already or someone else will “. It was time. In the days after I had reached out to and interviewed 30 plus developers with a true vision that had been fine tuned over the course of two years. I settled on Samiteon and started building my vision. I hand drew every screen, function, and detail on my iPad every night from 12am-3am or so for several months because that was the only time I could truly work on it. 

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From January of 2021 to now, the idea and vision have completely come to life on beautiful screens from desktop to a full scale iOS app. GreenStats goal is simple. We aim to empower realtors to keep the profit in their pocket. I want to empower Realtors to never feel the way I felt thru my struggles. The struggles ultimately were preventable should I had access to a solution like GreenStats. From profit and loss management to insightful reports detailing key performance indicators, GreenStats will empower you just as it has empowered me to understand my business on a whole knew level. From Starbucks to revival. This is my story, this is GreenStats. 

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The Origin Story of GreenStats, written by Founder and CEO, Travis Cox.