Kyle Whissel has a standing instruction for his “60-day” bootcamp trainers: they should be willing to cut people.
His team brings in 10 to 15 new agents a month, puts them through approximately 60 hours of training over two weeks, and gives the trainer a goal of removing two people from each class.
It’s a striking approach from the leader of eXp Realty’s highest-volume U.S. team in San Diego, California. Whissel is CEO of the Whissel Beer Group, formed in 2025 when his Whissel Realty Group merged with Daniel Beer’s Beer Home Team.
According to Whissel, the team made $875 million in sales volume across 1,042 transaction sides last year (it was the first team in San Diego to break 1,000). The median price in San Diego — which is where he likes to focus his attention (“we love that median price,” he said) — is around $1 million, he told Inman.
They’ve done that by hiring — and retaining — the right people. “We’ll give people an opportunity to prove themselves … but we’ve grown far more by cutting people than simply by hiring more people,” Whissel told Inman‘s Taylor Anderson during an interview at eXpcon in Salt Lake City earlier this month.
The company’s saying: “Expectations without enforcement are simply suggestions.”
Behind the 60-hour job interview
Whissel’s recruiting process starts with a conventional, short interview, but he views the company’s two-week training period as a far better measure of whether someone belongs on the team.
Spending 60 hours in training gives leadership a chance to observe how that person behaves, learns and responds to expectations. Role-playing and scripting exercises also reveal whether new agents have the communication skills needed to work with clients.
The process continues after training, too. New agents are assigned mentors, and Whissel said those mentors are empowered to recommend removing someone who fails to meet team standards.
“If you’re going to be disrespectful to our team, I’ll be damned if I’m going to give you a client because you’re probably going to be disrespectful to them too,” he said.
Whissel also has activity and production expectations for agents already on the team. They include participating in role-playing sessions and attending meetings, along with meeting production targets.
Recruiting agents who’ve been competitive elsewhere
Whissel’s hiring philosophy reaches back to his own first job, scooping popcorn at a movie theater, where he would compete with others to see who could serve the most customers. He looks for that same competitiveness in prospective agents, even if their previous accomplishments have little to do with real estate.
An applicant who participated in a college sorority, for example, might be asked whether they held a leadership position. Whissel said he wants to understand whether someone has a history of taking initiative.
Checking in one year after the merger, Looking forward to 2027
In August 2025, Inman reported the merger of Whissel Realty Group and Beer Home Team, two of eXp’s highest-producing organizations. The combined company launched with approximately 160 agents and more than 60 staff members across five offices.
He said the first six months involved understanding the two organizations’ systems and getting them aligned. Whissel now believes it could take 18 months to fully integrate the companies.
“We’re going to be almost flat year-over-year,” he said, referring to the team’s expected 2026 performance, “but we’re setting up for a really, really big 2027,” he said. “You’ve gotta take a step back to take two steps forward.”
He remains optimistic about 2027, when he expects the operational investments to begin contributing to stronger growth.
Top tip to agents who are not so optimistic
Agents need to understand assumable mortgages, he said. “If you are working with a seller … and you’re not asking questions to figure out ‘does this seller have an assumable mortgage?’ (If it’s FHA, VA or USDA, those are assumable), I’m gonna beat you, because I am asking those questions.”
To find out whether a mortgage is assumable, agents simply need to get the closing disclosure from the seller. “It’s simple,” he said.
