Glover Agency, the Michigan team Jeff Glover founded in 2008, became fully independent on Nov. 1, ending a 17-year run with Keller Williams. The move comes roughly three months after Glover sold his three Keller Williams market centers.
The team says it has been Michigan’s top homeselling team across all brands in 11 of the past 13 years and has sold more than 10,000 homes. It operates out of four offices in Birmingham, Plymouth, Fenton and Grand Rapids.
Glover Agency will now operate only in Michigan and isn’t affiliated with any franchise or national brand.
With Glover Agency out of the franchise system, none of Glover’s Live Unreal Companies are tied to a single brand, which Glover says frees Glover U to work with agents and leaders at every brokerage in the U.S. and Canada.
Why Glover U needed him to go indie
In an exclusive interview with Inman, Glover said the decision had a lot to do with Glover U, the coaching and training company where he now spends most of his time. Glover U has long pitched itself as broker-agnostic, but Glover said his KW ties kept closing doors, even after the market center sale.
In August, Glover sold his ownership stakes in three Keller Williams market centers across Michigan, where he served as majority owner and operating principal. He said the sale supported Glover U’s broker-agnostic approach to serving agents across the U.S. and Canada. The three market centers combined closed nearly $1 billion in sales volume in 2025.
Jeff Glover
“Most of [the potential Glover U clients], if they don’t know me and their agents don’t know me, they’re not going to return my call,” Glover said of leaders at rival brands. “I had leaders of large companies — I mean, the largest that exist today — say, ‘Hey, Jeff, that’s great you sold your franchises, and we’re definitely open to you helping our agents, but I’m sorry, I can’t put a Keller Williams guy on our stage.'”
Joining another brand would have recreated the same problem. Going independent, Glover says, removes it.
“This move furthers the brand-agnostic approach we’ve been working toward, and now there should be little to no objection to somebody trusting me with their agents, because I don’t have a dog in the fight,” Glover said. “They don’t have to worry about me pushing their agents to go to any one company when I’m independent.”
Consumers list with agents, not logos
The second driver is marketing. Glover Agency has advertised under its own name for years on TV, radio and billboards, and Glover said most Michigan consumers already assumed the team was independent.
Franchise rules on how the team could advertise, down to how large its name could appear, made it harder for individual agents to build their own brands.
“It’s very hard for them to create a brand within a brand within a brand,” Glover said. “It’s confusing to consumers. It’s confusing to other agents and other companies.”
Glover said top teams that understand marketing already know where consumer loyalty sits.
“The everyday seller and everyday buyer generally doesn’t say, ‘ We’re listing our home with Keller Williams or with Coldwell Banker,'” Glover said. “They say, ‘We’re listing our home with ‘Joe Smith’ or ‘Amy Duncan.'”
For the consumer, Glover said that the brand is “just the gravy on top.” “The brand helps, but today’s consumer resonates more with an agent’s or a team’s brand than with the company’s brand,” he said.
Day-to-day operations at Glover Agency are run by CEO Taylor Kerrigan. Glover remains involved and still lists and sells. He said he was prospecting in front of the team’s agents just before speaking with Inman on Friday.
“For our clients, nothing changes about how we serve them, other than a more personalized approach,” Kerrigan said in a statement. “What does change is that the name on the door is entirely ours.”
What he’ll miss
Glover joined Keller Williams in 2009, and the company says the team climbed as high as No. 3 nationally among all groups and No. 1 among expansion teams for homes sold. Asked what would be hardest about leaving, Glover didn’t hesitate.
“Without question, my relationship with Gary Keller,” he said, pointing to Keller’s early top 100 mastermind and a smaller circle of about a dozen agents, the Pirate Group, who got regular access to the KW co-founder. “I wouldn’t be where I am today if it weren’t for him.”
Glover said he still considers Keller a mentor and expects to keep speaking at KW events “so long as I’m welcome.”
Indie isn’t for everyone
The timing puts Glover on the opposite side of an industry trend. Consolidation has dominated brokerage headlines this year, including Compass–Anywhere and Real–REMAX, and independents face growing pressure to align with a larger platform.
Glover doesn’t think independence is right for everyone. He said it works for owners who know what agents need today, such as database growth, leverage and help building personal brands, and who have the energy to deliver it.
“For the person who somewhat wants the easy button, and maybe they’re at a point in their life where they don’t have the energy or time to pour into their company,” he said, joining a franchise or a company like Real, eXp or LPT “makes a lot of sense for that individual.”
For Glover, the bigger bet is on Glover U.
“The biggest thing is neutralizing Glover U so that it will be the No. 1 training and coaching company on the planet for real estate agents at the rate we’re growing,” he told Inman. “And I can’t do that if I’m affiliated with any one brand. So that’s a big part of it. The other part is the freedom and flexibility this gives us to help our agents grow their brands even bigger.”
