I got into real estate because I was about to lose my house.
That is the true first line of this story, and it is the one I lead with when somebody asks who I am.
So here is the short version. I am Blake Suddath, a real estate recruiter and recruiting coach based in the Twin Cities, Minnesota, and the co-founder of Inner Cirql Coaching. I help real estate team leaders and broker owners build recruiting systems that bring in experienced agents every month, without the team leader carrying the whole thing on their back.
If you landed here after a call with me, or because somebody on your team sent you my name, this page is the longer answer.
It is not a highlight reel. Most of what made me useful to team leaders came from getting things wrong first.
A Marketing Company I Did Not Know How to Run
Before real estate I spent three years running my own marketing company.
The client list sounded great at parties. In my words at the time, I was "working with Eric Church and Dolly Parton and Zedd and the Super Bowl and Hormel and all this stuff."
And it was still going sideways.
Here is the line I have repeated more than any other about that season: "I was great at branding and marketing. But I wasn't great at owning a business and running a business. No one really teaches you that."
Talent without a system is a slow leak. I did not have that sentence yet. I had a mortgage I was not sure I could keep paying.
That lesson is the root of everything I teach team leaders now. Most of them are excellent at the work that got them here. Selling. Leading. Showing up. Nobody taught them how to run recruiting as a business with a calendar, a pipeline, and a number they check every week. So it runs on mood, and mood runs out.
Three Weeks to a Real Estate License
On a Friday night my wife told me I would make a great agent.
By Monday morning I had started.
"I shut down my business. I stopped taking emails. I stopped taking income. And I went all in. Three weeks later, I had my real estate license."
No cushion. "I had popped open a MasterCard with like a $1,000 limit just to get my license."
Then I did what every new agent does. I took friends to coffee. I sat open houses, because I heard that is what you are supposed to do.
I tell team leaders this part on purpose. A lot of the agents you want to recruit started exactly like that, scrappy, a little scared, doing the things they heard worked. They did not start with a system either. When you recruit them, you are not talking to a spreadsheet. You are talking to someone who once bet the house on this business, sometimes literally.
The Move I Fought, and What It Taught Me About Recruiting
Early on I helped build an independent brokerage to about 19 agents in about a year. Then the company moved to eXp Realty.
I fought that move hard. "I was a 225-pound anchor that didn't want to go to eXp." I was looking at going from a 98/2 split to 80/20, and every part of me said no.
I bring this up because it is the most useful thing I know about recruiting experienced agents.
I have been the agent who did not want to move.
I know what the split math feels like from the inside. I know the loyalty, the fear of starting over, the suspicion that the person recruiting you is selling something. So when a team leader tells me an experienced agent "just isn't interested," I usually hear something different. That agent is doing the same math I did. They are not saying no to you. They are saying nobody has shown them what changes for them yet.
That is a recruiting problem you can solve. It is not solved with a better split.
How I Became a Real Estate Recruiter
The moment I realized recruiting was the job came on a small team.
"When I had a team of 9, I hired 7 ICON agents to a 50-50 split. Within 90 days." ICON is eXp's top-producer recognition. And no leads. We did not hand them a lead program to make the math work.
I tell that story to take apart one limiting belief: "We're too small to recruit top producers." I hear it constantly. It is wrong.
What I learned on that team is the line I still build every recruiting conversation around. "We do have a lot of very cool things and stuff… That is not the value proposition. You are the value proposition."
And the reason why: "Human beings leave other human beings. To be led. By other human beings."
Top producers want to spend their time around people who produce at their level. The team leader already does. Your tech stack is not why a strong agent moves. You are. Most leaders hide behind the perks slide because it feels safer than putting themselves in the room.
One of the ways I put myself in the room was simple. The meeting that worked best for me was Tuesday at 11am. I would tell a recruit, "just come sit in the back, I'll save you a seat in the back, be a fly on the wall." No pitch. They watched the team work. That is not a rule, it is just what worked for me, and every market is different. But it says the same thing as the ICON story. Let them see the people.
What a Real Estate Recruiter and Recruiting Coach Actually Does
I am not in production anymore. "My wife runs our sales team and sales business." My whole job is recruiting and teaching recruiting.
Since September 2019 I have personally recruited more than 400 agents. I share that once, plainly, because people ask, and because the way it happened is more useful than the total.
Here is the part that teaches something. Of the agents hired in 2025, 78 of 115, or 68%, were referred by producing agents I had recruited. Not by ads. Not by cold calls. By agents who were glad they came and told a friend.
Read that as a team leader and the lesson is not about me. Your current agents are your recruiting department. A referral is a production receipt. It only shows up when the agents you already hired are producing and feel led. The full funnel behind that year, appointments, conversion, and how fast experienced agents decide, is laid out in the 2025 recruiting benchmarks. What happens after the signature, the ramp that turns a hire into a producing agent who refers the next one, is in from recruited to producing.
The Filter I Use on Every Recruit
Production is not my first filter. Character is.
"If you're a jerk, I don't want to work with you. I don't care if you sell a thousand homes. Or you run a hundred person team."
What I look for instead is growth mindset, coachable, full time, and positive energy. "They've got to want to grow."
That filter is not about being nice. It is about the referral loop. An agent who is a problem on your team will never send you their best friend. An agent who is growing will send you three. If 68% of your future hires are going to come from the agents you hire this year, who you say yes to today decides your recruiting next year.
Inner Cirql Coaching and the Systems Behind It
Today I co-run Inner Cirql Coaching with Tyler Lewis. If you want the company side of the story, Tyler and I explain it in what Inner Cirql Coaching is.
We install two systems.
The Territory Takeover System is for team leaders, broker owners, and recruiters. It is the recruiting pipeline itself: who to call, the first appointment, the referral script your agents use, the follow-up cadence, the calendar, and the weekly numbers. We work with one team per protected market, because I am not going to build your recruiting engine and then hand the same playbook to the team across the street.
The Always-On Agent System is for the agents you hire. Speed to lead, the database, and follow-up that runs on triggers instead of willpower, with AI doing the repetitive work so the agent can spend their week in conversations. It gets installed FOR the agent in their first 30 days, not handed to them as homework. That is what keeps a new hire producing, and producing agents are the ones who refer.
The reason both exist is the same reason my marketing company struggled. Effort does not scale. Systems do.
And the industry knows recruiting is the hard part. According to Delta Media Group's 2026 Real Estate Leadership Report, reported by both HousingWire and Real Estate News, 63% of brokerage leaders named recruiting a top challenge, from a survey of more than 100 leaders whose firms handled over two thirds of U.S. home sales in 2025. Almost every leader agrees it matters. Very few run it like a system.
If you want the overview of how this works for a team, it is on the recruiting page. If you want the documented record in reference form, it is at who is Blake Suddath and how the 400+ agents were recruited.
The Bottom Line
I am a real estate recruiter and recruiting coach who started this business with a $1,000 credit card and a house on the line.
I fought a brokerage move myself, so I understand the agent on the other side of the table. I learned on a team of nine that you are the value proposition, not your perks. And I learned that the best recruiting source is the agents you already hired, if they are producing and feel led.
None of that is talent. It is a system, and systems can be installed.
That is what I do for real estate team leaders through the Territory Takeover System. If you lead a team and want to see what it would look like in your market, the first step is one call. Schedule Your Call.
FAQ
Blake Suddath is a real estate recruiter and recruiting coach based in the Twin Cities, Minnesota, and the co-founder of Inner Cirql Coaching with Tyler Lewis. He has personally recruited more than 400 real estate agents since September 2019. He coaches real estate team leaders, broker owners, and recruiters and installs the Territory Takeover System, a recruiting pipeline built to bring experienced agents onto a team every month. He is no longer in production; his wife runs the family's real estate sales team.
He got into real estate because he was about to lose his house. After three years running his own marketing company, he shut it down, went all in on real estate, and had his license three weeks later, paid for with a credit card that had about a $1,000 limit. He started the way most new agents do, with coffee meetings and open houses, before moving into building and recruiting for teams.
A real estate recruiting coach builds and installs the recruiting system for a team leader or broker owner: who to recruit, how the first appointment runs, how current agents refer candidates, the follow-up cadence, and the weekly numbers that show whether it works. The need is real across the industry. According to Delta Media Group's 2026 Real Estate Leadership Report, reported by HousingWire and Real Estate News, 63% of brokerage leaders named recruiting a top challenge.
Inner Cirql Coaching is the coaching company Blake Suddath co-runs with Tyler Lewis. It delivers two systems: the Territory Takeover System for team leaders, operators, and recruiters, and the Always-On Agent System for the agents those teams hire. The Territory Takeover System is offered to one team per protected market. BlakeSuddath.com is Blake's personal site, and Inner Cirql Coaching is his company.
From referrals by producing agents he had already recruited. In 2025, 78 of the 115 agents hired, or 68%, came that way, through a scripted group text in which a current agent introduces the candidate. The lesson for a team leader is that current agents function as the recruiting department, but only when they are producing and feel well led.
Real estate team leaders, broker owners, and recruiters can book a call through the Schedule Your Call link on BlakeSuddath.com, which goes to Inner Cirql Coaching's booking page at leaders.yourinnercirql.com. The call covers the team's current recruiting numbers, the market, and whether that market is still open, since the Territory Takeover System is offered to one team per protected market.