Britney Mroczkowski opened Session 6 of She Does Deals fresh off CREW Network’s national conference, where she’d stood in front of a sign that read: You weren’t built for limits. Neither were we. A brokerage made for women who lead. “That is us, eXp Commercial,” she told the room. “We have more women percentage than the national average in commercial real estate.” The booth, she said, was overwhelmed — in a good way — by the number of women who stopped by.
That set up the session’s theme, from new to next level. Not the mechanics of a deal, but the earlier, harder question — how do you build confidence, credibility, and a personal brand in an industry that, at most traditional firms, won’t let a newly licensed person touch a deal without years as an assistant first? “You don’t have to know everything to start building momentum,” Mroczkowski told the group. “The only way to learn it is by going through deals.”
What Five Years and 42 Abandoned Listings Taught Mroczkowski
Mroczkowski used her own five-year milestone as Florida’s commercial broker to frame the stakes. She started with 15 advisors in the state; the team now holds steady around 100. Before that, at Colliers, she’d worked her way up from assistant to senior advisor over eight years — and when she left, she signed agreements promising not to contact 42 listings she had to walk away from. “That’s exactly why we’re different here,” she said. “You can join eXp Commercial with zero experience and we’ll give you the tools, the resources, the mentorship — everything you need. Most traditional commercial brokerages won’t do that.”
Her own practice runs on three disciplines she’s kept for years:
- Three networking events a week, no exceptions, and not always the obvious ones. Her example from that week — lunch with a title company contact who turned into several new ways to collaborate, lunch with the general contractor who built her first shopping center and is now consulting on a large Tampa development, and an AI class through the local Small Business Development Council. “It doesn’t always have to be CCIM or CREW events,” she said. “Activity breeds activity.”
- Prospecting is the one calendar block that doesn’t move. “The only reason you should cancel that time is a family emergency,” she told the group, describing an advisor on her team who kept a prospecting call rather than rescheduling it for a showing — simply telling the client he’d call from his car instead. “You have to live and die by your calendar.”
- Knowing when to say no. Her team won’t show a property to a prospective tenant without verified financials and a signed exclusive representation agreement first. “Know what’s worth your time,” she said. “Yes to the qualified deals. No, when it’s not worth it.”
Building Credibility Before the Track Record Exists
Mroczkowski pursued her CCIM designation starting early in her career and received it at 25 — in part, she told the room candidly, because she looked young and needed something that signaled expertise before her deal history could. “What can you do to build your own credibility? Are there designations, courses, ways to get your name out?” Social media, in her experience, outperforms every other channel for lead generation when it’s used to document real activity, like new clients, closings, showings. “Brag about yourself,” she said. “I get more leads from Instagram than anywhere else.”
The credibility question extends to knowing when not to go it alone. “It’s much better to split a commission and get the deal done than to try and do it yourself and not have your client’s best interest at heart,” she said. “Who cares if you’re only getting half the commission? You wouldn’t have had a commission otherwise.”
Marla Brown: From Three Transactions to a Group of Her Own
Brown’s path into commercial real estate wasn’t linear. Twenty years as an entrepreneur came first — connecting startups with venture capital, working as a speech pathologist, a stint with Success magazine. She spent roughly a year at a boutique brokerage before joining eXp Commercial with only three lease transactions completed. “The learning curve was the biggest hurdle,” she said. “I felt like I needed everything.”
What she had, from the start, was an instinct for building relationships before she needed them. Her recruiter introduced her to Mroczkowski before she’d even decided to make the move, and she used the transition to meet broker after broker across the Orlando market — relationships she still calls on today. “I kept those relationships,” she said. “I still get to nurture them.”
That instinct wasn’t accidental. It traces back to an exercise she did during her MBA, around the same time she earned her real estate license. In the exercise, she mapped her own weaknesses, with input from the people she worked with. “If you don’t know what your weaknesses are, ask the people you work with,” she said. “Learn what you’re not good at so you can be better at what you are good at — and connect with people who are strong where you’re not. Your deals get stronger. Your clients come back.”
She has never stopped running that check. Even with 19 deals in motion at once, she books a standing meeting with Mroczkowski roughly once a month — sometimes just to talk through unstructured chaos. “I word-vomit and she pulls it all together,” Brown said. “If you don’t line up your chaos somehow, you can run into situations that self-sabotage your business.” Those meetings, often only 20 or 30 minutes, became something she now coaches her own group to treat as non-negotiable. “Never wanted to be the solo advisor,” she said. “It’s not a solo job.”
Why Brightside Commercial Group Happened Now
Brown didn’t set out to build a group. It grew out of coaching other advisors through their real estate exams, then naturally partnering with several of them — many newer to the industry than she was. Add in residential agents making the move to commercial, and advisors whose mentors were based elsewhere in the country, and the structure assembled itself. “A lot of it just happened organically,” she said.
Her co-leader, George Borbely, became her partner almost immediately after she joined eXp Commercial, and the collaboration has only deepened since. “We discovered we’re the yin and the yang,” she said. “He’s my work husband.” Today, Brightside Commercial Group serves the entire state of Florida. Brown positions herself deliberately as a generalist, with specialists on the team covering retail, warehouse, land, multifamily, and hospitality. “I don’t know everything about every asset class, or need to,” she said. “Instead, I position myself to know the experts in those asset classes and connect my advisors with those experts.”
Mroczkowski’s read on the timing: “I think it was your time.” The current numbers back that up — 19 active deals, 10 partners, 41 completed referrals through eXp’s Global Referral System, all run by someone who joined the platform with three transactions behind her.
What attendees took from session 6:
- Prospecting is the one calendar block that doesn’t move — protect it the way you’d protect a closing, and only break it for a genuine emergency
- Start the deal before you feel ready — the best way to learn commercial real estate is inside a live transaction with a mentor beside you, not before one
- Know your weaknesses and say so out loud — asking colleagues what you’re not good at, then partnering around it, makes every deal you touch stronger
- Residential experience is not a prerequisite — multiple practitioners in this session built commercial careers with zero residential background
- A designation buys credibility before your deal history can — CCIM and similar credentials signal competence while your track record is still being built
- Residential referral partners are underused — a single networking event produced five solid commercial referrals for one participant in a single week
How to Get Involved
Masterminds like this are rare in commercial real estate. That is the point and the gap Mroczkowski is deliberately closing.
She Does Deals is built for the conversations that don’t happen at all brokerages, such as where you made the mistake, what it cost, and who has been through the same one and come out the other side. The deal flow that follows from those connections is a byproduct. The relationships — advisors who become colleagues, mentors, and peers — are the product.
The series is open to all professionals, inside and outside of eXp.
For more information about Marla Brown and her Group, visit BrightsideCommercialGroup.com