‘Playmakers’: The ‘invisible’ brokerage attracting top agents 

Editor's note: The Playmakers podcast explores the biggest shifts in real estate with those who are shaping the industry's future. Check out our top takeaways and watch the latest episode from host Andrew Flachner, co-founder of RealScout.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed in the Playmakers podcast belong solely to the podcast creators and guests.

On this episode of the Playmakers podcast, Side Co-founder and CEO Guy Gal explains how he has used his childhood experience as a "bully's bully" to advocate for the high-producing real estate agents who always seem to be "getting the short end of the stick."

"A traditional brokerage would rather have 1,000 agents that close one deal a year than have 100 agents that close 10 deals a year," he said, because a top producer "is maybe going to split with the brokerage at 25%, and someone who's doing one deal a year is going to pay them 50% — if not more."

Gal and fellow co-founders Ed Wu and Hilary Saunders launched Side in 2017 not just to help agents with their transactions, he said, but to offer protection "in an industry where all the major players tend to invest in advancing the interests of more casual or part-time agents, as opposed to very productive ones."

The 'invisible' brokerage: Though Side was the ninth-largest U.S. brokerage by sales volume in 2025, it doesn't have the same name recognition as some of the industry's other major players — and that's kind of the point.

"We are the first — and effectively only — exclusively invisible white-label real estate brokerage," Gal said. Whereas "big-box brokerage" models rely on brand recognition, Side aims to "uncouple the brokerage from the brand" while providing agents with the same legal, compliance and auditing support that those traditional brokerages do.

The ultimate goal? To "lower the barrier to ownership — and do that by creating an invisible brokerage."

Side's purpose: "Agents in relationships with traditional brokerages that do well make good money — but they don't make any equity. All the equity flows to the actual brokerage itself," Gal said.

The key to creating equity as an agent? "You have to own the business; you can't just run the business," Gal said. "It's why Side now exists," he added — "to create more accessibility to something that in the past wasn't so accessible."

What agents who endure have in common: Agents with long-term success are able to build and cultivate a community — and they don't "mortgage their futures for gains in the present," Gal observed.

Successful people understand that success isn't "defined by how fast you grow" but by "how you get there — and whether or not you do that in a way that's enduring and sustaining and consistent," he added.

A future rooted in the past: Ten years from now, the real estate industry is "probably going to be the same thing with respect to what agents can and cannot get," Gal predicted.

Real estate is "innately" local — "it's only been in the last 35, maybe 40 years that we've seen it subjected to corporate consolidation," he said. "But that is not the heart of real estate, and for that reason, that's why things like that really struggle to endure."

The industry of the future "is going to look a lot more like the past, which is a lot more local, a lot more boutique and a lot more community," he added. "Acts of authenticity and creative expression are the things that will matter most."