I was reading two different posts on Active Rain last night, and they got me thinking.  One was a follow up post by an agent in California, letting people know that he appreciated all of their help in directing him to a brokerage.  He narrowed it down to ReMax and Keller Williams, ultimately choosing Keller Williams.  He stated all of his reasons why he chose KW, and then a pretty good dialogue of comments followed.
The second posting was from an agent near Seattle, WA, announcing that she had officially moved to ReMax.  Again, a nice dialogue of comment followed with all of the praises of ReMax.

Personally, I can't imagine being anywhere other than Keller Williams, for a myriad of reasons that aren't important to this post.  I also realize that KW isn't for everyone, and there are some people for whom we'd be an outright bad fit.

What I've discovered is that "wherever you go, there you are."  If you're happy at your current brokerage, I can say with confidence you'd be happy at Keller Williams.  If you're dissatisfied with your current brokerage, there's a good chance you'd be unhappy at Keller Williams as well.  At our office, we like to say that we love to bring on new happy agents.  We feel we have more to offer than any other company in our area to help agents further their careers and better meet the needs of their clients.  But we don't go looking for unhappy agents looking to make a change.  Unhappy agents bring their baggage, and that can disrupt our offices' chemistry.

In addition to taking your own personality with you wherever you go, you will also be faced with the reality that you'll have to do cross sales with agents from all other brokerages, regardless of where you hang your license.  That's one of the things I've appreciated most about Active Rain.  There seems to be a lot of respect amongst the brokerages.  Both of the posts I talked about above, and most of their comments, were simply singing the praises of their company without putting down any others.  I can't say the same for other online forums I'm on.  Our local newspaper's real estate blog is turning into a place where agents can hide behind their keyboards and insult each other.  No fun.

Thanks for all the support on this site, and the general upbeat attitude.