Brittany Murphy, ALC

Leadership is often discussed in real estate, but rarely in the context of culture, mentorship, and long-term relationships. In this episode of The American Land Seller, Brittany Murphy interviews Brian Reynolds of Ironhorse Land Company to explore what it takes to build a people-first land brokerage. From recruiting and agent development to accountability and company growth, Brian shares practical insights for anyone involved in land, agriculture, and rural real estate. Building a People-First Land Company What does it take to build a successful land company without losing sight of relationships, culture, and accountability? In this episode of The American Land Seller, Brittany Murphy sits down with Brian Reynolds of Ironhorse Land Company to discuss leadership, recruiting, mentorship, and the realities of growing a land brokerage in today's market. Brian shares lessons learned from years in the land business, including how strong company culture impacts agent success, why recruiting should focus on fit over volume, and what it takes to build a team capable of serving landowners at a high level. Recruiting the Right Agents One of the key topics discussed is recruiting within the land industry. Brian explains why experience alone is not enough and why attitude, work ethic, integrity, and cultural alignment often matter more than a resume. The conversation explores how Ironhorse Land Company approaches growth while maintaining the standards and values that define the organization. Leadership in Rural Real Estate Leadership is about more than managing transactions. Brian discusses the importance of mentorship, accountability, and creating opportunities for agents to grow professionally while serving clients at the highest level. Listeners will hear practical insights on building trust, developing talent, and creating long-term success in a competitive industry. The Future of Land Brokerage The land business continues to evolve as technology, marketing, and consumer expectations change. Brian shares his thoughts on where the industry is headed and why relationships remain the foundation of successful land transactions. Listen to the Full Episode Whether you're a landowner, investor, land professional, or someone interested in rural real estate, this episode offers valuable insight into leadership, recruiting, and building a company that puts people first. Listen to the full episode of The American Land Seller featuring Brian Reynolds and hosted by Brittany Murphy.

At Ironhorse, we have always believed that world-class creative and bold ideas only move the needle with excellent support. Specifically, these concepts require airtight operations and an exceptional standard of execution. We did not build this company to look like everyone else's brokerage. Instead, we deliver on our promises by ensuring our internal engine matches our powerful brand presence. Therefore, to lead this next era of growth, we are thrilled to officially announce the promotion of Brittany Hurdle Murphy to Chief Operating Officer (COO). Furthermore, she will continue to guide our strategic brand vision as acting Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) until we fill the role. This appointment comes eight months after our September 2025 launch. Ultimately, the position formalizes a portfolio of operational leadership that Brittany has effectively championed since day one. From a Blank Sheet of Paper to America’s Best When we founded Ironhorse, Brittany joined our team as a foundational pillar. She took on the task of shaping a new kind of land brokerage from the ground up. Consequently, much of what defines Ironhorse today, both internally and externally, came directly from her hand. For example, she designed and deployed our core brand identity. She built the digital infrastructure and established our distinct social presence and editorial voice. In addition, Brittany, alongside Koby, selected and integrated the technology stack that runs the company. This includes everything from our website platform to back-office systems and multi-state advertising contracts. Beyond the public-facing brand, she authored the Iron Standard Playbook, which serves as our internal operating manual. She also engineered the property listing formats that every Ironhorse agent uses today. Furthermore, she developed our recruiting book and the entire agent onboarding system behind it. To drive engagement, she built the production pipeline behind the American Land Seller Podcast. Finally, she wrote and currently teaches our specialized agent personal branding curriculum. As a result, this relentless focus on strategic excellence has already yielded historic milestones. Under Brittany's direction, Ironhorse achieved an incredible first-year honor. Specifically, The Land Report named us one of America's Best Brokerages in our very first year of business. “Brittany has been with Ironhorse since day one. A lot of what makes this company feel like Ironhorse, the personality, the design, the polish, comes directly from her,” says Koby Rickertsen, ALC, Founding Partner and CEO. “She has quietly built and shaped pieces of this business that most people never see, and she has done it without ever asking for credit. She has become an invaluable part of our leadership team, and this promotion reflects what she has already been doing.” An Executive Transition to Chief Operating Officer In her dual role, Brittany sits directly at the intersection of our brand promises and our operational delivery. She will easily maintain the high-level marketing trajectory that put Ironhorse on the national radar. Meanwhile, she will now officially lead agent onboarding, transaction workflows, and vendor management. She will also oversee the cross-functional systems that support our brokers in the field. Thus, for Ironhorse clients and partners, this transition ensures a completely streamlined experience. They can expect white-glove, premium execution backed by ultra-reliable internal systems. Certainly, a decade of real estate and land experience prepares Brittany for this dual charge. Prior to shaping Ironhorse, she served as the marketing director for a prominent Western land brokerage. Earlier in her career, she worked as a development broker in Nashville. Notably, the industry recognized her impact in 2023 when the REALTORS® Land Institute named her the Land Rising Star. With that award, she made history as the first and only woman to receive the honor. She also holds a Bachelor of Arts in Communications and Political Science from Middle Tennessee State University. Setting a New Standard While the new title solidifies her executive leadership, Brittany’s focus remains exactly where it has always been. She continues to focus daily on the groundwork, the strategy, and the team. “Most brokerages run on the assumption that brokers are interchangeable and clients are transactions,” Brittany notes. “We're building Ironhorse on the opposite premise: the broker is the product, and the client deserves better than the industry standard. Ten years from now, I want this to be the brokerage other firms are trying to figure out how to compete with. The title is just what it's called while I do the work.” Currently based outside Nashville, Tennessee, Brittany will continue to work closely with our Gothenburg headquarters. She will consistently support Ironhorse brokers across all twelve licensed states as we scale our footprint. Please join us in congratulating Brittany on this well-deserved promotion to Chief Operating Officer. The foundation is built, the standard is set, and we are just getting started.

We sat down with Justin Osborn, ALC on the REALTORS Land Institute Voices of Land podcast for Episode 62, "Building a Land Brokerage from the Ground Up." Justin is an accredited land consultant with the Wells Group in Durango, Colorado, and over the course of the conversation he asked the kind of questions that don't get asked often enough in this industry. Not the highlight reel questions about wins and growth, but the harder ones about why you'd start a company in this market, what most people get wrong when they do, and what it actually takes to build something that lasts. What follows is a recap of that conversation, along with a few things we didn't have time to say. Why Ironhorse exists Koby had built and successfully sold a multi-location real estate company before he started Ironhorse, and he spent the years after that watching the land industry from a few different vantage points. What he kept seeing was a misalignment between leadership, agents, and clients. Companies were chasing reputation. Agents were chasing volume. The clients, who are the entire point of the business, were too often getting whatever was left over after everyone else had taken what they needed. Ironhorse is the answer to that. Not a reaction against any one company or any one person, but a different vision for what a land brokerage can be: built around standards, structure, and people, with a long-term view that doesn't bend to whatever the market happens to be doing in a given quarter. And to be clear, we're not building this one to sell. What the Iron Standard actually means The Iron Standard isn't a tagline, and it isn't something we workshopped in a marketing meeting. It's the set of commitments we make to clients and agents, and it's the answer to every operational question we run into. When we're trying to decide whether to take on a new listing, hire a new agent, or build out a new process, the Iron Standard is the filter we run it through. In practice, that means we don't play the volume game. We've turned down more applicants than we've hired, and we'll keep doing that, because the wrong agent costs more than no agent at all. It means our listing presentation tells sellers exactly what they're getting from us before we ever ask for the business, with no surprises and no oversold promises. And it means the agents who join Ironhorse find systems and standards already built when they walk in the door, so they can spend their time selling land instead of reinventing wheels that should have been there to begin with. When Brittany asked Koby in their first conversation about the company, "What do you need me for?" it was because so much of the framework was already in place. That intentionality is the standard, and everything we build still runs through it. On the industry shakeout Justin brought up a stat during the conversation that more than 20 percent of NAR Realtors didn't renew their license this past January, and asked whether the broader market correction had given us second thoughts about starting a company. It hadn't, and the reason is that we don't see the shakeout as bad news. A lot of people who got into real estate during the low-interest, post-pandemic stretch didn't fully understand what they were signing up for. Land brokerage in particular isn't a part-time gig you pick up after teaching school or in between other careers. It's a full-time profession with real costs, real complexity, and real stakes for the clients trusting you with what is often their largest asset. The agents leaving the industry now mostly aren't the ones the industry needed in the first place, and the agents who remain are the ones who'd already chosen this as a career rather than a side income. That's why we keep coming back to one line from the conversation: we don't need more land agents. We need better ones. A smaller, sharper field is good for clients, good for the profession, and good for the brokerages building the right way. Advice for agents thinking about ownership Justin asked what we'd say to younger agents who imagine themselves in our position someday, and we each had a different answer. Brittany's was about how to choose where you hang your license in the first place. Don't take the first shiny flag waved in your face. When you sit down with a brokerage that's recruiting you, you should be interviewing them as much as they're interviewing you. Ask to see their systems. Ask what their standards actually look like in practice. If they can show you something concrete, with documents and processes and a clear plan, you're probably in the right room. If they can only describe it in generalities, you're going to spend your career reinventing wheels that should have already existed, and you'll feel it. Koby's answer was for the agents thinking specifically about ownership, and it was a warning. Owning your own company doesn't mean escaping a boss. It means everyone becomes your boss: your clients, your agents, your team, your partners, your family who's watching you take on the risk. If the only reason you want to start a brokerage is so that you don't have to answer to anyone, you're starting it for the wrong reason and it's going to fall apart faster than you think. The intentionality has to be there, and it has to be the kind of intentionality that holds up at midnight on a Tuesday when something has gone sideways. What we didn't say on the episode Forty-five minutes goes faster than you'd think, and there's plenty we didn't get to. The biggest thing we didn't say is that most of the work of building Ironhorse has been quiet. It's been writing SOPs and naming divisions, defining roles and drafting a playbook one section at a time, choosing the right agents and turning down the wrong ones. None of that shows up in a press release or an Instagram post, but all of it is what makes the difference six months and six years from now. Brand is what you say. Standards are what you do when no one's watching. The other thing we didn't say enough is that Ironhorse is a team, not a duo. There's a leadership group that grounds Koby's instinct to move fast and spend big, and there are agents who push us to build systems worth their time. The Iron Standard isn't one person's idea. It's something that gets defined and refined every time we sit around a table together, and it's better for it. Listen to the conversation The full episode is available on the REALTORS Land Institute Voices of Land podcast, wherever you listen. We're grateful to Justin and the RLI team for having us on, and to the community of land professionals who keep showing up for conversations like this one. Link to RLI Episode 62. If the way we're building Ironhorse resonates with you, and you're a full-time land professional thinking about your next move, we'd like to talk. Visit ironhorselandcompany.com or reach out directly.