Starting an real estate consulting firm in Texas

[Prasanna K.]

I am a research intensive person and so I have a lot of friends who ask and trust my advice on finance, investments, real estate and recommendation on service providers. Most of them are in high income-tax states and are planning to follow my path of moving to Texas and/or acquire real estate investments in Texas. I am thinking on starting a consulting firm that gets revenue via referral services to the agents, mortgage brokers, property managers, insurance agents, cpas, lawyers and syndicators whom I have/will have vetted, used and trust. This will be a win-win-win situation. I have a pretty demanding full time job that i also love and so consulting/referring works well from time flexibility perspective.

I understand I need a TREC license to be a referral real estate agent in Texas. Are there any other licensing requirements for referring and getting compensated by other service providers in Texas? Any advice from others who have done this or have worked with such a consulting company appreciated.