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Having a strong company culture is a helpful way for brokerages to attract new recruits and retain current real estate professionals working at their firms. Culture is the reason agents will stay at a firm for their entire careers.
For CENTURY 21 Scheetz, four key cultural tenets within our core values set us apart from the competition. They are:
1. Strive for greatness. We do not rest on our laurels. We approach everything we do with the mindset of constant improvement. This attitude inspires relentlessness at our organization. When we are aligned with this mindset because it keeps the right people affiliated with our company.
2. Encourage positivity. It’s critically important to create positivity in a sales environment—especially one as ever-changing as real estate. Brokers must foster an environment that lifts people up and doesn't bring them down.
3. Build trust. Every meaningful relationship—both personal and professional—is based on a solid foundation of trust. Without it, we have nothing.
4. Serve and love our communities. In the real estate industry, we have an ethos of giving back. We thrive when the communities we live in and work in thrive. We must make sure that we're constantly focused on how we can help make the communities that we serve better.
In total, our culture takes a holistic view of our agents by delivering products, services, and tools to help make them better and grow their businesses. We want our sales professionals to live the life they want to live. We talk about “better” a lot because our best day, our best life, our best company, our best transactions—are all meaningful. Everyone knows that our future is bigger than our past; that tomorrow is always an opportunity to be better and to improve. It's highly leveraged.
For example, my best day starts when I walk through the office or host a Zoom conference. I see agents who are collaborating, putting together transactions, and feeling confident about their work. We're all constantly learning, and we are all learning from each other. Experience shows that when you're learning, you’re earning. Plus, when agents know that their work translates into a greater purpose because of its impact on the clients they're helping, closing a deal is a powerful accomplishment. And the icing on the cake? It also helps ensure that we are attracting the right people to our organization.
Two days ago, when sitting down with an agent who was thinking about affiliating with us, she could clearly see that we were all about growing together. She already had a listing and was ready to go. I could tell she believed in herself and our culture. But if agents don't have that belief system within—that they can do it and that their best days are ahead of them—then we are not the right company for them nor them for us.
We're committed to delivering extraordinary consumer experiences and making agents' lives better. The top of our mission pyramid says, “Strive for Greatness.” It's not to “become great.” It's about always striving and making gains.
If you ever get to a place where you feel like you know it all and there's nothing left to learn, that's when the decline starts. I’m always challenging myself and those around me to keep pushing. Even when the brokerage firm gets to a certain size, or an agent gets to a certain production level, you must maintain that curiosity. It’s easy to go to, “I know it. I've been there. I've seen that. I've done that.” But seeing beyond that is the only way you’re going to continue to grow. I love it when people walk through our doors with a sense of curiosity. At CENTURY 21 Scheetz, we all must maintain that mindset.
We do not take our family of almost 400 agents in eight offices or their clients for granted. It's baked into our culture. It's the four key areas outlined above that keep our company growing while making an impact in the lives of the people we partner with and the communities we serve.
