Why Keller Williams?

There are lots of choices. Independent brokers, discount brokers, $100 per transaction brokers, full service and the list goes on. So why am I at KW? I signed up as a new agent because someone I trusted told me it was the best place. That was July 2003. I was green. Brand new agent. No direct experience in sales or real estate other than buying a couple of houses in my life.

Monica (my sponsor) told me about the training, the OP (Brian Fair), and her office in Forsyth County. I lived in Gwinnett so I decided to check out the office at Sugarloaf. I found that it was a supportive place with a great group of people who seemed to actually care about me and my new business.

I have now been at KW 10 years. I moved offices to focus on my business by referral. I found the North Gwinnett office to be a bit smaller and that made me happier. I am not a big corporate sort of guy and this office fits me really well. I love the company and the agents I get to work with.

I earned my brokers license a few years ago and I have to say it was more than a passing thought to go start my own brokerage.  I had even picked out a name for it. I had one friend that was trying to recruit me to his boutique brokerage and another that wanted me to be his qualifying broker in a start up he wanted to do.

So, why did I stay at KW??

Well, in my broker class we focused on running a brokerage. I got to looking at costs involved (MLS, office, phones, computers, insurance, marketing, signs, etc) and I can say it is cheaper to be at KW. My split has a cap and I feel like it was just a wise financial decision to stay here. I also did not want to recruit agents or manage all that so the cost of what I wanted was going to exceed my costs at KW.

I also suspected that being connected to a fast growing company would bring in referrals and additional business I would not otherwise get. I was right. All it really takes is 3 deals a year to pay my cap and I get that most years as referrals just because I am at KW. Profit share is another path to pay for my costs and I have not even scratched the surface on that yet.

One day I was talking to a local restaurant owner and handed my card to him. He looked at it and asked me “do you know Matt??” I said I did but it got me to thinking, was Matt’s name on my card?? Why did he ask me about Matt? It came down to the fact that Matt had done a great job of branding himself with KW and when this guy saw the KW logo he thought of Matt.

I got to thinking, how many KW signs are there compared to the little boutique company signs? How many of my friends, past clients and connections think of me when they see a KW logo? I decided that it was a great idea to stay from a financial point of view as well as a brand recognition point of view.

The biggest thing getting started has been the support, encouragement and training that I have included in my costs. I think we have the best in the business and I love it.

The last piece is however the most important to me now.  I’ll call it culture.

There are lots of definitions of culture. I found this one and it seems to carry a lot of the feeling I want to share. “A culture is a way of life of a group of people–the behaviors, beliefs, values, and symbols that they accept, generally without thinking about them, and that are passed along by communication and imitation from one generation to the next.”

I can sum up our ‘way of life’ in a simple phrase. God, Family, Business. In that order. There is a bit more about culture if you want to click here but ours can be summed up with WI4C2TS. We call it a belief system and I know from personal experience, we mean it.

There are stories about our KW family taking up a collection to make an office (that is being treated unfairly) whole. We collected about $107,000 to make up for commission that were not paid to the agents simply because they worked for KW. I know that money has been sent to agents that suffered loss in hurricanes, tornados and other natural disasters, major health problems and loss that was made easier because of our family at KW.

I could go on but I am out of space and time. This article has gotten too long so I am going to cut it off.

If you have ever thought about being in real estate and don’t know where to hang your license, I know a place. If you are currently in business and don’t just absolutely love your company, I know a place.

Call me and I’ll even buy the coffee. We’ll talk.

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