2018 was our 45th year in business and also the year we said goodbye to my grandma who helped start Crown Realty with my Dad. She greatly influenced who we are today, and I wanted to spend a little time this morning sharing with you some things I learned from my Grandma, Naomi Hosack.
We have adopted a new slogan around here and it’s “where agents are family and clients are royalty.” We truly believe it and try our best to practice it around here, and I think my Grandma started that trend of treating each and every agent like family. I used to love visiting her at the Olathe office when I was younger and I saw how she interacted with everyone. She knew everyone’s name and what was going on with them. As we grow larger and larger, I realize that gets harder and harder to do, but I’m thankful that with our smaller office sizes every broker and secretary knows their team so well!
Another thing
I learned from my grandma is the importance of celebrating. She celebrated every victory, every closing,
every listing won, every referral, everything.
And as Nick’s and my grandma, she celebrated everything with us too –
basketball games, losing a tooth, getting a good grade, whatever it was – she
was there to party with us. Celebrating
victories is what we’ll be doing here today too. 2018 was an exceptional year, as you heard
from Dad.
The other
part of our motto is “where clients are royalty” – because we are family, we
believe we truly can treat clients with the absolute best customer
service. We try to filter all of our
decisions through that lens.
Every website
and tool that we provide to our agent family is to help us best serve our buyer
and seller clients. And because of our
in-house training and high staff-to-agent ratio, each agent is able to be the
very best they can be with the support of their broker, their education, and
their secretaries. We believe that when
our agents have help setting signs, inputting listings, marketing, contract
support, and more, that frees you up to treat your clients like royalty.
I recently
read a book by Danny Meyer titled “Setting the Table.” Danny Meyer started off with one restaurant
in New York City at the age of 27. He
now owns a restaurant empire with hundreds of successful restaurants. One, Shake Shack, is here in Kansas City, on
the Plaza. In his book, Danny writes
that 75% of restaurants fail, and interestingly enough the stats for real
estate agents are similar, 80% of real estate agents quit in their first 2
years. Fortunately, Crown Realty agents,
much like Danny Meyer’s restaurants do much better. I went back and looked at our new agent
rosters over the last few years, and over 50% of our newer agents are
consistently closing over $1 million a year and only 15% have let their
licenses expire.
So what’s
Danny’s secret ingredient? I think it’s
the same as ours. He calls it
“enlightened hospitality” and it’s all about how you make the customer
feel. Many restaurants have similar
menus, appearances, and ingredients.
Every agent has the MLS, a lockbox, and a license. But Danny Meyer’s argues that in this day and
age, it is how you deliver your service that counts the most. He writes, “In the end, what’s most
meaningful is creating positive, uplifting outcomes for human experiences and
human relationships. Business, like life, is all about how you make people
feel. It’s that simple, and it’s that hard."
Let me read
that last line again, “Business, like life, is all about how you make people
feel. It’s that simple, and it’s that
hard.” My Grandma made everyone around
her feel like family. It is my hope that
we continue that legacy with each other.
And that every single client of all of ours feels like royalty when they
are working with a Crown agent.
Crown Family,
THANK YOU for all you do to serve with all your hearts and represent our family
well!
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Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business by Danny MeyerMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
This book is full of stories and gems of insight for anyone in business or leadership no matter what field!
View all my reviews
