Thousands of Keller Williams associates convened in Dallas in February for the company’s annual Family Reunion, the real estate industry’s most powerful training event. Family Reunion gives brokers and leaders the opportunity to re-energize and to learn how to take their business to the next level from real estate’s best.
Jeff Cohn, CEO of kwELITE, Omaha’s newest Keller Williams office, was on hand to share his expertise in four different panels. Here are the lessons he and his fellow panelists shared at the “Think Like A CEO” session.
Be authentic. When you are true to yourself and your values, you can better serve your clients. And they will appreciate working with you because authenticity breeds trust.
“There’s a lot of pressure, especially in our society, to live up to a certain expectation. Forget every expectation other than your own and take the time to truly know yourself, create self-actualization in your world and find your ‘why,’” Jeff advised.
Embrace technology but keep the agent front and center.
In response to the question, Why did you choose to join the Keller Williams family?, Jeff replied,
“Because it is a tech-savvy company, truly a tech business that happened to be in the business of consulting, that happened to consult real estate agents and kept agents at the center of the transaction as the fiduciary and didn’t allow tech to take over the industry.”
Know where you want to go with your business and then work toward achieving this outcome. Don’t leave success up to chance.
Have a particular business goal?
“Have a vision of how to get there,” says Jeff, “ so when [an] opportunity presents itself, you are ready to take it.”
One concrete piece of advice to take your business a step forward is to provide the consumer with a one-stop-shop solution
“The consumer doesn’t want to have to go to seven different offices to meet with seven different people. They also don’t want to go to an office, period. So if you want to be relevant in the next five years, you need to build a hybrid office that offers the consumer and the agent the ability to do everything virtually and in person,” Jeff says.
Care about people first and success will follow
Success in business is “not about the money; it’s about being the best version of ourselves,” Jeff believes.
Yes, “transactions matter. But they are secondary to the relationships you form.”
