In this week's Real Estate: Real Success Podcast, Chiyoko Kakino interviews Martin Charlwood, President, and CEO of CENTURY 21 Canada in Vancouver, B.C., to find out what type of leadership and culture is needed to thrive in today's rapidly changing world. Martin shares what he has learned over the past year and a half of unprecedented times and how he has taken those lessons learned and adapted the C21 business and his leadership style to ensure he is best supporting the brokerage owners, realtors, and clients.
Interested in opening your own brokerage? Learn more here
In this week's Real Estate: Real Success Podcast, Chiyoko Kakino interviews Martin Charlwood, President, and CEO of CENTURY 21 Canada in Vancouver, B.C., to find out what type of leadership and culture is needed to thrive in today's rapidly changing world. Martin shares what he has learned over the past year and a half of unprecedented times and how he has taken those lessons learned and adapted the C21 business and his leadership style to ensure he is best supporting the brokerage owners, realtors, and clients.
Interested in opening your own brokerage? Learn more here
Welcome to the real estate real success podcast, where we talk about key business successes and lessons learned along the way in the hopes of inspiring brokerage owners and managers to find new ways to grow their beds. I'mChiyoko Kakino. In this episode, we're going to learn about what type of leadership and culture is needed to thrive in today's rapidly changing world. I have the honor to be joined here by Martin Charlwood. He is the president and CEO of Century 21 Canada headquartered out of Vancouver, British Columbia, Martin. Thank you so much for being with us today. Thanks for inviting me. And it's my pleasure to be here with you. We all know that it's been a roller coaster over the past 18 months. To specifically talk about COVID. Cause I think we're all COVID out, but I want to talk about what you've learned over the last past year and a half and how you've taken those lessons learned and adapted the C 21 business and your leadership style to ensure that your best supporting our brokerage owners are realtors. And at the end of the day, our consumer. So let's go back to early 2020 when the lockdowns. What was your biggest challenge during that time and how did you, well, you know, I think it's quite interesting. In fact, my last business trip was, uh, me attending and participating in the Winnipeg broker owner, I guess the Manitoba broker owner, uh, councils award event in the middle of March, 2020. And, uh, when I left that auspicious event and came home virtually overnight, The entire world had come to a Hawes, certainly Canada had, and then other countries all began to really shut down. And I must admit that really did give us pause and made us rethink how we were going to support our brokers in a very uncertain time. What we realized was that, uh, very quickly we could pivot and provide a lot of the support and resources that we previously had. Face-to-face and we can do those virtually. So what we did over. With a very, uh, ambitious and able body manager team is that we create a daily webinars for agents, as well as weekly webinars for owner broker managers, to teach them some of the best practices that we are aware of and supporting folks out in the field. During these unprecedented times, we were able to pivot and provide virtual support, teach them how to do the things that were most important, staying close to their customers. And then we also provided the ability for them to do virtual, uh, open houses, which is crucial when, uh, trying to land new listings and then get them sold. So very quickly, we were able to adapt to a virtual world and our network in the field. We're very, very happy to receive that support and really we're able to run with it almost overnight. How has change the way you run the company or the type of support? And guidance that provides it's network. Yeah. You know, I think if I reflect back on what helped us put century 21 on the map, when we first brought the brand to Canada in the late 70. We were the first to really embrace a training culture. In fact, many of us referred many in, in the industry, uh, referred to us as the IBM in the real estate market, because we were very, very good at doing that training. And what we really focused on was not only teaching people how to recruit new agents to their brokerage, but also how to retain them once they came on. And crucial and doing all of that is to provide the training skills to make a new agent or an existing agent successful in their career arc. And we also wanted to make sure that we were training people so that they understood the technological and full body resources that were available to them for having been part of century 21. And then of course, once you know what, you've got to understand how that differentiates you from your competitors. So we were able to do that very, very robustly and to transition the support and training of all of that to go online. And then another thing that was also very important to us is that in the 40 plus years that we've been operating this brand. We've really created a family feel to our organization, our fellow brokers and our fellow agents. Aren't just another century, 21 person down the road, but they're actually a part of an important family. And what we've recognized is that we've created a culture that really allows brokers to help one another and agents within the century 21 family, to help each other, not to see it as competition, but to see unilaterally as a one unit in the marketplace going after, uh, making our customers. Okay, let's talk about leadership because the leadership is so important in ensuring that a brokerage is successful specifically and especially during trying times. So what type of leadership skills. Do you think a brokerage owner or a manager needs to thrive in today's leadership as is often the difference between success or failure. And it's important that we instill that in as many of our broker owners as we possibly can. Those leadership skills that we think are most important when building a successful brokerage first off, if you're not growing you're contracting. So what we're looking for and what we try to cultivate in our broker owners is a passion for growth. And the knowledge on how to succeed in growing your business growth, just for the sake of growth is not the panacea it's actually growing profitably. That's the most important, that's what we try to support. And those are how we try to guide them going forward. I think it's probably fair to say as well that, uh, real estate, uh, is not necessarily a technology industry, but technology has invaded every part of our lives. And the real estate industry is no exception. So we need to make sure that we've got people that are showing an interest in technology and understanding how these tools can be used to help support the leadership drive for growing your brokerage, recruiting new agents, and then also helping the ones that are already onboard to be successful and making sure that they've got what they need in servicing our client's needs. I think it's really important also in the culture that you create in a, in a brokerage. Agents that come under your brokerage need to understand that the broker owner and the management of that brokerage absolutely care about their long-term success. That's really the issue. They are catering to supporting and servicing the needs of Egypt so that they can be successful when the agents are successful. Then the broker does a whole become six. All right, let's talk about culture. Now. What should brokerage owners and managers do to maintain or hence their culture in what really now is called a hybrid working model, because now it's really quite different, right? We're not having those conversations at the water cooler. We're not able to give up. If someone is having a bad day, we're not, you know, we're not able to be together all the time. So what do you think, you know, owners need to do in order to continue to keep their culture? Because some of them, you know, that is their main value proposition. No, it's interesting how you mentioned the water cooler. I, none of us ever expected this set of circumstances to be around almost coming on two years now, or certainly at the 18 month mark. And I think a lot of people miss those interactions, but what's really important is whether you're doing a virtual. Or whether you're doing it in person, when those circumstances allow in-person interaction, it's really important that you recruit to your brokerage. And I think it's really important to improve the Egypt recruiting process. So if you are a brokerage and you believe in the full value proposition of supporting your agents from soup to nuts, it's really important that you recreate agents that appreciate that. Because if they're not aligned to the culture that you are trying to build in your organization, That will become problematic for you in the long run. So we really work with our brokers to understand what kind of culture they would like to foster in their particular brokerage. And then we guide them and help provide them with resources on how to recruit to that culture that sometimes takes into consideration the questions that you want. When you're reviewing candidates to join your organization and long, the short of it is if you hire correctly and hire to your culture, you will avoid having big issues down the road. And that's a big part of what we've learned, certainly over the last few decades, but also highlighted and accentuated in the, in the current and unique circumstances. We find ourselves in. Obviously I, you know, virtual meetings is been what's happening all around the world. It's not just in the real estate industry. It's happening in many industries around the world. Um, office meetings are no longer in person or very few of them are in person, but you've got to get good at being virtual. And what we're actually finding is that because of the ability to use tools like zoom and WhatsApp video on various other, you know, go to meetings, if you will, it allows us to have more frequent contact with our agents and to do it virtually, but do it where we can see them eye to eye. Maybe not in person. And that really helps foster a real camaraderie about how we can help them become more successful in their careers. You know, a couple of examples I can share with you as well, and trying to adapt to these current times, you know, we've had a couple of our brokerages, uh, century 21, BJ Roth and Berry. They recently had their last Christmas party that they had. They hired a whole bunch of food trucks and had an outdoor event. So people could mix and mingle in a more safe environment, but it wasn't your typical. Dinner or Christmas party inside where people were concerned about a close proximity to one, another century, 21 millennium had an event for their top producers. They took them all to Niagara falls. And of course, leading up to this event, they said, we really looking forward to celebrating your successes, but you need to make sure you're double vaccinating before you come to the event. So people feel comforted. When they're meeting with each other, and these are the types of things that we have found have been successful and lots of people have been doing, and we've got great feedback on it, Martin. I really like how you say hard to culture, because that is so true. No matter what industry you're in, it's so important to do that. You know, let's talk about now best in class. Cause at century 21, we always say what's the best in class. Best thing. So, what do you think some of the best in class examples are that brokerage owners are doing right now to ensure that they're supporting their, oh, it's a question we get asked many times, you know, I, I think it's really important if you, uh, if you want to build a successful business, whether you are a broker owner or whether you're an agent building your book of business, you need to have a roadmap. And that basically starts in the business planning process. So, you know, when you refer to best in class, well, we really encourage our brokerages to do is to make sure they've got a concise, well thought through business plan. And then we encourage our brokers and the managers that support the agents in the field that also develop their own personal business plans. And it's really important that, that you provide support and guidance in the creation of the plan at the outset that there's support ongoing during the year for following the business plan. But most importantly, that there's accountability built into it because if you're not being held accountable to what you've got is your goals and how are you going to reach them in the first place? So that's super. And what we did is we pivoted who we were actually doing this before the pandemic hit, but we shifted a lot of our education platform online, where we have a very robust century 21 university, and we have the ability to provide a facilitator workbooks for our broker. And we can then deliver the content and teach their agents how to be very successful in the business planning so that they can achieve the goals that they've set themselves out for. At the beginning of each year, I think, uh, the great brokers they provide that type of support. And that really makes the agents feel as though they're number one, that their success is put before the broker. Because, as I said earlier, you know, a successful brokerage is only built on a group of successful agents and that's super, super important. Um, I think another thing that we've been in process of developing over the last few years is our in-house century 21 concierge program. So what we do is we get each broker owner to designate either themselves or one of their management team to be the in-house concierge, whose responsibility it is to know. Each and every one of the systems and programs that we have available in the century 21 system. So that any agent at any time who has a question about what might be available or how to use it, they have a local resource in their own brokerage to figure out what is out there that they can use. That's. Proven as a tool to make them more successful. So we really believe in that. And through this concierge program, we have the ability to help people. Hyperlocalized their own individual agent website. We teach them how to utilize our robust hub, 21, uh, marketing platform and how to build their CRM in there so that they can be very well connected and proactive in their communication with their customer set. As they look at. Yeah, new listings as they look to get referrals, as they look to sell properties on behalf of their customers. So Martin, there's been a lot of discussion around what the future of brokerages looks like in real estate. And so what do you think are the biggest opportunities for brokerages moving? No, I made mention of it a little while earlier. You know, business is very robust and very competitive these days. And generally speaking, we find if you're not growing, then you're doing the opposite. You're often contracting. I think what's super important to note is that there is a vast opportunity for growth. Lots of people are. That the real estate industry has almost been a pandemic proof industry. It's been robust. We've got agents and brokers reporting to us that during the last 18 months they've had the best 18 months they've ever had in the history of their, their career in real estate. And so I think the biggest opportunity is to take away. Of the growth potential in your local community. Um, and I think another part of what, what should be in the back of the minds and moving to the middle and the forefront of brokers' minds is some of the other ancillary real estate related product offerings that you can put on the table for your customers, namely mortgage, not often do people buy houses. Full of cash. They need some financing. And so I think the mortgage business is something that's should be very much built into the complimentary add on services that you provide your customers. And then of course, we have a lot of people buying property for income purposes. And so I think property management is another very logical, additional ancillary service that smart brokers should be looking to add to their portfolio of offerings in the, in the Goforth. Martin. One of the things that you talked about was, you know, expanding revenue, streams, really with brokerages. And, you know, I think that there's some advantage to a brokerage being kind of a one-stop shop for their clients. So I know that the parent company to century 21, Canada is a company called childhood Pacific group, which you and your brother and your father. Tell me a little bit about the real estate portfolio that the child would Pacific group has that had a vision of this like 15, 20 years ago and how that really compliments the century 21. You know, it's interesting. When we started century 21 in Canada in the mid to late seventies, we spent the first sort of five, 10 years building the footprint across Canada, my dad and his original management team folks like Brian Russian back in the early days, really helped put the brand on the map in Canada. And then we spent about 10 years, really fine tuning and being very competitive. Getting good at what we did about 20 years ago, we actually started a new company, actually called Sentinel mortgage set, set them financial, and it is a mortgage brokerage franchise focusing on residential mortgage brokerage. And for the last 20 years, we have built that up to be a network of getting close to 200, uh, franchises across Canada and post. 2000 mortgage brokers that help people across Canada comparison, shop mortgages and not just accept one of the big five banks auto renewal offers that very often is not a competitive offering compared to what some of the other secondary lenders are offering in the market. So we started that about 20 years ago. And then about five years ago, we also brought a brand called real property management into the Canadian marketplace. And that brand specializes in offering property management services to people that own approximately four doors or less for income properties or less. And our goal in bringing those two additional. Operating companies into the Charro Pacific group, real estate portfolio was the idea that over a life span of a customer over a life span or a real estate transaction, we would love to have the opportunity to help them buy or sell a home using century 21. If they're buying a home, we would love to be able to offer them competitive mortgage brokerage services to do that through septum. And then for those that aren't, you want to generate an income out of our property, that they've purchased to also handle the property management for them. So that, that. So in my house, we can help finance the house and then we can help them property management. And when we think that that is a very, very robust and good way to maximize the real estate opportunities as this industry unfolds, and as it gets more competitive going forward, Martin, we talked a little bit about what the biggest opportunities are for brokerages moving forward. What do you think the biggest opportunity is for the century 21 brand overall? And what are you doing to take advantage of this opportunity? Interesting question. We're one of the longstanding success stories in real estate brokerage in Canada. We've been operating now for sort of 46 years and people would possibly refer to us as one of the legacy companies and helping develop the market across Canada. What I still find fascinating is that we still seem to be one of the best kept secrets in the industry. So I think about, uh, what, what's one of the biggest opportunities. It's for us to be able to show from the rooftops that today's century 21 is very different than a century 21 that came into the market sort of 40 years ago. You know, it's really hard for realtors also to just to stay top of mind and to try and keep up to speed with the immense amount of developments that take place in the industry, the new products and services, the type of technology that comes into play. One of the opportunities that, that we have at our disposal is for us to be that guiding light, to share with brokers and agents, what we believe, determine the best tools in the industry, the ones that we've either brought in as a private label into the central Toronto family or ones that we built as homegrown. So we can actually be the ones that short through the plethora of choices and provide you with a toolbox, if you will, of proven successful systems and, and products that make your job easier. One of the short of it is rather than you having to keep up with all the developments in the industry, we can do that for you. And when you're part of the century 21 family, we make that easier than you trying to do it alone. And we also have a group think tank of all of our brokers across the network, and we're able to share from each other what we're learning in each individual market. And when there's an opportunity for us to meet. Successfully happening in one part of the country, we're able to share that with brokers and agents on the other side of the country and do that very efficiently. And that is one of the big benefits. And one of the big opportunities that you have when you're part of an organization like century 21. It's interesting. If you really think about it as well. Again, as I mentioned in one of the previous discussions we were having, there are forecasts that suggest that the a hundred thousand realtors that are in the market today in Canada are going to grow to 150,000. So it was a lot more agents coming into this business because again, it's proven to be the real estate industry is proven to be one of the Bulletproof, you know, pandemic era industries. So it's really, really important that people understand that century. 21 is one of the absolute best places, not only to start your career, but to actually live out your entire career. Interesting stat I'll share with you is that it is a well-known fact that 80% of the realtors that come into. Real estate market as newbies do not survive in the industry past their first anniversary. And our statistics show quite the opposite that if you start with century 21 and you work with your owner broker and the management team and follow the successful path that we have shown. So. There's up to a 90% chance for you to be in the real estate industry and with century 21 in your second year. And well beyond that. And we think that those are really, really big opportunities for us to be able to share that success path with people and to let them know that if they're considering various options in the real estate market century, 21 should absolutely be in that final choice. And we hope to earn your respect. And when you over to be a member of our. What are you doing now or are going to be doing in the future to better adapt to the new. Yeah, it's so funny that this whole new normal, not just our industry, it's so many others, very likely is the new normal. I think what we've learned is that remote work is not the enemy. This whole virtual thing is actually something that we can embrace. And if I reflect back on how companies like century 21 previously dealt with our network, obviously. Telephone work, but there would be periodic, quarterly, biannual, or once a year events, conventions, et cetera, where we would see people and be in front of them between those events though, we'd be on the telephone. And I think what this whole new zoom, you know, go to meetings, whatever platform you're using culture, it has allowed us to. Face-to-face albeit not, not real. Face-to-face not physical face-to-face, but virtual face-to-face like you and I are right now. And I think when you can see the person that you're talking to, it just creates that better bond. And I think what we're going to see as a much tighter and more cohesive communication between. Head office and brokerages in between brokerages and their agents between face-to-face meetings. And I think that's really going to be a fantastic new approach to how the business is going to be run. Plus I think over the years, there's always been a bit of an issue as it relates to when you go to sell your home and you have to go through that process of an open house. And I don't know anyone that puts their hand up and says, oh boy, I really want to have a hundred people this weekend plow through my house that I've never met before. And the ability to do remote. Uh, open houses and do virtual open houses, I think is something that's going to be a trend that will stay with us, post the pandemic and will be really good for the industry. And obviously, you know, I think what we're going to see going forward is I think there is going to be a serious pent up demand for some in-person events. Not everyone quite yet is ready to be at in-person events, but we're seeing. Getting feedback from various individuals that they're really keen to be at the next Canada conference or our next chairman circle or the next awards event. And for those that are going to be fully vaccinated and are comfortable getting together face to face or looking forward to embracing you and seeing your in person. And we think that's going to be an important part of the culture going forward in century 21 forever. So, Martin, this is the last question that I have for you today, but what is the biggest challenge that you've ever faced in your career that ended up being a blessing in this. There's been some pretty serious soul searching these last 18 months, I would have to say, you know, I know this isn't a podcast about COVID, but I think the pandemic and how it affected so many of us so deeply was really, uh, one of the biggest challenges that's ever faced, not just this industry, but I think all of us in our, in our, in our careers. And as I reflect on how we quickly. Determined that century 21 actually had some of the best resources available to support our brokers and our agents, and that we had an ability to pivot very quickly and provide a lot of that support. Virtually really turned out to be a blessing. I mean, I think it's just amazing, you know, there's so many things that we used to do in person that we were able to very quickly. Adapt to and provide online so that our broker owners who were feeling quite nervous in those opening weeks immediately felt the support. It felt they were part of a family that cared and understood that they actually had some solutions to implement that could get them through some of these tough spots. Um, a number of the things that we provide online over the years have been accentuated. And one of the things that we've mentioned it on a number of cages is campus, uh, 20 one.tv that allows a number of our agent and brokers to go online. Sometimes there's live events. Sometimes there's a, you know, on demand events that they can use to support the initiatives that they want to drive forward in their weekly, you know, training sessions, et cetera, et cetera. We also have our online university. Again, some of that stuff has done live again, virtually, but live and others is done on an on demand. So people can work through it at the pace that they like themselves. And I think these resources being made available on line and virtually has really allowed us to stay ahead of our competition. I think we do it better than any of them. But there's also something to be said about a hybrid model where we're not just going to be all virtual going forward. I think as things normalized here, which we really hope to see happen in the next sorta let's call it 90 to 180 days, or we will get back to normal by the early part of next year. But we see a combination of virtual as well as in-person events, because it's good to be next to your neighborly century 21 family member to be able to. Habits to share best practices to show trials and tribulations, but also when you don't have the time to get on an airplane, to go meet someone or even to drive down the street and go meet someone for lunch, you have the ability to work on your skillset and the honing of your business. Be it an agent or a broker. And to do that virtually at your pace is super important. I think that's one of the things that's really shined for us here through these last 18 months. It makes us feel very confident about this. Well, thanks so much, Martin. Um, you know, I'm a big believer in video, but I can not wait to be with the rest of my C21 family members. Thank you so much for being with us. Um, I am so proud to be part of the century 21 brand, and we really appreciate your time today. So thanks so much. I look forward to a more of this than the go forward phases and I thanks for inviting me. It's been very dry.