At brokerage, ‘We eat barbecue and drink beer’
Chance Brown, owner of CB&A, Realtors, says sales meetings at his brokerage company are different from most. “We eat barbecue and drink beer,” Brown said. The no-frills fare sets the table for a discussion about problems agents share and how to overcome them. “Not feeling like you’re alone is super important to the culture,” Brown explained. Brown started his real estate career selling for David Weekley Homes, a builder often named one of Fortune’s 100 best places to work, and he will happily tell you he stole many of the company’s practices. “I learned about culture — a culture of teamwork, a culture of caring about each other,” Brown said. So perhaps it’s no surprise that CB&A ranked No. 4 among small businesses in this year’s Top Workplaces list, based on an employee survey conducted for the Chronicle by Energage. CB&A was only launched in late August, and the latest Top Workplaces ranking covers ratings by agents who were previously with Brown’s Realty One Group franchise. Brown spent five years building the franchise, and many of the employees have long worked together. The franchise earned spots on the Top Workplaces list for the past three years, and along the way, Brown was named Realtor of the Year by the Houston Association of Realtors. When his franchise agreement with Realty One Group expired Aug. 28, Brown launched his own brokerage company — CB&A, Realtors. He said 98 percent of agents stayed on through the transition, and the new brokerage continues to offer a flat-fee model for agents. “There’s always a lot of nerves when you go into something new,” Brown said. “But it’s been phenomenal.” Since the announcement that he was starting his own real estate firm, there has been a 10 percent increase in the number of agents at the firm and a 20 percent increase in the number of property sales, Brown said. He attributes the company’s success to a philosophy focused on making life as easy as possible for its agents. From the layout of the brokerage’s new office to a new nonprofit that can support says he tries agents to in plan times around of need, real Brown estate agents’ needs. Take, for instance, CB&A’s new software, meant to automate as much of an agent’s job as possible. When an agent puts a house into the multiple listing service, the system automatically makes the home its own website, creates and posts a YouTube video from the listing’s photographs and posts to social media. When clients go under contract, they receive an email inviting them to a dashboard where they can book movers and update their mailing addresses with the click of a button. “Nobody goes into the business of real estate so they can do paperwork,” Brown said. “So if we could take that two or three hours they spend on it a week to let them spend time with their family or whatever it is, that’s what we want to do.”