About

Opened ERA American Real Estate.

Gloria and Barbara were faced with either seeing their real estate agency’s largest client leave or leave themselves to have the client follow. Within 5 days of deciding to make a move, they were operating in an old construction trailer they have moved onto the premises of where ERA American would stay and grow for the next 35 years. Interest rates hit 18% that year, but the client was building with cash, so they kept very busy with new construction, some rentals and trying to figure out how to grow a real estate company. Joined ERA one month after opening our doors. They knew they needed guidance as neither of them had any aspirations of growing their own real estate company. Fortunately, Gloria had gotten her broker’s license the year prior. Gloria takes sole ownership in 1990 after her dear friend and partner was no longer able to function in the business

Expanded the Business Model.

Expanded the Business Model to be inclusive of Team – Encourage, support, and grow Team Leaders

Enjoyed 25% market share in our area.

Development of the Marketing Department for the company TOMA and the development of our own real estate magazine that competed with Homes & Land and The Real Estate Book. (Until late ‘90’s) Marketing also helped our agents by opening our own design shop.

First-class relocation department.

Developed a first-class relocation department that assisted agents with their leads and with company leads in a pre-internet environment.

Opened Navarre office.

Primary focus at the time was procuring land, developing and selling townhomes for an overseas investor.

Changed our Leadership Structure.

Instead of having Branch managers, Gloria had the foresight to see how using the “right” leaders in their expert field could not only enhance the agent experience, but also offer far more support and success to the agent. This was also the beginning of our “agent services coordinators”. The Agent Services Coordinators are the support staff that focuses on agent needs, statistics, know all of the ERA American and ERA programs, add ideas for agent services to enhance agent experience, and keeps the offices running smoothly on a day to day, so the leaders focus on agent productivity and company profitability.

Opened ERA American Real Estate.

Primary focus at the time was procuring land, developing and selling townhomes for an overseas investor. 07

Company went totally paperless.

The agents were forced to store their transaction via the company paperless system. The move in a few years reenforced the paperless movement. Totally revamped the way we train and add value to agents through Business Management training. Get agents to realize they are running their own business with the support and guidance of ERA and ERA American. Added small group meetings to enhance agent engagement and productivity. Meeting with peer groups to allow each agent level to be able to collaborate and commiserate with their peers. This would also allow us to train to specific knowledge levels. All agents had a seat at the table.

We revamped our Mission and Core Values.

We needed to clearly define who we were. We change lives through real estate by creating opportunities for financial independence, security, and wealth, we treat everyone with professionalism and respect, we take care of those who need us, we grow our family with trustworthy and caring people, and we support and educate all members of our family, empowering them to pursue their dreams.

American Charitable Foundation was developed to grow our philanthropic culture.

The company had a community support culture always starting with placing more than 40,000 flags in yards for 4th of July for now 40 years. Giving to the local college, supporting local and national charities, but the foundation made it official and allowed the agents and staff to contribute to help serve our entire community and sometimes our surrounding communities.

New Building – New Opportunities.

Changed the way offices look in all our branches and offered agents a different way to work and what agent space looked like for the future. This also changed the agent’s work habits, so we had to adjust. The agents wanted to work from the beach, their back yard, and sometimes…the office. We instituted re-recruiting our own agents. Staff calls, text, and other relationship connections with our agents. We constantly remind them of the support given in our business meetings, and the sales team reports on relationship engagement monthly. All leadership looks for business, attitude, and life changes to stay engaged in agents lives and needs.

Business Conversion.

Company decided to double down on Business Conversion with co gen business and agent business and re-focused on recruiting teams. We went after KW and created our own new version of teams.

In the top 1% for PPP of the US.

We committed to growing listing agents and encouraged rainmakers to build teams. We also started to keep track of our Per Person Productivity.

American has the top 3 teams in ERA.

Pat Williams Team for the win! And won the Circle of Light Award.

American has 2 of the Top 3 Teams in ERA.

The world changed forever.

ERA American has the best year ever, added Tony to our leadership, added a game changer agent from CB and increased her production by 37%. With her affiliation we became super charged in the way we helped agents’ business plan and this mindset allowed us to focus on the willing and offer programs that help agents experience growth in their way. While recruiting we did a full investigation of her past business and created a pro-forma of what her business and personal life could look like if she shifted to a listing agent. Then we added in a bit of marketing offerings to support this shift and she was ours. We have now instituted this plan with our top performers and up and comers. We changed our commission plan and added accelerators to agent income. Putting more money in the agent’s pocket and looking for opportunities to gain back or maintain the same company dollar. We are doing this through marketing programs, transactional fees, and increased company lead generation which enhances the lead referral fees the company charges. In addition, looking for expenses we no longer need to have and opening our Business Partner programs to add additional income for the company.