Many people find themselves spending years and years wondering if they should start a business or venture on their own. Should they quit their jobs and set up their own organization? Is this really an option for them? Could they really do it? Lots of questions come to mind, and the answers ain’t always easy to find.
The answer to this question came into the life of Ryan Waller, Realtor at Home Group Realty Inc., when he bought a rental house in 2009. None of his friends could understand why or how he was doing it. To them, it seemed like an absurd notion. But for Ryan, the move proved to be the stepping stone for his entrepreneurial venture with minimal risks. He listened to the real estate call and obtained a license in 2015, and subsequently transitioned out of the corporate world in 2017.
The Call of The Real Estate
After his education, Ryan’s creative mind led him to be a part of an advertising agency. Eventually, his role evolved at the agency, and soon he got into a marketing role with Chapters Bookstores, which was one of the agency’s clients. However, Advertising and Marketing being a lot of theory-based practice, did not match Ryan’s result-oriented personality. Sales, on the other, was different altogether and motivated Ryan to achieve goals by being target-oriented. Hence, he shifted to the role of sales when his manager at Kimberly-Clark asked him to join sales. Since then, Ryan has never looked back.
Over the next decade and a half, Ryan Waller held diverse, progressive management roles at Kimberly-Clark and Nestle. These roles had some entrepreneurial degree attached to them, which helped him become the Realtor he is today.
During the same time, Ryan’s wife Beth held the role of a skilled salesperson in the publishing and dental industries. Embracing motherhood to the core, she took a sabbatical from work and chose to stay at home to raise their three daughters. Later, Beth teamed up with Ryan in 2018, one which was a natural fit and seemed right given her expertise at sales. Together, both these dynamic personalities offered two unique perspectives to prospects, which has had a tremendously positive effect on their business outcomes.
A Forward-Moving, Visionary Leader
According to Ryan, an inspiring leader empowers people surrounding him for the greater good and creates new opportunities through creativity and innovation. And he considers himself lucky to have worked with talented people who emphasized these leadership skills that he uses in his real estate business. However, Ryan had to overcome the challenges associated with his work-based freedom to reach where he is today.
Ryan recalls when he was in the corporate world, the creative differences within the working pipeline would hamper his creative process. “The biggest roadblock for me was my struggle with the red tape and processes,” says Ryan. The required extensive approval to practice any new initiative took a toll on him and stifled his creativity. Hence, when he moved into real estate, he was surprised by how much he wanted to operate without any restrictions.
With freedom as the central point, Ryan’s words for young aspirants reflect the same, and he wants them to enjoy what they love to do. He says that new Realtors are often confined with all the rules and perceptions of what other realtors do. “So many new Realtors just toe the line of ‘this is what you’re supposed to do,’ and it’s really not. Think about who you want to be, why and how you want to be different, and have a plan,” explains Ryan.
Ryan asks budding real estate entrepreneurs to have a short memory for not losing themselves in the process. He says, on a frequent basis, leaders face challenges about trust, feeling betrayed, their ideas being challenged, or even having a bad year. “You have to let it go and move forward because there will always be more opportunities out there,” he asserts.
Commitment-Based Services
Home Group Realty is a boutique brokerage real estate firm that emphasizes on the commitment to understanding the local market. Thus, the business operates with the tagline ‘Fiercely Local’ and makes sure to frequently participate and support local events and initiatives.
Realtors such as Beth and Ryan Waller serve the industry and people by being on the same page. Everything they do revolves around the clients, irrespective of whether it is more insights, more marketing, service, communication, or results. However, Ryan understands that it is always beneficial to be able to differentiate one’s service from others. He elaborates, “Without differentiation, you don’t offer a compelling value or reason for someone to work with you. Our clients realize that these differences in services are worth more, both in the transaction and their end result.”
Even in the early stages of the global coronavirus pandemic, many feared the market would crash, resulting in the hoarding of panicked buyers, sellers, and realtors. However, the market did not crash; it just came to a halt. The firm understood this and tightened its roots in the ground and differentiated it from others by eliminating public open houses from the process; the only change they made was the way the business operated.
Once the initial restrictions got off, the need for homes to be sold skyrocketed. “Personally, we had a very strong year as we were still advertising and being present at the hardest of times, which led to a lot of new clients,” he mentions.
The Road Ahead
Moving forward, Beth and Ryan Waller have got their eyes set on establishing a strong, profitable business. Talking about the future and their plans, Ryan mentions, “We like that when people call us, it’s us who shows up to the house – not another team member. But with that, it requires us to be strategic in how we grow our business, because we only have so much time and we want a family life, too. Eventually, we would like to grow a team of like-minded individuals.”
