I am honored and thrilled to announce that today is the 5th anniversary of Charlesgate Realty Group. It's been a wild ride over the past five years, and like anything in life, filled with its ups and downs, but I do have to say - we've been hugely successful so far and it is a exciting, ongoing learning process as we continue to grow the company.
It really is an interesting experience to create a company. Like any business (real estate or not), as an owner you have to wear many hats. I have had to become an expert - probably only in my own mind! - in financial accounting, marketing, HR, legal matters, IT networks, operations, strategy, training, and more - all why doing the most important part - providing excellent service to customers and clients!
A huge thank you to all of our past and present customers and clients (there are over 2500 of you!). You are what creates the opportunity for us to do what we do. You drive us to get better every day, every week, every month, every year.... Most of the time I am very confident that we are doing a great job for our customers, but since I have a deep motivation to always be doing more, sometimes I get nervous about how our service is interpreted by our clients. That's why we recently sent out a customer service survey to our past customers - to get the staight truth. And I am proud to say that a whopping 98.1% said they have recommended or will recommend their friends and family to us for their real estate needs. That is the truest measure of satisfaction and loyalty that I can think of. If you received service that was good enough so you are comfortable recommending others to us, that means we are doing our job well. Of course, we also love to hear any constructive criticism as well. I want our customers to challenge us to get better. We exist to serve you!
And I would be remiss if I didn't say a huge thank you to the excellent staff we have here. We have some of the absolute best people in the industry who have a deep care for our customers and who believe in our mission to provide the absolute best real estate service in Boston as much as I do.
I have a lot to be proud of from the past 5 years, and here are some of the highlights:
- Moving into our beautiful new (much larger and much more expensive - ouch!) office on Boylston Street this year that my partner, PT, and I had custom designed and built for our use
- Having our main website, charlesgaterealty.com win an award from the Mass Association of Realtors for being one of the Top 3 real estate websites in Massachusetts in 2007
- Being selected as one of the top "30 Under 30" Realtors nationwide by the National Association of Realtors in the June '08 issue of Realtor Magazine. Of course, it is my name on the award, but it would not have been even close to possible without the efforts of the whole Charlesgate team here. (Oh, by the way, please ignore the horrible mugshot....i was having a bad day!)
- Growing the team from 3 to 23 highly skilled and motivated team members (and growing)! They are really the Best of Boston!
- Being quoted in the Wall Street Journal and having at least 17 of my friends email me within hours to let me know, innapropriately of course! (apparently the WSJ has a large readership...who knew??)
- Being on pace this year to have by far our best year yet (even through the "down" market). Hard work pays off!
- There are plenty of others that I just don't have time to write now, but I will at some point.....
- A brand new website redesign with more content, more functionality, more tools, more ways to learn about Boston real estate.... Even though charlesgaterealty.com won the website award in 2007, we can and WILL do a lot better still...
- More research reports, market stats, and home buyer and seller guides that help educate you on the market...
- More events - regularly scheduled live homebuyer events, webinars, customer appreciation nights, and more...
- Videos and podcasts with helpful advice about the Boston real estate market...
- Property management - Many of our clients have asked us why we don't do property management. And until now, we haven't been ready to. One guiding philosophy for us has to only offer services that we are confident will make a difference for our clients. Going through the motions and offering half-ass service will NEVER happen with us. Rather than asking "how can we make more money?" for us its "how can we make a difference?". Now that we are almost ready, I am excited to roll out excellent property management service in the coming months.
- More (and better!) posts on my blog! Stay tuned!
