FirstTeam’s Michele Harrington talks about innovative recruitment strategies for real estate agents
In this week’s episode of the Power House podcast, host Diego Sanchez sits down with us FirstTeam Real Estate CEO Michele Harrington for a provocative conversation about female empowerment, real estate leadership and recruitment strategies.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. The duo begins the conversation by exploring Harrington’s path to the CEO role at FirstTeam.
Michele Harrington: After entering the sale of real estate, directly from the Marine CorpsI built my own real estate agency. Six years ago, my entire company switched to FirstTeam. Over time, I became Chief Operating Officer. And then Cameron Merage thought I could really lead the company into the next generation.
Sanchez: Looking at the industry, only 26% of leadership positions in the real estate industry are held by women, even though more than 60% of real estate agents are women. Why is that?
Harrington: For women, we want the flexibility of a great career, a family, and other things in our lives. If you look at the leadership journey, it is a little more structured. We are doing our industry a disservice when women don’t step up and lead. I chose to step up and lead because I love our industry and felt I had something to offer it.
Sanchez: You’re also quite ahead of the curve in recruiting at the moment. FirstTeam is on track to surpass $1 billion in recruited teams this year. How do you do that in this crazy housing market?
Harrington: We have a unique way of recruiting. We have always been a new-agent company. Our licensing school brings in brand new agents, whom we train and develop to help them become superstars. If you look at the top ten agents in Orange County right now, eight of them started at FirstTeam.
Most brand new agents fail. When we investigate, they succeed when we put brand new agents on a team. These teams are extremely growth-oriented teams and they want to recruit. So we’ve figured out a way to get seasoned agents who have or want to grow these teams, and their production is growing at 20%, 30%, or 40% per year.
We acquire these teams and then recruit for the team. That’s why they are attracted to us and grow with us.
Sanchez: Are you thinking about expanding FirstTeam outside of California?
Harrington: We think it is best to keep our fort very strong and still grow. So organic growth by spreading into adjacent areas is ideal, as opposed to skipping and going to a big city somewhere else in the country.
Sanchez: We see some green shoots on the housing market. What does 2025 look like for your company?
Harrington: I think 2025 is going to be a good year, and this year has really turned around for us. We sold the head office, which saved us a lot of overhead. We have ended an expensive collaboration and also recruited a lot. Now that we have this upward trajectory to 2025 – and I expect the market to improve as well – I think 2025 is going to be a good year for us.
