The founders of Christie’s Sereno talk about friendship and business partnership
Trapani: The answer to that question goes back to 1976, when Ryan and I were 10. We were young children who lived in Saratoga, which was a kind of agricultural community at the time. We met along the driveway and led to a friendship.
We were fairly rebellious. Ryan was a skateboarder. He built half a pipe in his driveway. His father didn’t like it very much. And I was growing up a surfer.
We have channeled that as agents and managers for years before we had taken over our original company through some executive functions. The spirit that Sereno launched was the same spirit that Ryan and I felt in 1976 when we were children.
At the heart level, when the second appeared that occasion, Ryan and I both knew that this is the direction we had to go.
Iwanaga: Our collaboration with Mike and the rest of the leadership team was huge. They have built an incredible brokerage. They are very smart business people, but they also live from the heart and have a beautiful spirit.
Velt: What advantages do you see really possessing locally instead of being part of a larger business structure?
Trapani: The way in which brokers deal with customers is on the most personal level due to the most transforming changes and decisions of life. And so the nature of that relationship is synonymous with the relationship that agents have with their brokerage owners and leaders. That was our experience as agents in the first company we were at in the early 90s.
And then there were some major acquisitions and we experienced a different environment where it was more a business culture that taught us a lot. Yet there are some restrictions in the field of local decision -making.
Velt: Tell me a bit about your recruitment strategy. Do you recruit as a boutique brand?
Trapani: Sereno is the heart and soul of the company. It’s the DNA. It is the thing that officers retains; It is the thing that draws agents, right? Christie’s is this Tier-one worldwide luxury brand in which you could in fact transport every market and people know what it is. That is a kind of opportunity that we think we take with us.
To end the conversation, the group investigates important leadership lessons that originated in the years of affairs in real estate.
Trapani: Is top of mind, being respected is more important than being fun. And that is a difficult one because real estate people are busy being loved.
Iwanaga: I think the moment was for me to be the importance of humble, right? Leadership is about understanding, empathy and ultimately making decisions based on doing the right ones.
