Mike Hickman could sense a market change was on the horizon.
By the start of the summer, mortgage rates were up and home sales were down.
So Seven Gables Real Estate’s long-time chief executive started cutting expenses, hoping to avert the types of layoffs some large national real estate brands have undergone this year.
Seven Gables hasn’t had job cuts since 2008, Hickman said.
“It’s the worst thing ever,” he recalled.
Keeping his workforce intact is just one way management at the independent, Tustin-based brokerage seeks to make Seven Gables a happy, productive workplace for its 75 employees and 450 agents.
“We have three layers of expense cuts, and we’ve already gone through two. And we’ve not laid off one person,” Hickman said in early November. “And not anyone can really tell the difference in anything that we’ve done.”
The company’s efforts haven’t gone unnoticed by its employees.
Seven Gables ranked first out of 21 employers in the region with 500 or more employees in this year’s Top Workplaces project. It’s the eighth straight year Seven Gables ranked among the top 15 employers in the Orange County Register’s overall program. And it’s the company’s third time with a first-place ranking.
“I’m always humbled by the fact we get a call” from Top Workplaces, Hickman said. “But I also think it’s a reflection of what kind of culture we have and the enjoyment and happiness that people have.”
In addition to its real estate brokerage, Seven Gables has six other operations: a property management company, two escrow companies, a mortgage brokerage, an insurance business and a national hazard disclosure company.
Even amid the slowdown, the 46-year-old firm is expanding, opening new offices in Glendora and Monrovia. The firm’s seven existing offices were all in Orange County, but now Seven Gables is leapfrogging into the San Gabriel Valley.
“The traditional methodology in real estate is to expand in concentric circles,” Hickman said. “I’ve always kind of bucked traditionalism.”
Seven Gables’ non-traditional approach extends to agent commissions as well.
Agents choose from among three compensation plans or a custom plan. Agents can elect to have the traditional commission split, sharing their earnings from each home sale with the brokerage.
Or agents can cap their payment to the company, sharing a larger portion of their commission with the firm until the agent has paid the company their cap amount. After that, they keep 100% of their commissions or a lesser portoin depending on the agreement.
Lastly, agents can choose a combination of these models and even create a monthly payment fee to the company. These agents usually work remotely and do not use office space.
We sat down with Hickman to ask how Seven Gables nurtures productivity while also maintaining, as he put it, its humanity. Here are highlights of that talk:
Q: How do you keep morale high in a time of economic uncertainty?
A: I have to be certain about the vision and the clarity of purpose for the company. I like to present people with the facts. Everybody can talk about the challenge of interest rates being doubled since the first of the year, etc. But what’s the solution? And I think the best thing I can do is show up for people.
I said to somebody the other day I went from CEO to CRO — chief repetition officer. You have to continue to hit home, repeating this certainty and our vision. I’m trying to show that we do have a path forward.
Q: What have you done to avoid layoffs?
A: We repurpose how people work and what they do. In dual capacities. I think that plays into the ability to not lay off people.
I’m looking at the (receptionist) sitting outside this door. And she’s working on property descriptions, she’s working on three things at one time as opposed to what used to be a job of answering the phone.
We’ve repurposed her in such a way that she’s now advanced in her job. She’s excited about her job. And her attitude since she first started as a receptionist or an office administrator, she really has changed, and she loves her job.
Q: Quiet quitting has been a hot topic of late, meaning doing the minimum at work to get by. Is that even possible for real estate agents?
A: If you don’t have boundaries in this business, you’re choosing wrong, you’re choosing burnout. Some of our most successful agents take more vacations than anybody in the company and, by the way, I endorsed that.
Think about it. When they’re here, they’re 100% engaged in the business. And when they refresh and recharge on a vacation they’ve been on, they come back invigorated and recharged and fresh. They’re excited. They can’t wait to see their clients work with their clients.
Seven Gables has the highest production per person in the county of Orange today. That’s a benchmark for us.
But more importantly, it proves to us that what we’re doing is correct. And we’re helping our agents have great lives.
No. 1 large company
Seven Gables Real Estate
Founded: 1976
Headquarters: Tustin
Industry: real estate
OC employees: 526
Website: sevengables.com
Quote: “I went from CEO to CRO — chief repetition officer. You have to continue to hit home, repeating this certainty and our vision.” — Mike Hickman, CEO of Seven Gables Real Estate
UPDATE: This post was revised to address incomplete context regarding compensation at the brokerage.
