Liz Gehringer: Communicating with confidence

I'm so happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

Well, it is interesting. It is a very full plate. I've definitely learned what to take off the plate. It's almost like what are those overcooked veggies or something I'm not touching. I have responsibility for our franchise brands: Coldwell Banker, Century 21, Better Homes and Gardens, ERA. I also have responsibility for marketing across the entire organization, as well as events and execution. So it's a busy bit of work, but I think it's really important to challenge yourself just when you're getting comfortable in a role. Our company is very good at finding the next mountain to climb, so to speak. I'm getting my arms around it.

I worked here as a lawyer for a long time. I actually started my career in the automotive business. I worked for Ford Motor Company, so I started with a consumer-facing role. I was very focused on cars, something that I loved, and delivery of something that consumers really related to. I was in sales and marketing. I went to law school, something I had always intended to do, but I had been drawn to the work I was doing. I became really fascinated with small businesses and the way they were powered by franchises, the way car dealers became big powerful companies through the Ford Motor Company organization. I saw that opportunity in real estate. While I first got into litigation, I sort of had my eye on getting back to some of those roots, and I've been able to do that here. While I was a lawyer for the company, I was still working on this model of delivery in real estate, much of which happens through franchises, small businesses running the brokerages, and how our company helps power them with tools, planning, and brand especially. I was able to find my way through law and back again to the things that attracted me to the real business of real estate. You asked how I did it. I asked to take on more responsibility. Once I got comfortable with something, I asked if I could take it from another angle. The company, especially our CEO Ryan Schneider, was incredible about talking about what that really could look like: what skills do you have, what did you do that you loved, where do you think you could add value, how do you think you could help the business grow? We talked through those things, and that took me over into the business side. It's really come full circle, but I've definitely been involved in the asking and seeking new responsibility.

I think there are a couple of different kinds of roles. Most companies have generalists and specialists broadly speaking. If you are heading toward leadership, I think it's really important to become a generalist. You have to be able to tackle so many different issues, grow the team, guide the strategy, guide the operations, and future-proof the organization. It's helpful if you are a generalist, if you have a lot of capabilities gathered from many different roles along the way. I think that's part of our philosophy. We support our experts in legal, finance, real estate, and brokerage, but as you're looking to identify leaders and have people grow, it's really important to make sure you're adding different areas of expertise so they can ultimately become stronger generalists. That underlies a lot of our philosophy. We have an annual process which we revisit quarterly, checking in with people, identifying our growers, and making sure we get in a room with each other to talk through talent and talent plans for those people. It's a very mature and professional process. You have to have real rigor around your approach.

When I moved over into operations on the business side, I really felt it. I had to almost quiet the specialist parts of what I knew, almost quiet the expertise. It's an interesting experience. You're used to representing one view in a room, and you have to become more of a listener, more of a learner again, and sort of quiet your things.

I work really closely today with Sue Yannacone, who's an amazing mentor. She really helped me get through that. She talked a lot about taking your compliance hat off so you could put on all the other hats as well, not putting it away, just rotating through the levels of thinking that are required. She helps guide me today too. I think you sort of might over-index away from your skills at first, and then you bring them back. You don't want to step on the shoes of the other people who are in that role. All of us go through that if you move into any new leadership role. The person who is in your prior position, even if it's changed a bit, you don't want them to be in your shadow or feel like they have to do it your way. You want them to do it with their best expertise and skills. So you do have to sort of self-audit. You're the person most aware, and you have to do a little bit of self-auditing until you can bring it back in with the confidence that okay, it's time people actually are looking to hear all of my perspectives on something. A lot of humility.

That's such a great question. It's an interesting time because COVID took us on a certain journey in the real estate market. At first, it was very stressful for so many reasons, not just health but business practices, so much adjusting. We all predicted gloom and doom, but it turned out to be such an active market, so many people relocating, so much migration. It was such a positive time in the business, but almost so positive that it took down the level of rigor. People weren't training. Transactions were happening so quickly. Home buyers and sellers didn't need as much assistance, or it was a different kind of assistance, more about speed. If you kept that level of rigor up, you probably left opportunity on the table. Something had to give. Now we realize there were years in there. So many agents joined, and some more experienced agents just stayed the course and kept their practices. But I think we ended with a bit of a training gap. Some agents don't have the full training or all the skills they would have had if they had the experience of pre-COVID years. It's almost back to a lot more training getting back in place, making agents understand what they need to do in this particular market. There is more expertise and more specific work that needs to be done. That's where we're pulling everybody's attention back to today's market: training, coaching, and masterminding so agents can show their experience to others. Agents love to share their experience, so letting there be teaching within the network is really important.

I've really enjoyed it. It's been such a shift for me to lead leaders. It's so different from leading managers. Leading leaders, you've decided those are the people you've selected to lead the organization. They've got incredible skills, and it's like helping them work the thing they're so good at. It's not about things to improve upon per se, but how can you really fire up business growth through their skills? I think about a brand like ERA and Alex Vidal, who's leading that brand. He's an incredible leader who comes with quite a bit of background coaching agents himself and recruiting himself from his own brokerage background. He's turning that into a lot of what he's delivering to the network, bringing his own skill set as part of the value proposition, which is different than we might see in other brands. That's great. How can I empower him to do that and not worry about whether it seems like a lot of his time or different? Freeing him up and identifying his strength to be incredible. Each brand has so much different opportunity within it. Better Homes and Gardens comes with this incredible brand, the publication that people know. A few weeks ago, I was enjoying a quiet Saturday morning at home, and my four-year-old daughter had a Better Homes and Gardens magazine open, flipping through pictures. She can't read yet, but she was immersed in that brand. I sent that picture to Ginger, and she loved it. There's so much power in that brand. She's a marketer with an incredible background, so she's making that connection stronger, working some digital delivery into that connection. Each leader has strength, and it's important to support that strength. Sometimes our instinct is to go in the direction we're used to seeing, but it's actually about helping the person be their best thing.

I think it's really good to encourage people to change positions or take on stretch assignments, all those things that feel a little bit disruptive. But 10 or 15% of what everybody is working on should be their stretch, something that isn't easy or great for them. Almost everything we do should be focused on growth. Back to the beginning of the conversation, the whole team needs a simple message: if it's not growth, don't do it. There are some maintenance things we have to do, but when you're picking among too many priorities, pick the growth piece. Whether that's helping companies recruit, helping an agent focus on a new expertise, or per-person productivity for an agent, how do we make that person more productive? At a franchise level, can we look for an acquisition for that company and help support it? As a broader network, how do we bring new companies into the fold through our programs and outreach? It's really making sure the team is focused on growth, and then their own personal growth through that stretch assignment. It's business growth and personal growth, and we try to keep those simple cuts so you're not giving people too much to focus on.

I think it's just framing everything as opportunity. We do a really good job of hiring optimistic, skilled people who have the experience of many market cycles, so they're not surprised or confused by the cyclicality of our market or different challenges. They're mature leaders. Framing everything as an opportunity is really important. You could read headlines and think it's a terrible time, or you can reflect for a second that the level of relationships we have with our customers right now actually feels a lot like it did during COVID. At Anywhere, our family of companies, we feel like we're in such a great position. We hear from our customers that they're very happy about the work we're doing in Washington, the legal leadership we've been able to provide for them. We're doing advocacy work through our agents in DC. Those are leadership positions. When we reflect, while our brokerages and agents may be having to change up the way they're working or volume may be down, it's an opportunity to have strong relationships because we're doing the right things for them. They also have an opportunity to look at how we run our own brokerage. We have a tremendous amount of cost discipline, known for that in our company. That is in part designed to inspire them to have cost discipline, whether they're companies or agents. Where are you spending? Are you paying attention to things that are auto-renewing? Are you looking at your footprint? Do you need the exact office footprint you have today? We work to inspire our customers, franchises, and agents through our own business practices. Those are all opportunities. It's a little bit of that mindset. You don't want to be running in a full sprint all the time. This is a little bit of training time where we can step back and look at our operational excellence.

The top agents have been good at this, but they're doubling down on it. It's obviously sphere. It's being in touch with your sphere with a level of expertise. Customers today's home buyers and sellers are far more educated. They're not looking for things they already know. They're looking for the information you have that they don't have: a deep understanding of the local market, a deep understanding of the particular inventory in the community they'd like to be in, which homes are moving or about to move. Nobody can beat an agent's local expertise. They're looking at investment ideas and purchases for investment purposes. There's a whole higher level of information that customers are interested in. Agents are increasing their level of expertise, increasing their contacts, and making sure they're in touch with compelling information with their customers. That's really what's happening right now. They're trying to make sure, just like in every other business, that the interaction between a home buyer or seller and an agent is that exciting, interesting experience. You want that everywhere you go now. This business grew up trying to have a quiet agent experience. You've seen all those funny videos about how agents are running around crazy behind the scenes but appear completely calm for the customer, not letting the customer know they did anything. It's much more about expression of the work you're doing now, giving the experience and letting the customer know. The analogy of a duck, calm on top of the water but feet paddling quickly underneath, doesn't demonstrate value. That's one of the things we keep hearing as a priority as we come out of this March 15 D-Day from last month.

Real estate has always been about the consumer, making sure the home buyer or seller is best served and finding the community and home they're looking for. When you talk to agents in the business, they are 100% focused on the person, actually serving that customer. A lot of the conversations that happen get away from that today in the news or everything that's being discussed, but there is this genuine seeking of community. It's a very personal transaction. Home buyers and sellers want to work with somebody they can trust, who they can let into their personal needs and into their family. Working with a trusted agent has always been at the center of this transaction. People want to work with a real estate brand they know and recognize that has a good reputation. An agent with a great reputation, a brand with a great reputation, we've got that in spades here at the company. We have all these well-known and trusted brands, including Corcoran and Sotheby's. We have a large family of companies. People have an automatic reaction to our brands. Consumers have an automatic reaction when they see our signs on a lawn, our advertising, or an agent affiliated with one of our brands. That's meaningful because we've been around for a long time, providing advice, and we have a great reputation that has almost become automatic. We have to keep earning it every day. Our agents do that. Trust has always been important because I studied business management and organizational management. I spent all my college years thinking about how important it was to find and create a place where people wanted to work and felt connected. You spend more time with your co-workers than your family often. How could we develop culture? That's really why I started my career thinking about it as such importance. Trust and professionalism, that's where you want to work, who you want to do business with, how you want your workday to go. It's at the center of how we conduct our business. It's really everything, the cornerstone. If employees know they work at a place with a good reputation, they proudly conduct themselves that way. If agents affiliate with brands they know are trusted and professional, they become that. It's a full reflection. The people become the brand.

That's a really great question. We have a family of brands that all have unique identifiers within the brands and a little bit different positioning with consumers. They have a different draw, and there are different market aspects. For example, Corcoran and Sotheby's have a primarily luxury focus, while Coldwell Banker, Century 21, Better Homes and Gardens, and ERA do more of a full cycle of consumer, from a first home purchase all the way up to include luxury. They could be considered more mass market, something for all aspects of the home buying cycle. The differentiation of the brands allows for different focus in different areas of the country. We are a certain number of leaders with a certain amount of capacity, so we can focus on consumers to make sure we're hitting and attracting consumers from all aspects. There is a consistency though: trust and professionalism is a consistency across the brand that can attract agents and employees. Our overarching Anywhere brand, the family under which we operate, is really a big part of the employee focus. Anywhere is driving our strategy and helping us across all brands, but it's the mothership in terms of employment as well. It stands for certain values, winning a lot of accolades for the way we offer our work, which is a remote-first setup, and the way we bring people together through employee resource groups and the culture we've created. It's a big market, a huge number of agents and employees, and we want to attract and take care of as many of those people as we can.

They definitely are very much affiliated with their brand and have incredible brand pride. That's fantastic, and we love that. Yet in a moment like we're in today, when we're working on issues in Washington or legal issues, or looking at the NAR settlement, we're making sure we have them set up appropriately. We went out and were the first to make sure we had a settlement in this case to take care of them, get them from being distracted to being able to deliver their services. In those moments, Anywhere definitely resonates with them in a different way. They know they're affiliated and have these protections and the brightest minds working for them both at Anywhere and within their brand. But there's a ton of brand pride because the brands are run by distinct leadership teams with distinct marketing plans and approaches. They definitely associate that way. There's some room for masterminding. Sometimes we get people together across brands, showcase top agents, and let them hear from each other with idea sharing. That's been really popular. People love their brand, but they also love top performance. Agents are salespeople. This entire organization is about sales. It is a high-performing place. Anytime you can showcase approach with people or let them see other top competitors, they absolutely love that.

I absolutely agree with that. I've said it many times. The one unique thing about real estate is that we do come together at the closing table. We'll be sitting side by side with other brands at the closing table. From a consumer perspective, it is best when we operate together with the highest ideals. We're not looking for other companies to not be trustworthy or not be professional. We really want all brands to be successful in real estate because we will conduct business together nearly every time.

They may be facing more questions about how commissions work. It's interesting that for us, we do these transactions all the time, but for home buyers and sellers, they're rarely in them. They get in and don't really remember from maybe when they bought a house 10 years ago how the whole thing works. Agents have to come with that understanding. That part is not new to them, that the customer isn't doing this transaction frequently. What's new is that there's so much outside discussion. They have to take the time and explain what the benefits could be. If you're on the sales side, how we are attracting buyers. If you're on the buy side, what you may be expected to pay and what that's going to look like. A lot of this is still evolving. You and I might have a more detailed conversation in a few months as we start to see some practices get built out a little bit more. You have to be able to talk through buyer agency agreements and commission questions generally with confidence. Talk about what the selling agent is doing and what the buying agent is doing. More specifically for that client, what's it going to look like? How can you expect me to interact with you? What will you be hearing from me? How do I decide which homes I'm showing you? How do I go about communicating with you? When you're making a decision about an offer, really explaining why you think this offer is the right offer, telling the stories of the experiences you've had on similar transactions. There's so much to add. The agents know it. They just haven't had to have as much of a conversation. They're just going to have to take their time and explain and not feel defensive about it. We know we're in this business for the sake of the home buyer and seller. This is why we got into the business. We love housing, we love community building, we love what we do. I don't think we should be worried. I think we should approach it with the candor of 'This is why I get in and this is how I operate.'

I agree. I was talking to Jason Waugh yesterday, who's the president of Coldwell Banker the franchise business. He was talking about getting requests for information that actually wouldn't be helpful at all. Some of what people want to know, really small details on a certain case, and there are many cases going on. What would that actually help that broker or that agent with today? People are feeling overwhelmed and recognize they maybe need to be students, but they actually are already experts in the service they provide and how they conduct their business. They may not need to become legal experts in what motion is happening in a certain case. There's this feeling of needing to know everything. It's about guiding people back to what they really do need to know. Some of what people feel uncertain about is not actually the thing they need today to serve a customer.

We're doing it through a lot of communication. Change management is obviously the most important skill of any leader, especially today. Change is happening so fast. Every couple of years there's some dramatic shift going on. It's housing. We're in it for life, but it might change every three to four years. It's giving us some strain. It's really just thinking back to the agents' own strengths, reminding them of that. We're doing it through a lot of typical change management mechanisms: town halls, FAQs, written communications. People receive information differently, so you have to do some written things, some FAQs. Some people like to hear things as a form of a question. We're not trying to go too fast or too far. If you begin every communication with the understanding that we all have an obligation in this industry to put the consumer first, to make sure we're giving them fair representation with full disclosure and transparency, reminding people of the basics. That's what I did in ethics. I made sure we were considered an ethical company so I could remind people of that and we could conduct ourselves that way. It's a pretty simple thing through this: consumer first and transparency. That's the through line. When you're working on annual goals with the team, you say growth is the through line. You're trying to do a lot of stuff, but what are the growth pieces? I really believe that transparency and trust, building that for the consumer, is the through line to help the agents have the right mindset.

No, I agree with all of that. I think podcasts are fascinating. I have three children who are in their 20s, and they're podcast only consumers of information. Such a great approach. Social is really huge with agents. I definitely feel like that's a great way to reach and communicate with agents. They get a lot of information there. But it's a little bit of all of it. You can't pick one. Simplicity of those communications is really important.

Likewise. I love this conversation. You're the PowerHouse. This was great.