However, with respect to Ms. Morrisette, the only thing ironic about “Ironic” was that none of her lyrics were actually ironic.
Rain on your wedding day isn’t ironic – it is inconvenient.
A black fly in your chardonnay isn’t ironic – it’s just gross.
I can, however, tell you what is truly ironic – and that is a CEO standing on the stage of the Silicon Slopes conference, giving a speech about building authentic company culture, just 6 hours after laying off some amazing employees.
Now, some of you might be thinking, “that isn’t ironic … that’s hypocritical.”
Perhaps – and I did consider canceling my presentation today – but I’m not too proud to say that, in addition to those wonderful people, just hours ago I also stepped down as CEO of Homie.
When Dave asked me to speak with him three months ago, I had prepared a completely different speech for you.
I won’t tell you I’m not saddened or that it hasn’t been a rough day. I am sad, and it has been rough.
However, the decision to step down was not actually difficult to make.
After all, it is the only way I could authentically keep our cherished company values and culture.
I want to take you back to 2003. I had co-founded Entrata and was serving as its President.
While working the insane hours of a tech start-up founder wasn’t a lot of fun, it was exhilarating.
We were consistently growing in Utah and Idaho. We had plenty of deals coming in, and revenue to follow. We were featured on the cover of Fortune Small Business Magazine. All signs were pointing to success.
It was at that time that a massive potential client came to us and asked for a very specific feature. Now, we didn’t have that feature yet, but her account would be worth nearly 30x what our biggest client was worth at the time.
I promised we could deliver, and gave her a 90-day timeline.
Then, I made a massive mistake. With just weeks before the feature was due, we were not even close to meeting the deadline. I fired off a terse email to my partner. It read, “are we going to keep stringing this lady along, or are we actually going to build this tool?”
The problem was, when I hit “send” I realized I sent it not to my partner, but to the client.
Needless to say, she was furious, and with every right to be.
It occurred to me in that moment that all I had cared about was “value,” or, in this case, “money,” when what I needed to actually care about was “values.”
From that point on, I dedicated myself and our organization to a set of core values.
12 years later, I co-founded Homie.
Some would say I was crazy to do it. After all, we were trying to disrupt one of the most fiercely protective industries in America.
Within a few months we began receiving cease and desist letters.
We also had investigators from the Division of Real Estate scaring away clients and home builder partners.
Competing realtors used fake reviews to take our online ratings from 4.6 to 2.2 stars.
Our own association was conducting continuing education courses bashing our company with our own Homie realtors present for the course!
I was even threatened with 6 months of jail time for having attorneys as the primary real estate representative. We now have licensed agents.
These kinds of attacks were brutal for my morale.
Each hurdle had me questioning what success would look like.
However, because we had established our Core Values and shaped our company culture around those core values, we began to thrive.
Although we have literally 20,000+ competitors in each of our target markets, are slandered on a continuous basis by our own trade organization, and have had to jump through endless regulatory hoops, we have consistently met our mission to “bring equity and change to real estate, for good.”
You can see our mission being fulfilled as we have become the largest listing broker in Utah, and helped our customers keep over $140 million in the process.
Now, while you can look to our technology, marketing, or other innovations, what has really been the driving force for our success is in keeping our core values.
Those core values are Disruption, Loyalty, Humility, and Balance.
Disruption
We start with the why.
We bring power to our colleagues and customers through technology and innovation.
We don’t believe you need permission to be a leader.
Loyalty
Our colleagues come first.
By doing so, we are able to obsess over producing value for our customers.
Humility
We check our ego at the door.
We value progress over perfection.
We believe in being grateful.
Balance
Our work is part of life, but it isn’t life itself.
We give our full effort at work, and at home.
We don’t focus on getting things done – we focus on getting the right things done.
So, with everything sounding so positive, why did I have to do layoffs and make the choice to step down as CEO, eliminate my salary, and take an unpaid position on the Board?
Well, even though we have had success, and even though we have held tightly to our core values, we have been facing some intense headwinds.
As you know, after a lengthy bull real estate market, the bears have come out of hibernation.
Not only do we still face the onslaught of resistance from what some call the “Real Estate Cartel,” backed by a trade organization that is twice the size of any other in the US, but the real estate market itself has been thrown into turmoil.
Interest rates are nearly triple what they were in recent years. Add to that the beginning of a recession, and you’ve got an uphill battle.
That doesn’t mean I don’t feel up to the challenge. In fact, I feel more confident in our mission than ever before.
Still, I made a commitment to follow our core values, and the only way I could do that was to hand over the reins to the new CEO, and my co-founder, Mike Peregrina.
Why?
If we are going to continue our vision of disrupting the real estate industry, we also need to disrupt the status quo at Homie. Mike is the right person to do so.
If I am going to claim a core value of “loyalty,” I have to be loyal to as many Homie colleagues as possible. That means eliminating my salary so we can retain as much top talent as possible.
It isn’t easy to step away. It isn’t easy to acknowledge that the organization needs new leadership. It definitely isn’t easy to be on this stage giving this message. However, you can’t claim to live the value of humility if you are never willing to sacrifice your own position even when it is better for the team.
Let me be clear. This isn’t a happy day for me. I didn’t wake up today excited to step away from Homie, and I would have done anything to keep from doing more layoffs.
In the end, however, the path was clear, and it was made clear by asking two simple questions: First, am I leading according to our core values? And second, do the core values point to the need for a new direction.
The answers weren’t fun, but they were clear.
And, in reality, the core values made the decision for me.
Many of you in this room are just starting your companies. Many of you are in new leadership positions at established companies. Many of you are future entrepreneurs.
We all want to think we are in control of everything at all times, but all of us instinctively know that isn’t always true.
It wasn’t true when I started Entrata. It wasn’t true when I started Homie. It isn’t true today.
We know a recession is looming and none of us can guarantee our companies will be untouched by an economic downturn.
It’s incredibly difficult to control our forecasts and projections. You can’t control whether or not Facebook or Google changes their algorithms or changes their pricing which could have an immediate impact on our cost to acquire clients.
You can’t control new or changing regulations. You can’t control a virus, a conflict, or a personal struggle.
There is so much we can’t control.
But what you can control and influence is your company culture.
You can create a strategy of values that shapes your work environment.
You can demonstrate vulnerability, giving people the green light to be authentic.
In fact, it isn’t just that you can, you must.
As leaders, when we accept the title and the paycheck, we accept responsibility and accountability.
We have a moral obligation to create and adhere to core values for ourselves, our colleagues, our organization, and our customers.
If you don’t have core values, start your first draft this weekend. Get your team together and fine tune them to be aligned and authentic.
If you already have stated core values, spend the weekend truly pondering whether your values are aligned and authentic. If they are, lean in. If they aren’t, begin immediately to change your core values from cute talking points, and transform them into the most powerful driving forces in your company.
In closing, I’m grateful for my time as CEO and for having co-founders that were willing to lead companies with a strategy on culture. I’m leaving Homie’s day to day operations Mike Peregrina’s capable hands.
We will continue to change real estate for good. There is more work to do and we won’t quit until it is done.
There is one message I hope all of you will embrace: growth of character is greater than the growth of business. Living a life of values is greater than monetary value, and building an organization that focuses on vulnerable authenticity will allow everyone to come as they are, human and broken, and leave with personal success to take on any endeavor. Thank you.
