The past several months have flown by like weeks, and our brand has come to life in so many different ways. For all of us, to launch a real estate brand from start to finish was a new experience. Fortunately, when you put the entire team together, we collectively had the right combination of experience, intelligence, energy, youth, appetite for risk, aversion to risk, creativity and guts. That part was no accident. I chose very carefully who would best be suited to create an international real estate brand like no other.
As a team. we challenged and continue to challenge ourselves and each other to ensure everything we create remains in sync with our core business values and brand promise. All of the team members have taken themselves far outside their comfort zone during this process, and everyone continues to have the opportunity to challenge the status quo by exploring areas few others have been allowed to go. Personally, I knew from the beginning it was going to be like this, and I wouldn’t have had it any other way.
Some of the things I obsessed about over the past several months included yard signs, avatars, scented candles, search engine functionality, website design, branded bags, our growth plan, business cards, our vision, party invitations, grass, Web 2.0, our blog, the list could go on forever.
We ate a lot of pizza and jellybeans. We drank too much coffee and Diet Coke. Our Blackberries buzzed 24 hours a day with messages from our extended team members from California, Des Moines, Washington, Toronto, Boston, New York and, of course, Parsippany. We came in on weekends, we stayed late into the night, we arrived early in the morning. We took the red-eye back from broker meetings to be in the office in time for the next meeting. We baked Better Homes and Gardens® recipes for prospective brokers. We laughed at ourselves, we worried, and sometimes got upset (but not very often). Some of us pulled all-nighters. A lot of people stepped up to the plate to help in ways I never would have imagined.
The thank you list is long and deserves a blog post of its own. Each and every person contributed in their own unique way. It is not uncommon to feel an emptiness after you have worked hard on something that has finally come to fruition. Events like a wedding, a big party, a conference… once the event has taken place you wish it wasn’t over. The difference for all of us involved in the launch of Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate is that this really is just the beginning.
In the weeks, months and years to come we will affiliate with many brokerage companies, we will continue to enhance our tools, our technology, and our services. We will add to our team. We will strive to exceed consumers’ expectations, as well as our brokers and their agents. We will listen. We will research. Our job isn’t over with the launch, it has really just begun.
Tomorrow, we begin our media quiet period. You will still hear from us, but we won’t talk about ourselves, the launch, or the brand until July 23rd. On that day, we will unveil what we have been working on for the past nine short months. Stay tuned… something we are very proud of is about to be born.
