Tyler Davis, ALC is the CFO of SVN | Saunders Ralston Dantzler. In this episode of In Our Expert Opinion Real Estate Podcast, Tyler joins the show to share some company growth strategies for new markets. The conversation explores business succession planning, expansion strategies, and the importance of hiring and training the right people. Tyler also emphasizes the significance of education and knowledge-sharing in the industry, providing valuable insights into the world of real estate and business growth.
Below is an excerpt from the interview. Listen above for the full podcast.
What does the future look like at SVN | SRD? We’ve been in business for 28 years now, and we have a bright future as a company. We've been doing a lot of work to refine who we are, what we do, how we do it, and really to make sure that this company is in business for the next 28 years.
When you have to talk through long-term planning for how the company survives and thrives, they’re not always easy conversations. It's hard to do.
The sooner you figure out a plan, the better. To their credit, Dean [Saunders], Gary [Ralston], and Todd [Dantzler] want this company to continue in the future. Dean's got kids and son-in-laws who work here, and so does Gary, so there is a kind of pride in what they've built. Now, the pride part is in a legacy and what this looks like over the next 20 or 30 years.
We've grown as a company in a lot of really good ways, and I think there's a lot more growing to do both externally and internally. We really want to make that a focus and be better for our clients, better for our advisors, and better for our staff. We're really working hard to bring all that to fruition this year.
How is the company growing? Our goal is to provide value to advisors, to inform clients and customers, and for them to have a great experience buying and selling property.
From a growth standpoint, it's twofold: it's it's geographic growth, but it's also internal growth. We want advisors who come on board to us to have more opportunities than where they were. If they're new to the business, we want them to come in and have a bright future and unlimited potential here.
It's internally how we help our advisors be more productive, but it's also how we get better as a company. How do we grow in different markets and different regions? Some of that is outside of the state of Florida, and some of it is inside. Where do we not have enough coverage? Where do we have too much coverage?
The commercial business is a lot more focused on your geography. You've got to be a master of your market because there's so much clustered with it. The land stuff is a lot more spread out when it comes to knowledge. It's a lot more about territories. It's a lot different, and you can cover a lot bigger ground because there are just not as many properties as there are in commercial where you have to be central.
What do you want to improve? One of the feedback items that we heard a lot was, “Let's have better training.” I think we have good processes and training for how to use our systems, but it is not that. It's, “Let's have technical training on real estate.” It really got me thinking about how we create a knowledge program here for new and existing advisors. How do we utilize a lot of the knowledge that we have with our advisors and with our strategic partners?
I've been working on a plan, and I think we're going to call it Saunders U. We want this to be an onboarding platform and a knowledge bank for information. For example, I've written out probably 30 or 40 courses that we want to record. We want to have knowledge checks, and have this be interactive for our advisors.
There's a lack of resources, even for people who have college degrees, to train people on how to do what we do. I want to make that easier, so we're committed to building out this program to help not just new advisors but also existing people.