Ryan Rodenbeck had a vision for a new kind of real estate brokerage. One that would use marketing and technology “to bring something to the table that no one else was doing.”

Here’s the story about how Workplace became a key part of that bold new vision.

Ten years Ryan founded Spyglass Realty in Austin, Texas. But while his agents took the city’s property market by storm, Ryan was focusing on something else, too.

Something bigger than listings, sales, and revenue. “At Spyglass, we focus on the company culture. We want to be unique. We want to have a family atmosphere. We don’t want to lose our identity.”

Great teams need great tools

As the business grew, the challenges mounted. “When you’re trying to grow from a small- to a medium-sized business, a lot of people don’t realize how hard it is to get up that hill,” says Ryan.

“As a business owner, you’re working days, nights, and weekends. You’ve put blood, sweat, and tears into your work and you’re trying to find the perfect work/life balance.”

The way to become more efficient was ‘with a great team and great tools’

Tools for better efficiencies

For Ryan, the answer was obvious: he needed to get more efficient. More efficient with his time. More efficient with his focus. The way to do that, he realized, was “with a great team and great tools”.

The team was in place. The tools weren’t. And finding the right one was more complicated because of the nature of the real estate business.

“It’s not your typical work environment. Some people work in the office but most of them are constantly on the move.

“We needed a tool that could be versatile, could be nimble, could be everywhere all at once. And we needed something that was easy to use."

The breakthrough came after Ryan read an article in an industry magazine a little over 12 months ago. “I read about a company that had adopted Workplace. I immediately signed up for the free trial and everything just fell into place,” he says.

“The first thing I noticed is that it was very similar to Facebook but without any of the distractions. Being able to put our team into this standalone system that was completely ours was great.”

“Not just for the training and the communication – it helped us create a company culture that we just didn’t have before.”

Using Workplace to Transform training, communication, and collaboration

While Ryan admits that Spyglass is “finding new ways to use Workplace almost every single day”, he identifies three use cases that have already transformed the business.

“Number one is agent onboarding,” he explains. “Before, we would have a new agent come into our office and go over every different aspect of the technologies we use. That would take a lot of time.”

Ryan estimates that the new onboarding process saves around 32 hours of agents’ time every month.

Ryan estimates that the new onboarding process saves around 32 hours of agents’ time every month. “The second thing is that we put every new property listing into a group,” he continues.

“I add my office manager, I add my marketing assistant, virtual assistant, and every single thing we need is in that group.”

“For instance, when I go to a listing, the first thing I’ll do is a Live video of the property so that my marketing assistant gets a glimpse at it and my stager can get ideas before they go to an appointment.

“If I’m talking to a client that needs to tell me something, instead of putting it on another system I add that to the group so everyone involved with the transaction is up to date on the latest information.”

“In one word, the difference that Workplace has made for our company is ‘efficiency’.”

But because he can do it from anywhere, and agents will see it in real-time through Workplace, it means no more waiting around to get everybody together in the office.

Ryan reckons it saves around four hours a month by removing unnecessary team meetings. “In one word, the difference that Workplace has made for our company is ‘efficiency’,” says Ryan.

Enabling agents to do what they do best

Geoff Perfect, Global Director of Small and Medium Sized Businesses at Workplace, looks at the bigger picture. “We’re really proud of the impact that Workplace is having across the real estate industry,” he says.

“We see businesses from the UK to Canada to Australia who are transforming the way they work together. We’re really just removing a lot of the pain from the selling process with better tools for communication, for collaboration, and just empowering agents to do what they do best, which is close deals.”

Culture. Camaraderie. Education

Ryan’s message to the rest of the industry is simple: “I would say that if you’re a real estate agent and you have not looked at Workplace, there’s a whole world of efficiency, company culture, camaraderie, and education that you are missing out on.”

“It’s going to allow me to achieve what I call ‘scaling to freedom’. And I’m very happy to have it.”