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Scott Agnew hasn’t actually gone out and
sold a house in about five years, he
admits, but he is one of the most
successful Realtors in Arizona. And now
Utah, for that matter.
Agnew has emerged in recent years as a
kind of “Mister Fix-It” for the Keller
Williams International real estate
empire, building up a once-troubled
franchise in Utah at the request of Gary
Keller until it is now one of the
company's top 10 offices in the United
States and Canada.
Agnew’s Warner Road office in the Kyrene
Corridor also is among the firm's top
producers. In fact, it’s the
fourth-highest-producing office in the
Keller Williams empire and the number
one Keller Williams office in Arizona,
according to Agnew.
Agnew owns five separate offices that
operate under the Keller Williams
banner. Two of them are among Keller
Williams’ top 10 offices anywhere -- the
Tempe office (Number 4) and one in
Midvale, Utah, a suburb of Salt Lake
City.
The Midvale office is rated Number 10
among more than 540 Keller Williams
offices in the USA and Canada.
Agnew plans to open several more offices
over the next few years.
Agnew got his start in real estate in
1978 after graduating from the
University of Arizona with a business
degree and an interest in real estate.
Not surprisingly, he spends his time
these days managing his interstate
operations instead of selling individual
properties.
“Patti, my wife, is the one who sells
the houses,” he says.
The key to his success? “I believe it’s
my ability to recruit the best
leadership talent,” he told Wrangler
News. “I’m a recruiter, a talent
recruiter. I know how to align myself
with the top people.”
Scott Agnew, who recently turned 50,
calls himself a “strategist.”
“My thing is all about developing
people,” he said. “I seek to recruit and
train the very best talent in the real
estate industry. That’s my quest. Every
day, my interests center around those
activities.”
It’s not a talent he learned in his
college courses on real estate. He says
his real textbooks came after graduation
when he devoured bestsellers like Dale
Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and
Influence People” and other self-help
books for business types.
Today, Agnew looks for several key
attributes in his teams.
First, he considers matching values. In
Agnew’s case, that means putting God and
family ahead of business.
Then he looks for “awesome
problem-solving abilities.” Also, a
clear track record of success. And,
finally, “a behavior match for the job …
they have to be wired in such a way that
they want to get tasks completed quickly
with people.”
Agnew went into real estate as soon as
he graduated from college. But he
detoured into what he calls “the
corporate world” for a few years.
That’s where he learned that sometimes a
handshake is just a handshake and
sometimes it’s a dependable promise.
To summarize that story, Agnew says he
had a handshake agreement with the owner
of a business to the effect that that
Agnew would build up the business in
exchange for a share of the ownership.
“I worked there for a couple of years
and really had a large increase in
business,” he said. “The owner and I had
a handshake agreement but when I went to
get my ownership that was promised me in
the handshake agreement, everybody
forgot about that discussion.”
“At that point, I walked out of his
office into my office and the telephone
rings. It was a friend of mine from the
University of Arizona who said, ‘I’m
starting this real estate company, do
you want to come over?’ I said I’ll be
right over. Just as one door closed,
another one opened.”
“I went there part-time, and within 90
days, I became the president of that
company,” he said. “In the next couple
of years, we grew it to be $100 million
in volume.”
Agnew (who is no relation to the
controversial former Vice President
Spiro Agnew, by the way) has been
building up real estate offices ever
since.
In 1997, Agnew and Texas-based Keller
Williams found each other. “We were the
first Keller Williams franchise in
Arizona,” Agnew said.
The franchise included the Tempe
territory. So it was my job to come here
and start the Tempe franchise.”
“At the very same time, Keller Williams
had an office up in Utah that was losing
money. I went up and bought it” with the
encouragement of Gary Keller, he said.
“He’s the whole reason I joined Keller
Williams,” Agnew said.
“That’s what propelled me into Utah.
Now I own the rights to sell all the
rights to Keller Williams franchises in
Utah,” he said.
Again, it was a handshake deal, Agnew
said.
“It was nothing more than a handshake
deal. It was a promise. It was, ‘Fix
Utah, Scott, and we will see where that
leads us’.”
By 2003, Agnew had opened the Midvale
Keller Williams office to capture the
Salt Lake City market. That office now
is the top Keller Williams office in
Utah and one of Keller Williams’ busiest
anywhere.
Agnew, himself, spends only about six
days each month in Utah.
The Utah market is growing, however, he
says, and “our full potential is well
ahead of us.”
Keller Williams now has five franchises
in Utah, and Agnew owns three of them.
He plans to triple that to 15 Keller
Williams offices within three years.
Agnew anticipates owning six of those 15
Keller Williams Utah offices.
“I’m going to pick where I’m needed,
where they need the leadership. I’m just
going to go in where I feel I need to go
to make sure growth happens.” |
