Growth
House calls
How Stephen Shapiro grew WEA to $1 billion without falling into the slovenly habits of corporate bloat
By Mike Cottrill
Smart Business Los Angeles | April 2009
Page 1 of 3
The oddest thing happens when you call Stephen Shapiro.
He picks up his phone.
Something similar happens if you e-mail him: He responds within minutes.
It’s not just the salesman in his blood; it’s part of the basic philosophy on which he and his partner, Kurt Rappaport, founded Westside Estate Agency Inc. No assistants, no secretaries. Just the basics, please.
Wouldn’t you do just the basics if in one decade you could build your company to $1 billion with four employees, two offices and about 50 independently contracted agents?
Shapiro, WEA’s chairman, has seen how the big real estate agencies do business, and he’s not impressed.
“I don’t think I can be delicate,” he says. “They basically have sales managers that are failed salespeople and they follow a book of rules and become lemmings to the corporate entity and they have to do A, B and C in order to get to D, and everything is very predictable. They have training programs that teach you how to fill out forms as opposed to working with us, where we teach you how to make deals. We are the last of a dying breed of salespeople.”
So when Shapiro and Rappaport opened their high-end agency, they didn’t want to build up a 10,000-employee representation of corporate American bloat. Already the two premier agents in the area — with a client list filled with people you wish would come to your birthday party — they focused on high-end sales and nothing else. They refused to dip their hand in any other businesses and built off a foundation of staying in constant contact with their clients, helping every employee become immediately productive and never forgetting where they made their money.
Here’s how WEA built up its business without being held back by bloat.
