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Growing from a team of five to a team of 30 within four years is no mean feat; here’s how the husband-and-wife team behind a western Sydney commercial real estate agency have gone about it.
The co-owner and director of operations at Ray White Commercial Western Sydney, Ruby Rozental, was speaking on a recent episode of The WIRE when she acknowledged the importance of being “a business of attraction” to achieve growth in the industry.
Conceding it is “really hard”, she explained, “You already need to be the hot thing and the challenger in the market and bringing it to the other guys; so everything that goes into that marketing and actually doing the deals and getting noticed.”
Ms Rozental said, “That’s a big credit to Peter, my partner in the business, because he was able to do that from the beginning when we first hit the ground and all through COVID.”
As a result of really doing the deal, we just were able to attract really great people to us and build on them.”
“So yeah, the growth’s been fantastic. I didn’t expect it, but I’m happy to run with it.”
Working alongside husband Peter Vines, Ms Rozental said the pair “have made a very good partnership.”
Self-professing herself as a very detail-oriented person, the former lawyer said, “I like to do everything well and go to the next step, whereas Peter’s a very big-picture person and is always looking for the next opportunity in the business.”
“We do and have made a very good partnership in that respect because he sort of dragged me along to the next thing and I’m trying to perfect a thing prior. It works!”
But while she is quick to praise others, her own work in the business has also been instrumental in creating “a business of attraction”.
“The wonderful thing about running your own business, and it’s maybe its supreme egotism, but you get to create an environment that you would want to work in,” she reflected.
“For me, that’s about working in a place where we recycle, where we embrace all cultures, we enjoy not just embracing them, but their differences… We celebrate the different foods, the different languages, the wonderful parts of each religion and ethnicity and things like that,” Ms Rozental reflected.
“That’s really important to me. It’s important to me that every person is valued for their uniqueness, I guess.”
It goes hand in hand with the business’s philosophy, that “nobody gets to be the top jerk”.
Those values mean Ms Rozental is “the sort of mad social lefty running around trying to make everyone recycle and look after themselves and the environment. And we do a bit of charitable work in the mental health space, and we do talk to our staff a lot about when we partner with an organisation — why we do that and what that means to us personally, Peter and I, and others.”
“I want to create an environment where those things matter,” she pointed out.
“I hope that others would say there’s a lot of quality of perspectives and a lot of perspectives are embraced.”
“And also, I just bought a massage chair yesterday because one of my staff asked for it, so that’ll be in the office next week!”
It comes back to the emphasis Ms Rozental puts on knowing her staff.
“I’m always very interested in what makes people tick,” she stated.
“I hope they don’t mind me saying this, but each of my staff members — I’m interested in them as people and interested in where they’re going, and in their careers and what makes them tick, what motivates them.”
But it can’t be a one-way street.
“While I seek to know them, I ask them to know me in a lot of ways, so we do have some very frank and direct discussions both about what they want out of life and their careers.”
“I consider it part of my role as a leader in the business to help them get where they want to go, but also to have them understand that it’s a two-way street.”
Listen to the full conversation here.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Grace Ormsby
Grace is a journalist across Momentum property and investment brands. Grace joined Momentum Media in 2018, bringing with her a Bachelor of Laws and a Bachelor of Communication (Journalism) from the University of Newcastle. She’s passionate about delivering easy to digest information and content relevant to her key audiences and stakeholders.
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