COLUMBIANA, Ohio – After stepping away from real estate brokerage management for four years, Rick Clark and Sean Carney returned in 2021 with their new company, Clark Carney Realty Group, and a new philosophy.
The company’s new growth plan is centered around a smaller, highly qualified group of agents who are focused on delivering the highest level of service, Carney says. The strategy is to grow internally with a select group of agents instead of continuous agent recruiting and turnover.
“Most companies with large overhead for franchise fees, national company branding and even local companies who are constantly recruiting newly licensed agents need to keep a constant churning of new agents to feed their compensation structures,” Carney says. “Our last time around, we were focused on growth with tremendous success in volume and sales, but at the sacrifice of quality service to our clients and also lost sales for our most qualified agents.”
The company’s new structure focuses on a smaller group of 15 agents, including the two owners, Jean Cusick as broker and Mitch McGuckin in a leadership role.
“We are always available to all our agents to help with anything they need,” Carney says. “We’ve found this helps everyone, leadership and agents, to be more focused and efficient, allowing us all to deliver an overall better experience for everyone involved – clients, agents, title and lending companies.”
Carney says he and Clark were surprised by the early success of the new company in 2022. Clark Carney Realty was first in the city of Columbiana and fourth in Columbiana County in the number of transactions.
“Real estate sales is an extremely competitive business. There has been a mad dash in recent years to brand brokerages as different and offer unsustainable compensation structures,” Carney says. “We have chosen to simplify and focus on the clients. This is already paying off and will only compound as our reputation grows.”