Background:

Corefact was an early innovator helping real estate agents gain listings and sell homes through direct marketing, offering both print products and digital services. They had a long stretch of rapid growth for many years, much through direct sales to agents, but increasingly by partnering with large real-estate brokerages.

As the business grew into a midsized company in 2015, the four partners each led an area of the business to keep up with growth.

Our work with Corefact started in 2015 and is ongoing.

Challenge:

In 2015, the growth rate began to slow from 35% to single digits 15 months later. The leadership team struggled to focus on all the priorities necessary for growth and execute them well.
Client needed:

1. Better prioritization and focus
   • More structure in choosing priorities for its software development arm and other new innovations as well as a process to protect those priorities from distractions until they were fully executed.
   • Mitigate the boom/bust cycle
2. Better choices about investing profits in good times to maintain more consistent growth of the company over time and avoid growth slumps.
   • Reducing the seasonality endemic in the real estate industry such that staff could be retained year-round and all quarters would be profitable every year.

How We Helped:

1. Set up a planning cadence and active management of the plans.
   • Formalized the new initiative, ideations and planning processes to be written and more team-based, with tougher prioritization.
   • Established more management team role clarity and responsibilities and stepped up the regularity of management team meetings.
2. Created board-level process and facilitated meetings to allow all owners to be better aligned.
   • Created and maintained an ownership-level dashboard looking at risk and performance. Facilitated eight owner meetings per year, discussing the business, strategy, owner’s needs and concerns, and balancing investing in growth with shareholder returns.
3. Provided guidance on investing in growth: at times advocating for managing the timing and at other times advising to hold back to manage liquidity and profitability.
   • To drive continuous, systematic growth, we guided the introduction of new leaders and process well in advance of need.
   • Coached three departments through introduction of career pathing.

Our work has focused on these Growth Drivers:

• Developing Talent
• Leading with Teams
• Planning and Managing to Plan
• Finance Capability

Results:

Corefact’s revenue has tripled since we began, and its valuation estimate his risen 6X. The firm’s revenues continue to grow in the 30%+ range.

“Our work with Mastering Midsized has allowed us to take our market knowledge and expertise and convert it into faster and more sustainable growth. Our finances have never been stronger, allowing us to self-fund our new plant on the East Coast. Rob and his team challenge us to build the management systems that keep producing results.”
– Chris Burnley, CEO, Corefact