Her Story
About Melanie
I've been with Berkshire Hathaway for 10 years now, and I'm currently a Business Development Director, a role I've held for about 7 years. I meet with HR Directors to learn about their hiring, onboarding process, and any talent retention or recruitment challenges they're having. Then I customize a package for them with our complimentary concierge services. When I first started 10 years ago, I began in commercial real estate for a year, then moved into corporate relocation, which has been the most rewarding part of my career. We provide a red-carpet level approach for employees relocating to the Tampa Bay area, literally checking off every box for any real estate component. If someone is interviewing to relocate here, we'll provide area tours, help with finding a house, assist their spouse with finding a job through our career placement agency partners, help navigate schools for their kids, arrange temporary housing, and coordinate moving services through our partnerships with the world's top four van lines. We manage the entire piece completely complimentary - we don't charge for these services. Of course, any new employee that finds a home with their trusted real estate advisor pays the usual real estate transaction commission. We provide a very white glove level service which helps to enhance many of the companies throughout Tampa Bay. My day-to-day involves a lot of corporate calling both on the phone and in person to meet individuals who don't have this component within their employee benefit offering. I also do a lot of networking in the Tampa metro community, doing B2B sales and meeting C-suite executives. I enjoy meeting new individuals and listening to their process to learn ways I can help assist them with our services and resources. We have 15 offices in 6 counties and close to 750 sales agents, so when someone gets a win, everyone can share in that.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Melanie
01What do you attribute your success to?
God receives the glory for everything in my life. He has guided me in cultivating and building meaningful relationships and partnerships. God brought certain people along my path which helped in many ways to overcome challenges during times like Covid, when there were limiting networking opportunities. I also attribute my success to my mentor, and the President of our company, Casey Bryan. She has helped me throughout the years to be innovative, and analytical to our concierge approach, and has always been very supportive. I think learning from past failures and being coachable goes a long way for any person on the path toward success.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
Listen and have empathy. This is an easy one for me because I love meeting new people and seeing how I can help. When you talk less and listen more, you can usually find an opportunity for where you can lead a helping hand to someone that has a significant challenge.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
Build relationships and come from a natural, organic presence. Don't try to be something you're not - just be yourself, and meet with as many people as you can. Always have a value proposition and have that one thing that really does help to differentiate you from everyone else, so that you make yourself invaluable and memorable.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
I think the biggest industry disruptor would be AI right now, and so really differentiating yourself from the competition in some way is the most meaningful impact you can have with any client or any person within your book of business. For me, that would be just building relationships with people and listening and understanding what their pain points are, and then determining how we can customize our services to make sense, to make their life easier. That's paramount, that's the number one. That's one thing that AI can't really touch, is that human touch, so I think that's where we have the opportunity to really separate ourselves from AI, is to just continue having that personal one-on-one relationship with individuals. With real estate, it's really incredible because of all the apps now. You can just hop online, and it's tough for an individual to be loyal to their real estate agent if there's not some kind of value add that the agent's providing. Fortunately at Berkshire Hathaway we provide a strong platform of resources and services that AI can't touch. At the end of the day, people are going to work with those they have a relationship with and trust.
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
Loyalty and trust are the two most important values in both my work and personal life. Without either, it's tough to have a relationship. Loyalty and trust are the foundation for any good thing worth pursuing.
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