A crucial skill associated with being a successful real estate agent is the ability to deftly handle all kinds of issues that arise. Colibri Real Estate is the nation’s premier school for aspiring agents in great part because it has done just that, not only surviving but thriving when the pandemic forced learning institutions to pivot regarding their methods of teaching students.
“We have all been learning how to do things differently,” says Jennifer Hoff, president of Colibri Real Estate, “and have evolved to meet student needs where they are. We believe we’re taking education and learning to a new level.
“Our goal is to surround the learning experience with technology solutions and amplified learning examples so students feel like they’re prepared to take the real estate test, pass it and get started on their careers,” she adds.
These are exciting times for Colibri Real Estate, which is part of the Colibri Group, an education company headquartered in St. Louis and comprised of elite brands that provide learning solutions to licensed professionals.
Hoff points out that there are three types of students who come to Colibri Real Estate to become agents. The first are those who want to start a new career loving what they do, who want the flexibility to make their own hours. The second are those who see real estate as a pathway to a better financial future, who want to be their own boss. The third group consists of those who have jobs and simply want to supplement their income.
“We want all of them to know they can do this on their own time,” Hoff says of Colibri Real Estate’s various offerings, including livestream, a virtual classroom and in-person classrooms, too. “We want them to know that our results get people to pass the exam and have wonderful careers. We teach what’s tangible and practical, so they’ll learn the right skills to be successful.”
The leadership team at Colibri Real Estate includes experts in differing areas of the business who are leading the company forward.
Ensuring that students get the most from their time with the company falls in great part to Brian Betts, chief experience officer, who says student feedback is crucial to how he strategizes.
“At the macro level of the professional education space, a lot of companies treat this as a transactional or almost commoditized product,” he says. “We’re focused on evolving our experience to be more of an experiential product in which we have a lifetime relationship supporting our customers.
“We value their time and effort. We emphasize the three Es for what we want our classes to be: effective, efficient and engaging.”
Colibri Real Estate focuses on the end-to-end experience for feedback.
“The journey is not just the final step,” stresses Betts. “We measure all points of it with surveys, listening posts, forums and Q&As embedded into the learning experience to make sure we’re serving customer needs.”
Online and in-person options
As Head of Content, Product and Innovation, Andrew Robinson is tasked with improving the success rate of the school’s students, both in becoming licensed real estate agents and being successful in their careers.
“It’s a rigorous focus on the value of our content, the efficacy of it, and creating new tools to help our students prepare for a career in real estate,” he says. “And also pushing the boundaries on real estate education broadly, blurring the line between classroom work, a traditional experience that you would have in any primary or secondary education forum, and creating an experience that’s differentiated in an asynchronistic world.
“With COVID-19, we introduced a livestream product offering, which is a way for students to have synchronistic experiences with instructors, and we created new content to offer that program. If you think about sitting in a classroom, we brought that to students in an online forum.”
Robinson’s preference is for online and in-person courses to dovetail seamlessly.
“We offer asynchronistic education to students in pretty much every state,” he says. “I’d like them to be able to jump into a class when they have challenges and jump out when their schedule doesn’t allow it so they have more flexibility.”
Regarding who’s doing the teaching for Colibri Real Estate, that falls under Gina Pendano’s purview. As director of instructional talent, she recognizes major changes since COVID-19 arrived in regard to who does what and where.
“One of the big shifts in instruction is that everyone used to want to teach in person, but now, in a post-pandemic era, we’re seeing instructors wanting to teach livestream,” she points out. “Livestream is how we want to grow. Instructors are still able to see and interact with students, and they like that aspect of teaching. Real estate agents are social beings, typically extroverts, so livestream provides that without travel. There’s greater flexibility for agents and brokers who contemplated teaching in the past but didn’t have time for it because of travel hours and such. This widens the market for people interested in being instructors.”
Just as Betts uses customer feedback to gauge overall satisfaction with Colibri Real Estate, so too does Pendano when it comes to teachers.
“Instructors are the face of the brand no matter how hard the rest of us work on the back end,” she says. “If students in a class don’t like the instructor, then our brand is tarnished, and they’ll write reviews about it. That can ruin a company’s image, so we’ve put a lot into hiring great instructors and continuing to develop and audit them. You can be a phenomenal real estate agent/broker, but it doesn’t mean you’re going to be a phenomenal real estate instructor.”
For Hoff, Colibri Real Estate’s future is nothing but bright. She scoffs at the thought that the real estate industry is in for anything other than some short-term choppy waters, confident that what Colibri offers will continue to be in demand.
“Right now, you see a lot of gloom and doom about real estate,” she concludes. “I think it’s important to understand the difference between what’s happening now and what happened in 2008 with subprime mortgages and how the real estate market drove that recession. Currently, the market is impacted by high mortgage rates and a housing shortage.
“So why is now a great time to become a real estate agent? Because this is the time to learn how to be successful so that as interest rates come down and the housing shortage begins to lessen, you’ll be able to take advantage of the boom that will occur. And for those looking to supplement their income or do something they love, that will be an awesome time,” concludes Hoff.
For more information, visit https://www.colibrirealestate.com.
