PEOPLE
AGENT PROFILE
Upping the ante It has been said that money won is twice as sweet as money earned. For Jordan Boyes, the number one agent in Saskatoon, that couldn’t be further from the truth
AFTER GRADUATING high school at 17, Jordan Boyes made a beeline from his tiny hometown of Kelvington, Saskatchewan to the province’s biggest city, Saskatoon. It is a path taken by many a prairie boy, but few end up making the same splash that Boyes has. Now in his seventh year in the industry, Boyes is in charge of his own growing brokerage and is the City of Bridges’ number one agent. Boyes says he always knew he would be involved in real estate in some capacity, but his first job saw him working at the central warehouse for Co-op, where Boyes worked his way up into the shipping and receiving department. At 19, Boyes first floated the idea to his family and colleagues that he was thinking of getting his real estate licence, but he was told unanimously that he was too young. He then did what anyone in that situation would do: he started online gambling. Boyes was turned on to the lucrative possibilities of playing online poker by one of his Co-op co-workers, who had begun working less and less because he was making more money at home. “I got quite intrigued by it,” Boyes says. “I taught myself how to play and a few months after that I quit as well. I did that for four and a half years.” Boyes had considerable success as a card shark, but in 2010, when the online gambling
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industry began looking less stable, he decided to finally make the switch to real estate and place his next bet on himself. Boyes obtained his real estate licence and was hired by a local independent brokerage, Hallmark. Within his first two years, he was Hallmark’s top producer. Boyes credits his rise to putting in countless hours of hard work: “I’d phone up agents and volunteer to do their open houses or their running around if they had a sign call or a buyer they were too busy with. I just made sure I was available.” For six months, Boyes was managing six open houses every weekend. In May 2015, after Boyes had strung together another three years as Hallmark’s top agent, the company was acquired by Royal LePage. Not sensing an advantage in having a national brand name behind him, Boyes decided to form his own company, Boyes Group Realty.
“I feel people, more and more in this industry, are choosing the individual – not the sign on the lawn. It’s what you teach your agents and the service they provide their clients that keeps people coming back.” Boyes has made agent education the linchpin of his brokerage. He is especially adept at mentoring new agents who, like Boyes, may be new to the city or starting from scratch. “That’s where my advantage is,” he says. “I show them from the ground up how to create a database, how to work open houses, how to cold call, how to generate leads online. I’m a good trainer in that aspect because I started from nothing and taught myself how to do it.” Another lesson Boyes hammers into his agents is, no matter how good business is today, to constantly be prospecting. “The most important thing is to work even harder when you’re busy so that funnel of
COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT Because of the success of Boyes Group Realty, Jordan Boyes and his wife Brigitte have been able to devote considerable time and money to a number of charities in Saskatoon. When she is not helping with the brokerage, Brigitte spends many of her days volunteering for the local chapter of Ronald McDonald House, which provides lodgings for the families of sick children. The couple also provides assistance to patients working through physical rehabilitation by providing funds for the Saskatoon Health Region’s First Step Program. This year, Boyes Group Realty was the head sponsor of Bloom – An Evening of Love, a gala event that raised money for Saskatoon’s neonatal intensive care unit.