Ashley Pederson

PROMO REALTY
REAL ESTATE

Your Own Way

How did your business get started? I worked my way through college at a real estate office, and I remember telling the broker there that I wanted to be a broker someday, too. After college, I obtained my real estate salesperson license and thought a fun place to sell in Mid- Missouri would be the Lake of the Ozarks. In my early 20s, I started selling real estate at a family-owned brokerage. After getting married, my husband and I (both Jeff City natives) decided to move back and raise our family in this community. I started selling real estate and began building my team. I kept my dream to open a brokerage in mind and saw a continued need to put customer service at the forefront. Clients needed great advertising and professional photography for listings, help finding their dream home, and someone to walk through the entire home buying or selling process. I wanted to build a brokerage that really supports agents with top-notch training on the latest technology to advertise listings all the way and how to maintain open communication with clients to achieve our shared goals.

What’s been your biggest struggle and how did you overcome it? It is important to me to maintain a positive atmosphere because it helps create happiness and success for our clients. It took me a few mistakes to learn that good people are found, not changed. They can change themselves, but you can’t change them. I now have a lengthy process that I go through when hiring staff or agents, including several interviews and a personality test. I have a local business strategist that helps me facilitate this process so I can continue to hire people that will contribute to our positive team culture. I believe a rising tide lifts all boats.

What kind of culture exists in your organization and how did you establish it? Our team culture is both positive and customer-focused. We have morning huddles where we go around and say one positive thing in our life and one goal that we have for the day. This helps start our mornings off with gratitude for what we have and accountability toward what we want. How did Covid affect your business? Instantly, we shifted our strategy and decided to start virtual showings and virtual open houses. After making this change, we realized this is a really effective way of doing an open house. Homebuyers were able to tour four homes within the same open house hour without leaving their own homes. We also encouraged sellers not to take the first offer and instead have us hold the home available for showings to get multiple offers. This allowed us to get the maximum dollar and the best terms. For our buyers, we started going after homes not on the market. Our buyers would identify a neighborhood they like and we would send letters to see if any homeowners were interested in selling. We were very successful and kept our buyers from losing out.

Why did you name the business Promo Realty? When I started my business, I didn’t realize that finding the perfect name would be so hard! Thankfully, my cousin Steve Schafer has experience in helping new businesses establish names and was able to guide me through the process. After lots of brainstorming, we held a family vote to narrow our list of 20 down to one — giving us Promo Realty as the clear winner. To me, Promo has a few different meanings: 1. Pro Missouri — I am pro Missouri and all for supporting local. I wanted to make sure that our business name conveyed that as well. 2. Promotion — Promo Realty does an exceptional job with promoting our listings and staying on the cutting edge of digital marketing. Our goal is to get our sellers maximum exposure for their properties and maximum dollar for their sale. 3. Professional — Before starting my own brokerage, I had a real estate team at another brokerage. During that time, I received so many comments on the team’s professionalism and reliability. We have high standards and truly care about every aspect of our job and I think that shines through in the work we do.

What are your future goals? My goal for Promo Realty is continuous growth — both in growing the brokerage team and building our client list to serve more of the community. I think our service truly sets us apart, and I want to maintain a slow but steady growth that allows us to give our agents and our clients the time and attention they deserve.

How is community involvement important to your business? We really enjoy giving back. Some of the past community involvement we’ve enjoyed is ringing the bell for Salvation Army, working with United Way on their yearly Women’s United event, working on Habitat Homes, supporting the Red Slipper Event, and supporting Halo.

Any advice for those just getting started? Understand that you will make mistakes, but the businesses that are successful are the ones that learn from their mistakes and do not give up.