Even Chris Colgan would admit that turning a passion for sneakers into a stunningly successful real estate career might not be how it’s taught in business school. But that’s exactly what happened, and now the leader of the Chris Colgan Team, which just joined The Real Brokerage, has his sights set on even more growth.
Colgan’s aligning with Real brings 28 agents and expands the company’s presence across Northern Virginia and the greater Washington, D.C., metropolitan area. The team is on pace to close approximately $150 million in real estate transactions this year. He has created one of the region’s strongest brands by combining high-touch service with innovative digital marketing.
“Chris has built an exceptional business by embracing the future of real estate,” said Jason Cassity, chief growth officer at Real. “His ability to leverage social media and personal branding to serve clients and attract top talent aligns perfectly with Real’s vision. We’re excited to welcome Chris and his team and support their continued growth.”
Colgan, now 44, utilized the same content and community-building strategies he used to grow his sneaker and streetwear media brand. This audience has become a significant source of business for the team, generating buyers and sellers and expanded exposure for clients’ listings.
The sneakers and streetwear experience aided Colgan when the decision to move into real estate arose.
“It taught me how to build a media brand,” he said. “I learned how to identify what people care about, how to package information so they want to watch it, and how consistency and personality can turn an audience into a real community. Eventually, I started asking myself how to take everything I learned building a sneaker audience and apply it to real estate.”
Colgan is an open book when it comes to his life story, with his early-life struggles making what he has achieved even more impressive.
“In 2003, I dropped out of the local college because I was making good money selling homes,” he said. “I actually had a team that imploded around 2019. I wasn’t running it properly and it was totally my fault. I remember crying when the last person left.
“The next few years I had a big depression problem, spent time in Florida at a depression facility and came back realizing that I had to take control of my life. I really worked on myself personally. I was a solo agent for a year or two, then decided to start a team again. I met my wife at about the same time and was with PLACE Real Estate as well as eXp. I also went from 480 pounds to 270.”
In a Q&A with RISMedia, Colgan provides an inside look at how his career evolved, with advice for new agents on what it takes to succeed in the constantly evolving real estate industry.
Michael Catarevas: Detail your sneakers, streetwear and media brand.
Chris Colgan: I’ve always had a pretty insane Air Jordan collection, and years ago I decided to start posting about it on my personal Instagram account, @ChrisColgan. At first it was really just sneakers, new releases, streetwear news and things happening in that world. But I became fascinated with figuring out what made content work and how to actually build an audience.
That account eventually grew to well over 100,000 followers and opened up some incredible opportunities for me. I was featured by outlets including Complex, Nice Kicks and Sneaker News, interviewed by international media about streetwear, and invited to events throughout the sneaker industry.
With real estate, at first, I honestly couldn’t figure out how to make the content really take off. The breakthrough came when I started focusing less on traditional Realtor® content and more on development news, local stories, new construction, market changes and things actually happening around Northern Virginia and the DMV.
At the same time, I was consistently building YouTube. Today, our local real estate Instagram audience has grown to more than 85,000 followers, with the majority concentrated in the DMV and Northern Virginia, and our YouTube channel has close to 40,000 subscribers, again with a very strong local audience.
The biggest thing is that it has translated into actual business. I would estimate that roughly 40% to 50% of my real estate business now comes directly or indirectly from YouTube and Instagram. The sneaker world really taught me the media side of the business. Real estate gave me the opportunity to apply it locally. I don’t really look at social media as advertising anymore. We’re building a local media company around the real estate business.
MC: Explain the strategy for moving from one brokerage to another. How did you decide it was time to set up your own team?
CC: I had actually been watching Real pretty closely for a while. One of my good friends is Ken Pozek, who has also built a huge business around YouTube, and he and I strategize quite a bit. Through that, and just watching what Real was doing from the outside, I kept noticing things that caught my attention.
Eventually, I decided it was the right time to transition my team to Real, and it has honestly been a huge blessing for us.
I’ve been in real estate for 22 years, and I’ve built teams at different stages of my career. When I restarted this version of the Chris Colgan Team about three and a half years ago, I wanted to build something that combined traditional real estate fundamentals with media, technology, lead generation and agent development.
This year, we’re on pace to do about $150 million in sales with 27 agents, and one of the things I’m most proud of is that we run a profitable business. Volume is great, but I’ve become much more focused on what actually falls to the bottom line.
I keep myself on the same commission structure as the rest of the team because I want the business model to work without creating special economics around me. My long-term goal is to eventually build an organization doing $1 billion in annual sales, but I don’t want to chase volume just for the sake of saying we did a big number. I want to build something that is profitable, sustainable and creates real opportunities for the people who are part of it.
I consider the agents who work with me partners, not simply Realtors® on my team. Now that we’re at Real, I’m even more focused on pouring into the agents we already have while continuing to attract great people and build something much larger around them.
MC: What is your day-to-day like now?
CC: My days are packed. I’m usually shooting content for YouTube early in the morning, typically somewhere around 7:30 to 9. Then every morning from 9 to 9:30 we have a team huddle. From about 9:30 until noon, a huge part of my focus is conversations. I’m either calling leads, prospecting or meeting one-on-one with agents.
One of the things I preach to my team is that you need to have at least 10 solid conversations every day. And I don’t just tell them to do it—I will literally sit there and make calls in front of my agents so they can hear how I handle conversations.
The rest of the day is usually a combination of meetings, coaching and training. I like doing short, intense 30-minute training sprints rather than dragging everybody into long meetings. Since moving to Real, one of my biggest goals has been to really pour into the agents we have and help them become better at prospecting, conversion, appointments, content and building their own businesses.
The influencer side of the business has grown into something I never expected as well. I’ve been hired by Comstock to help promote projects locally, including its Marriott Residences project. I’ve worked with builders such as Stanley Martin and other major companies to help promote their communities, and I’ve had other local businesses approach me about influencer partnerships. I get invited to a lot of events because of the audience we’ve built. LIV Golf even hired me to help promote two of its Northern Virginia tournaments.
MC: What’s your recruiting strategy?
CC: Recruiting is another meaningful part of my day. A lot of agents discover us through social media and reach out about joining. Usually someone on our team will speak with them first, and then I personally interview potential agents to make sure they’re a good fit for our culture and what we’re trying to build.
Agents don’t just want to hear about a commission split anymore. They want to know: Who am I learning from? What kind of community am I joining? Can this group help me generate business? Can they help me become better at marketing, sales and building an actual company? That’s really what we’re trying to create.
At the end of the day, I’m still very much in the weeds with my team every single day. I probably look at our P&L almost as much as I look at our sales numbers. You can sell a tremendous amount of real estate and still have a bad business. I’m much more interested in building a great business.
MC: What advice would you give those starting out in real estate?
CC: The first thing I would tell a new agent is this: You’re not really in the real estate business. You’re in the marketing and sales business. I’ve been doing this for 22 years, and I’ve worked through multiple real estate markets. The agents who survive and build great businesses are the ones who understand how to consistently create conversations and opportunities.
If I were starting over today, I would block 9 a.m. to noon every single day for prospecting and conversations. My goal would be a minimum of 10 quality conversations every day. Not likes. Not emails. Not sending somebody a text and counting it as prospecting. Actual conversations.
Then I would take social media extremely seriously. I would clean up my Facebook so the people I’m connected to are people I actually want in my world—past clients, future clients, friends, family and people in my community. Then I would post what I’m doing.
Facebook is incredibly powerful because there are so many homeowners and baby boomers there who have tremendous amounts of equity and real estate needs. On Instagram, I would try to post something valuable about my community every single day. I would talk about developments, restaurants, neighborhoods, new construction, housing-market changes and things people actually care about.
I always tell agents: Try to become the Gary Vee of your town. Become the person everybody in your community sees and thinks of when they think about real estate. At the same time, I would work every lead source I could get my hands on—open houses, Zillow, Realtor.com®, Brivity, my database, internet leads—whatever opportunity I had. And I would have a great CRM and become absolutely relentless about follow-up.
I would also do as much training as possible and seriously consider joining a strong team, especially early in my career. I think the industry is going to become increasingly team-driven because it’s difficult for an individual agent to build all of the technology, marketing, lead generation, systems and support necessary to compete at a high level.
The other thing I would warn agents about is getting addicted to putting out fires. Real estate can make you feel incredibly busy. You can spend your entire day dealing with inspections, emails, paperwork and transaction problems and feel like you worked really hard. But if you didn’t create any new conversations or opportunities that day, your business may actually have gone backwards.
I wouldn’t stress about having the perfect website, logo or brand when I was starting. I would make sure everybody I know knows I’m in real estate. I would talk to people every day. I would create content every day. I would learn how to sell. And I would become known in my community. If you do those things consistently, the business tends to follow.
