Meet Stephen Berg | Realtor

We had the good fortune of connecting with Stephen Berg and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Stephen, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
In my past career, I always felt constrained in the sense that when I wanted to make a change or improvement to the business, there was always “red tape”. There was always some sense that “don’t fix what isn’t broken,” despite sometimes when there was an obvious opportunity for improving the bottom line. Since I left college, I was driven to improve every business I have been a part of, and early on when I worked for someone else, it was really difficult to make changes that I saw as beneficial. Therefore, I began to think about how I could work for myself. I wanted the freedom to do business how I saw the most effective way to do it, and if I needed to make a change, I could do just that. I wanted to remove the barriers that I saw as a hinderance to even greater success. I have always been a very independent person, even as a kid with sports. The sports I was drawn to were skiing, skateboarding, sports that had quite of independence to them. I loved the concept of being able to go out and work on getting better at the sport, independently. Working for yourself is no different, you have to just wake up, create your own schedule, and make it happen. Your success is one hundred percent dependent on you, and your drive to improve.

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
What sets me apart from other Realtors is my education and past experience in construction. Both have been great assets in helping clients make informed, educated decisions. I studied Real Estate Development and Finance at Colorado State University. While in school, and for quite a few years after, I flipped houses. I made money on a few houses, but more importantly, I lost a lot of money on some flips. I learned so many invaluable lessons flipping houses, especially when it didn’t go well! That, coupled with my education, has really helped position me as a Realtor with real world experience, and I can pass those lessons along to my clients to help them make the best decisions possible.

I also spent ten years in the wine business, making and selling wine. Selling wine is much easier than selling Real Estate, but it’s similar in that it’s a product that everyone loves. The difficult thing is solving what someone actually needs. Wine is a little easier in that regard, but Real Estate is a complicated, large transaction, with a lot of moving parts. It’s often a stressful process. So I try to take an approach of being calm and calculated with every decision, in order to overcome the anxiety and stress that my clients can have. My job is to be an advisor, and give the client clarity on they decisions they are making. I am proud of the feedback from my clients that despite anything that is thrown our way, I remain calm, and always focus on finding a solution. At the end of the day, everyone wants a win-win situation, so I do my best to get to that outcome.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
I am a city-person at heart, I love downtown Denver. My wife was a chef and I was a winemaker in our past careers, so we are still very passionate about food and wine. We spend a lot of time exploring the city and all the great restaurants Denver has to offer. My favorite neighborhoods for food are Lower Downtown (LoDo), and River North (RiNo). The shear amount of restaurants, and great bars in town is immense. If a friend came to town, my first thought would be, “where are we eating?!”

We also like spending a lot of time with our two boys at City Park, the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, and the Denver Zoo. We are big animal lovers and love what the Denver Zoo is doing around the world for animal conservation.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
My colleagues at 8z Real Estate have been unbelievably supportive in my journey. My team leaders, Lauren Gates and Ryan Carter, the CEO Lane Hornung, and my team members, Melanie Madden, Sergio Nazzaro, Luke Corbitt, and my Transaction Manager Catie Johnson. I also have to give a shoutout to my wife Leah, who is the rock of my family. When i started as a Realtor, we were broke, living with the in-laws, and Leah was pregnant with our second child. As a family, we knew there was a lot of risk and the failure rate was high for people starting a career in Real Estate. Leah was unbelievably supportive and continues to be to this day. This is a difficult job in that in order to be successful, you need to work all day every day when you first begin, and I could not have been able to do that without the support of my loving wife Leah

Website: https://stephenberg.8z.com/

Instagram: @stephen.berg.realtor

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVJ2BKrmx1u5fD2rsWsJbAg/videos

Image Credits
8z Marketing, and the rest are mine.