It is a long path from small business owner to national company CEO, but it’s one John Runko has paved with strong foundations.
As CEO of the Independent Property Group (IPG) in Canberra, Mr Runko is responsible for implementing the strategy set by the board to ensure the business continues to grow. This is a vastly different role for someone who started their career as a hairdresser.
After succeeding in his trade, Mr Runko and his wife bought two hairdressing salons in their late teens. They were successful businesses that the couple sold to buy a small motel on the NSW south coast.
“I thought that I’d just about hit the jackpot because I was going to move down the coast with my wife, a couple of small kids and I was going to be a motel proprietor,” Mr Runko laughed, explaining it was feast or famine in the tourism trade. Summer was so busy they were working constantly and winter was completely dead.
“The biggest lesson from the hotel was jumping in blindly and just assuming that because you’ve run one business that you can run another business, and not really doing enough research into what something entails,” he added.
So they sold up at a small loss and headed back to the nation’s capital. While looking for a new home and experiencing poor service from real estate agents, Mr Runko realised where he needed to be and set his sights high. “These real estate agents were driving very, very nice cars, and the thought struck me that if these people can do as well as they have with that level of service, then I was reasonably confident that I could do at least that well.”
“I decided that I was going to work for Canberra’s number one real estate agency. And in the early days that was a company called Reg Daly Real Estate, which is effectively the company that’s evolved into Independent Property Group today,” he explained. IPG now spans real estate sales, strata management, property management, mortgage broking, accredited real estate training, real estate software and project marketing.
After interviewing with the managing director Mr Runko started as a sales trainee, got great results in his first year as a sales person and was soon promoted into junior management. He saw this as his opportunity to progress with a company he liked – and never left.
“What excited me as much as anything else was the organisation, the people within it and some of the visions that were in place way back then. We had a structure which allowed for ownership and shareholding opportunities for people within the organisation and that meant that you could have a much greater influence on the overall organisation and where it went and what it did,” Mr Runko explained.
His next role was managing one of the offices, where he really found his passion for leading others to achieve great things. “I did everything that I had to do to make sure that I put my office in the number one position at every opportunity available.” An example of this drive was thinking outside the box by offering furniture packages from Freedom with every new property sold. This made IPG stand out from competitors in a tough market back then.
Leading a successful team requires the same skills whether the team numbers a few or the 180 staff the whole group currently has. “A leader cannot ask their people to work to a standard that they’re not prepared to hold to themselves,” Mr Runko explained, saying the difference between a manager and a leader was that a manager ensured tasks were completed, but a leader takes a group of individuals and inspires them to achieve what they couldn’t do on their own.
Constantly striving for better won Mr Runko the position as IPG’s sales director, where he was responsible for the performance of all the sales teams, and within 12 months he had moved into the CEO role. Making that position his involved understanding the processes at all levels of the business and getting staff buy-in by asking everyone what they wanted to see from the brand.
One of IPG’s biggest attractions is the ability to own part of the operation, as Mr Runko mentioned when he joined more than 25 years ago. IPG has many shareholders who work within the broader organisation. These shareholders are not just high performing sales people, but include administrative staff, property managers and strata managers who “will do whatever it takes for the overall good of the brand”.
“One of the things that’s been fairly important for us is to provide a career path which provides a number of different options for people to take and for the people who have shown the loyalty, the passion, the skills and the dedication to the organisation, we allow them to take equity within the business,” he said.
Consistency in communication across the board is the key to running any business - from small to large operations like IPG, Mr Runko said. “If I go out there and talk about what’s happening, what my thoughts are, what my vision is, what we’re hoping to achieve and they’re getting the same message from the sales director, from the regional directors, from their office principals, then that means as an organisation everything is consistent.” To ensure the organisation runs smoothly and grows, Mr Runko surrounds himself with a capable team, the members of which each specialise in one aspect of the business. “It’s very important that I have the right team around me, and the right team around me doesn’t just involve the managers who effectively answer to me, but it involves having a team around me with all the skills that I need,” he explained, citing the board’s two non-executive directors and external chairperson, and IPG’s legal and accounting experts who between them, “have a range of skills that I need, that I can go to when I have questions to be answered”.