A Farewell to BNP, and What's Next

Jan 31

Written By Brandon Nelson

Welcome to the final newsletter that I will author as the broker and owner of BNP Realtors.

What follows is in part a heavy message.

And in part, for me at least, it is an exciting and positive message.

I am going to share that Brandon Nelson Partners, after 8 ½ years in business, is closing its doors.

I am going to share the story of what led to this outcome, and where it leaves things.

I hope it is as informative to you, as it was helpful to me to write it.

Let's turn the page.

If you only have 30 seconds

BNP Realtors, the independent firm I opened in 2015, home to a dozen exceptional team members who ultimately comprised one of the most respected, highest-quality residential real estate firms in the Pacific NW, is formally ending its existence as a business in the next 7 days.

The agents, assistants, and admin who worked for BNP have already, or are this week, relocating their individual licenses to new firms to continue their careers.

BNP’s office at 1100 Lakeway Drive in Bellingham, certainly one of my most treasured properties to have owned and transformed, is under contract with a buyer and that sale will close on February 22nd.

That’s the quick, 30,000-foot overview of things.

Now, if you have more time, let me tell you the story.

A long rise, and then a turn

From 2015 through most of 2022, the local real estate market and the volume of sales BNP agents were conducting and being compensated for, was abundant.

Every quarter during that time, we were easily covering all the basic, fixed operating expenses that needed paying every month.

And we had a healthy enough margin to do a fair bit extra, like:

Provide a moving truck to our clients and the community for free
Donate $10,000 after our 100th sale, 6 years in a row
Host (insanely fun!) socials, parties, and movies
Supply race buoys and sponsorships to dozens of local sporting events and athletes
Make no-interest loans to our clients for upgrades before listing
Buy and remodel a beautiful building on Lakeway Drive

All of which became central to BNP’s legacy – a legacy I will never regret or stop being proud of.

But by January, 2023, with the increased expense of the new building and every other line item for that matter, all coming at the same time the entire market’s sales volume had softened, it was clear that a crack was forming.

BNP, following nearly 8 full years of profitability, was in a new weather system, one that came with a new financial profile.

I made a first-quarter move to offset the trouble, and chose to invest aggressively in new marketing channels to hopefully boost sales.

But I had chosen poorly, and that ended up being a waste of money.

By summer, I was focused on designing a new arrangement for the agents’ relationship with the firm, a structure that would allow them to earn more despite the downturn.

I called it BNP 2.0.

I introduced it on August 1st, along with a necessary string of cuts to many of the items I had formerly covered for the team.

I also put my own agent hat back on, and returned to working directly with clients to try to pad the bank account.

I had accepted by then that, for me, for BNP, just breaking even in 2023 would be perfectly acceptable – though even that was starting to look unlikely.

I began making the analogy to the team that running BNP was like piloting a 747.

In the good years, we were at cruising altitude with no turbulence, drinks were being served, music was playing, it was (financially at least) easy living.

But by late summer we had lost altitude and I could see the ground terrain increasingly clearly.

The drink cart was put away, the seatbelt sign was lit, and while the music was still on, it was turned way down.

At the helm, my focus was on safely flying the plane, for sure, but I also had a question looping over and over in my mind.

The question was: “Where can I set this thing down if I have to?”

Let me tell you, that is a humbling thought to have on repeat when the firm carries your very name, when that name is on the front and sides of a building in giant letters with 30,000 cars a day rolling by.

Those were some sleepless nights.

I want to pause here, having shared the depth of my stress at that time, and acknowledge the team at BNP for saying, “We see what you are trying to do, and we are here with you.”

Everyone had taken a hit to their sales, to their income.

Everyone was navigating the much leaner level of business opportunities that we were faced with, the leaner supplies and agent-support services provided inside the walls of BNP's office, yet no one was directly pointing a finger at me or blaming me for the challenges.

To be clear, it was far from the team culture we had enjoyed during the early years, but the collective loyalty was not lost on me, and it is yet another thing I will be forever grateful for.

During that time, I was consulting regularly with several other business owners, listening carefully and trying to process everything they shared.

One notable piece of advice was to set something of a rule, a hard stop, so I knew when it was time to just land the plane, versus cheese-gratering it over a swath of earth while refusing to believe we were actually on the ground.

The rule I settled on seemed simple enough: If the firm reached a point that it could no longer pay its own bills, it was time to close it.

I had started 2023 with about 5 ½ months of working capital in the checking account.

By December, I was down to about 40 days’ worth, with one or two sales pending, which is about 1/5th of what the firm needed to stay in the black.

Furthermore, the outlook for January 2024 looked eerily similar to January 2023, in which we had closed all of 3 sales.

The belly of the 747 was brushing the treetops.

Financial, and also personal

To be the owner-operator of a generally successful small business, perhaps especially a business that requires on-call availability as the core tenet of its existence, is to commit to two primary truths:

1) You are going to wear about 10 different hats on any given day.

2) You are going to switch those hats on about a 1-minute interval from the moment you wake up, until the moment you fall asleep.

If you know me, you know I am capable of living those two truths.

At least I had been.

Profitability is a hell of an incentive to keep hat-switching at that speed and intensity.

When profitability waned for long enough, however, so did my energy and desire to endure.

My imagination started to wander, envisioning simpler days, less moving parts, less hats...

And new opportunities.

Know what I had been doing professionally right up until June, 2015, when I became the leader of an independent real estate firm, voluntarily charged with making more right decisions than wrong in the categories of:

Hiring
Training
Management
Retention
Growth
Budgeting
Sales
Marketing
Advertising
Branding
Operations
Strategy
Compliance
Legal
Human Resources
Customer Service
Tech Support
General Contracting
Dispute Resolution
Sponsorships and Donations
Events
Janitorial
Truck Maintenance
Content Creation
Market Forecasting

Before taking on all that, I was a real estate agent. :)

As I navigated these challenging days, I found myself dreaming of getting back to wearing one hat, the hat of helping buyers and sellers get where they want to be, and letting someone else manage the other 90% of that list above.

And also of being a dad, an athlete, a chainsaw carver, the stuff that fills my soul, no profit necessary.

As 2024 began, with 30 days of cash left, one pending deal on the board, and the arc of my thoughts trending more and more towards a simpler future, I made the decision to set the plane down softly while we still had control.

I called meetings, met with the individuals at BNP to share my decision, and was relieved when everyone accepted it graciously.

To their credit, everyone at the firm had long since developed their own unique approach to the business and needed neither my leadership nor direct client introductions to sustain their careers.

Put differently: The BNP model had worked.

And without an inflow of new agents to become the next generation, I came to fully accept and be at peace with easing it down for a landing as a perfectly appropriate final step.

And that is exactly what we did.

So what’s next?

My career in real estate continues as an agent with Compass, here in Bellingham.

I’ll share in future newsletters all about Compass’s approach and why I and several others from BNP chose it as our new firm.

Suffice it to say that if BNP the firm could dream, it would have dreamt of becoming Compass.

I am excited to be more available than I have been in nearly a decade, and with vastly less hats on.

I am excited to continue the commitment to volunteering, supporting, and giving back to the community in many of the same, and many new ways.

I’m pleased to share that BNP’s closing has no adverse effects on my family’s home, lifestyle, or financial wellbeing.

I am humbled and grateful to have 100% accidentally timed BNP’s creation and journey during the greatest bull market in the history of housing, and to have aligned with a handful of the most enjoyable, most capable, hardest working agents and support staff I could have ever asked for.

A million thanks to all involved, on every level, with all my heart.

And with that story being told, with that chapter having closed...

Let me now invite you to continue forward with me, bringing everything I have done and experienced up to this point, including everything I just learned…

As we step, with enthusiasm and renewed energy, into the next chapter.

I'll see you again, my friend, in two weeks.

Cheers.