HIGH 'CALIBRE' ADVICE

WHEN Henry Ford famously quipped 'coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success' he must have had Justin and Alison Hagen in mind.

Married for seven years and business partners for five, the dynamic duo launched Calibre Real Estate in 2009 and have grown the company to employ 30 full-time staff and last financial year turned over $2.2 million nearly double than the previous year.

The couple moved from Sydney to Brisbane in 2006 to purchase their first home and an investment property and says they found the process to be confusing and stressful.

Although they had no prior real estate experience they wanted to fill a void in the market, offering 'straight forward' real estate management and residential sales consultancy.

An aircraft engineer by trade, Justin says they began managing their own properties and projects including small developments and renovations and as a result were approached by friends and family to assist with their investments.

The company has expanded to include two offices in Brisbane and a marketing office in China that aims to sell property to Chinese investors.

"Brisbane is not really a well know city to the Chinese investors, they are looking more Sydney and Melbourne," says Justin.

"One of my agents has been flying over there once a month to educate them about why Brisbane is a great city and get it on the map in terms of investment.

"We have been getting some good sales through, it is a work in progress but we are definitely going to build more in the future."

Justin says Calibre Real Estate has a strong focus on sustainable growth and attributes the success of his business to a strong, passionate team.

"Overall our success has been brought by putting on a great team and surrounding ourselves with people that want to be involved in the business and have a real passion for real estate and wanting to succeed," he says.

"We spend a lot of time on training our staff - my sales team still gets trained every Friday for an hour and a half, it doesn't matter how good they are or if they are just beginning, everyone sits in.

"I think it is really important to build that team environment because then everyone reaps the rewards."

Justin adds that he and his wife are the perfect team and says the beauty of the way they work is in their different attributes.

"Alice is very systematic and driven through processes and I am a big thinker, I have ideas and we balance each other out quite well," he says.