Susan Beach
CELEBRATING LEADERS
STORY BY KEVIN GREEN | PHOTOS BY KENNETH BAUCUM CONSULTING
LETTING PURPOSE LEAD THE WAY
Susan Beach is asked the same question probably three or four times a week: "Is retirement in your near future?"
FIVE DECADES THE WORKFORCE
It is no doubt a relevant inquiry. After all, Beach has been in the workforce for about 55 years — the past 29 of which were spent serving her local community in the real estate business through Keller Williams Realty.
According to the Social Security Administration, the Normal Retirement Age — also referred to as Full Retirement Age — varies from age 65 to age 67 by year of birth. Beach is due and more than deserving of retirement and the benefits that come along with it.
When the topic comes up and she thinks about her tenure, questions of her own penetrate her mind. "Am I looking that much older? Is it that obvious?" However, there is no hesitation in her voice when she answers with a firm “No”, and her reasoning has to do with her purpose in life.
Right now, that purpose revolves around her duties at Keller Williams Realty Advantage.
That isn’t to say Beach doesn’t enjoy the small things in life — cooking, walking, spending time with her family and traveling are among her favorite hobbies. She is simply passionate about her work, and withdrawing from that at this time would leave a hole she wouldn’t know how to fill.
“If I think about retiring, I'm like, ‘What am I gonna wake up and do every day?’” said Beach, who spent three years in production before accepting a position in leadership. “My role is very far-reaching, so I get to really do what I love and stay interested in what I do every single day. So I'm like, ‘Why would I retire?’”
BEFORE REAL ESTATE
Before getting her real estate license in December 1994 and joining Keller Williams in January 1996, Beach worked in the wholesale apparel industry with her husband for 26 years. The job kept her busy as she traveled back and forth between Oklahoma and Arkansas, doing business with all JCPenney stores in the area while her husband dealt with luxury retailers like Neiman Marcus in Oklahoma and Texas.
It was a fulfilling gig through her 20s and 30s, but as she continued getting older, the grind of constantly traveling started taking its toll. Walmart began its rise in the corporate landscape around that same time, changing the complexity of wholesale and retail for the foreseeable future. For Beach, that was another sign that a career change might be a good idea.
“The margins were going to be very different for these retail stores,” Beach recalled. “Who's the wholesaler going to cut first? The wholesaler is going to cut the middleman, and we were the middleman. It didn't matter how successful we were, we were still in the middle. We kind of anticipated that, so about five years before we took the dive, we knew it was coming; we knew we had about five years to go.”
A NEW DIRECTION
Beach and her husband looked into many different opportunities that could have suited their desired lifestyle, and the occupation that correlated with the least amount of financial risk was, of course, real estate. It took some convincing from her significant other, but she ultimately decided to join the industry. The rest is history.
“Truly, it was not my first choice,” Beach said. “My husband had to literally talk me into it. I just didn’t think I was going to like it.”
It takes courage to leave the comfort zone of a nearly three-decade career, but Beach was no stranger to difficult situations. Growing up the youngest of four children certainly had its obstacles, but it was those challenges and her relentlessness to overcome them that spurred her to a life of success and progress and the feeling of accomplishment.
“Hands down, I would not be who I am today without that because I had to be strong,” Beach said. “I had to be resilient. I had to pat myself on the back. If I wanted to succeed, I had to succeed because I wanted to succeed.”
And succeed she did.
FINDING PURPOSE IN LEADERSHIP
Beach carried her strong-willed mindset into adulthood, and her peers picked up on her positive and purposeful attitude. Her desire to be good at her trade put her in positions to make a good living, but there was still something missing until Keller Williams approached her about going into leadership.
Regardless of whether it was wholesale apparel or real estate production, she was good at what she did. However, she never thought about loving or hating her job — it didn’t matter as long as she was making money. That all changed, though, when leadership became a part of her everyday life, weaving itself into her very being.
“Once I got into leadership, and I say this even today all these years later, I should have been doing that all that time,” Beach said. “That's where my passion is. I'm really good at sales, but I can't say that I love it or I hate it; it's a vehicle. But I love my leadership position.” Beach is responsible for four pillars within her leadership position — growth, productivity, profitability, and culture — and each has its own requirements.
Growth entails hiring the right people for the company, and productivity directly relates to the talent chosen for hire. Meanwhile, profitability ties in with the Keller Williams economic model and making sure the people brought into the company produce at a high level. However, perhaps the most important of all the pillars is culture.
“The culture is really what pulls it all together in terms of having a productivity-specific environment that people can really thrive in and be transparent and authentic with each other and come from a place of contribution, not scarcity,” Beach said. Even with all those responsibilities, Beach is only touching the surface of what she hopes to accomplish in the coming months and years.
A GROWTH MINDSET
She is already in charge of seven offices ranging from the central office in Midtown to other communities like Glenpool, Sand Springs, McAlester, Coweta, Okmulgee and Bristow, and those were opportunities she created for herself. Nothing was given to her. Furthermore, according to Beach, her branch is number one in the city, in production and closed volume.
“That’s a big deal, and it’s a big deal because I made a conscious decision that there’s opportunity all around me,” Beach said. “All I have to do is go seek it out.” And with so many opportunities still to be grasped, it is no wonder Beach has no plans to retire. She is focusing on not only her future, but the future of real estate in Oklahoma as well.
If she keeps pushing for the betterment of the industry to further improve service to the community, the legacy she leaves behind once she does finally retire will be everlasting and beneficial well into the future.
“That is profound to have been with a company as long as I’ve been and to still feel as passionate about that company as I did when I interviewed 26 years ago,” Beach said. “I think there's any number of things I could do, and I'm sure something will come up.
“I'm always looking.”
