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Tom Rhodes taught his children at a very young age to tell the truth, value reputation, and put family first.
Those principles and seven others became Rhodes Rules, the principles upon which their real estate group at Compass is built.
The Rhodes Group includes Tom and three of his five children — Dan, Burton, and Thomas — and two non-relatives who have been adopted into the family, Neil Broussard and Nina Sachse.
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Twenty-one members of the Rhodes family just returned from vacation and wasted no time getting back to work. In fact, they were closing deals in between family meals in the Texas Hill Country. That work ethic, after all, is spelled out in Rhodes Rules.
And we get it, this is a Father’s Day story, but patriarch Tom Rhodes tells us there’s one reason his children have such strong moral and ethical character.
“I give 110 percent credit to [their mother] Suzy Rhodes,” he said.
Taking Care Of Business
Thomas Rhodes, the second-to-youngest Rhodes child, remembers an early incentive to doing good business and putting the client first.
“When I was a kid, we had two phone [land] lines at the house,” Thomas explained. “Line one was the family phone; line two was the business phone. People would call and say, ‘I’m trying to reach your dad about real estate.’”
The family patriarch missed most of those calls because, well, he had five kids. So he told the Rhodes children he’d give them 3 percent of what he earned if they brought him the number or a name of a person he’d not already been working with.
Young Thomas happened to answer when the buyer of a $2.2 million home was on the line.
“I think I bought a bass guitar,” Thomas said. “That was a lot of fun.”
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Now 44 years old with three sons of his own, Thomas has worked in real estate in some form or fashion since 2000, following Rhodes Rules even when he wasn’t working alongside his dad.
“I love helping people,” he said. “I grew up watching my dad working deals. I think the best part of real estate is putting deals together, especially when they’re difficult to do. When you win a deal for your client, it’s super rewarding.”
Brother Burton Rhodes, the middle child, was the first of the sons to join the family firm. He went to work with his father after his job with Anderson Technologies in San Francisco came to an end and the dot-com craze crashed.
“There were 10,000 guys like me looking for a job,” Burton said. “My dad had always told us we need to find something we enjoyed doing, and we’d never have to work again. One hundred percent, we had a choice of whether to go to work for him. I told him I’d do it just temporarily while I looked for another job. That was 21 years ago.”
Burton Rhodes has been listed among D Magazine’s Best Real Estate Agents in Dallas every consecutive year since 2005.
“I never thought I’d be working for my dad,” Burton said. “Back in 2000, it was just me and Neil Broussard working out of my dad’s house. I was watching my dad work as hard as I’ve ever seen anybody work in this business. He would tell me I was going to do exactly what he did. We woke up at 5 a.m. and would go to SMU and swim laps. At 6:30 a.m. I was ready to take a nap, but we’d cold call for two hours. It was a true sales job. It’s like training with an expert runner. They’ve been running marathons for years. He taught me about being motivated, creating a schedule, and doing the work that needs to be done.”
Family First
Tom Rhodes grew up in Highland Park and is now semi-retired. He said he’s proud of his boys Dan, Burton, and Thomas, and what each of them brings to the business. Dan is the administrator, Burton is a computer expert, and Thomas runs the sales team.
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“They get along with people, respect their clients’ wishes, and listen to what people say. That’s probably their greatest asset, that they’re really good with people,” Tom Rhodes said.
His own father went through the Great Depression and worked hard.
“He had it tough. He was very frugal,” Tom Rhodes said of his father. “Back then, dads were good dads but you didn’t see a lot of them. They never went to events. Now you go to a 5-year-old’s soccer game and there are 15 or 20 parents there. My dad said, ‘You can do anything you want to as long as you can get there on a bike.’”
Tom Rhodes learned the honor code that one does not lie, cheat, or steal, or tolerate those who do, while he was a student at the Virginia Military Institute.
He started working in real estate in 1976, made his first big commission — six months’ salary on his first sale — and told his bride Suzy he’d died and gone to heaven.
“This can be a really fun business,” he said. “There’s nothing better than somebody coming to you and wanting something, then you match exactly what they want. Everybody walks away from closing feeling great.”
Father Knows Best
A theme among everyone in the Rhodes family, even the “bookend” children — eldest Courtney and youngest Patrick — who do not work for the family business, is that family comes first. Real estate can be a cutthroat business, but the Rhodes Group has each other to lean on. They treat each other well, and that practice extends outside the family, earning them a reputation as some of the best in the business.
“Sometimes when there is a family involved, there’s a level of trust,” Burton Rhodes said. “Perhaps it has to do with how we’re all in this together as a group, and we’re going to be all in it for you. We want to make sure we do right by the people we work with. My dad says there’s nothing more important than our reputation.”
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Thomas says whenever the family gets together, they talk about real estate deals “or tease my dad.”
“He claims to be semi-retired but he has this farm and he keeps buying houses,” Thomas said with a laugh. “One of the coolest things about my dad is he would knock on doors. He taught me how to do it. You get a lot of no’s when you’re knocking on doors, but it’s OK. There’s $20,000 behind one of these doors. You just have to figure out which door it is. I went from Abbott to Harvard, knocking on doors. My speech was, “Hi, my name is Thomas Rhodes. I was just curious if you know anyone who wants to sell their home.’ One man answered the door and said, ‘I want to sell my home.’ I didn’t know what to do after that, but I ended up selling the home. Every time I don’t know what to do, I call my dad. He’s done thousands of deals, so he knows what to do.”
Rhodes Rules
So what are the remaining Rhodes Rules that the family lives by?
Talk less, listen more; love what you do; be nice, do your homework; know your neighbors; play hard but play fair; ask how you can help.
It’s easy to see how those principles are emulated in the day-to-day business of the Rhodes Group.
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“He’s so big on reputation, and he drilled that into us,” Thomas said of his father. “The most expensive thing you’ll ever lose is your reputation, and you’ll never get that back. He taught us that an acceptable answer is ‘I don’t know.’ He taught us to keep our mouths shut. He’s not big on bringing people into a home and showing them where the master bedroom is. They can figure that out. He’s really good about stepping back and not being the center of attention. That’s what we try to emulate.”
Burton, too, calls upon Rhodes Rules in his daily life. While the brothers are “extremely candid” with one another at work, they don’t let anything get under their skin long-term, he said.
“[Real estate is] a hard job. I think when you get good at it, it becomes an incredibly easy job,” Burton said. “You’re just trying to solve a problem or help people out. My dad has always been our true north. He’s less involved now than he was, but at some point, you’ve taught your kids everything they need and you can take a step back. He’s truly the core of what we stand for.”