By Annamaie Koehler-Shepley

  At Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices C. Dan Joyner, Realtors, the secret ingredient in the recipe to success is family.

CEO Danny Joyner, the son of the company’s namesake C. Dan Joyner, became president of the company in 2010, but has been in the business his whole life. From learning to tie his shoes from an agent in the company lobby, to painting houses and cutting grass in the summer for their family’s property management company, Joyner grew up in real estate.

“I think part of the reason that I always wanted to be in the business is because I was always a part of it,” Joyner said. “With my dad, I saw how they all interacted, and it always did feel like your second family.”

As a company with more than 400 employees across 11 offices, that familial culture didn’t happen overnight.

“It all started with my father. He started the company over 50 years ago, and he built a real family-based business: it feels like your extended family and everyone goes out of their way to help one another,” Joyner said.

In a way, for Joyner, earning the title of Top Workplace is a reflection of his father’s legacy.

“To me, it’s more important than any production goal that we reach,” Joyner said. “Culture is everything in your organization, and, to me, that’s really the most important thing because it drives everything else. If you’re happy with where you work and you enjoy where you are, you can be productive, so it’s one of the most wonderful honors that I feel we could receive.”

To help foster that family connection, employee birthdays and happy hours are frequently celebrated, and the entire company as a whole gets together for a big family-based event around Thanksgiving each year. In recent years, the company has been renting a big farm to accommodate employees and their families, complete with music, hayrides, and bonfires for the kids to make s’mores.

And despite the changes in the industry, from shifts in technology to aligning with the nationally-recognized Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices brand in 2014, Joyner says that core values of the company will never change.

“We’ve always been a very supportive company from the top down, and I think everyone in our organization feels that and wants to carry that on,” Joyner said.