Profeta a natural in role of Chief Happiness Officer

Nick Profeta learned at an early age how a smile can light up another person’s life and also be a great personality trait for being in business.

His trademark smile has served him well in his role as Chief Happiness Officer for RE/MAX Real Estate (Central) in Calgary.

Profeta started at RE/MAX Real Estate (Central) in 1992. In those years, the real estate company had an insurance agency – home and auto – and Profeta worked as a salesman in that division. When the insurance part of the company was sold, Profeta became personal assistant for RE/MAX Central’s owner Pat Hare and did that for about six months. In January 1995, he got his licence and became a realtor.

 

About 10 years ago, Profeta read a book called Delivering Happiness which was written by Tony Hsieh, the founder of Zappos, the shoe company, and Profeta met him in Las Vegas at a RE/MAX convention.

“He’s one of these business entrepreneurs. Made a lot of money off the Internet. He sold shoes online with Zappos and I think he sold it to Amazon for millions and millions. He started another startup and sold it to Microsoft. But he was all part of that culture,” says Profeta.

“I grew up in the restaurant business. My first boss when I was 13 years old was Peter Livaditis (of La Caille) and he has a beautiful smile that would light up the dining room when he was working the room.

“And my dad . . .  had that same kind of smile that would light up the job site working construction. It’s just the kind of smile that would attract people to him. And Peter and dad always told me ‘keep smiling, keep smiling’. And I kind of did. Then I got into sales and started selling real estate and started winning the awards. Becoming number one. I read Tony’s book and when they introduced him onstage his title was Chief Happiness Officer. Truly I never heard of it before.”

As soon as Profeta returned to Calgary he called up his business card designer and asked him to put the title on Profeta’s business card.

“When I took the title of Chief Happiness Officer, I gave it to myself. I told Pat, the owner, I was going to do it. He was cool with it. I looked at it and said ‘Pat we have three other managers, so instead of me being senior manager or VP of operations or general manager’ I wanted something a little bit different. I still hold the manager title but I added Chief Happiness Officer title to it about 10 years ago,” explains Profeta.

So what does Profeta see as his purpose in being a Chief Happiness Officer?

“RE/MAX Central was already successful. We had already achieved the status of the number one RE/MAX office in the world. I said what could I do to bring a little bit of the culture that already exists to the forefront,” says Profeta, who studied Business and Computer Science at the University of Calgary and Mount Royal College.

“To kind of look at what Walt Disney did or even the original WestJet culture kind of whistle while you work and try to keep happy. I thought I’d start delivering that to the office. So everything I did always had a focus going back to the people, to the relationships, to engagement. Everything we did we always looked at it what can we do for our 250 or 300 agents, that we have, keeping them happy. It’s not a hard job because when you have successful people they naturally exude happiness and strength and relationship building. They engage. They’re all in.”

Profeta, who is married to Heather and has two children, was born and raised in Calgary and is proud of his Italian heritage.

He earned his membership to the RE/MAX 100% Club and RE/MAX Hall of Fame. He also received the Calgary Real Estate Board “REALTOR® of the Year” Award for 2012 and most recently was awarded “Manager of the Year” from RE/MAX in 2016.

RE/MAX Central has been the top-producing single office globally for RE/MAX for the past 19 straight years.