This week, a new unscripted series that follows Toronto, Canada’s luxury real estate market premieres on Amazon Prime Video. Showcasing the real-life scenarios that realtors face each day, Luxe Listings Toronto, which is available in more than 240 countries worldwide, focuses on three successful agents who are conquering the city’s competitive market. Toronto’s iconic neighborhoods, awe-inspiring skyscrapers, and expansive luxury properties make for one of the fiercest real estate markets in the world, and the stars of Luxe Listings Toronto expertly navigate the high stakes pressure of securing multi-million-dollar listings.

Brett Starke, one of the experts featured on Luxe Listings Toronto, represents the drive and ambition of a younger generation looking to get ahead of the competition in the real estate market. He runs The Starke Group, an on-the-rise venture based in downtown Toronto. With his philosophies based in leadership, community building, accountability, and supporting charitable causes, Starke’s team is highly reviewed and in demand, and under his leadership, the company has gained a reputation of being well connected, knowledgeable, and intuitive.

Here, Starke discusses the strategies, obstacles, and triumphs behind the brand.

ICON/REFINED: How do you ensure your brand stands out in a crowded market? What differentiators, trends, and insights do you rely on to get noticed?

Brett Stark: We ensure our brand stands out in a crowded market by focusing on relationships and our core values over fonts, colours, and images.  We believe a brand is how you make other people feel when they work with you, not the fonts and colour scheme that go along with it.    

To get noticed we focus on being active community members, and helping all of our friends, family, and clients to the maximum of our abilities while supporting their dreams, their businesses, and their goals. We focus on others, not on ourselves. That’s how we get recognized.    

We believe the point of marketing is to be remarkable.  Anything we put out, we think, Will people remark on this? We try to stay away from the standard, Just Solds and Just Listed posts and focus on creating remarkable content.

We also really live our three core values: community, accountability, and charity very publicly, so that when people are looking for the right realtor for them, they see how much we focus on others, not ourselves. 

IR: What are your goals with having the opportunity to showcase your business on Luxe Listings Toronto?

BS: A requirement to be on the TSG team is to write down your goals and review them daily with an accountability partner on the team. In fact, that is one of the major reasons we were given this opportunity. We had a written goal for years to get featured on a TV show.  

My goals from this show are the same goals that I had before being involved in Luxe Listings Toronto:

1. To have the #1 real estate team in Canada 
2. To have the #1 online real estate training program in Canada

Our team goals, that we recite on a weekly basis, are exactly the following: to be the biggest and top selling team in Canada with the best in class training, culture, and tech and the lowest fees for our agents in the industry by September 11, 2025.

Brett Starke is the President of The Starke Group (TSG), a thriving real estate venture based in the heart of Toronto. His unwavering commitment to excellence has helped him master the art of approaching real estate with a team-oriented attitude.

IR: What challenges does your industry face, and how does your business overcome them?

BS: We face constant challenges. My personal motto is Adapt and Overcome, which I have stitched into the inside of the collar of every single one of my suit jackets (yes, really). 

I don’t even know where to begin with challenges, we face a new one almost every day. The reason being a real estate agent even exists in the first place is because buying and selling properties is very complex and these complexities come with a lot of challenges and obstacles. I always tell my team, the only easy day was yesterday. 

Instead of focusing on problems and challenges, we focus on how to overcome them and how to move to that next level. Our team just had our record Q1. The team members with the least success focused on outside noise such as interest rates, politics, lawsuits, news, etc. These things are outside of their control. The most successful agents focused on providing their database with value, while tracking their progress and actions.  

To help navigate the challenges of the outside world, members of TSG are asked to record a daily gesture of kindness in their daily workday trackers, and this helps to keep our agents in the right mind space.  

IR: What advice would you have for an entrepreneur who’s looking to establish a successful real estate business? 

BS: Don’t quit. Everything you have ever wanted is on the other side of quitting. Adapt and overcome. 

Luxe Listings Toronto is available for streaming on April 26, 2024 on Amazon Prime Video.