Stuart Collier Commits To A Higher Level of Service

Stuart Collier tries to hire people who are better than him.

The good people with whom he’s worked have been a consistent theme throughout his successful career.

“I’ve always had really good people around me,” Collier said. “I’m really grateful for that.”

Now, the licensed real estate broker and owner of Collier & Associates has 10 “very high quality” real estate agents working for him.

A lot has changed for Collier since 2011, when he was named to the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal’s Fast 15 class. The former nursing home administrator said he always loves to take on new projects.

“I’m in a totally different position now,” he said.

In 2006, Collier started a career in health care by washing dishes. He had just graduated from the University of Arkansas with a degree in psychology and had been rejected for an administrator-in-training position at an area nursing home.

He accepted an $8-an-hour kitchen job and spent the next six months working to convince his supervisors he was up for the task of becoming an administrator. They recognized his commitment and asked him to join the training program. Less than a year later, he was named interim administrator at North Hills Life Care and Rehabilitation in Fayetteville.

As a nursing home administrator, he said he “rolled out culture change before people knew what culture change was.”

He helped North Hills become the only facility in Arkansas to be recognized in U.S. News and World Report’s 2010 national rankings.

He left the nursing home to become administrator at Katherine’s Place at Wedington — a more than $10 million skilled nursing facility that opened in August 2010 in Fayetteville.

Collier was administrator at Katherine’s Place for about three years before he decided to work for himself and “create my own destiny.” The move would allow him more time to spend with his family.

Before leaving, he developed a business plan to start a geriatrics consulting company.

He put his plan into action and worked with nursing homes and primary care clinics. He said he was consulting on a corporate basis with more than 40 clinics throughout the state.

But not long after he started the company, the real estate market started to rebound.

Collier already was a licensed real estate broker, so in late 2013, he established Collier & Associates in Fayetteville.

“My love is for real estate,” he said. “It was just a no brainer.”

It’s in the Augusta native’s blood: his grandfather worked in real estate.

Collier, 34, started the company alone, and within the past two years, hired 10 real estate agents.

“It just kind of took off,” he said.

Collier declined to release revenue specifics, but the company has grown so much that he and a partner recently broke ground on an 8,000-SF office building on East Mission Boulevard.

“It’s been good,” Collier said. “All it really is is customer service.” And he’s taking customer service to a “very high level.”

While the consulting business is no longer his focus, Collier has been able to use his health care background to help in the real estate business.

“I’ve been brokering clinic deals,” he said.

He has been working a lot of commercial real estate deals, including in central Arkansas.

“I brokered a $2 million deal in Conway,” he said.

Collier is also a licensed real estate broker in Oklahoma.

Within the next five years, he plans to expand his business to have room for as many as 30 agents.

But quantity isn’t as important to him as quality. He wants these agents to be better than everyone else and operating at a higher level.

One thing he would advise members of the current Fast 15 class is to be mindful of the changes in demographics, specifically with the baby boomers. How to provide service for this generation will be vital to business going forward.

Collier and his wife, Sarah, have two children, Presley, 11, and Estelle, 8, and live in Fayetteville. Collier enjoys hunting and spending time with family.