History

North Star Synergies, based in Denver, Colorado, provides proven sales, marketing, and management strategies, services, and networks to America’s new home industry and beyond, with honor, energy, and integrity.

Where the firm came from

North Star Synergies took its current form in April 2011, when S. Robert August established it after 28 years of executive business development at S. Robert August & Co., Inc.

The practice runs continuously back to 1983 — more than four decades of consulting to builders, developers, brokers, manufacturers, and lenders.

Running alongside it on the brokerage side has been a succession of three companies: S. Robert August Realty Corporation, founded in 1983, which became RealtyWorks in 1993, and today Gourmet Real Estate.

We have advised through the boom of the late eighties, the corrections of the nineties, the 2008 collapse, and every market since. As we have put it for years: our theories don’t come from reading blogs or by osmosis. They come straight from experience.

Across four decades, the firm’s principals have advised on the marketing, sales, and management of residential, resort, retail, recreational, commercial, institutional, industrial, and governmental real estate — as well as other business products and services — representing an estimated cumulative value in excess of $50 billion.

How the approach was formed

North Star Synergies’ expertise comes from long-term research, observation, and participation in the marketplace rather than from a methodology invented in a boardroom.

The distinctive part of the model traces to our founder’s work in economic development in the early 1980s, when he was named Economic Developer of the Year (1979) and Marketeer of the Year (1981) by the Metro North Chamber of Commerce in Denver. He founded the Douglas County and Teller County Economic Development Councils and helped establish the Adams County Economic Development Council.

That experience produced an insight the firm still runs on: a real estate project can borrow the reach of institutions that already have the audience it needs. Economic development councils, chambers of commerce, HBAs, Boards of REALTORS, utilities, and manufacturers all have relationships no project marketing budget can buy outright. Organizing those relationships around a project is consistently cheaper and more durable than buying attention.

Locally

We have worked with Front Range economic development councils, Colorado newspapers, the Colorado Association of Home Builders (CAHB), and the Colorado Association of REALTORS (CAR).

Nationally

We have assisted clients including Countrywide Home Loans, Centex, Gold Crown Management, and American Home Mortgage. Through the National Association of Home Builders, the firm is known for its speaking engagements, its ability to bring companies together, its published articles, and for the book Marketing for Remodelers: Building Business Leads.

Internationally

We have worked with global organizations including Disney, Whirlpool, Pella, ExxonMobil, and Multiproyectos — from a master-planned community at Walt Disney World to a full-day broker workshop for 250 participants in Guatemala.

Giving back

Based in Colorado, the North Star Synergies team enjoys giving back to the community that supports us. We have helped raise more than five million dollars for organizations including Children’s Hospital, the Boy Scouts of America, Multiple Sclerosis, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, Hospice of Metro Denver, the Colorado Easter Seals Society, Show Home for Hope, the Bridge Project, the Colorado AIDS Project, the Colorado Pediatric AIDS Foundation, the Home Builders Foundation, HomeAid Colorado, the Children’s Diabetes Foundation at Denver, and the NAHB’s Home Builders Care program.

More on that work is on the community involvement page.