This episode is different. This one is about us.

In 2010, this business started with a name on a signboard and an idea about how people should be treated. Sixteen years later that name sits across a network of offices, hundreds of people, and tens of thousands of families who've bought, sold or leased a home with us. A brand designed for a business of a certain size eventually stops fitting a business that has become something else.

So we pulled the whole thing apart and asked what OBrien actually is. Not what we say in an ad, but what we are on the days nobody is watching. That process ran through workshops, interviews and focus groups, and it produced a new identity, a new promise, and a new way of talking about property.

Dean O'Brien founded the business and leads it. Steve Osborn of Identity Marketing was handed the job o ...