Phil Soper had just landed the top job at Brookfield's residential division when he found himself in front of a group of senior executives wanting to see the $5,000 watch he didn't own.

Soper had been named president of the residential company Royal LePage, which now trades publicly as Bridgemarq Real Estate Services. It was 2002, and he was suddenly the company's public face, commenting on all aspects of Canada's housing market.

But one of his early interviews with a local Toronto newspaper went awry when Soper, opining on the luxury housing market, said consumers were turning to quality rather than quantity and referred to expensive watches. Through a miscommunication, the journalist thought Soper was talking about himself when he mentioned $5,000 watches and people gravitating to luxury homes.

"The story comes out, and it's how Phil Soper lives in one of the country's most expensive" neighborhoods and "wears a $5,000 watch," he said.

The new Royal LePage president did live in a nice part of Toronto, but it was an entry-level home. And the watch would turn out to be a similar story,

Soper was coincidentally in downtown Toronto the next day for a meeting with Brookfield's top leaders, a company based in Toronto but with extensive operations in New York City these days and US$725 billion in assets under management. Everybody wanted to see the watch.

"Brookfield (management) is just the exact opposite" of flashy and showing off things like expensive watches, Soper said with a chuckle. "Cyrus Madon, now the CEO of Brookfield Business Partners, reaches out, grabs my arm, pulls it up to my face, and says, 'That's not worth $5,000.' I had a Mickey Mouse watch."

Soper was a systems engineer by training and had worked his way up through the ranks at IBM, moving around the world. With young kids, he wasn't ready for another move in 2001 after becoming general manager of IBM Canada.

Luckily enough, a friend from his undergraduate degree days was running a small Brookfield company and happened to call him about a job running some relocation companies. "Brookfield was knitting these companies into one relocation business," said Soper.

He landed a job at Royal LePage Location Services, a company whose remnants were eventually sold to Japan's Relo Group Inc.

"Back in the day, when you were an employee in the business, they would tell you it was time to move, and you would move," said Soper. The relocation companies would handle everything from housing to taxes to schools for kids.

Soper had only worked in Royal LePage's relocation division for about 18 months when the chief executive who hired him tapped him to replace him after announcing his retirement. Soper became president in 2002 and added the CEO title a year later.

"I always joke that I worked my way up from the top because my first job was president," said the executive

As one of the largest residential companies in Canada, Bridgemarq has 22,000 agents, essentially independent contractors, who work across brands that include Johnston & Daniel and Via Capitale in Quebec on top of the LePage brand. Bridgemarq has about 450 direct employees.

"You behave like it's one company and not just independent contractors," Soper said. "The biggest source of cultural cohesion is our charity function. We have the largest charity in the country focused on eradicating domestic violence, the Royal LePage Shelter Foundation."

When he first landed the Bridgemarq job, Soper knew he had a lot of learning to do. "You think you know an industry brokerage because you have bought and sold real estate as a consumer, but you see it from behind the scenes, and you don't know how the sausage is made," he said.

By 2005, one of Soper's biggest tasks was taking the company public under the Royal LePage income fund in 2003. It was later renamed Bridgemarq.

He learned a tough lesson early on when one of his ideas flopped.

"I came, and I pitched a performance incentive. The idea was to take their base salary down by 5% and give them a 10% bonus," said Soper. "The idea was everybody gets a raise, but it would introduce them to variable and team-based pay."

Soper went back to the CEO who hired him and told him about the failed plan. The conversation created an understanding that while variable pay might have worked in a fast-growing tech firm, it might be too risky for employees who have cost concerns as simple as getting their cars on the road.

He figured out another way to create an incentive, an extra day off for specific performance levels.

"That was the Holy Grail for these people because some of the work was drudgery," Soper said. "It was a huge learning experience to understand that people in all workplaces are not homogeneous. You have to understand what motivates people."