His first jobs as a busboy at a local pizza restaurant and managing a furniture store are decades behind him, but Marcus & Millichap President and CEO Hessam Nadji's work philosophy has barely budged now that he runs a real estate investment brokerage.

For Nadji, success in business comes down to one thing: customer service.

"It is all about how I can do something that is a little more than what someone may have expected," Nadji told CoStar News. "If you give people a little more than what they expect, and something they didn't ask for, that's value creation. I have the same approach to every client and every broker I work with. There's no downside."

It's a combination of humility and strategy that has proven to be the key to his success throughout his career, and one he said was fostered by his mother, an English teacher, and his father, a successful photographer.

Nadji was born in Tehran. His parents brought him and his younger sister to the United States, and after graduating from high school, there was no question about whether he would attend college, he said.

In Persian culture, Nadji said, education was paramount, and the notion of not attending was out of the question. "I had to figure things out and go to work and to school at the same time," he said. "That background had a lot to do with me really getting serious early on in life."

So he got to work. While attending City University of Seattle he landed a job as a data entry specialist for Grubb & Ellis, a brokerage that's now part of Newmark. As a computer science major, Nadji said, he had every intention of pursuing a software design, coding or programming career because Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft and the rise of the computing era was "all the rage" in greater Seattle at the time. So, starting his career in the real estate world was entirely accidental.

"I had no idea what commercial real estate was and didn't know anything about Grubb & Ellis," he said. "I just knew I wanted to work in a computer and technology field, so I took the job. If someone is saying they’ll give you a chance, give you a shot, that’s a gift. You have to do the best you can with that and make the person glad they chose you."

He might have started out by focusing on data entry for tenant surveys, cataloging which tenants occupied which buildings and on what floor, but Nadji created openings for himself to quickly move up the corporate ladder by trying to always go above and beyond the standard job description. He started hosting client presentations with the data he compiled and analyzed, helping office tenants make informed decisions about their real estate footprints.

"The value of connecting all the dots and using data for decision-making became very apparent, and that catapulted my career," the CEO said. "Next thing I know, I was called the research director for the office in Seattle, and following a couple of years, my career was elevated even further when the CEO of Grubb & Ellis started getting curious about the work I was doing."

Nadji's real estate career quickly built momentum. He had a stint as head of research and held a few senior vice president positions. He also worked with corporate giants such as General Electric, IBM, Kraft Foods and Pier 1 Imports as they began outsourcing their real estate needs.

So when Bill Millichap and George Marcus came calling about five years later, Nadji was prepared. The Marcus & Millichap founders had a vision for where the then-small brokerage should go, Nadji said. They placed a bet on him, the up-and-coming real estate executive, to expand the company into a bigger advisory and research brand to boost sales.

Fast forward to today, and Marcus & Millichap has expanded to nearly 2,000 investment sales and financing professionals with offices throughout the U.S. and Canada. Under Nadji's leadership, the brokerage closed more than 12,000 deals collectively valued at upwards of $86 billion in 2022 alone.

Despite the growth and prestige, Nadji said little has changed when it comes to how he approaches his job.

Referring to his initial working days as a busboy, home furnishings store manager and analyst while in school, he said, "I am as obsessed with potential opportunity loss today as I was then. Opportunity loss is the same as real loss. My wife and I have an argument about not beating ourselves up too much because we can’t act on every opportunity, but man, I’ve been wired to try my earnest to catch every single one. Those are precious, and you can’t take them for granted."

It has been a constant theme for Nadji as he has navigated his professional and personal lives, both of which are now rooted at or near Marcus & Millichap's headquarters in Calabasas, California.

His career has taken Nadji through decades of highs and lows, including when he took over the national brokerage's national specialty divisions’ top job in 2010, right after the Great Recession ended, and became CEO in 2016. But his leadership philosophy has held steady: Stay humble, and see yourself as part of a team that creates the most value.

"It's about leadership through servitude," Nadji said. "People choose to either follow a leader or be part of a leadership team, so I have a sense of accountability to their career development and their path, and you can't get too far ahead of yourself. It’s not about you, it’s about the value you create for others and what you leave behind when it’s all over."