The call came from a trusted client, counsel for the Atlanta Braves. She had a contract for a land acquisition and needed a title company to hold the earnest money and handle title. There was one catch.
“I don’t want to tell you who the buyer is,” she said, “because if I show you the buyer’s signature, you’re going to know and then you’re going to have to sign all these confidentiality agreements… So can you take my word for it?”
Calloway Title and Escrow said yes.
A few weeks later, our team learned who the buyer was at the same moment the rest of Atlanta did, on the morning news. On November 11, 2013, the Braves announced they were leaving downtown for Cobb County, where they would build what is now Truist Park and The Battery Atlanta.
Amanda Calloway, Managing Partner of Calloway Title and Escrow, told that story on Part 1 of Closing Time with Iain Bryant, a video series hosted by Stewart Title’s Group President of Agency Operations. Across two episodes, she talked about the Braves, the $300 and a motorcycle that started her father’s career and what it takes to hand a family business to the next generation when the plan doesn’t unfold the way anyone expected. She also shared her advice for owners and successors on both sides of the handoff.
Here are the lessons from that conversation we think are worth sharing, for anyone in commercial real estate and for anyone building a business they hope will outlast them.
A Title Problem Hiding in Plain Sight
Looking back at the Braves deal, earning their trust was just the first step. The real work started with the land.
The 80 undeveloped acres in Cobb County carried a Colonial Pipeline easement, with an active pipeline running diagonally across the parcel. It was “probably the reason why it had not been developed before then,” Amanda said.
Instead of designing around the problem, the team went looking for a way to solve it. They found an instance in North Carolina where Colonial had relocated its pipeline before. The Braves took that precedent to Colonial and made the ask, and Colonial agreed. Before a single wall went up, the pipeline was rerouted around the future site of the ballpark and The Battery.
More than a decade later, Calloway Title is still working on the development, including a new condominium project now coming out of the ground. In Amanda’s words, “It’s kind of the gift that keeps on giving.”
Inside an “Overgrown Family Business”
Today, Calloway Title is an Atlanta-based, commercial-only title insurance agency with a legal services division. We are direct agents for major underwriters in Georgia, South Carolina, Florida, Tennessee and Alabama, with attorneys on staff barred in each state. We also handle title for clients across the country through strategic partnerships with other agents. Our 65-person team handles closings of every size, from $100,000 transactions to deals worth hundreds of millions.
“We are kind of an overgrown family business around here,” Amanda told Iain. To understand how it got that way, you have to start with her father.
$300, a Motorcycle and a 1970s TV
After college, S. Marcus Calloway was back on the family farm, “bumping along on a tractor,” as he told it, thinking there had to be more to life. Then his college roommate called from Atlanta with a pitch: come learn to run title. Marcus rode to Atlanta on a motorcycle with $300 in his pocket and a big 1970s television strapped to the back.
He started as a “road guy” for a major Atlanta law firm, driving out to rural courthouses to research titles, many of them for power companies. At night, he put himself through law school and passed the bar on his first attempt. But the firm wouldn’t hire associates from unaccredited law schools. They told him he could keep running titles, but that was all. Marcus’s reply: “Thank you very much. I’m not going to do that.”
In 1996, he founded Calloway Title and Escrow with about seven employees. He took whatever work came in at first, but his real strength was complex commercial deals.
“The commercial work seems to be more about getting in there and really solving the title problems and underwriting some complicated issues,” Amanda said. “My dad built a shop that was built for doing large commercial deals.”
As clients needed him in new markets, the firm followed, expanding into South Carolina about 24 years ago and into Florida soon after.
The Long Game of a Great Mentor
Amanda never planned to join the family business. After graduating from the University of Georgia, she moved to Manhattan to chase Broadway. (We told that part of her story in Taking the First Punch.)
Marcus supported her, with conditions. He’d help with New York rent if she took the LSAT first. The next condition required a few law school applications. When Emory accepted her, and she wasn’t ready to leave New York, he suggested a one-year deferral. By the time the city had lost its shine, the door to law school was already open.
“There is a puppet master at play here,” Amanda laughed. The best mentors don’t force a path. They keep the right doors open.
When a Succession Plan Meets Real Life
In Part 2 of the interview, Iain turned to a question weighing on much of the industry. Many business owners in the baby boomer generation are looking at a transition in the next five years or so, whether to trusted employees or to family.
The Calloways had a plan, and a good one. In 2015, Marcus and Amanda put a formal succession plan in place. It began with a five-year earn-in, during which Amanda took on management and leadership responsibilities alongside her deal work. Between 2020 and 2025, Marcus would publicly announce her as his successor and step back. As Amanda put it, he was “only supposed to be a phone call away.”
Then Marcus became ill in late 2020 and passed away at the end of 2021. He chose to keep his illness private, and during the COVID years many clients, underwriters and even employees didn’t know. The public passing of the torch never happened the way it was designed.
“I felt a lot of pressure to prove to everyone that I was up to the task,” Amanda said.
Two things made the difference. First, a few months before he passed, Amanda insisted that her father join a company-wide Zoom call to publicly hand her the baton, because some employees had struggled to accept her new authority without hearing it from him. Second, the preparation never stopped. Instead of a standard hospital bed, Marcus had a king-size adjustable bed brought in so the two of them could keep holding meetings side by side.
“We spent hours and hours and hours, me just downloading information from him, asking him questions,” she said.
What Would Marcus Do?
The firm’s greatest asset during the transition was continuity. At least 90% of today’s team worked for Marcus, and many have been with the company longer than Amanda has. In those early years, nearly every challenge started with the same question: What would Marcus do?
The answer was usually clear, because Marcus led out in the open. He was a servant leader with a communal office where employees came and went all day. He took calls on speakerphone so his team could learn from every conversation. Amanda keeps that tradition alive, with younger employees working right in her office.
Both Amanda and her Managing Partner, Kyle J. Levstek, spent years “elbow to elbow with Marcus working deals,” an experience that left them with what she calls a playbook.
“We didn’t just learn title from Marcus,” Kyle said. “We learned how to treat clients, how to treat each other and when to say no.”
That playbook covers ethics, too. Amanda recently had a client push her to cut a corner she wasn’t comfortable cutting. As much as she wanted to accommodate them, she kept hearing her father’s voice: “We do the right thing. We do it the right way every time.”
The culture you model every day is the succession plan that survives when the written one doesn’t.
Succession Planning Advice From Someone Who Lived It
Iain asked Amanda what she’d tell people on both sides of a leadership transition. Her answers apply to any business, in any industry.
If You’re the One Stepping In
Spend as much time as you can working together, physically, on deals and on leadership decisions. Watch, learn and ask why. Amanda and her father had plenty of “intense conversations” when she questioned his decisions, and that was the point. The goal is to absorb your mentor’s judgment before you need it, so that when you’re in charge, “you know what to do because you’ve seen your mentor do it over and over again.”
If You’re Handing Over the Reins
Accept that your successor will do things their own way. “I’m not going to do the best job if I just emulate my father,” Amanda said. “I’ve got to take what I’ve learned from him, but also be my authentic self and put my own stamp. This is the Amanda era.”
Then make the plan known. Tell your key employees and key clients who your successor is, give them a clear vote of confidence, and allow time to adjust. “Change is hard for people, regardless of the industry,” she said. The more public support an outgoing leader gives, the more buy-in the incoming leader gets.
As for working alongside a parent, Amanda called it “not always easy, but an awesome experience.” She added, “I wouldn’t change a thing.”
It’s Always Been About the People
Amanda was candid that the title business “can be grueling and can be thankless at times,” with squeezed margins, market cycles and plenty of stress. But she closed the interview with this: “I feel like I’m right where I’m supposed to be.” The reason, she said, is the people: her team, her clients and her title company partners. Iain, in turn, called Calloway Title a great partner to Stewart.
For our clients, that’s what 30 years looks like in practice. Under Amanda and Kyle’s leadership, you get a long-tenured team, leadership shaped by decades at the closing table and a standard of doing it right every time, whether the deal is a single parcel or a ballpark.
Key Takeaways
- Trust is built before the deal. The Braves project came through a long-standing relationship, not a cold call.
- Solve the problem, don’t avoid it. A pipeline easement that stalled development for years became the first box checked.
- Start succession planning early. The Calloways began a decade ahead, and that preparation carried the firm when life changed the timeline.
- Make the handoff public. Employees and clients need to hear it from the outgoing leader.
- Let the next leader lead. Honoring a legacy doesn’t mean copying it.
Watch the Full Interview
Watch Part 1 and Part 2 of Amanda’s conversation on Closing Time with Iain Bryant. Thank you to Iain and the Stewart team for the opportunity to share our story. Whether your next commercial deal is a single parcel or a stadium, in Georgia or any other state, connect with the team at Calloway Title and let’s get it closed
