REI INK

From There to Here

Lessons Learned From Restaurants, Retail and Renovation

I was raised in Tampa, Florida, where my parents ran an Italian butcher and deli shop. So, my work ethic started at a young age. I swept the floors and helped out where I could. Sometimes, it meant staying up late to get the job done. I got my first paying job at age 12 at the local mall, managing a kiosk where I sold software. This is the job that taught me about sales and customer service. I had to ask customers what they were looking for and try to identify their problems and needs. I then had to try to match them with the right software solution for their need. As I took on different roles in my career, I did hold close that asking questions is the first step to offering good customer service. I worked at that kiosk until my brother recruited me to join him at a Checkers Drive-In Restaurant when I was 15. There I learned the world of fast food management. By the time I was 18, I had worked my way up from the grill to managing the restaurant. I was one of the youngest managers in the company. But, I learned how to manage a team with many different backgrounds and experience. As I moved into my college years, I wanted to try my hand at retail. I got a job managing a mall-based toy store. That was a hard business. Two key things made it hard. First, you turned 75% of your inventory in one day (Black Friday) and you had to replenish it overnight to be ready for the next day. Second, the whole staff was seasonal, so you had to hire and train more than 40 people in less than a month, only to let them go a little more than a month later. My Home Depot adventure began in October 1999. Initially a manager-in-training candidate, I spent my first two years learning the company culture and our store environment in the garden and hardware departments. As college graduation neared, I chose to pursue a career at the Store Support Center. I went on to spend six years in finance supporting the Home Services Division of Home Depot. In 2006, consumers had access to large credit limits and home improvement loans. These financing vehicles allowed them to complete large “do-it-for-me projects.” Home Depot began expanding its services offerings into many new product lines, and I left the finance group to focus on Outdoor Living Installation Services. There, I led an initiative to convert parking lot space into an Outdoor Living vignette with sheds, decks, pavers, outdoor kitchens and water features. In addition to setting up the space and creating a selling center, I convinced the leadership team to invest in an associate to staff the area and generate sales. Just like building a small business, but with access to investment, I had to convince the leadership team to give me a little startup capital. Besides selling the internal Home Depot team, I also needed to get vendors to participate. Vendors were on board with supplying product, but I had to figure out the labor side to create the selling space. So, I led by example and laid pavers for the first three selling centers. But, just as the program was ramping up, the bottom fell out of the market and people’s access to credit dried up. Due to reduced demand, Home Depot exited the Outdoor Living Installation Services business. At about the same time, Wells Fargo mortgage consultants started sending people into our stores to get support for a 203K Renovation Loan product. Although Home Depot Home Services offered more than 25 unique programs through our stores, none were designed to be a flexible general contracting program. Recognizing an emerging market segment, Home Depot invested in a small team to put together a network of contractors that could focus on completing a full range of repairs. We started with a list of our best Pro customers. Within four months, we went from a pilot program to a nationwide 203K Renovation Loan rollout. Alongside our growing 203K Renovation Program, a foreclosure crisis was emerging across the country. As the crisis deepened, Wells Fargo began accumulating more and more of their own properties, many of them in severely distressed conditions. Properties that weren’t repaired would not sell, so a huge backlog of distressed assets formed. Premiere Asset Services (PAS), a division of Wells Fargo that maintains and manages assets for Wells Fargo and other clients, was introduced to Home Depot, and we became a direct repair vendor. As economic conditions continued to decline, foreclosures plagued the country. We expanded our business by taking on additional clients, which allowed us to build out our team and expand our service provider network. As a recession-combating line of business for the Home Depot, we became a landing place for associates who would have been displaced from other lines of business. In addition, we were able to provide opportunities for our best Pro customers and keep them working. By creating value for our clients and stabilizing neighborhoods, we helped create future Home Depot customers. We made it our team goal to create more business for Home Depot and its customers, so we could save more Home Depot employees who would otherwise be displaced. Another key initiative for The Home Depot is supporting our veterans. The capabilities we developed during the foreclosure crisis provided a unique opportunity to partner with several banks and military donation funds to provide housing for wounded veterans and their families. To date, Home Depot has rehabbed more than 600 military donation homes and has pledged to donate $500 million to veterans by 2025. Although I didn’t serve, both my uncles served in the Army and my father served in the National Guard. As we grew our Renovation Services Team, I looked for folks with military experience to support us in leadership roles.  As the market continued to evolve, investors

Read More

From Boots to Suits and Back Again

When I graduated college, I realized I had a choice: suit and tie or construction boots. I chose the latter. Subconsciously, this may have been my first step toward becoming an entrepreneur and eventually the founder of Walnut Street Finance. I wouldn’t say that my career path was always a calculated journey. Sometimes I just plowed ahead toward what I thought would bring success. But one thing I did consistently was throw myself completely into every job, no matter how big or small. I turned each opportunity into a learning experience. I know it may sound cliché, but there is no better way to understand your customers than to have walked in their boots. Perseverance and Thirst for Knowledge My first boots-in-the-mud job was on a real estate development site called Ashburn Village. It wasn’t far from where I lived in Virginia. I remember riding my bike through the dirt of construction sites around where I grew up. There was rapid development sweeping Washington, D.C., suburbs, so real estate felt natural to me. I graduated with a degree in economics from George Mason University in the 80s with the know-how to use computers, which were just making their foray into businesses. Looking for a job after graduation, I knocked on the trailer door of the development site of Ashburn Village. I didn’t have an appointment. I offered to digitize the firm’s finances using Lotus 1-2-3 and told them they could fire me whenever they weren’t happy. They hired me on the spot. Over the next four years, I worked on the finances while soaking up as much real estate knowledge as possible. Through a combination of perseverance and luck, the next 10 years laid substantial groundwork for who I am today. For this next stage of my journey, I had to put on a tie. Before the Great Recession, there was the savings and loan crisis in the late 80s and early 90s. I joined the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) just as it started to collect and sell assets. I was ready to tackle this Wild West home mortgage disaster. Of the hundreds of billions of assets the RTC liquidated, I was active in the sale of $14 billion in real estate. I quickly realized there was a whole other side of landholding that I had no idea about. This was a crazy time. I walked away from this experience with an overflow of information on how mortgages worked, the risks of savings and loans, asset valuation and trustworthiness—all of which would play a major part in my decision to start my own business. After spending five good years with Sunrise Senior Development, building across the mid-Atlantic and southeast and helping take that firm public, I was ready to put my boots back on—on my terms. Thinking Outside the Bank At this point, I realized real estate investors had to think outside the bank and lenders had to take underwriting into serious consideration. The snowball repercussions of being too risky with money could be devastating to so many. In 1997, I took the entrepreneurial plunge and formed Walnut Street Development. We built single-family detached houses and townhomes as well as some commercial properties. Our goal was $1 million in revenue for the first year. We hit it with our first two projects. During the next 10 years, we were building nonstop. I developed a deep appreciation for what our future Walnut Street Finance borrowers would experience. We did it all—from acquiring to zoning, materials sourcing to permitting, and everything in between. There were a lot of growing pains, and I was often flying by the seat of my pants. Looking back, I am grateful for my mentors and my family for keeping me grounded. You Can’t Do It Alone The next thing I knew, we were peaking at more than $250 million in revenue. But I wasn’t doing any of this alone. Not only did I have my own trusted construction team, I had formed partnerships with The Carlyle Group, Lehman Brothers and Trammell Crow. This trifecta of private equity, investment banking and international real estate powerhouses helped me deliver more than 1,200 residential units and 200,000 square feet of commercial property in the D.C. area. By this point in my journey, I’d learned a few incredibly valuable lessons. The first was that I needed to be sure my construction boots are always at the ready. The second was that we don’t ever succeed alone. One man building a company is a fool if he thinks he doesn’t need smart, experienced, independent thinkers and doers around him. I also strive to keep a personal touch on the business. It was important that I was boots on the ground during our builds, putting faces to names and roles, resolving pain points and understanding every stage of a project. The Big Twist By 2008, the market turned. We decided it was best to go from sell to buy. We scooped up 100-year-old row houses in D.C., which we fix and flipped. We did it again and again, with great success and excess capital. By pivoting from building to lending, we came out of the recession relatively unscathed. We made our first few loans—using a pen and yellow pad—to our previous flipping competitors. We had just two employees. Four years later, we originated more than 350 loans. Last year we generated over $70 million in loans and had more than 15 people on staff. We proactively nurture a culture of quality and service. We’ve built this company by doing what we say we are going to do—with our customers, fund investors and one another. Most important, we can serve our customers best because we know what it is like to walk in our customers boots. We never forget where we came from.

Read More

From Salesman to CEO

Drive, thick skin and a customer-focused approach propelled Brandon Guzman’s quick rise in the industry. You could say I grew up fast. I was a latchkey kid from Puerto Rico with a single mom. I didn’t have any rules. If anything, that fueled my drive to create something, succeed at something. After moving to Cleveland, Ohio, with my mother, I attended a local Catholic school and was always searching for ways to make money. At age 13, as an eager eighth grader, I officially joined the workforce as a bag boy at the Heinens—a popular local grocery chain. I walked to work after school and worked as long as they would let me. That job taught me a lot about work ethic. Entrepreneurial Spirit Emerges Early My first entrepreneurial endeavor happened the summer after my freshman year of college at Ohio University. My friends and I had all returned home and we needed to make some cash for books and tuition. So, we decided to start a lawn care company. We rented some equipment for lawn cuts and mulching, and we printed thousands of flyers that we hand delivered to every mailbox. We started to get some calls, and then referrals, and then it just took off. Sure, it was a simple business idea, but I found I loved building something from the ground up. And I learned I could outwork the competition. Once I was back at Ohio University, I tended bar every night I could while working toward my business major. After graduation, I took a job I thought would lead to a big career and a big paycheck—insurance sales. I had no idea what I was doing or talking about. I compensated by outworking every other rep in the room. I was good at sales. I have the drive for it, the thick skin, the confidence. But I did not like the company. It was stagnant. A Startup Calls A chance encounter with an investor introduced me to a new startup that was looking for its first sales rep—MFS Supply. I jumped at the offer. The idea of working at a company that had its whole future ahead of it appealed to my entrepreneurial spirit. I started with MFS Supply that Monday. As I walked into the office, I realized the reality of startups. I walked into a single room shared with the other two employees where we had to jostle for chairs. There weren’t any desks. The only bathroom was in another tenant’s office. If all of us were making calls at the same time, you couldn’t hear yourself think. I took to it immediately though. This fledgling company needed its employees to mold it, grow it, establish its brand. Growing Pains In 2007, the year I started at MFS Supply, the company sold five products into the property preservation space to about 20,000 contractors nationwide. As the subprime mortgage crisis hit and the recession enveloped the U.S., MFS Supply thrived. Banks were foreclosing on homes left and right, hiring more and more property preservation contractors to secure and winterize the properties. MFS Supply’s customer base grew to 60,000 contractors by 2008 and hit 100,000 contractors at the height of 2009. I led the charge on expanding inventory from securing products to winterization materials. In 2007, as the first and only sales rep at MFS Supply, I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t know the industry, the customer. I worked 10-12 hours a day, just calling customers. Not just to sell but to ask them questions, have a conversation and start educating myself on what they really needed. The idea of really collaborating with your customers, listening to them, putting them first is what made MFS Supply stand out from the competition. It’s now a core value of the company and something we do every day. This set the tone for me and the company. I built out a strong referral program with my customers, and the company grew by focusing on adding value. When I was promoted to senior account manager, I was tasked with bringing in more sales reps to support growth. The customer-focused attitude was instilled in all of us. I remember a time I had a customer who had to have product the next day for a job. But he couldn’t afford the $300 overnight shipping. Another rep and I jumped in my car and drove the three hours to his home to deliver it to him. Often we’d get a customer order after the UPS pickup cutoff. We’d box up the order and take turns driving around the neighborhood to catch a UPS truck to hand off the package. Eyeing the Future In 2010, I signed up for night classes at Baldwin Wallace and started working toward my MBA. College had prepared me for sales, but I wanted a full understanding of management, operations and finance too. My MBA classes were a key driver in my career expectations, shifting my focus beyond sales goals and toward management. The same year I graduated from the MBA program, I was promoted to director of sales. In this new role, I oversaw the birth of a new market—REITs. In 2015, these real estate investment trusts started snapping up affordable homes in bulk in the wake of the financial crisis. Invitation Homes, American Homes 4 Rent—MFS Supply was their first vendor. REITs didn’t need many securing products, they needed appliances. This was MFS Supply’s first big product diversification. Selling appliances was a different ballgame—new shipping structure, new pricing model, huge variety of SKUs, new sales knowledge. So, I built out an appliances team to support this initiative. The following year, I launched into another new market—multifamily—and was promoted to vice president of sales and marketing. The appliance game is tough. High competition, low margins and price driven. We found it was a great way to get a foot in the door in the multifamily industry but not a product we could use

Read More

“I Felt Alive”

Self-challenge leads to a lifetime of opportunity. Someone once asked me how I view my success. After thinking about it, I replied that success is a journey of self-exploration and of constantly challenging one’s self. If you improve, good things happen. If you don’t challenge yourself, life is boring. My journey began in 1993 at the Indian Institute of Technology, where I had dual majors—chemical engineering and computer science. My career goal at the time was to become an environmental engineer. Computer science was, I felt, a  nice complement. Big Moves I joined Deloitte in 1997 immediately following graduation and moved to the U.S., settling in Atlanta. The whole world was new to me—new surroundings, a new job and new challenges. I felt alive. At Deloitte I was involved in telecommunications and CRM projects for large clients, including software companies that were embarking on developing CRM software.  After two years, I felt restless. I needed a new vista, so I applied to Wharton to earn my MBA. I chose this path because Wharton had a reputation for being challenging. Again, I felt the urge to rise to the occasion.  I applied to graduate school with the intent of working on Wall Street as an investment banker. Early in the application process, I began to think about my Deloitte experience and a different career path. I had spent considerable time in call centers while working on CRM projects, and I wondered why they were operated exclusively in the U.S. I asked myself, “If you can operate a call center in Spokane, why not in India?” Business Calls That question was the seed of a new business idea. I shifted my focus from working on Wall Street to learning how to build a proper business. In my first year of studies, I collaborated with a former Deloitte associate with whom I shared my  idea for a global outsourcing company. He had worked alongside me on CRM projects and embraced the concept. We spent the next six months working on our business plan. By the end of the first year of school, I had raised capital to fund a startup. My investors’ support was conditional on my leaving school to manage the company. I agreed and dropped out of Wharton in 2000 to form iSeva, a global call center company, with my fellow Deloitte colleague as a co-founder.  People I knew didn’t think this opportunity was real. They cited the volatility in starting a new company and the belief that American businesses would never work with offshore vendors. But companies large and small were poised to take advantage of the Indian labor market. The gold rush was on. I had no doubt I could make good things happen. We focused on mortgage and high-tech, two categories in which we felt confident. Key to our success was focus and specialization. We developed relationships with marquee clients like Citi and Symantec. Over four years, we built a thriving $10 million-class business that employed more than 1,000 people. A “Growing” Challenge In 2004 it became clear to me that to survive in this industry, one had to be a big dog. We were surrounded by giants like Tata and Infosys and, in order to survive, we had to get big fast. The market for a small company just wasn’t there. We had raised some institutional capital, and our investor wanted to roll us up into a collection of complementary companies to build mass.  We sold our interest in the business, and I reapplied to Wharton to complete my MBA. I felt too young to retire, and I wanted a new challenge. I believe that, in life, what you do next is based on what you’ve already done. I took stock of what I knew and began to shape my next move. I knew the U.S. mortgage industry and the U.S.–India corridor. I understood technology and operations. I began to shape my next focus from those perspectives. More Searching . . . and Growth At iSeva, we focused on the origination side of the business, which was pretty crowded at the time. I began to study other parts of the industry and settled in on loan servicing, specifically subservicing. It combined outsourcing with operations, two competencies with which I felt comfortable. I completed my graduate degree in 2005 and began to search for an acquisition candidate. I created what is now called a search fund, where investors agree to contribute capital once you identify and acquire a company. In September 2005, I discovered BSI Financial Services, a company formed in 1986 to service motorcycle leases and auto loans. At the time, BSI was operating as the mortgage division of a bank. I signed the acquisition papers at the end of 2005 and closed early in 2006. We planned to focus on loan servicing for the conventional lending market. The end of 2005 saw home prices beginning to dip and foreclosures rising. By 2007, the Great Recession was looming, and I elected to shift our focus to nonperforming and distressed assets. I took my cues from our clients. They wanted  consistent returns, 100% regulatory compliance and operational transparency. We focused on managing expenses, training and modernizing our servicing platform. During the next 10 years, BSI Financial earned a reputation of being a nimble company that used technology to craft unique solutions for investors in the nonperforming loan (NPL) space. As the company grew,  Inc. magazine recognized us as one of the nation’s fastest-growing companies. Our workforce swelled from 15 full-time employees to 350. Along the way, we discussed and debated our strategic direction: How was the market evolving, and how should we best align our talents and resources in search of the newest opportunity? Around 2014, as our clients were disposing of REO property, I noticed that investors were swooping in to buy those properties to fix-and-flip or hold for single-family rental (SFR). These investors were playing a pivotal role in stabilizing and rehabilitating the real estate

Read More

A Chance Opportunity Becomes a Lifetime of Success

  • by
  • Comment Off
  • 2,247 views

Don Wenner has enjoyed many successes, but it all started with an unexpected opportunity that he accepted. Sometimes the most life changing events are those that occur when least expected. That’s exactly what happened to entrepreneur Don Wenner when he was introduced to the world of real estate as a young college student. Once that introduction was made, Wenner became obsessed with real estate, determined to build his knowledge of it and create an elite and successful business. Today, Wenner is the founder and CEO of DLP Real Estate Capital, a multifaceted company that leads and inspires the building of wealth and prosperity through innovative real estate solutions. His companies, under the DLP Real Estate Capital name, include DLP Realty, Direct Lending Partners, DLP Capital Partners, DLP Real Estate Management, DLP Brite Homes and Alliance Property Transfer. Here is a current snapshot of DLP Real Estate Capital: Approximately 350 employees 1,500 properties sold in 2019 More than 800 current investors More than 12,000 units owned in portfolio More than 400 loans under management More than $800 million in assets under management $100 million in total annual revenue Early Days Don began his career as an agent and broker. He then expanded into home flipping and renovations, managing real estate investment funds, strategically building a large real estate rental portfolio, private lending and, most recently, developing into home building. Don and DLP’s fastest scaling vertical is providing capital to real estate operators and entrepreneurs. The company offers loans, lines of credit and equity to operators in the single-family space to homebuilders and multifamily operators throughout the U.S. He’s one of the fastest-growing private lender and capital providers for value-add and new construction housing investments in the country. Early Entrepreneurial Instinct While all this may sound impressive, Wenner’s thirst to gain a deeper knowledge and his commitment to continued growth is constant. An entrepreneurial mindset has played a huge part in this 34-year old’s life. Even as a young child, Wenner was an entrepreneur. His father, Don Sr., told a story at his son’s wedding that exemplifies Wenner’s entrepreneurial passion. Every day, Wenner’s parents would pack a 6-pack of Hostess Donettes in their son’s lunch box. And every day, the young boy would separate the pack and sell the individual Donettes to his classmates for 50 cents each. Until the principal found out—and made a phone call home. When Wenner was a teenager, his entrepreneurial mindset helped him launch a successful lawn mowing business that included 40 lawn customers in one summer. Soon, he found himself working two and three jobs simultaneously. While still in high school, he surprisingly moved out of his parents’ home and paid his own way through college at Drexel University in Philadelphia. During school, he worked more than 60 hours a week waiting tables and at accounting firms Wenner was convinced he wanted a career as a financial advisor, but that would all change when one of his restaurant patrons asked if he wanted to work for him selling home security systems. Wenner was 19 years old and making about $1,000 a week, but he said: “Why not? I was a hard worker and not afraid to knock on doors, which I did, relentlessly. My first paycheck with that company was $5,280 for two weeks of work, and I quickly became the No. 1 sales rep in the country.” That same customer who invited Wenner to sell home security systems also sold real estate. He told Wenner he’d be great at real estate. Again, Wenner thought,“Why not?” Still a college student, Wenner took real estate classes at night, got his license and became an agent. His first home sale was in April 2007. Between then until the end of the year, he sold 67 homes and hired the first two members of his support staff. The numbers kept getting better. He sold 120 homes in 2008, 250 homes in 2009 and 1,250 homes in 2018. How did Wenner sell all those homes and continue to expand that growth? “I am extremely solution-focused when it comes to sales,” he said. “Often, this means thinking outside the box. During those early years, home sales were not posted on Craigslist. Knowing this, I was prepared to take full advantage of this prosperous tool and sold almost half of my homes that first year this way. After 2006, when home sales started to slow significantly, I thought about other ways to offer solutions and incorporated the Guaranteed Sale and the Immediate Buyout Offer programs to help provide solutions when it came to real estate. I absolutely love thinking of an idea, putting the plan in place and achieving my goals—taking a raw idea and turning that into a profit.” Dream Live Prosper In 2009, Wenner launched DLP Realty (Dream Live Prosper). Over the next several years, he continued to build companies under the DLP moniker, including lending, investing, real estate management and construction. As an experienced home flipper who flipped hundreds of homes as well as someone who had built a substantial rental portfolio, Wenner saw the need to hold on to properties and transition from a single-family realtor/scattered investment model to multifamily.  “My focus turned from single homes to purchasing multifamily Class B and C housing (also called workforce housing) and zeroing in on secondary markets where the cost of living was more affordable and many companies were moving their workforce to,” he said. By raising private capital to handle the increased volume, Wenner launched DLP Capital Partners. With the high volume of properties the company bought each year, Wenner even launched a title company. Wenner next focused on scaling the company’s operations side. He decided to focus on two things: buying larger properties and making loans to other real estate investors. In 2013, Direct Lending Partners was launched. Today, the company funds short-term real estate loans in 34 states. As a home flipper, Wenner found that the lenders he went through were not only not slow, they were

Read More

Warehousing Some Respect

Greg Rand watched his mother work hard to build her real estate business, even though realtors often didn’t get much appreciation. He was determined to change that image. By Greg Rand My earliest business memories are related to real estate because my mom, Marsha Rand, launched her real estate career when I was in elementary school. She went from a rookie agent to a top producer, to a branch manager and finally the owner of her own firm. Century 21 Rand was a startup that had culture as its foundational value proposition. It was quintessential Century 21—a rowdy band of women who sported gold jackets and took on the town. Entrepreneurial Foundation I learned three key things about the business from watching this all unfold. First, entrepreneurship in real estate works. Second, family is the most important thing, unless an agent is having a problem, and then solving their problem is the most important thing. And third, the public didn’t appreciate real estate agents enough. Every time a real estate agent was depicted on TV or in movies, they were lampooned. That was my mom! I still remember how it bothered me as a kid. I worked in my mom’s  company in many mission- critical capacities: licking envelopes, answering the phone, sticking photos into photo books…. I graduated to taking pictures and having them developed at a 24-hour photo. I observed that something important was taking place in that office. People would come out of conference rooms elated. “They just bought their first house,” someone would tell me. Or they would come out looking horrified. “They just bought their first house!” The range of emotions told me something weighty was going down. It didn’t make sense to me that a profession in which something so important was being handled was also made fun of. The Dawn of Data One day when I was answering the phone on the weekend, I had a revelation. I had been trained not to give out the price of the house until I got the caller’s phone number. Hmm. The caller wanted information, and we weren’t providing it. I filed that impression away for a few years until I learned about the coming “information superhighway.” I read a speech from NAR president Bill Chee in which he characterized the situation as a bunch of hungry lions coming over the hill while a few chihuahuas fought over a piece of meat. Those little dogs were about to be devoured. The chihuahuas were realtors, the lions were the consumer public and the meat was housing data. They wanted it. We were hoarding it. And the internet was going to blow us to smithereens. The customer wanted information, and we were intentionally getting in the way. At the time, I was 24 and making six figures as a mortgage sales guy. I quit that job to start a company based on “public access to MLS.” Mike Toner, a college buddy and I launched RealtyVision, one of the first two companies in the country to display interior tours of houses on computer. This was pre-internet. The computers were encased in kiosks in public places. Our business model was fatally flawed due to lack of distribution. If we had held out a couple of years, RealtyVision would have been a website and I would have retired by 30. But we didn’t hold out. We ran out of money and got jobs. HFS, Inc., the company now known as Realogy, had hired Bob Pittman as the new CEO of Century 21. Bob was one of the founders of MTV, so he was a whiz kid CEO. I pitched RealtyVision to Bob’s team, and they said “no.” Instead, they offered me a job to do half-day technology seminars for their agents. This was 1996. I did 70 cities in 18 months. We showed audiences ranging from 20 to 400 real estate agents that technology was not their enemy. I have some priceless memories of the first time my audience saw things like email attachments. As the Technology Evangelist, I got to work on the IT team that deployed the first Century21.com, which was also one of the first real estate websites with MLS data. Public access to the MLS was a huge success, and I believe it’s the reason the industry has thrived for so long. The customer wanted access, and we gave it to them. You can make fun of realtors all you want, but they stared down those lions and made friends. If they had held out and fought the release of MLS data, there is no doubt they would have gone extinct. All in the Family That was a wild ride that allowed me to make a minor impact on a large part of the country. Then my mom pitched my brother Matt and me to join her in the family business. My dad wanted to retire, and she wanted to begin a transition. I jumped at the chance to have a deeper impact, if on a smaller geographic scale. It was an honor to be asked. I had spent almost a decade in the real estate tech space. Now it was my time to work on the other side of my theory—that real estate is too expensive to take lightly. Real estate is a financial service. This was late 1997. We switched from Century 21 Rand to Prudential Rand. Flying the flag of a financial services powerhouse was perfect for where we wanted to take the company. We grew from $7 million in revenue to over $50 million within 10 years. We layered in mortgage, insurance and title businesses. We did our best to present a “business suit” version of real estate sales. We were a top-quality firm, but we were still essentially doing it the same way as everyone else. In 2008, we switched to Better Homes and Gardens and took on a much softer brand, which has worked like a charm. Launching a Dream I

Read More