A blast from your past
Capitalize on your prior experience to build your future success.

by Dan Rafter  Lee Lamont never worried about his career. As sales director for a large publicly traded technology firm, he had successfully guided a sales team of 12 that generated $140 million in sales annually. Officials with his firm sent him around the world, and Lamont rewarded them by nabbing lucrative clients in England, Australia, and Canada.

And in early 2003, these officials sent Lamont to Dallas to grab even more clients. He got engaged. Everything seemed perfect.

Then his firm declared bankruptcy—a move that all but dissolved the company. Lamont, still in Dallas, suddenly found himself unemployed.

“I was horrified. Mortified. I had invested so much time and energy into a company only for them to turn around after having relocated me yet again and declare bankruptcy,” Lamont says. “It was a terrible feeling.”

Lamont quickly looked for work. He found it at Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage, Dallas/Fort Worth. And the career move couldn’t have gone any better. Lamont landed his first real estate paycheck in February of this year. He now boasts $7 million of home listings.

Though Lamont had no formal real estate background before joining Coldwell Banker, he did come to the company armed with business skills honed during an eight-year career in the corporate world. He knew how to form a business plan, craft a reasonable budget, and create concise and powerful sales presentations.

Lamont isn’t shy about promoting his past when meeting potential clients. That led him in May to his biggest real estate accomplishment yet. After crafting a marketing plan that wowed the developers of Lighthouse Creek, a planned luxury country club development to be located on the shores of Cedar Creek Lake, Lamont nabbed a spot as one of the residential development’s exclusive listing agents.

“This is something I wish I would have done many years ago,” Lamont says about starting a career in real estate. “I can’t describe the feeling I had when I earned that first paycheck. I knew it was something I had worked hard to get. That made it all the more rewarding.”

Lamont isn’t unique. In 2003, more than 100,000 new members joined the National Association of REALTORS®. Many of those who had already built successful careers in other industries are jump-starting their new careers in real estate by promoting their past and tapping into skills learned in previous industries.

It takes a solid commitment
Bill Sabino, managing broker of RE/MAX Premier Properties in Plano, has seen this trend and can count many past careers among the newer agents in his office. Not all of these newcomers will succeed, he acknowledges, but many will.

“The ones who don’t make it are those who try to sell real estate while still looking for an upswing in their past industries,” Sabino says. “They still hope to one day get back into their old careers. The ones who make it are those who have made a real solid commitment to changing a career.”

Don’t forget your past
Phil Del Vecchio has worked as an agent in Sabino’s office for the past two years. Prior to that, he managed the U.S. marketing and engineering division of Exxon/Mobil Corp. A group of 130 engineers and technicians reported to him.

Del Vecchio was, by any measure, a success in the engineering field. But he grew tired of the corporate world and the travel and inflexible hours that regularly came with it. Looking for a new challenge, he joined his wife Lucille, a former schoolteacher, in the real estate business. So far, this husband-and-wife team has thrived. These days, the Del Vecchios claim at least four transactions a month.

“We look at it as if we have re-potted our careers,” he says. Del Vecchio often taps into his past as an engineer to help him in his new career. He knows the signs of a healthy structure, for instance, and can also pinpoint the telltale signs of potential problems. He promotes this talent when meeting with potential clients. While always advising his buyers to hire home inspectors, Del Vecchio says his ability to also search residences for potential structural problems gives his clients an added level of comfort.

The Del Vecchios also take advantage of Lucille’s past. She previously worked in computer training during her career in education, and can teach 45 software programs. Her computer skills help the Del Vecchios create their own marketing materials.

Del Vecchio has some simple advice for other professionals considering a move to the real estate business: Do it. But don’t leave behind the business skills you developed in your past career.

Use your people skills
As a registered nurse for nearly three decades, Jodi Blumberg knows how to listen. She also knows how to identify people’s needs and then meet them.

When Blumberg decided in 1999 to embark on a career in real estate, it didn’t take her long to realize that the skills she developed in nursing, specifically the ability to listen to people and work confidently with them, were ones she could use to succeed in real estate.

“Customer service and client satisfaction are critical in both of these careers,” says Blumberg, who is an agent with Century 21 Sunset, REALTORS® in Fredericksburg. She still works part-time as a nurse at Hill Country Memorial Hospital. “I take good care of my patients, and I take good care of my clients,” she says. “A lot of communication is critical in both of my careers.”

Blumberg finds that she uses many of the same skills with a client moving toward a closing as she does with a patient she is helping recuperate from surgery.

“Being in nursing for nearly 30 years has certainly helped me grow my real estate business. It has made it very easy to meet with clients and work with them,” she says. “I am around people all the time. I am always dealing with critical situations. I am always having to follow-through on issues.”

Though Blumberg is careful not to solicit customers while working in the hospital—she considers this a serious breech of ethics and a conflict of interest—the agent says that her clients are invariably pleased when they learn that she works in the medical field. These clients, Blumberg says, recognize that she works in an industry where caring is a necessity. They believe that Blumberg will display this same care when it comes to helping them buy or sell a home.

“Every patient I work with has different needs. The same is true for the clients I work with in real estate,” Blumberg says. “In both cases, I am always striving to lead them to a good outcome in the end.”

Prior experience benefits managers and owners, too
While working as a corporate executive for a Fortune 100 company that specialized in mergers and acquisitions, Sam Owen learned the importance of what he calls “lean manufacturing.” He studied how his firm took a process, made it more efficient, and saved loads of money.

Today Owen is one of the owners of Century 21 Evans in Flower Mound. He also sells some real estate, though he prefers managing. And though he has left the corporate world, he hasn’t forgotten the lessons he learned there, specifically the one about the importance of efficiency.

That’s why Owen, who has been at Century 21 for a year now, makes sure his agents have to fuss with as little paperwork as possible. This way, they can spend their time doing what they do best: selling homes, earning listings, and searching for new clients.

“I worked in a big organization,” says Owen. “And when you work in a big organization, you are taught quickly how to turn a company into a strong one. I knew that when I came here, the first thing we needed to do was to draft a strategic business plan. That’s what we did. And now we’ve gotten to what I consider a good base level. We are set up now to grow.”

Owen also learned during his corporate days that true growth in a firm comes largely through acquiring other companies. That’s why he is now looking at other area real estate offices with an eye toward future mergers and acquisitions.

Considering his own background, it’s not surprising that Owen looks favorably on agents who come to his office after they’ve already carved out a successful career in other fields.

“Since the downturn in the economy, companies have been cutting so many people from their payrolls. At first they were cutting the fat. They were cutting the people who really weren’t doing that great of a job, the people they could spare. But as the downturn continued, they started cutting people who were quality employees, who had great talents and work ethics,” Owen says. “A lot of these people have now started entering the real estate field. They have done an outstanding job. The work habits they have, the type of professionals they are, have helped make them successful.”

Dan Rafter is a freelance writer based in Chesterton, Indiana. His articles have appeared in the Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, and Christian Science Monitor.

Photo © Picturequest.

home   current issue    top 10    resources 

discussions   contact us   search

Buyers & sellers, visit www.texasrealestate.com.
REALTORS®, visit www.texasrealtors.com.