How I Learned to Create Opportunity in Rochester Real Estate
It wasn’t quite snowing but, then again, it wasn’t really raining, either. Instead, what was falling from the sky was more akin to slush- thick, cold globules that bathed me from head to foot. Well, that’s not quite accurate. My sodden clothing clung to my body as a result of the late winter downpour. My feet, covered in inexpensive loafers whose soles had worn thin, were actually soaked as a result of the gelatinous puddles that I trudged through as I made my way from door to door.
It was March of 1990 and I was a newly licensed real estate agent. Regardless of the effort that was needed or the obstacles that I encountered, I was going to become successful in my newfound career. That day, I was walking door to door in one of Rochester’s wealthier neighborhoods, Browncroft, introducing myself to potential clients. I can only imagine the internal dialogue as one kind soul after another answered my knock and listened to my offer of assistance. If they should decide to list their house for sale, I was there to help! It had to have been pity or incredulity that prevented the dry, warm and cozy residents from quickly slamming their door before scampering back to the comfort of their living room (heated, I was certain, with a fireplace cavernous enough to hold a cord or two of dry wood). Miraculously, a kind woman at 160 Dorchester Road asked me to come inside. She needed to sell her house and wondered if I could help her do so.
Showing Up Before I Knew What to Do
My job with the New York State Health Department concluded at 5:00 Monday through Friday. The moment that my workday finished, I drove to Lowenguth Realty on East Avenue to….
Well, those first few months, I honestly didn’t know what I was going to do when I arrived at the office. However, I knew that I needed to be there. It was only in the office that I might stumble upon the thread of an opportunity. A typical evening involved cold-calling prospective sellers, studying maps, writing personal notes and newsletters. Every personal encounter became another record in my database. Every rumor or potential lead became a note handwritten to a potential client. It was constant and I never stopped. I couldn’t.
What was driving this compulsion? Why the freneticism?
Fear.
In the moments before I would fall asleep, I worried that I would be impoverished in my retirement- unable to pay my bills. When I finally did sleep, I dreamt of the day that I would see the Eiffel Tower or spot a lion while on safari. In my dreams, I enjoyed the comfort of a large house where I could find both privacy and solace. But it was the terror of not having a financial safety net that consumed me from the sound of my alarm clock through to the end of my day. Thankfully, I was young and I was resourceful. I was also an optimist. As a result, I learned to channel my anxieties, concerns, and worries into the fuel that kept me moving.
Why Real Estate Is a Contact Sport
What I didn’t realize at the time is that real estate is a contact sport. There’s a direct correlation that can be drawn between one’s ability to increase surface area and the likelihood of encountering and then creating opportunity. Michael Bloomberg has stated that his extraordinary success was not attributable to a few large wins but rather to small victories accumulated over time. Inadvertently, I had stumbled upon a similar strategy. Constant forward motion created more encounters and those encounters, repeated over days and years began to compound. While I’m still waiting for a Bloomberg-like payoff, the compounding has served me pretty well. I can now affirm that the Eiffel Tower is incredibly romantic and feral lions are as glorious as I assumed they would be.
There are a lot of people who spend their days waiting for opportunity to find them. My experience has been the opposite. Opportunity favors those who give it a greater number of places to land.
Audentes fortuna iuvat.