Clients First: The Two Word Miracle

Skeptics Might Say . . .

But how do we prove it? It is simply not enough to stand on the street corner, stomp our feet, and insist it is true because we just know it to be so. Skeptics might say, “Oh, you two are just brilliant businesspeople and you would have succeeded anyway.” Then why hadn’t we? Remember, we were both past 50 when we stumbled into the real estate business. Where was all this brilliance before? Not that JoAnn and I are stupid, but whatever brilliance we possessed before real estate did not lead to stellar success. Before that dark and stormy night, we were different; we hadn’t yet made the commitment to put our Clients First, no matter what, and until we made that life-changing decision, whatever brilliance we had was tarnished and unrealized.

Others might credit luck or being in the right place at the right time. We started in the summer of 1997. Mortgage interest rates were 8 to 9 percent. The Phoenix/Scottsdale market had been flat for more than 16 years, ever since the bubble and bust of 1979–1980, followed by the Savings and Loan scandal and the Resolution Trust Corporation bailout. There were a lot more sellers than buyers, and our broker even questioned our choice to start in our quiet ZIP code, which included homes that were more than 20 years old, when all the action (what there was of it) was 5 to 10 miles north of us, where some builders were still developing new subdivisions. Back then, there were more agents leaving the real estate business than ...