TO THE 23 YEAR OLD ME

MEMOIRS

Jul 7

Written By Wendy Russell

“This decision you are about to make is the right one.

You will make a lot of money.

And then you will lose it all.

White men with grey hair will try to bully you.

But you will stand tall.

Don’t give up.

You don’t see it now, but this is setting you up for the biggest play of your life.

The risk will be worth it.

Keep going. Trust me.

It all works out in the end.”

I answered the phone in my pre-rehearsed voice.

“Good morning, welcome to Investwell Properties, this is Wendy.”

To be honest, hearing that ringing was somewhat of a comforting tone.

We had only been open for less than a week and I recall my Uncle Peter asking me if I was worried about the decision we’d made to start our own real estate office.

“Starting a business is risky”, he would say. “I can’t imagine how I’d feel just waiting for the phone to ring.”

That thought had never even crossed my mind. Of course the phone was going to ring! The 23 year old me was beaming with optimism and rightly so. In the 5 years we ran the business, that phone never stopped.

But this call on this day was different.

I picked up the receiver on our reception Commander phone system and pressed the flashing red light. It was an older gentleman. I could tell by the deep tone and whether it was intuition or something else, I just had this image of a mid-50’s white balding man in a suit. A real estate agent.

“Hello, is this Wendy Russell?”

“Yes it is”, I replied enthusiastically. “How can I help you?”

I don’t recall the exact word for word conversation that transpired, but I can distinctly remember the feeling I had when I put that receiver down.

As it turns out, it was the Principal Licensee of a one of the franchise offices down the street, who I later discovered was the head of the REIQ for our particular zone.

His “welcome to the neighbourhood” speech that was delivered to me via telephone that day was nothing short of condescending, rude and tacky to say the least. The giggles and hidden laughter behind closed palms was the image I saw when I recall that phone call. They weren’t welcoming us. They thought we were a joke.

Was it intimidation? At the time I took it that way. But it never deterred me, thankfully. I have an inbuilt grit that my mother instilled when I was a young girl and this has served me well over my years in business.

But I learned an important lesson that day.

Actually, two lessons.

ONE. Use this kind of bullsh*t to motivate you rather than go down the second-guessing rabbit hole. The fact they even bothered to make the call suggested they were threatened. Or at least annoyed we had set up as a competitor on their turf.

TWO. Cancel my REIQ membership asap. I was never a member again after that and it never made a difference. Although this might seem like a knee-jerk reaction (and it was at the time), the fact is, I saved thousands in membership fees over the years and re-directed those dollars back into marketing my own agency brand. Looking back, it was one of the better decisions I made.

And yes, creating, marketing and believing in my own brand was a huge takeaway from this era in my first real estate agency, long before “brand” became a buzz-word.

Investwell Properties entered the Gladstone real estate market in September 2004. Just a few months after the mayor at the time, Peter Corones officially opened our office, the Comalco Stage 2 project was announced and the investors began to flood the market. In the week immediately following the announcement, we sold just about all of our listed stock and the local newspaper real estate section of homes sold out every property under $200,000. It might not seem like a large number now, but back then, this was huge for Gladstone prices. We had timed our opening perfectly and for the next 4 years we rode the wave, selling out to a local trio in 2009 who purchased our entire office - sales division, rent roll and office fit out + lease.

Ten years later, WENDYRUSSELL® was born.

And that journey is a whole other story for another time.