Fred Seely
How often do you get out in the community? Not enough, of course, but let’s make it a little bit more dicey - you don’t get out at all.
Lecture time.
Our company does more than publish the newspaper you’re holding. We have a daily newspaper which primarily serves the business and legal communities, a weekly magazine which covers downtown Jacksonville and a monthly newspaper which covers golf in approximately the same area as Realty/Builder Connection.
This means that we have to move around a lot. We have to attend a lot of meetings and be involved with a lot of very different groups.
Unless it’s a real estate function, betcha that I haven’t seen you.
I’ve seen Wendell Davis, though. Oh, have I seen that old coach, and our story on page one shows what getting out can do for you.
Wendell was big in NEFAR when I joined Bailey Publishing. At the time, we did the NEFAR newspaper - you’re holding an outgrowth of that - and I quickly discovered that he was a man with knowledge ... which I needed. Then, I started seeing him elsewhere. All over. Jacksonville Chamber meetings. Clay County Chamber meetings. Quarterback Club. Political rallies. The guy was all over the place.
It takes that to get ahead and Wendell surely has come a long way from coaching football at Orange Park High. You have to believe that he was helped along that road by a lot of people.
Therein lies the clue for you. Those people didn’t come to him. He went to them.
I see jillions of you at the excellent meetings within the real estate community. You’re great at networking at the various SMC, WRC, NEFAR, Nassau board and (I presume) St. Augustine board (they won’t tell us when they meet) meetings. Surely, does any profession offer a better chance for its moving parts (agents, lenders, appraisers, etc.) to mix and mingle?
It’s very important, too. The client expects a steady flow of information and money as he goes from selecting a home to moving in, and I can’t imagine a profession that does it more smoothly (could it be that lawyers aren’t involved until the end?)
Networking is one thing; how often do you get out?
I’m involved with the Downtown Council of Jacksonville’s Chamber and have regularly attended meetings for the past eight years. We have anywhere from 40 to 80 people at each meeting, and we meet twice each month. I guess I’ve been to 150 meetings (that’s a lot of pastry - too much) and in that time I’ve met exactly one real estate agent. Uno.
And why not? This is a reasonably affluent group of people who have a commonality (the Council) and, thus, a loyalty to their fellow members. They do business with each other and, like many such organizations, often devote a few minutes to let members thank each other for doing business.
Does that mean you should avoid the industry meetings? Of course not. Go to one, and you’ll probably see Wendell. But that field doesn’t produce much hay - you need to be where the clients are, and they darn sure aren’t going to be at a real estate meeting.
— Fred Seely is the editor of Realty/Builder Connection and editorial director of Bailey Publishing & Communications Inc. He can be reached at [email protected].