Things don’t always work out the way you want. No matter how hard you try, and how smart you are, life can take a turn that you anticipate, and certainly don’t want.
And, there’s another side to this coin. Things work out for you, and you are encouraged to challenge yourself and the world. You decide to see if you can make life turn your way, rather than waiting to see how it turns for you.
In this month’s issue, we meet people looked at their circumstances and grabbed their own destinies.
I looked for a quote to set the tone for this column and I found these words from novelist/philosopher George Bernard Shaw:
“People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can’t find them, make them.”
I don’t have to tell you about “circumstances” under which everyone in our industry has endured during the last four years.
Some people have left the business. Others had opportunities elsewhere. And still others didn’t heed what the veterans have been saying: it will get better.
Some people have stayed the course and have taken advantage of new opportunities. To quote Shaw, these are people who “get up and look for the circumstances they want.” They set a goal, plan a path and go to work.
Here’s what Rick Dalton, who started his own company recently, said: “The biggest reason we went out when we did was because we started to see healthy signs in the market and we wanted to be positioned as a company that was there to take advantage of the market return when it happens.”
Rick is someone who found the circumstance he wanted, and acted upon it, and Wellington Homes is the result.
Cora Johnston, who once headed Mercedes Homes here, looked and she “found there was absolutely no new product in our market. What everyone was selling was exactly what was on the resale market. The builders were competing against themselves. Also, the sales people, really through no fault of their own, had been beaten up so badly that they forgot how to sell through relationship selling.”
Cora is another person who found the “Circumstances they want” and today she is running Generation Homes.
And take Janie Boyd, a top-producing Realtor who recently started her own business. After years of working for someone else, she decided that this is the time.
For many, it probably doesn’t seem like the best time to start a real estate company but don’t tell that to Janie.
You’ll meet these three, and others, in this issue and each has a little different story to tell.
But they all have one thing in common: they looked at the glass and decided it was at least half full and with hard work and ingenuity they could fill it to the brim.
Good for them.
These are the kind of people who should inspire the rest of us. These are the people that football coaches talk about when they’re exhorting their teams “keep fighting,” and “go the distance.” These are examples of what can be done, or at least tried, when the world’s turns aren’t exactly working out the way you want, or when the circumstances offer up an opportunity.
— Jim Bailey is president of Bailey Publishing & Communications and publisher of Realty/Builder Connection.