One Thousand Sales.
It all started with a single phone call.
The year was 2007 and I was working for $15/hour as a brickie's labourer. My job was to mix cement and move endless buckets of sand and blue metal around a building site.
The back story was that in my early 20s I had started a career in real estate under a wonderful mentor John Pidcock who became very ill and I lost my way. Then, tragedy struck. My brother Christian died, it felt like a bomb had gone off in our family home.
Even writing this makes me feel uncomfortable, is it too personal? Maybe, perhaps, but with my name on the door this business is personal and so is real estate.
With my mentor's health failing and my brother gone I left real estate, it was all too much.
So there I was, labouring under the hot sun with a bunch of great guys trying to work out what to do with my life….actually I didn’t really care.
As I was shovelling cement into the mixer my Nokia 6110 rang and a lady called Judy asked if I could help her. She wanted to sell her home and was told by a friend that she could trust my advice (*that friend Marlene is a major player in the DMRE story).
Just like Danny Glover’s character Roger Murtaugh in Lethal Weapon I tried to explain to Judy I was retired, out of the game. She insisted so I reluctantly agreed to visit her on the premise I might help her sell without an agent (for free). I met with Judy, she was lovely...and determined.
In the end I agreed to dust off the double-breasted navy suit and represent Judy and sell her modest Mosman home for half the standard commission.
10 days later the house was sold, Judy was thrilled and I had made an honest $20,000. "Back to the building site" I thought. "Not so fast" proclaimed my now-wife Natalie, she thought there may be something in this. What did she know?
A few days later I was back on the mixer listening to Triple J and the phone rang again, another house in Mosman this time owned by Max and Marg….friends of Judy’s. Sold two weeks later, another cheque in the mail.
Following these successes, in a small rented apartment I decided to start a business. Inspired largely by Kate Galetto, a fine independent agent (still is) I used all of our money to buy computers, sign up to the necessary subscriptions, get insured, and design a website. I was very nervous.
What felt like only a few days later Bear Stearns collapsed and the greatest financial crisis of our times was upon us. Hello Murphy’s Law.
If you have read this far I’m sure you are wondering what this is all about, let me explain…
Today our office is exchanging contracts on our 1000th sale. We will be moving back into our newly renovated building soon and we have some very exciting things to share with you over the coming months.
With all of these milestones I decided it’s time to tell the story of the business over a few chapters. My team will tell you I feel uncomfortable referring to this as ‘my’ business, in a way it belongs to everyone that has been part of the story so if it’s ok with you I’m going to tell it.
Until next week,
David Murphy