The story of my billion-dollar business starts like this. I borrowed $1,000 from a friend.
People imitate their leader. Lead by example.
In New York City, the meek don’t inherit the earth. The big mouth does.
Buyers decide in the first eight seconds of seeing a home if they’re interested in buying it. Get out of your car, walk in their shoes and see what they see within the first eight seconds.
If you want to be noticed, dress the part.
I had probably seven agents by the time I became a legitimate real estate broker.
No loan is free. The costs are in your loan somewhere, maybe rolled into the amount to be refinanced or even coming at a higher interest rate.
You can’t study to be an entrepreneur. Sometimes, you just have to jump.
I hadn’t learned to read by third grade, which wasn’t unusual for some kids. I knew something was wrong because I couldn’t see or understand the words the way the other kids did. I wasn’t the least bit bothered – until I was sent back to the second-grade classroom for reading help after school.
I was a hot-dog stand lady, I was an orphan housemother, I was a waitress 3 or 4 times. All of those jobs did not have good bosses. They basically told you what to do, when to do and when to hop. And I just didn’t like that very much.
Every single thing I learned about marketing and building my business, I learned from my mom, and she had never been in the workforce. She just had great practical sense.
Most great entrepreneurs I know are nothing like the other kids. They’re almost like tangent lines – those lines that seem to go nowhere. Nothing connects them, until they get out in the real world. Then they connect just fine.
I wanted to be a 150% entrepreneur and a 150% mom, and I found that I was having a very hard time doing both. I was about 75% and 75% – still better than 100%, but not what I was accustomed to at work.
Failure is my specialty.
I became a larger than life figure for one reason only. When you’re quoted in the ‘Wall Street Journal,’ the ‘New York Times,’ constantly as the expert in the business people assume you’re a lot bigger than you are. And then I had to run like hell to catch up with my own image.
The best time to expand is when people are asleep at the wheel.
My mother’s genius was to put her finger on the gifts she saw in each of us, and make every one of us believe that that gift was uniquely ours.
Taking chances almost always makes for happy endings.
Everybody thinks that they’re going to time the market, they’re going to sharpshoot the market, and buy right at the bottom. The truth of the matter is that nobody is good at it.
The most influential factor in selling a home is always price. Don’t build ‘wiggle room’ into the asking price. There’s a price war out there and you have to win it from the get-go.
My mother is an amazing woman. Not only did she manage the entire household, she noticed a gift in each of her kids and instilled confidence in all of us that that gift would take us wherever we wanted to go.