What a year of anniversaries this is for me. From the first time I delivered a paper route to working at the Toronto Star to Real Estate News and all kinds of stuff in between. I could tell you stories. But not today.
This story is about REM.
Back in 1989 I launched a cable television business called Real Estate TV and I needed a way to advertise its programs to real estate professionals. There was no newspaper or magazine dedicated to the real estate professional community in Canada that would accept advertising from RETV.
Around that time, my friend Jim Adair was writing copy for Real Estate TV, more out of friendship than money, considering the amount he usually received for writing was more than I could pay. Jim had already established his reputation as an excellent writer and editor for national magazines and newspapers. He and I had talked for years wistfully about the potential of a good sincere publication dedicated to real professionals.
Jim told me he would be pleased to be the founding editor of such a publication. With his encouragement and willingness to be the editor, I started a publication for Realtors and real estate professionals that would be independent, objective and above all useful for those working in the industry – not to mention a publication that would accept advertising from Real Estate TV. I remember Jim saying at the time that it should be a publication where Canadian real estate professionals can get information that they cannot find anywhere else. I use that perfect line to describe REM to this day.
I talked to an advertising salesman with Jim at a restaurant in a shopping mall. We scribbled out a rough draft of what we felt was a fair rate card on a table napkin. I wrote out his first month’s pay cheque from my dwindling personal bank account right there. I took the napkin back to my office. We did not have computers back then, so I had it typeset for printing on card stock. I came up with the name Real Estate Marketing, as it seemed to best describe what it was supposed to be. Then it became Real Estate Magazine and then Jim coined the word REM and that is what it remains today.
The first issue of REM rolled off press in June 1989. Twenty years ago.
It has been quite a ride. There have been so many times that I have been on the brink and over the edge with this publication – financially and emotionally – I have lost count. Some say that national publications are supposed to be published by big mega corporations. REM has never been that, that’s for sure. I have always kept it going with bits of glue, old rubber bands and scraps of used string, one issue at a time.
Sometimes I think that many who come upon this publication would think it’s just a damn newspaper for a bunch of real estate people. How serious can you get about something like that?
Well I reckon more serious than I can describe. I worry that if REM were to ever actually be published by a big corporation or conglomerate, it could lose its objectivity and no longer be meaningful or important to the real estate community in Canada the way it is now.
Even though my home is rented today, REM has kept a roof over our heads for all this time. Most importantly, REM has helped me understand a great many things in life because I think keeping this thing going is a lot like the business of life. Any time you want to hear about it, give me a call and I’ll tell you about it. Lord knows Jim won’t give me enough space to tell you about it here. He’s one of the finest men I have ever known and about the best friend anyone could ever have but he is a man with no time for schmaltz.
This business never made me very rich in money but it gave me more wealth in friendships and life than I could ever calculate or even describe. If you were to ask me who has been the most important friend to me over all these years I wouldn’t hesitate for a minute to say it was you. The way I see it, you are the one I should thank the most. So I thank you so very much for the past 20 years. Thank you for reading all the way through REM to this page. Let’s start the next 20 together right now.
Heino Molls is the publisher of REM. Email [email protected].
