Princess Diana once famously said, “Family is the most important thing in the world.”
Lucky Betty Doré! She has two “families.” One immediate family consists of her two grown daughters and two granddaughters, ages 6 and 16. The other “extended” family is the people she has worked with for nearly four decades at the London and St. Thomas Association of Realtors (LSTAR). “I will miss the people,” she says before her official May 31 retirement date. “They are like an amazing family.”
Doré came from a farming background in Western Ontario, where she took commercial courses in high school before accepting an entry-level position with an insurance company. She also worked for a mortgage company but sought a more challenging career.
When she became office manager at LSTAR 38 years ago she says everything was paper-based and she used a manual typewriter.
“I started in May and my CEO asked me to put together the first MLS catalogue for the association and to have it completed by September,” she recalls. The task was accomplished and the ambitious young woman continued to prove herself. Before becoming EVP, she took a four-year night course at the University of Western Ontario’s business school and obtained a Certificate in Management, followed by a two-year course to get her Certified Association Executive (CAE) designation with the Canadian Society of Association Executives.
“Everything has changed since I started, and the Internet has been the most positive change,” she says. “Instead of driving a client to a dozen or more properties, an agent can (research) online and then visit a few choice properties.” She knows that change is inevitable and has long believed that “success breeds success and failure breeds failure” so she has always maintained a positive and receptive attitude and an open mind to change. She calls it “forward thinking,” but concedes that some real estate agents dislike change. “But when we bring them in to explain the changes, by the end of the day, they’re happy.”
She once attended an industry seminar that concerned a topic that she regarded as “out of the box thinking.” Undaunted by the complexity (and necessity) of the changes recommended, she took the ideas to her directors and said, “Pull your head off, turn it around and put it back on with an open mind.”
She believes the secret to success in the real estate business is training. “LSTAR provides its members with every imaginable service, technological and otherwise, and we train them so they know how to use the tools that will help them make a living. I also believe in Realtors training Realtors.”
She describes LSTAR as a lean machine that’s all about service and is blessed with a member-friendly board. “We have a waiting list of members wanting to volunteer their services on task forces, committees and boards.” She is proud to add that many are young Realtors who are children of current members.
When asked to name some of her proudest achievements, Doré is circumspect. “Oh, my, there have been so many firsts: We were one of the first boards to have an online MLS system in 1982; and I was a founding member of Project Connect that allows associations in Ottawa, London, Toronto and Hamilton to access each other’s MLS systems.”
She also points to her involvement with IDX (Internet Data Exchange) and notes that LSTAR was one of the first boards in Canada to embrace it.
In her quarter century-long role as EVP of one of Canada’s largest Realtor associations, Doré has amassed a large number of local, provincial and national awards that recognize excellence in an association executive. A previous chair of the Association Executives Council of CREA and Ontario Realtors Care Foundation, she was recently recognized by REM as one of the people who has had the greatest impact on the real estate industry in Canada in the last 25 years.
“Hers will be big shoes to fill,” says Carl Vandergoot, LSTAR president, who noted that his association has a solid reputation for being effective, well managed and progressive “and a lion’s share of the credit for that goes to Betty Doré.”
Alan Tennant, CREB’s CEO, describes the “go-to executive officer” as “the voice of reason, a tireless innovator and keeper of our institutional compass.”
When Doré hears of these accolades, she is both humbled and introspective. “I try to run a good, tight ship and I work well with the Board of Directors. We are a team,” she says, and then injects her personal and business philosophy: “No matter who you are, where you are or what you’re doing, it should always be ‘we’ and not ‘I.’”
She leaves the business with a positive feeling for the future of organized real estate and hopes the people to whom she is passing the torch will continue to work for regionalization of MLS.
When asked about her retirement plans, the avid reader and online Scrabble player says she hopes to volunteer at shelter-based charities, such as Mission Services of London, a Christian charity that provides shelter and serves people who struggle with poverty and homelessness; or Unity Project for Relief of Homelessness in London. “Who knows, maybe I’ll stock cans at the food bank.”
The mother and grandmother also wants to spend more time with family and friends. Travel is also on the horizon. She visited Cuba in January and is planning a trip to Hawaii with her family in 2017 when her youngest granddaughter will be old enough to enjoy that beautiful Pacific island.
Betty Doré may be looking forward to saying Aloha to a well-deserved retirement, but she insists she is sorry to be saying goodbye to her work “family.”
Dennis McCloskey is a contributing writer for REM.
