Another networking night. Another room full of agents. Still no idea what the person who brings your drink is called. Rob Dundas takes a funny look at an industry obsessed with building relationships, and the everyday connections we walk right past. (Cartoon inspired by this column and generated with the help of AI)
I realize that sounds like something you’d hear from some guy who’s been sitting at the same end of the bar for the last 25 years, but stick with me here.
When I was a kid, “Sesame Street” used to sing a song about the people in your neighbourhood. Go ahead, sing it in your head… the grocer, the doctor, the plumber, the teacher.
Mr. Hooper.
The whole point was incredibly simple: “These are the people you see each day, so maybe you should know who they are.”
Apparently we needed to be taught this at 4 years old, but by 40, we’ve all completely forgotten.
Networking with ourselves
I find this particularly comical in real estate, an industry where we never shut up about building relationships.
We network relentlessly… and needlessly.
We dress up, go to microbreweries, and stand around other Realtors talking about real estate. We attend conferences with Realtors… Whoopee! We have lunches with Realtors, and we join groups with Realtors. We go to award ceremonies to congratulate Realtors for selling lots of real estate while surrounded by other Realtors who also sell real estate.
And then, when the evening ends, we walk past the waitress, who was wonderful, without knowing her name.
That’s Casandra, by the way.
She lives four streets away. Her two sons are in minor hockey and her full-time job is with the school board, but she got divorced… I guess shit happened. Oh, and that’s Xin. He owns this restaurant and has four incorporated companies. He is a very busy guy.
The bartender lives in a fourplex and has a cat named Mr. Pickles, and he’s six payments behind on his Toyota. He meets Tinder people now and then, and he’s a bit lonely, and weird, and his credit sucks, but he’s doing his best to rebuild his life. The dude has made loads of mistakes but, even at 52, he’s all right.
The fella who parked too close to your Mercedes owns a construction company. That’s Marcos. He thinks I’ll talk to him about my job and that he’s clever enough to mentally muscle me into a 1 per cent sales contract.
Ha! Like we’re at a swap meet, guy.
But that was before I knew him. Funny story, it turns out that he’s just someone who loves to grind price. His dad’s his hero, and a businessman, and taught him everything he knew… and he wants to make his dad proud. They also both love the Raptors… and his wife has terminal cancer and he has nowhere to categorize that, so he carries it alone.
Because his dad would have.
But I’m glad I spent 20 minutes talking to Steve from Whatever Brokerage Inc. about his headshots and amazing new AI concept.
By the way, Steve’s NEVER buying a house from me. Neither is Marcos, but I think about him more.
That being said, I honestly believe we’ve somehow taken the simplest business principle in the world, “know people,” and turned it into an organized activity where we deliberately go somewhere to meet the same people we already know, and THEN we wonder where all the people we need to do business with are.
Wow.
Then that email comes to your inbox: “Here’s a great idea, let’s gather the Realtors and do a Zoom meeting. Maybe we’ll pay some lame-ass to tell everyone how to build their brands.
“Better yet, let’s (place whatever method you want here) it. God knows 10 bucks at Dollarama and a card with a Dolly Parton quote will likely qualify everyone with the human trust needed for a million-dollar listing.”
Your brand is at the corner store
I’ll save you the two-hour seminar you were thinking of attending in Richmond. Your brand is sitting at the corner store.
What’s that owner’s name? You don’t know. Yet, you’ve been going there for eight years.
You know where he keeps the chips and you know which cooler has the Diet Coke in it. You know the debit machine sometimes takes two tries. You’ve watched his children get taller behind the counter.
And you have no clue what his name is.
But you’re a “community expert.” Of course you are.
I’m not suggesting we become those awful people who turn every human interaction into a sales pitch. Nobody wants to be trapped at the gas pump while some knucklehead hands you a business card and explains how it’s “always a great time to talk real estate.”
Please don’t do that. God, save us all. Please don’t.
I’m suggesting something much more radical.
Introduce yourself.
That’s it… HIGH FIVE!
You might just discover something.
I’ve met judges, cops, bikers, contractors, business owners, criminals, politicians, scientists, people with money, people without money, investors, tenants, and landlords. I’ve met someone who went over Niagara Falls in a barrel (that’s 100 per cent true) and someone who made money by letting venomous creatures bite them. I can testify that you cannot possibly meet enough unusual characters to know anything about anyone without a conversation.
That guy working behind the counter at the Busy Bee might own three more “Bees” and a Tim Hortons.
You don’t know a damned thing about him.
Maybe the woman pouring your coffee owns a cottage. Maybe the crossing guard has been buying investment properties for 20 years. Maybe your mechanic’s partner is looking for a house. Maybe none of them need anything from you at all.
GOOD! That’s also allowed. AWESOME!
Recognizing isn’t knowing
Here’s the thing: there’s the slightest possibility we’ve lost something in our networking seminars.
Maybe that person you don’t know is just, well, interesting. Maybe they know something you don’t. I think that’s reason enough to say “Hi,” don’t you?
We’ve become incredibly adept at NOT knowing people.
We recognize people, we qualify people, pigeonhole people, and even judge other human beings for the silliest things, but that’s vastly different from knowing them.
Oh look, there’s the woman from the wine store, the guy at the gas station, that chick with the tattoos with the scary dog. There’s that messed-up old couple across the street, the waitress at the restaurant, the garbage guy.
The garbage guy?
This man has been coming to your house once a week for nine years. That means he has visited your property roughly 450 times.
Your own family hasn’t put in numbers like that.
Here’s an idea. Wave. You might even say, “S’up?” I admit, I’ve given butter tarts and even a beer to that sanitary engineer… and he and I still speak now and then.
His name is Rico.
Don’t worry, you won’t be legally required to have anyone over for Christmas.
That’s the whole move
Still, to me, the grocery store is the funniest example.
We stand in line, surrounded by people (who live right next door), while staring at our phones, then go home and read Facebook feeds about loneliness. Have you ever seen someone struggling with a shopping cart? Take it for them! Say, “No worries, I’m going that way. Keep the quarter.”
That’s the whole move, you magnificent beast!
You don’t need a QR code, there’s no sign-up sheet, nobody has to exchange LinkedIn profiles.
Maybe they say “thanks.” Maybe you make a stupid joke. Maybe you find out they grew up where you did.
You’ll likely never see them again.
Civilization will survive either way, but every once in a while, something amazing and unheard of happens.
You meet somebody, and that person knows somebody, or knows something, or has done something interesting, or grew up somewhere, or runs a business you didn’t know existed, or has an opinion that you disagree with.
… Or becomes your friend.
Imagine that.
Your neighbourhood isn’t the houses
We spend thousands of dollars trying to create “touchpoints” with strangers while ignoring the people we actually touch points with, and then we spend thousands more to find out why we’re lonely or have no connection and how to find more business.
The irony is magnificently perfect.
I suppose that’s my point… this ain’t about real estate at all, it’s about how sadly self-involved we’ve become.
We walk through our own neighbourhoods as though everyone else is part of the scenery.
There’s my house… There’s that store… There’s a restaurant… There’s the gas station. There’s the person who works there.
Wrong!
There’s Susan.
You just never bothered asking.
“Sesame Street” figured this out more than 50 years ago. Your neighbourhood isn’t the houses.
It’s the people.
Somewhere along the way we became so sophisticated that we’ve forgotten a simple concept given to us by a man squatting under a Muppet.
I wonder if you would have said “Hi” to him.
Likely not. He has a strange beard and hangs out with that Susan chick.
Be that as it may, maybe networking isn’t something you have to go to. Maybe your network is walking past you. Maybe it’s serving your dinner, fixing your furnace, cutting your grass, checking your groceries, walking those dogs.
Or someone who just shot you the Big Bird while driving down Sesame Street… but I’d be a bit cautious there.
And maybe before spending another evening standing around drinking wine with people who have the same job you do, it wouldn’t hurt to find out who the hell the staff is.
Not prospecting, not developing a lead, not selling them anything.
Just because it’s kind of nice to know somebody you don’t know.
You know?
