Liza Kaufman/Sotheby’s International Realty Canada 

 

Liza Kaufman has never been one to wait for the perfect moment to take a chance.

The founding partner of Sotheby’s International Realty Québec believes taking risks is essential to entrepreneurship, and that the pressure to get everything right can sometimes hold people back from pursuing their ambitions, especially women.

“A lot of women want to be 99.9 per cent sure that something that they’re doing is absolutely perfect before they launch,” she says.

Kaufman knows firsthand what it means to move forward without guarantees.

When she opened her brokerage, the company didn’t even have a French-language website. Kaufman had no way of knowing whether the business would succeed.

“I just knew that I believed in myself so strongly that I was just gonna push through anything to make it work,” she said.

The gamble paid off. Today, Kaufman is among Sotheby’s International Realty’s Top 100 Global Advisors, having built a career representing luxury properties and working with prominent entrepreneurs and business leaders.

Now, she’s applying that same philosophy to an entirely different venture.

Her new podcast, Smart Women Big Deals, explores the risks, failures and pivotal decisions behind successful entrepreneurs, with a particular focus on women’s experiences.

 

An unlikely start in real estate

 

Born in Lima, Peru, Kaufman immigrated to Canada at age 10. Her career eventually took her into corporate finance and public relations, with time spent living and working across North America and Europe.

Real estate, however, wasn’t part of the plan.

About 23 years ago, Kaufman agreed to accompany a friend to real estate licensing classes, thinking the knowledge might prove useful as a property owner.

When her companion dropped out, Kaufman continued.

“I’m not a quitter, so I figured, OK, I started this, I’m gonna finish it,” she recalls.

After completing the courses, she visited a local brokerage to arrange the registration required to write her exam. On the stairs, she encountered her neighbours, who asked her to help sell their house.

Within about a month, it was sold.

“I made a lot of money for that time, and I thought, this could be a very interesting thing to do.”

As her career developed, Kaufman began thinking about how luxury real estate in particular could be handled differently.

“I wanted to create a company that marketed properties, didn’t just sell,” she says.

She was drawn to Sotheby’s International Realty, then beginning to franchise, particularly its investment in online marketing. She helped bring the brand to Canada and established its Quebec operation.

 

The stories behind the deals

 

Kaufman’s relationships with successful business leaders helped inspire Smart Women Big Deals, which launched Sept. 23.

“What always fascinated me wasn’t so much the billions of dollars that they made, it was how they got there, how they handled the failures, the pivots, the lucky breaks, the people that helped them along the way,” she says.

The first episode features Compass founder and CEO Robert Reffkin alongside his mother and mentor, Ruth Reffkin. Other guests include celebrity event planner Mindy Weiss and entrepreneur Katherine Garbarino.

The podcast launched with an event at the de Gaspé Beaubien residence, listed by Kaufman Group for $29.5 million.

For Kaufman, the project is also personal.

A longtime mentor to young women and grandmother of seven, including three granddaughters, she has become concerned about the expectations some young people develop through social media.

She worries that stories of seemingly overnight entrepreneurial success obscure the years of work and setbacks behind major accomplishments.

She discussed the podcast idea with Shopify president Harley Finkelstein, a client who has his own podcast. His advice was simple: “Just do it.”

Kaufman initially imagined launching with her phone and a ring light. Instead, she established a small media company.

“I started getting the same type of energy that I had when I launched Sotheby’s,” she says. “The same excitement, the same type of commitment.”

“It was a joy that I felt and the excitement within myself that I was gonna create something else.”

 

No deadline for reinvention

 

Kaufman believes women should be more comfortable taking calculated risks, even when success isn’t assured.

“I don’t look at failure as a problem,” she says. “I look at it as a lesson, a pivot, an inflection point.”

Her daughter and business partner, Alfee Kaufman, has followed her into real estate while balancing motherhood with an ambitious career.

But Kaufman’s message extends beyond women already established in business. She hopes to reach younger women hesitant to pursue their ideas, as well as those considering returning to work after raising families.

“I wanted to create a space for women of all ages, and the men that support us,” she says.

For someone who entered real estate by chance and is now building something new more than two decades later, reinvention isn’t simply a subject for her podcast.

“Nobody has the right to tell you that you cannot reinvent yourself,” she says. “And there is no deadline for reinvention.”