Chapter 11

The Shop

Josh pulled into Cor's laneway for what he knew would be the last time.

It's over, he thought. A good try. But it's over.

He had no ill feelings toward Cor or Amy. He'd enjoyed the week, he learned a lot, and didn't begrudge the time he'd spent with them. If anything, Josh thought, I feel guilty that I wasted their time. That thought followed him down the laneway, and he took a deep breath as he saw Amy's car parked in front of the shop. Time to face the music.

“Ironically, I got the seeds of the idea at that sales seminar,” said Josh. He smiled weakly at Amy. “I know,” Josh said. “You told me not to feel bad about learning. You were right.”

“That's the thing about those types of investments, Josh,” Amy said. “You're investing on the inside. And so change happens on the inside, too. And that can take a while to show up on the outside.”

In my case, I guess it didn't show up at all, Josh thought. Then he banished the voice. He was determined to finish this on a positive note.

“Let's hear the idea,” Cor said.

“It doesn't matter much now,” Josh said.

“Then I guess you've got time to tell us,” Cor said.

Josh sighed. “Of all the myths, the one that resonated with me the most was the Value Myth. It seemed so relevant to my industry. People like Amy and I…we're struggling to add enough value. People don't really need an agent to shuffle paperwork around or show someone a house. Those are important things, sure, but,” he looked over at Cor's gleaming motorcycles. “They're just polish. Not true value.”

Cor smiled.

“I'd been racking my brains trying to come up with something new. As I discovered, it's hard to just come up with a great idea on the spot. Sometimes you need inspiration. And I guess I must have been inspired during that sales weekend, because the answer was right in my journal.”

“That's a big part of the value of those things,” Amy said. “Inspiration comes from many places, but not always from within. The speakers, the participants, the panels, the stories. Anytime you put people in a room like that, there's huge potential.”

Josh nodded. “Ever since I started in this industry, it's been drilled into me that listings are key. You need sellers to list their homes for sale, and then you need to sell them to buyers. Pretty simple. But I believe that for every home that's listed, there are probably another ten that are almost for sale. They're homes that could be sold if the right buyer came along, but the owners aren't actively seeking to sell. They aren't interested in getting involved in potentially selling their home—listing the place, having hoards of people through. That's just too much trouble. They're just not ready to put their home on the open market.

“Some agents try to target those homes. They knock on doors occasionally with a buyer in mind. But the problem is that you can't know every home. Especially the unique, pricier ones. But,” Josh said. “A hundred real estate agents can.”

“Today,” Josh continued, “I saw this crowd of agents and they nearly made me late for my appointment. I was frustrated as hell, but a part of me kept thinking about the power of that crowd. After all, if a bunch of people can stop a moving car…what could a whole crowd of real estate agents accomplish?”

He looked at Amy. “Think about it,” he said. “Between you and me and every other agent, we probably know every property in the area. I realized we just needed a way to pool our knowledge. Not about homes already for sale, but about those that aren't but might be.”

Amy was sitting upright now, paying close attention.

“Well I figured there were two parts. The first was getting more specific information about what our buyers want, getting into details of the perfect home, property, neighborhood. Really finding out what drives them.

“And then,” he said. “Instead of only trying to sell them something that's already for sale, which they can find themselves easily with today's technology, we tap into the pool of agent knowledge to find a few ideal homes by sharing what our clients really want. The clients are happier, the agents do more deals, and everyone wins.”

Amy was excited. “It's something we can't do now because we don't really know what other people's clients want. In fact,” she added, “most of the time we don't even know what our own clients want. We're just trying to sell them what we have instead of what they need.”

“Exactly. We're trying to hammer square pegs into round holes. There's no abundance there. No value. So I made up a simple system for really capturing what our buyers want. It's just paper right now, but we can easily share it online with some simple computer work. And if every agent used it, we could all more readily find properties that fit.”

“Josh,” cried Amy. “I love it. What an idea.”

“It's a sort of crowd sourcing,” Josh said. “As a whole, we know more than we do individually. Together, all of us are smarter than any one of us. It's a bit like potluck math. We end up with more in the end.” Then his face fell.

Josh sighed. “I guess it doesn't matter much at this stage. I mean…it's still a good idea, I think. But it didn't work. I tried it with nearly 100 agents yesterday. No one had any ideas for my client.” He held up his hand in a “stop” motion without even looking up from the floor.

“Before you say it, I know. It's just a waypoint on the path to success. But it was a pretty crucial one. I missed the top spots on our team so this particular failure is going to be a fork in the path. I'm going to have to find a new route to success.” He sighed. “Kiera's going to kill me.”

Amy looked puzzled. “You tried it yesterday? How come I never heard anything?”

Josh shrugged. “You weren't at your office when I pitched the idea. I figured you didn't want to make me nervous,” he smiled. “Anyway. My client had this specific need. He wanted a huge acreage of rural property to build his dream home. But he wanted an income from the acreage. Have you ever tried to find a thousand acres of land around here? All these little vineyards. It's an impossible task. There aren't more than 100 acres for sale at any one time.” Josh looked wistfully out the shop door at the rolling hills.

“It would have been a hell of a deal, though, I'll tell you that.” Josh became aware that the room had gone silent. He looked up to see Amy standing there with her mouth agape. “What?”

“Josh,” Amy laughed, snapping out of her shock. “I know the perfect property.”

The room was silent for a moment, but for Josh, that moment felt like a long, swirling, slow motion eternity. It was as if he was watching from afar as disparate pieces of his life spun and danced and finally clicked together in a huge patchwork. The success weekend. Amy. Cor. The myths. Even that damn motorcycle. They all clicked into place and created one perfect moment where everything came together.

Cor had gone back to his motorcycles, seemingly unsurprised, although Josh noted a small smile playing around the corner of his mouth. Josh opened his mouth but nothing came out. “You—you know a property,” he finally croaked.

“It's not listed…but I know the owner. He wants to sell.”

“You're kidding me.”

“No. I'm serious.”

“Can…can…” Josh was stuttering. “Where is he?!” he blurted out.

Amy stood there, shaking her head in wonder. “He's right here.”

She looked over to where Cor sat at the workbench with the same smile playing around his mouth. He was shaking his head ever so slightly, pleased, but not surprised the way Josh clearly was.

Josh's mouth still hung open. Could this really be true?