Before starting my own real estate brokerage and ultimately real estate team, I worked for others in commercial real estate; I worked in commercial real estate finance and also for a local real estate investor managing and leasing a portion of their portfolio in the Denver area.

I originally got into real estate because it fascinated me; even since I was a child I was intrigued by the built world. I loved watching This Old House and Home Time while other kids looked forward to cartoons. My first career after college was as a wildlife Biologist. Even as a Biologist I was interviewing investors and developers trying to figure out how to get involved in real estate investing. I finally decided to go back to grad school and earned a Master's of Science in Real Estate and Construction Management from the University of Denver, Daniels College of Business. It's essentially an MBA focused specifically on the commercial real estate industry.

Building a team has been a challenge. Every entrepreneur I've ever talked with shares the challenges of transitioning from solopreneur to employer. Learning to manage people, let alone inspire them to be great isn't easy. It comes with a lot of fits and spurts; it is very much two steps forward and one step back process. It requires commitment and persistence to grow beyond some of those early team-building challenges. We're still growing... Ha!

Additionally, our industry has a very low barrier to entry. It's the real reason that the real estate brokerage industry has such a high turn-over rate. Many new agents join the industry believing it will be easy - easy money at that. Without good business acumen, willingness to engage in business development, sincere interest in the customer experience, and a vision or purpose - many simply wash out after a few months or a couple of years. The average consumer (buyer, seller, tenant, or landlord) doesn't know what to look for in a quality real estate professional and often falls to the allure of discounted commissions. Unfortunately, these discounts are often offered out of desperation from agents just trying to pay next month's mortgage, and they're less focused on the best interest of the consumer. The consumer has a bad experience and becomes a tad jaded toward our industry.

Eighty percent of the transactions in our market are done by the top twenty percent of the brokers. So, while the top twenty percent isn't necessarily competing with these other brokers, we are always working to correct and improve the perception of our industry. That is one of the personal challenges our team faces - how to elevate the reputation of the real estate industry with every transaction and client.

Just two. The first was my own brokerage, Total Realty Advisors. I joined Keller Williams in 2016 and closed my brokerage to rebuild as a team, the Lucchesi Property Group.

Formerly as the brokerage owner, I used to keep the entirety of my commission checks. However, I was trying to grow my business on an island by myself. While I now exchange part of my commission, Keller Williams has really helped me grow my business significantly. Before joining Keller Williams I worked with around 15 clients each year. Now, I work with around 35-45 clients each year. Our team intends to grow, eventually working with over 100 clients each year.

In 2017, I was the #1 individual agent in our market center (brokerage office). Even as our market center has grown and top graded with new talent we've continued to rank in the top 3 agents or teams each year since.

We had a client named Lowell a few years ago from Walden. He lost his daughter and needed to sell her house - one of our probate clients. When I connected with Lowell, he had unwittingly agreed to sell the house to the neighbor for pennies on the dollar. I believe the agreement was for the payoff of a small mortgage plus $20,000 to the daughter's estate. I helped Lowell to see that the house was worth much closer to $400,000 in our market at the time. Lowell was eager for the help, but already had an agreement with the neighbor, although no Contract. Lowell's attorney thought I was full of it. But he helped Lowell get out of the lease he had with the neighbor and the neighbor wasn't able to offer the fair market value. We helped Lowell sell the house for $383,000 sold AS-IS after some concession for a bad sewer line. We helped an elderly gentleman put over hundreds of thousands more into his daughter's estate and ultimately back to his family. The neighbor pretty well despised me, but what he was doing is illegal in other states; unfortunately not in Colorado. Lowell and his attorney are some of our biggest advocates. In fact, Lowell's attorney is one of our biggest referral partners. It means a lot to me that I was able to intervene and protect an elderly gentleman from being taken advantage of and improve his retirement.

Keller Williams has a proprietary artificial intelligence (AI) platform, which they actually built themselves. It is an end to end platform that allows us to enhance essentially all aspects of the client experience, while also streamlining our back of housework for each client as well. It also has the capacity to do some pretty amazing marketing which is helping us market and sell our client's properties faster and for more money. We can market our listings with a dedicated landing page, 3D tour, video tour, direct mail, social media posting, and advertising and email campaigns all from one central platform. Our clients get our consumer mobile app that walks them through the transaction process step by step, which helps us be efficient and effective in communicating with them throughout the entire process.

It's hugely important.

We have great reviews and execute a plan with each of our past clients to encourage them to share their great feedback. It's not as much about the star rating as people think. When I ask the new clients that found us online about it, they always tell us about the comments from our past clients. The magic is in what our past clients have to say, not the stars - although we always strive for five.

Our Clean-out to Close services program is uniquely tailored to make the process of selling a loved one's house through a trust, estate, or as a conservator simple and easy. We are experts at selling these houses AS-IS so the family doesn't make repairs or improvements. And, we Net the family more money, even after real estate commissions, than cash investors can pay. Finally, we track our numbers very closely compared to the average market. We have a proven track record of selling houses for 1-2% more and in 10-20 days less than the average realtor in our market. That additional money goes into the estates and trusts that we serve and represent.