FAMILY MATTERS
BY CHUCK PAUSTIAN
Enough is enough
Bob Taylor, ABR®, CRS®, associate broker with Weir, Manuel, Snyder & Ranke LLC, REALTORS®, in Birmingham, Mich., was your typical workaholic. Long hours at the office, including most nights and weekends, were spent chasing the next transaction and trying to sell more than the next guy. In fact, he was doing well, selling about 50 units a year and managing three offices. But in retrospect, he says, he’d lost sight of what’s important.
Twelve years ago, when his first marriage ended in divorce, he knew it was time to change his ways. “I suddenly realized there’s more to life than work,” says Taylor, 55. “I had a 15-year-old daughter I didn’t know and an 8-year-old son I needed to raise.”
He rebuilt his business, and this time around he set new rules. He no longer works evenings or weekends, except to help out a friend, and he never gives out his home or cell phone number. He also has adjusted his goals and is content with his 2004 sales volume of about $8 million and 20 transactions.
Taylor, who has spent more than 30 years as a real estate practitioner, says it concerns him to see the attention the industry lavishes on salespeople generating sales of $100 million or more. “Some people in real estate think it’s all about the money. It’s not. It’s about serving the public,” he says. “I don’t have a personal assistant anymore. I could, but then I’d work more hours and have more responsibilities. I like going home at night.” When he’s not working, he enjoys reading, working in his garden, and traveling—all with his wife of five years, Nancy.
Another source of happiness is his involvement with the local, state, and national Realtor® associations. He’s served on at least two committees each year since 1975. Taylor says his participation has enabled him to grow personally and professionally. “I fell in love with being a practitioner in 1974, and that hasn’t changed,” he says.
On the personal side, Taylor says he’s lucky to have received a second chance. He’s rekindled his relationship with his daughter, Jennifer, who’s married with a child of her own, and is close with his son, Mark, a junior at the University of Michigan. “Part of striking a balance is wanting to have that balance,” he says.
He hopes other practitioners learn the same lessons he has before it’s too late. “We send cards to our clients when their children have birthdays but miss our own child’s soccer game. We nurture our business relationships and ignore our personal ones.”
A lot of people, especially practitioners, like to live by the adage “Work hard. Play hard,” he says, but most people don’t get the second half of the equation right. “We think that playing hard is being on the golf course or having a boat,” he says. “We have to realize that part of playing is being with our families.”
NAR is promoting work-life balance through a new “FamilyTime ” program it produced with Million Dollar Roundtable, an insurance industry group. Pricing for the DVD begins at $5. For more information, call 800/874-6500 or visit REALTOR.org.
