Because I Said So: Partnering with Mom in Real Estate

For many real estate professionals, the thought of working with your mom or your child is the stuff of nightmares. For others though, it would be a dream come true. After all, how often do you have an iron-clad assurance that at least one co-worker has your back — one hundred percent — no matter what?

Working with family might not be a scenario everyone will experience, but for these moms and their daughters, overcoming the challenges of partnering up created a better business and a stronger bond between them.

An early education

Caroline Maki, Marty Rodriguez and Debbie Wicker recall starting out in their real estate careers and having their children with them. Regan Maki used to hunker down in the back seat of Caroline’s car on rounds of open houses, so that she could have time with her mom on the weekends. Shelley Dow accompanied Marty through neighborhoods as she knocked on doors and passed out flyers. Alexandra Wicker recalls her mother always selling homes for a living. These childhood experiences shone an insider’s light on the real estate business — but was it too much when they were so young?

“My husband always wanted Regan to work in corporate America, not at a family business,” Caroline recalled. “He wanted an outside experience for her.”

“Something I’d always lovingly joked about is that, when I became a real estate agent, I would work smarter, not harder, and always make sure I took time off for my children,” Regan admitted. “The other way around isn’t a bad thing, it’s just something I knew I’d always do different.”

For Marty, what her children did for a living didn’t matter as long as they loved what they did.

“After Shelley graduated, I told her, ‘I don’t want you to feel like you owe me anything’ and I was ready to let her go,” Marty remarked. “I just wanted her to love her job and to have the same feeling that I did — that you can’t wait to get to work.”

“Mom made it clear,” Shelley remembered. “She said, ‘Don’t work here because you feel you have to, do it because you want to.’”

Joining forces

Still, these daughters weren’t deterred from diving into the family business. For Shelley, the timing couldn’t have been better. As a recent graduate of USC’s Marshall School of Business, she was in competition with a flood of other candidates seeking jobs in Los Angeles. At the time, an uncle who worked with Marty let Shelley know that the office manager position was about to come open. She chose to interview with him instead of with her mother, and scrutinized the compensation package as thoroughly as one that came from another potential employer. Shelley got the job and steadily built the company’s infrastructure; today she’s responsible for operations and systems.

When Alexandra had difficulty finding work during her college break, she approached her mother Debbie with an unexpected proposal. “She said, ‘I never thought I’d ask this, but would you consider hiring me as your summer intern?’” Debbie recalled. “Then she came to us at the end of the summer and said, ‘I’d never thought I’d ask this, but…’ She loved real estate and wanted to stay on. The rest is history.”

“I just fell in love,” Alexandra explained. “It’s fast-paced, it’s different every day, and I loved watching my mom work with clients, negotiating contracts, troubleshooting. I thought, ‘I could do that.’”

Alexandra started out as a client coordinator and recently got her real estate license, so she’ll soon transition to being the third buyer’s agent on her mother’s team.

For Regan, technically this is her second round working with her mother. She and Caroline simultaneously joined the same company, but when her mother sought other opportunities, Regan stayed on. After working separately for some time, they decided to partner again and Regan went to work as one of Caroline’s agents.

Getting along

Working together requires each mother and daughter to objectively manage each other’s expectations and those of their co-workers. All three dynamic duos follow the Golden Rule and set the example for common courtesy and mutual respect among their team members, but Marty has one non-negotiable rule that everyone knows better than to test.

“I don’t let people cuss around me and I don’t let anybody do it in the office,” Marty stated. “I can rip you up one side and down the other — I can bring you to your knees — and I don’t have to say a single bad word.”

She says it with a smile in her voice, but you can hear the steel, too.

Years of trial and error in real estate gave these moms plenty of lessons and advice that they continue pass along to their children and staff.

“One thing I’d tell someone who was considering bringing in their son or daughter is to teach them to have the same work ethic you do,” Caroline advised.

Marty agreed. “How you do anything is how you do everything,” she remarked.

Some children joining their parent’s business are surprised to find out that Mom actually knows what she’s talking about, and that she wasn’t just the boss at home — she calls the shots in the office, too.

“I think when you work with a family member, you assume you know what they want, and you’re like, ‘Yeah, yeah; I know,’” Alexandra stated. “But I have to remember she’s been in business 28 years; I needed to slow down, soak up knowledge and listen.”

Trust and faith in her mother’s abilities is something that Alexandra quickly acquired once she started working with Debbie.

“If the market gets a little slow, I get nervous and ask her, ‘Are you sure you know what you’re doing?’” she recalled. “And she just goes, ‘Alexandra, going up and down is what the market does.’ So I’ve learned to step back and understand that she’s been around the block.”

While Caroline, Marty and Debbie have handed many, if not all of the business operations to their daughters, there are plenty of times when closed-door discussions are required. Even if their opinions differ, they always consider the greater good and make a point of showing one face to the rest of the team.

“Regan’s got her opinion, I’ve got mine and we come together to work it out,” Caroline remarked. “We always have a united front: If opinions differ, there’s a give and take, and we talk about it because it can’t always be my way or always her way.”

There are also times when staff get one answer from the daughter, but ask Mom for another, or vice versa. It’s an ongoing challenge for Alexandra, Shelley and Regan to remind non-family staff that their positions were earned, not handed to them.

“Sometimes we have to tell Mom, ‘You can’t give us privileges because it compromises our authority with staff,’” Shelley pointed out. “We understand how important it is to keep that relationship professional, so even though people think it’s weird, I always call her ‘Marty’ in the office, not ‘Mom.’”

“I understood not to take their power,” Marty agreed. “Someone might come to me wanting to do something in a different way, and I have to say, ‘No, these are Shelley’s rules and systems.’ Systems are what make a family work, and the systems are guided by those rules.”

Whatever the initial hurdles they encountered early on, each woman discovered things about her personal style that needed adjusting to nurture the professional relationship.

“Regan’s got a magnetic personality — there’s something about her people just love because she genuinely cares — but when she needs to be strong, she can be strong,” Caroline pointed out. “I think she gets that from me.”

“The clients just go gaga for Alexandra — and I always thought I had a great relationship with them,” Debbie laughed. “She’s been a great addition to the team: At the signing, they turn to me and say, ‘Be sure to tell Alexandra we said goodbye; we’ll miss her,’ and a tiny bit of me says, ‘Well, I hope you miss me, too!’”

Stronger today

Debbie and Shelley found that eliminating as much job overlap among employees was key to keeping the peace among the family and non-family team members.

“We like to think we’re creating a team where everyone has their own specialized job description,” Debbie noted. “They do what they do well and they keep repeating it.”

“The reason family companies are successful is when people do completely different things,” Shelley agreed. “My brother and I had some overlaps and we said, ‘This is crazy,’ so we chose to separate our responsibilities.”

“Being in business — not only with your mom, but just any business partner in general — is a give-and-take, like any other relationship,” Regan observed. “There are going to be sacrifices and things you compromise on.”

All three mother-daughter teams agree that keeping personal and professional lives separate contributed to team harmony.

“As much as it’s a family-run business — which is wonderful — you have to keep the mindset that it is a business,” Alexandra advised. “It takes time, but having open communication helps remind yourself to keep it a professional atmosphere.”

“Shelley is all business and we have an awesome company,” Marty stated. “There are so many benefits to working with her; I’m surrounded by people who really, really care about me, my customers and my business.”

These real estate professionals agreed that minimizing shoptalk outside the office also helps keep work and home in the proper place, and helped make the most of their time with the people they love.

“It’s our biggest challenge to say, ‘Okay, it’s dinner time: We’re officially turning it off,’” Debbie admitted. “On the weekends or at the holidays, it’s very easy to slip into business talk instead of enjoying having your family together.”

When she started working with her mother, Shelley had no idea that she would later take the dynamics and experience of their successful partnership and pay it forward.

“We have some women who are all related — cousins and sisters — who do a great job working together, but they tell us, ‘You set the example for families working together,’” Shelley related. “If I didn’t work here, I wouldn’t see my family as much; getting to see them every day is one of the biggest benefits.”

“At some point, I’ll look back and think ‘Gosh, I got to spend all those years working with my mom every day,’ Regan remarked. “I’ll see how we attained these levels of success and spent this time together, and I’ll be grateful.”