REAL ESTATE PROFILE — MARTY RODRIGUEZ: Her Team Still Delivers the Dream

Imagine Marty’s predicament. Last year, she was strapped in the seat of an Australian-bound jumbo jet taxiing on the runway, ready to enjoy her first vacation in 10 years.

Then came the dreaded announcement: “Please turn off all electronic devices and prepare for take-off.” Separating Marty from her electronic leash that has kept her successfully connected to clients for 32 years must have been sheer horror.

As far as the vacation went, Marty might as well have never taken off. “Here I was in Australia, and I’m thinking I need to be in Glendora working on my business. My mind was at home thinking about how to act and work in this new market. I acted like I was in Australia, but I really wasn’t there. That was tough.”

Sales Giant

It was tough because Marty is always there. Her Marty Rodriguez Century 21 brand, image and identify in the San Gabriel Valley are more ubiquitous than smog or 5 o’ clock congestion on the 210 freeway. Since she took out her real estate license in the late 70s, she has recorded more than $2 billion in sales. That’s more money than the GNP of some small Central American republics. Today, despite the nation’s nastiest recession in 80 years, her office spends $40,000 a month in advertising.

“We’ve cut back some,” Marty said. “We made some little adjustments, but we still advertise in the same areas. You can’t be the secret agent in this business. You have to let people know what you do. You still have to have all your feelers out there every day, physically and via print and the internet. It’s important that you always be the hub of information.”

If last year’s Australian excursion had a silver lining, it’s that she came back even hungrier to lead in this current market. Any thoughts of enjoying the fruits of her labors on a beach or continent away just aren’t part of her DNA, which is bad news for competitors. “Retire and do what? she asks “Stay home and eat bonbons?”

Revealingly, at a recent Realtor breakfast, where she was the guest speaker, she explained her thinner, sleeker figure was the result of her “eat to live, don’t live to eat” philosophy that she inherited from her father Felix, who lived to be 93. But she stays in shape not so that she can one day enjoy a life of luxury, but so she can keep up her stamina and work even more. “You have to take care of your health so that you can produce and work,” Marty said. Toward that goal, she works out with an in-home athletic trainer twice a week.

Work is her sinful dessert. At the same breakfast, Marty cited Bill Gates as one source who inspires her. “Success is a lousy teacher,” she said, quoting the Microsoft founder. “It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose … and it’s an unreliable guide to the future. Past success means nothing in real estate. It’s what you’re doing today and tomorrow that counts.”

The Beginning

In a sense, Marty has been running from her past while also embracing it. She is the original “riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.” She grew up the fourth of 11 children in a two-bedroom, one-bath house in El Monte. In a household of that size, her father set some straightforward rules: go to school, earn good grades, work hard, attend church and settle for nothing less than the absolute best.

As part of her full disclosure at the breakfast, she told the Realtors in the room where her competitive edge comes from. As early as age six, she easily sold more candy and Christmas cards than her Catholic schoolmates. In high school, she was a Bishop Amat cheerleader while managing to earn good grades and hold two jobs. At Rio Hondo College, she was taking real estate courses at night when she met Ed Rodriguez , who worked in heavy construction and whose family owned a small restaurant in her neighborhood. Their bond, which led to marriage, was their shared philosophy of working hard to get ahead. Their union was the start of “The Team That Delivers the Dream” that has since grown into an office with 15 staff members and 13 agents.

“We are born with certain talents,” Marty said, “and we marry the person who brings out the best in us … or we marry the person who takes it away from us. So for 38 years, I’ve been very lucky.”

Their marriage hasn’t always been a bed of roses. There have been a few thorns. Early in her real estate career, she realized she could be far more productive if she could hire a housekeeper. “When I first told Ed that is what I wanted to do, he said, ‘Oh, no, you can work and clean house, too.’ I got the housekeeper anyway, and then he was really mad. So I figured I really had to show him. Once I started focusing and producing, he was like, ‘Don’t even make the bed; just go to work.’”

Real Estate in Motion

Marty at work is a sight to behold — a cyclone of controlled chaos and high-energy and excitement. She isn’t isolated like some grand real estate pooh-bah tucked away in an over-the-top office behind an expensive mahogany table. Rather, she sits in a black nondescript chair, a swivel away from her contract, listing, transaction, escrow and marketing coordinators. Close by in her custom, white-with-turquoise-trim, 11,000-square-foot building on Route 66 in Glendora are her daughter Shelley, a graduate of USC’s Marshall School of Business who is the Responsible Broker and anchors the business and financial side of the company; her stepson Ed, who is the Sales Manager; and her son, Sean, who handles the office’s technology and information systems and is the Field Coordinator for the REO Department. Marina Hernandez, another invaluable and intricate member of the dream team, serves as Sales Support Manager while overseeing the entire Support Staff.

“We all work together so nothing falls through the cracks,” Marty explains in between phone calls.

Adds Shelley: “What makes us a successful ‘family-run’ company is we all bring special skills and talents to the table, and we respect one another for those skills and talents. We hold each other accountable to the things we commit to. Yet, we don’t take things personally, no matter what. If we did, we know that would negatively affect the whole company culture. Our staff knows we are a professional company that is genuinely invested in each person’s success.”

Nothing may fall through the cracks, but to watch Marty, as the head hen in this nest of motherly mayhem, is a crack-up. Clearly, she and her supporting cast are having fun. Once, two bidders at a charity auction paid $6,000 each to spend the day with Marty. They got their money’s worth. In many way, Marty’s still back in her two-bedroom house loving the pulse and pace of her crowded, but close-knit real estate family.

Within seconds of sitting in front of her twin computer monitors, she’s responding — honed by years of experience and hundreds of transactions — to emails, taking phone calls and making quick decisions about  offers, counteroffers, contingencies, appraisals, inspections, short sales, bank repos, Lakers tickets (she’s become a fan), closing gifts, swapping coffee vendors, listing appointments, speaking engagements, MLS photos – all to the easy listening beat of KOST 103.5 FM.

Black and White

There are many shades to Marty’s success, but gray will never be one of them. “I don’t like gray,” she said, while dipping into a large Costco can of animal crackers and sharing them with anyone within reach. “It’s either ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ It’s black or white. Don’t give me gray. When you go into the gray area, you’re headed for trouble.”

Hang with Marty for a while, and you begin to see the methods behind her magic or madness (call it what you will). While she is selling value to her clients, she is selling values to her staff, several of which have become well-known Marty-isms. Heaven forbid, if you’re one of her agents and your voice mailbox is full. “Unacceptable,” Marty smolders. “Yesterday, I called one of my agents and her voice mailbox was full. I was livid. Our most valuable tool is our phone, and if somebody can’t find you, and you don’t answer and you don’t have voice mail, you’re in the wrong business.”

At the office, she conducts routine car checks and dress checks. Levi jeans and frumpiness are not allowed. Excess ear hair and nose hairs are strictly banned. Marty will come at you with a razor or clippers and perform the excision right on the spot. Survivors have shared the stories. Scuffed, unpolished shoes … look out. Leave an unnamed, undated sack lunch in the refrigerator, beware the wrath. Marty would rather live with the devil himself than tolerate a hint of mold or mildew. Pose for a photo, the shoulders better be pinned back.

“You say you’re a professional, then look and be a professional,” Marty said. “You don’t have to have expensive clothes; you just have to be neat, clean and trimmed.”

Her entire real estate operation is a monument to order and cleanliness. That same devotion to tidiness is apparent in every one of her real estate files.

“Everything in my office is organized, systematized, computerized, and colorized,” Marty said. “Every position has a manual defining individual duties and responsibilities. My staff knows the purchase contract better than most real estate agents.”

Take a shortcut out of laziness, and it won’t go over well. “You’re not going to get away with it here,” Marty said. “We have so many systems here, and if you don’t abide by the systems, pretty soon, you won’t have a system. And we’re not going to let that happen.”

Full-Time Business

Marty’s passion for the real estate business runs deep and long. It’s not unusual to see her at the office working until midnight. “It’s scary, I know,” she admits about her real estate obsession. She comes into the office six days a week; on Sunday, her reputed day off, she still answers the phone.

“Real estate is a real business,” Marty said. “We don’t hire part-time agents. You don’t work part-time when you’re dealing with people’s lives, their families, or their money. Real estate is not a part-time job.”

Marty has a legendary, laser-like focus. When she started in real estate, Sean was three and Shelley was one. Early on, they used to say “Earth to mom, come in mom.” They always managed to get through, however, and today are vital, integral parts of her business. They understand mom’s passion and have become equally passionate about the business.

“When I can sell my ideas and ways to my children, then you know you’re a great salesperson,” Marty laughs.

Marty is able to bring such focus to her selling efforts because she knows her Management team is handling all the details of running the company. About 10 years ago, Marty attended a Management Action Program (Map), where she learned that her strengths and talents lay in sales, not management. That’s when she decided to hand the reins of managing the company to her team, and she’s never looked back.

“Marty does not want to run the company,” said Shelley. “She just wants to sell and know everything is being handled. We let her know the important stuff, but we don’t clog her brain with unnecessary things that will make her lose focus.”

The Right Focus

What Marty doesn’t focus on are things beyond her control. Maligning current market conditions is a waste of time to her. Excuses, be damned. “You can’t be worried about the economy,” Marty said. “Economies will come and go, and move every which way. I need to make sure I have my two feet on the ground and know where I am going – and that is putting buyers and sellers together in any market.”

Other qualities that set Marty apart are her product knowledge and preparation. For a dozen years, she was her area’s caravan leader. “It would be the same dozen people over and over, but I got to learn the area and the houses,” Marty said. “I can describe a house from my desk now. When you can speak that way with that much knowledge on the phone, you’re going to get someone’s attention.”

In early November, she got the attention of a retired Glendora couple who had called Marty about possibly listing their home. At the appointment, she wowed the pair with comps of similar properties so they would be completely comfortable about her suggested sales price. Like a doctor assessing a patient’s vital signs, she quietly observed the home inside and out, taking notes, asking a few follow-up questions and making recommendations. Strip the wallpaper, stretch the carpet, fix the broken window, paint and power-wash the outside spider webs, Marty advised. “Make it as model-home-ish as you can.”

“I’m very impressed with you and your company, and the way you have structured everything so well,” said the married couple’s daughter, who was assisting her parents in the sale of their home. “It’s very impressive.”

Marty is tough but tender. She’ll walk over coals to achieve her goals (as she once did at an Anthony Robbins seminar), but her goals and definition of success have changed over the years. Being Century 21’s top selling agent, which she has been countless times both nationally and globally, is less important to her than just being and doing her best. She’s still that kid at heart, racing to sell boxes of candy, only the boxes she now sells range in price from $50,000 in San Bernardino to $5 million in Glendora or La Verne.

“When you’re just getting started, success is, ‘Hey, if can do a few deals a month, you think, you’re fixed up,’” Marty noted. “Now, there are bigger and better things, and there’s more. I used to always want more, but it’s more for my people now. It’s about staying power. It’s about mindset. It’s about how do you find your way through this market.”

Strangely, she relishes this new market, accepting and picking up the gauntlet of short sales, REOs, and foreclosures that have been thrown at her feet. She has never been one to shy away from a challenge. She could retreat to the Newport Beach beach house, but she wants no part of it. Buyers who thought they could never buy in Southern California are back in play, and Marty wants to help them succeed.

Leadership and Loyalty

“I have a lot of people counting on me, who look up to me,” she said. “I don’t want to destroy that leadership. I have to be very responsible.” Her Catholic upbringing won’t let her walk away. She welcomes the fight. It’s her chance to be a salesperson again, not just an order taker when she was selling more than 500 homes a year in the go-go 90s.

And the fight is on, testing her systems and oftentimes the non-existent systems of others, driving her to frustration. “My daughter always says, ‘If you don’t push people to the limit, they will never be great.’ Well, this market will push us to the limits.” On one short sale, she said the decision-maker was in India. “That’s crazy,” Marty vented. “We need the jobs here.”

Marty said half the purchase contracts she receives can’t be executed. “Generally, my contract assistant has to tell them how to fill out the contract before we even negotiate it. I want a copy of the buyer’s check, verification of down payment, letter from the lender, credit scores … show me the money,” she laughs.

“And they think Marty is the ‘B’ because I’m making them do their job,” she added. “And you know what, whatever people think of me, it’s none of my business. I will not compromise my rules and standards for anybody.”

Customers First

Whatever she’s doing, it’s working. She hasn’t laid anyone off during this historic real estate implosion. She attributes that feat to keeping her focus on her customers. “Without customers, you have no business,” she said.

She recently moved a client into a new home in Rancho Cucamonga, but it wasn’t without travail or the usual drama that seem part and parcel of the real estate industry. Upset at the seller for not disclosing something about the home, her buyer angrily called off the deal and told Marty not to “try and talk him into still buying the house.”

“I gave him two days to cool off, and then I called him,” Marty said. He knew she would. “I said, ‘Look Sean, remember the reason you’re moving. You’re doing it for your kids and your family. You want to get away from your old neighborhood. You tell me you hear gunshots at night.’

“I didn’t try to sell him the house. I tried to sell him the reason why he was moving. He was moving for his family, to get away from that neighborhood. Guess what, they live in Rancho, and they love it there.”

If real estate is about location, location, location, then success in real estate boils down to trust, trust, trust, especially in a market as crazy and upside down as this one has been.

Maybe that’s the time to call a mega-selling Realtor who still shops at Costco, cuts coupons, pumps her own gas, and knows the value of a buck – especially when that dollar is her client’s.

“I choose to focus on what’s good about life,” Marty said. “Not what’s wrong with it.”