Jo Ann Theriault-Fazio

I attribute my success to so much, starting with growing up seeing this industry and watching how hard my dad worked - that was the first stepping stone. I was incredibly fortunate to have the opportunities I was given because of who my father was, and I will never apologize for taking advantage of those opportunities. I was able to get set up with Jeff, this top producer, and I learned so much from him. I don't even just owe what I feel like a lot of my career to him - I met my husband at work too, and then he came and started working with our team. So much of my trajectory is because of taking chances and taking the paths that other people helped lead me to. I think that's a huge, huge part of it.

The best career advice I ever received was from my mentor, Jeff Lake, who used to say to me, 'Do what you do best and delegate the rest.' I didn't put it into practice until I was much older - I was just like, I'm gonna do it all myself. But as I became a mom and as I've taken on so much more responsibility within the company, I finally took that advice to heart. Now I have such an amazing team around me. Could I do the little bits of marketing and stuff? It's so fun, and I enjoy it, but I have people who specialize in that, and they can do it a lot better than I can. So there's a lot more delegation that goes on now, and it just keeps things moving a lot smoother. It took me a really long time to take that advice, but it did turn out to be really great advice.

One, do it - it's a wonderful industry. You get to help people achieve the dream of homeownership, which is the American dream, right? We can help so many people with that. I also just think there's so much opportunity for women, specifically in sales. Whether it's women in sales who maybe they're in a different industry and they have sales skills, or if it's women even within my own family of companies who are on the operations side, they have such a great knowledge base to be able to take that leap of faith into sales. A couple of things: one, there aren't enough of us. Two, there's more than double the amount of real estate agents in terms of females. And then, single women were one of the largest groups of homebuyers in all of last year - it was over 20%, more than double what single men were. So women want to work with women, and we just don't have enough of them in this industry.

I think it's not so much on our side, but there's an inventory shortage right now, and that can make closing more loans challenging. Timing can be challenging for some people if you don't work for a company that can move quickly. Fortunately, ours can - we can move through the process really quickly. I think a lot of challenges people face in this industry, they place on themselves with their own limitations, where it really can be limitless, like how much you want to work. But I still believe that our business is a relationship business, and you have to go out and establish really great, solid relationships with your referral partners, with your clients, with your community, and all of that.

I think probably what's important to anybody in their work and personal life. For me, I very much value my team and their loyalty. I just don't think that you can replace loyalty, especially when it comes to work. I mean, people can choose where they want to work, and I love that I have some people that I have worked with for, you know, some in multi-decades, in some cases. You just can't buy that kind of loyalty and that commitment. I think that, for me, that's probably some of the highest - it's also a huge compliment as well, right? That people would want to stick it out with you for that long. And that obviously can bleed over into personal, too.