What is your success backstory? Is it worth thinking about?

I never dreamed this could happen to me.

It was a sunny day in July of 1975, and I was in an extremely tense meeting in Ocean City, Maryland.

I didn’t want to attend the meeting, but dear friends asked me to because they hoped I knew something about “sales.” I didn’t know how I could help, but I came along for moral support.

My friends owned the Virginia Mortgage & Investment Company, and they had invested millions of dollars to develop a 211-unit beachfront condominium called the 9400 Building.

Construction was completed, so it was time for owners to move in. The largest and most successful real estate brokerage firm within a hundred miles had been pre-selling using for the last three years, and had only made three sales. 

It wasn’t their fault. There were over 3,000 unsold condo units along the beach that year, and only a dozen had sold in the previous year. Banks had foreclosed on several prominent buildings, and they were offering deep discounts and mortgages with only 5% down. And yet, the local appraiser estimated it would take ten years for this glut of condos to be absorbed.

The mandatory meeting was organized by the lawyers representing Chase Manhattan Trust as formal notice that they were starting the foreclosure process. 

Fifteen of us huddled around a large boardroom table in groups of three or four. Nobody made eye contact with people in other groups. The environment was agitated with angry conversations turning red hot, reaching a fever pitch with lots of foul language and finger-pointing.

Millions of dollars were on the line! My friends were speechless; when they did talk, they stuttered. Their lips quivered and their hands trembled. Their fear of losing everything was apparent.

After twenty minutes of screaming and shouting, the Chase lawyer calmly stood up to bring silence. He then turned to my friends and slowly stated that they were filing foreclosure papers that day unless they received an immediate payment of millions of dollars.

My friend looked down as if studying a scratch on the table, and then she turned to me, and in a low voice, with tears in her eyes, said, “Jack, what do we do? What do you recommend? Can you help us?”

I thought my heart would stop. What could I say? My experience in selling real estate was zero. 

Everyone stared at me. I knew I was in way over my head, and I was scared. My “fight or flight” mechanism kicked in, and I instinctively went on the offense with a nothing to lose attitude.

I began to ask “what if” questions. When I did speak, it didn’t sound like me talking, but whatever I said in the next nine minutes was magical enough to have the bank hold off on their decision to foreclosure until Labor Day. My friends now had a gift of 75 days to pull off a real estate sales miracle… or come up with ten million dollars.

Later, at dinner, my friends saluted me with expensive wine to thank me for getting this reprieve as we began to ponder their next move. They didn’t have the ten million dollars, so we had not alternative but to double down. Their idea was to make ten to fifteen sales by Labor Day, and then beg or leniency from Chase.

Midway through our second bottle of wine, they implored me to help organize a sales strategy. I agreed to give them three weeks. It might have been the wine’s effect, but I believed there was a way to capitalize on the lousy market.

I was starting with a blank canvass, literally. At night, the building eerily pitch black with no lights on in any of its hundreds of windows. So I started there. We turned on the lights in every fourth unit. Then we got two of those large “grand-opening” spotlights to light up the building at they circled the sky. 

Then we took down the building’s name from the commercial-sized  billboard and changed it to read “RED TAG CLOSEOUT.” We also employed many other outside-the-box ideas. And since Ocean City is the summer playground for hundreds of thousands of people from the Baltimore/Washington DC area, we soon had traffic jams as hundreds of curious vacationers checked us out. 

The three weeks I agreed to give to my friends turned into three months, and all 210 units of the 9400 BUILDING were sold. 

I had never worked so hard in my life. I lost twelve pounds and earned over three hundred thousand dollars in commissions. 

Famous real estate writer, Lew Sichelman, chronicled the story in his article for the Washington Post with the headline “Action Selling Moves Ocean City Condo.” Forbes and Fortune picked up the story, writing about the “turnaround” of Ocean City and my career as an REO work out expert. (REO – bank lingo for real estate owned by the bank.) 

When I agreed to help my friends, I wasn’t motivated by money; they needed help, and I wanted to do whatever I could to get them out of their bind. My willingness to help them changed my life. It was one of the best decisions I have ever made. 

The story gets better. The bank agreed to pay me a typical real estate commission out of each closing, and then gave me four more buildings in Washington, DC and Baltimore to “work out” (sell) for them. 

Since then, I’ve successfully directed over four billion dollars worth of residential real estate, allowing me to be a multi-millionaire and regarded by many as a real estate genius. I may be rich, but I am not delusional; I know that I am not a genius of any kind.

In 1975, I didn’t know what I was doing, but I did understand the basic principles I learned from Napoleon Hill. His principles guided my early achievements, and over the years, I have continually refined my ideas until they were perfected and tested. The proof is that many of the salespeople who worked with my and learned my system became six-figure earners and, in many cases, have become millionaires.

About ten years ago, my wife, Marie Williams, a multi-million-dollar real estate producer in her own right, suggested I write down my sales and management principles so others could benefit from my experience. I agreed with her, but like most people, I procrastinated. I knew the task would be uncomfortable for me. Like most people, when facing discomfort, I dug in my heels so I could stay in my comfort zone.

Seven more years past, and my ideas were still mostly in my head. 

Finally, three years ago, Marie agreed to collaborate with me and add her expertise to create our HPA System. It is worth noting that Marie is a real estate broker, a mortgage broker, a lawyer, and has an advanced degree in Clinical Psychology. She was the missing ingredient! 

With Marie holding me accountable and polishing my rough drafts, we have created:

• The Sales Managers Playbook
• The Twelve Pillars of Persuasion
  

We all know how a pendulum works, and the Law of Reciprocal Return works the same way. The effort I gave all those many years ago, has given me far better returns than I could have imagined. And now, as the pendulum swings back, I wish to share what I’ve learned with you, so that you, in turn, can put forth the effort that will yield even greater returns for yourself.