Steve Salavec - Realtor

MARCH 23, 2020 © Right Here, Right Now.

About a week and a half ago is when it kind of hit me because I had to start re-evaluating everything because I was supposed to be in Manhattan today with my best friend Sarah and I had to evaluate is this…how much of this is real? How much of this isn’t? This was really early on but that is when I kind of started taking note of things.

It definitely effects my business. For me, I’m a referral based relational realtor, that’s what I do so how I conduct business is face to face is engaging with people, feeding off peoples energy and them feeding off of mine. So having to limit that or come up with creative ways to do that has been a challenge. There’s been some good things and some bad things and it’s still super early on this so I haven’t completely run the well dry but if things go on for a certain amount of time it will and that’s when I can kind of see that it will be a bigger issue.

Josh - What is worrying you?

The worry of the unknown, we just don’t know how long this can go on for or how long this is going to effect people. I mean I literally just got out of the service industry a little over a month ago, and had this happened a month ago this could have been…it’s already a big deal for me, but it could have been a way bigger deal for me than it is. And luckily I’m married, I have a partner, and we can kind of help support each other through that but it’s the unknown…we don’t know where the finish line and thats, for me, in business, in personal life, for me in sobriety, for me in anything I’ve got to see some kind of finish line so that’s what scares me.

Josh - Talking about sobriety, especially in the service industry, there’s a lot of people who do struggle with that and now in the isolation of staying home that could be difficult. How do you keep yourself strong during this time?

That’s a very good question, a lot of people haven’t asked that. I am a part of a 12 step program and a big part of those 12 step programs for a lot of people, their lifeline, are certain meetings, certain fellowships, and all of that has been cut out really quickly and there are people that need to go to those meetings or be part of that everyday and sometimes multiple times a day and these people aren’t able to do that. So I’ve gotten creative with certain people with doing zoom meetings, I send out notes constantly, I’m writing people notes just because in those few moments that they get a written note, rather than a text message, you can kind of feel a kind of nostalgic energy that connects you still even if it’s not face to face. It does worry me a little about people’s sobriety and meetings and things like that, and being in the restaurant industry, the service industry, even as a realtor not being able to come into the office and not being able to be around other realtors and feeding off of each others energy…it’s different, the accountability is…you really gotta buckle down on it yourself.

Josh - What would you maybe say to someone struggling right now.

I think it’s the same thing I would say that I started to say this week is…even when I heard M’s was closing, I tried to call every single person and if I didn’t get a hold of them I texted and left voicemails and let every single server that I worked with know “ If you need anything, I’m here, I love you, I’m your friend. There’s going to be another side of this and we’re all going to be better on the other side for it”. I literally tried to call anybody and everybody I could because I honestly meant it. I reached out to flippers that I know that are working on houses and I said “I’ve got some of my friends that are looking for extra cash, do you have anything they can do? Painting, lawn work, anything to help get some of these houses ready?” I didn’t hear a lot of traction back on that but I tried anything, everything I could because I know what I would have done in that circumstance to make extra money.

Keeping busy is something that I’m pretty good at. I just got married last year and my husband and I bought a house this last fall and there are things around the house that we’ve been wanting to do so we’ve been able to do that. Plus we’re both creative as far as trying different things, so, I mean I’ve been cooking something different every night, I’m not a really big cook but I’ve been learning, but big shout out to Tiffani Amber Thiessen for making the cookbook that somebody gave me (Laughs). But, I mean doing things like that, spending all the time that I possibly can with my husband which is great and also challenging because as a fiercely independent person I didn’t really realize that even though those small times to myself, how kind of important those are for a lot of us, those times away from our partners…I don’t know, it’s kind of a reset button to be a better partner. But there’s been some amazing conversations, there’s been some great connections, I mean yeah…knowing that you’re with your best friend, I mean it’s just like any other friendship, you get on each others nerves sometimes. You go to another place in the house…I don’t want to hear your cinema sins on youtube, he’s going to freak out if I watch another recap of a Ru Paul’s Drag Race Show (haha)

Josh - What’s your husband’s name?

Vince.

Josh - Tell me a little about Vince. What do you love about Vince?

I love Vince, I love everything about Vince. He’s great. He’s a director of program management of a software company. I mean, he’s…I don’t know I call him my nerdy buff Vin Diesel Guy. I mean it’s all I ever wanted and I got it. I’m covered in tattoos that are all kind of 80’s and weird to me, and he’s covered in tattoos with nuclear formulas, mathematical equations, and like chromosomes. So we have a lot of things alike but vastly different…I have no idea what any of those things on his body mean, he’s told me thousands of times, I have no idea what any of them mean. To this day I wouldn’t be able to identify him if something happened to his body based on those tattoos…But…that’s what I love about him.

I love that when I’m stressed out, without me having to say I need help because I can be a prideful person, that he just…will do something, even if he doesn’t know exactly what I need help with, he’ll just do something to help me or do something to pick up the slack so that when I go and look it’s done and it’s just one less thing I have to worry about. Just knowing that and feeding off of that energy. I don’t think I tell him thank you enough for that, but it means a lot to not have to ask sometimes.

Josh - How do you think this will affect Real Estate in the future.

I think it depends on the length and severity of where we are at right now. I’ve been personally so impressed, even in this last week, even being distanced from everyone, I’ve never felt closer to all my friends, the community in Omaha, as a whole, I’ve never felt closer and more connected than I have in this past week.

We’ve been having all our talks with different agents and one of the things i head that I think is going to make most sense is rather than doing 12 months of real estate, which is what we were anticipating, 12 months of business and real estate… we are going to do 12 months of real estate in 9 months. Is what a lot of people are hoping for and really kind of predicting because we are kind of going off on, as far as Omaha’s real estate market we are kind of taking a lead at looking at Las Vegas, looking at Seattle, and the real estate market has not crashed by any means. We have to get creative in these times as for showing houses, listing houses. But again, I had a friend that listed her house last weekend, it was her own personal house that she was moving out of. The rails were covered, door knobs were covered, there was sanitizer, there was spray to wipe down when you touch…its just being more vigilant and more conscious about those things. So as long as people keep up on that I think we’re going to be okay. I think there will definitely be a little bit of a shift down, I mean it’s just going to happen, because there are still some people that are being overly cautious and you have to listen to them.

I’ve noticed something even while driving here, and it was something so small…but I drive the same way here to this office all the time, and you don’t really see many people out walking ever, but as I was driving through Dundee I saw like all these people out. I mean they weren’t neck to neck, they were all spaced out but I saw two different people, one with kids and one with whatever, but then I saw a little girl in her front yard playing in the grass by herself in the grass in her front yard, and I never see that. And I didn’t realize how much I remember seeing that growing up, to when I don’t see it at all anymore. I mean that was a huge part of shaping me…was like using your imagination and…it’s just two different kinds of community that we were use to now, and that kind of community and if there’s some way coming out of this weave got a little bit of both I think that would be fantastic, everybody can understand each other a little bit better to you know?

I really think that throughout all of this, and whatever happens, and even before this happened I knew this was going to be a weird year being an election year and other things, but I know we’re going to get through this, I know there’s going to be another side, and I know we’re going to be different, hopefully better because of it. But I do feel everyone is going to be different because of it. I hope it’s going to be better…yeah, I’m pretty optimistic and realistic about the future and I don’t expect things to go right back to the way they were overnight, I think that’s asking to much, but I hope this doesn’t instill a long seeded fear in people to go out. That’s what I worry about. Everybody is being bombarded with all this data and facts from so many different things. I mean my mom is legally blind and she’s disabled and she lives alone. And so she literally will send me text messages, even today she sent me a text message, just to show you how far back she is with as far as the news and everything that’s actually happening and she said “Oh, did you hear that everyone is buying up all the toilet paper and doing this and that”, and I’m like it’s being going on for a while or whatever, and she said “ I think i need to get some” and I asked “How much do you have in the house?” She told me and I asked “How much do you go through in the week?” and she told me and I said “I think you’re good”. (Laughs) I said “Um, if you go through more than that we might need to call the doctor” (Laughs) But, Um, that just shows the lag of information that some people have. I mean this is all information that we all started to get over a week ago and this is information my mom is just finding out now and she’s a 58 year old woman, everyone is at a different place in all of this.

Right before I became a realtor, the first few months was me figuring out what I liked and what I didn’t like and when you get into a new business, there’s a thousand different ways of how people do things that can all be successful. there are people that knock on doors, there are those that send out mailers throughout the city, or those that have the coolest social media stuff. I tried all of those and after a little bit I looked at all the stuff that I tried and I saw what I liked, what felt like me and what didn’t fell like me. And I was a great server and a great bartender and the reason I was was because I was relational and so I transferred that to real estate to being a relational referral based realtor. And so, based on how i do, its almost like taking the same concepts from serving based on how well I do, please refer me to more people, if I was a terrible server, I wasn’t going to get tipped. It’s almost the same way, if I give you bad service as a realtor then you’re probably not going to refer me. So I tried to do that the same way. At the same time I’ve gotten little things from people over the years whether it be dropped at my door, I think writing notes is such a lot art form that is just so, it doesn’t have to be some long emphatic thing, but I think there’s just something more emotionally charged and stimulating and gratifying by getting a hand written note from somebody than a text message. Doing that, dropping something off on your doorstep and kind of envisioning in myself like “When he gets this he’s going to be so happy!” Sometimes its just for some specific people, I see that maybe there going through something or whatever, I had a client that had surgery and said something about wanting some cookies that were his favorite and couldn’t get them, so I brought him over some cookies to him. You know, things like that I think mean a lot. Because it shows that you are being aware of what’s going on with your friends and your clients, who are friends and having that translate into business.

Josh - Do you have any ideas of what other people could maybe do to connect with others in this environment.

I think people are trying different avenues right now, I see even on social media, I mean social media is going to be a huge lifeline through all of this, and it already is, we already knew this because it was the safest way to communicate and feel some kind of connection, it might not be the most fulfilling kind of connection but it is definitely is a connection and helps keep your mind occupied if you start to get stir crazy. I’ve seen people sharing things on social media that I haven’t seen on my friends list ever and I think thats something worth noting, you know, that’s important. I mean I tried a video the other day where I tried to contour my face like Kim Kardashian , you know I have never in my life, I mean I had a full on face of make up and it was fun. Me and my husband were setting up and I had scripts and stuff and I will always remember that. It took a whole day! Do something, and see what you like and what you don’t like. I did a fucking puzzle the other day, I hated it, but we did it. It was awful. I bought coloring books, I can’t color. I can’t do that.

I do think we are better together. God, I do think we are. I hope we realize that by being distanced from people, how important that energy and seeing someone, I mean even seeing you guys today is like…you know it’s important. And I have a husband at home so I do get some of that energy, there are a lot of people at home by themselves and thats a whole other beast in itself, like that’s really tough. And I feel grateful that I at least have somebody at home like that but, that’s gotta be really hard for a lot of people and I hope that people don’t take that for granted when we get it back, how important that is.