STAY IN YOUR LANE
I have always believed in niches… from the earliest days of my real estate career choosing to focus on bed and breakfast inns, at the start of that hospitality rage, to today with small, unique custom designed cottages and cabins - I have followed the path of “do something intentional and do it well”. I’ve strayed from that path, way more than I should have but… it’s worked out.
The hospitality concentration started early in my real estate career helping my father with the sale of the Elmhurst Inn, a/k/a Graycote Inn in Bar Harbor at the very beginning of my journey. I already knew that just showing houses would bore me to the point of madness and I couldn’t stay in the business long term without a finite specialty. From the beginning the creativity and entrepreneurial mindset of the hospitality business drew me in as I knew that is what I wanted to do - and boy did I ever,
From being the first broker in Maine, and in lots of the country, to focus on this small growing niche to building it into a Statewide power house to starting early to invest hospitality properties myself, I had found my place.
But I made a lot of mistakes, and I learned from every single one of them. I also had to depend on other people to run most of the properties so that I could continue my real estate business. I’ve had some of the best employees and I have had some of the worst. I can point to people I am so proud of today, phenomenally successful in their own businesses who started out with me and I can tell you horror stories that are so insane, you might not even believe them. I choose to laugh at those.
So this fall, we are adjusting our sails and shaking up our real estate portfolio focused on oceanfront cabins and cottages and Airstreams that are all the rage. We are limiting the amount of staff we need and focusing on things like virtual check-ins. We are acquiring some remarkable views that are frankly priceless. That’s our vibe and that’s what we are going with.