In “The Road Not Taken,” the poet Robert Frost wrote about a traveler confronted — confounded even — by two diverging paths.
To the group of real estate success stories interviewed by The Real Deal, that would be a walk in the park. That’s because many come to the real estate profession from another career, or two or three, and have taken countless paths to get to where they are today.
The journey to the top is the heart of this story. The Real Deal interviewed Peter Kalikow, president of HJ Kalikow & Company and former chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and former owner of the New York Post; John Lam, chairman and CEO of the Lam Group, who is bringing over 1,500 hotel rooms to New York City in the next year as well as a sizable chunk of all new hotel rooms to be built in the city over of the next several years; Kim Mogull, CEO of Mogull Realty, which brokered retail transactions in the past year for the likes of Donald Trump and clients in the Meatpacking District; Kathryn Korte, president and CEO of Sotheby’s International Realty, who started out at Sotheby’s as an administrative assistant straight out of college in 1984; Andrew Heiberger, president and CEO of Buttonwood Real Estate, who founded the biggest rental brokerage in the city, Citi Habitats, before selling it in 2004 and moving on to development; and Michele Peters, CEO of Weichert Realtors — Peters Associates, whose extremely varied career path has lead her to become CEO of her own firm.
As these six reveal, success comes only after unbelievable amounts of hard work and often flat-out failure or mistakes, as Kalikow describes his purchase of the New York Post in 1988. Sometimes it took having someone else believe in them, as was the case when Trump sought out Mogull, eventually becoming a mentor of sorts to her. Or sometimes it was a matter of simply believing in themselves, as in the case of Peters, despite a setback like being fired for not having the name recognition to finish a project. Now that’s something she can laugh about.
A couple mentioned Sept. 11 as a pivotal moment in their careers. When conventional wisdom dictated one direction, members of this group chose another. John Lam, for example, describes how hotel owners and hotel developers began switching to condos. But Lam figured that the return for hotels would be greater in the long run. Guess who has thousands of hotels in the pipeline this year in the midst of a strong market?
Then again, to paraphrase the Robert Frost poem, taking the road less traveled makes all the difference.
John Lam, chairman and CEO, the Lam Group
Kim Mogull, president and CEO, Mogull Realty
Kathryn Korte, president and CEO, Sotheby’s International Realty
Michele Peters, CEO and owner, Weichert Realtors — Peters Associates