Welcome to Friday, let’s sweep! | coffee, a party & a first…

We’ll start this week’s wrap up with our 3rd “cup of coffee” with broker, Kristin Munger. We share a relentless passion to help brokers & clients make better decisions as a result of understanding the market. Together in ’22 we’ll continue to set out to provide a handful of monthly soundbites. 14 minutes together on that right here

Note: we reference Keeping Current Matters & Windermere Stats often – as always, ping me if you need help gaining access either – happy to help: 206.227.7133

…and, as we set out into the weekend, for those of you in the midst of computation of time, regard this Monday, January 17th as a legal holiday. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is a legal holiday under WA St law.

What else is on my mind today? Our birthday. I’m excited to celebrate a year-long birthday with Windermere as we’ve turned 50 in 2022! As we set out on this party – I’m pretty darn excited to celebrate our past, celebrate our now and look towards the future. In my humble opinion, all 3 of equally importance. I’ve been here 20 of the 50 and look forward to many many more. The Godfather, American Pie, and the VW Beetle. What do these have in common with Windermere? All of us became big news in 1972!…

And oh, on a super fun future forward note around Windermere – I received this memo from Windermere Services Company this week. Typically I don’t shout out leadership changes at WSC yet this once deserves a special post; as it is a first! The first hire of Windermere’s 3rd generation…

Western Washington Owners,
It’s no secret that being a family-run company has been at the heart of the Windermere story for the past 50 years. This extends well beyond Windermere’s founding family to include several franchise owners who are second or third generation, as well as a great number of agents who have also passed the baton to younger generations of their family. With that in mind, I am very excited to announce the addition of Lucy Wood to the Services team as our new Western Washington Regional Manager. 

As I’m sure you all know, Lucy is Geoff and Jill’s daughter, and she will represent the third generation of their family to take on a leadership role at Windermere. Lucy will report to Dan Givens and augment the operational support he provides to each of you and your offices. Together, Dan and Lucy will attend all of the Western Washington owner meetings, communicate with you about business-critical updates, track and analyze agent retention data, work with you on recruiting efforts, and help support the ongoing success of you and your agents, among many other things. 

I know I speak for Lucy when I say that she’s incredibly excited to take her experience and lifelong connection to Windermere to a new level with the support of Dan – and all of you.

Please join me in congratulating Lucy on her new role! If you would like to reach out directly, her email is lucywood@windermere.com or ping her 206.437.7038!

Many of you too have worked with Lucy on her path to today. If you don’t yet know her story – we mic’d her up to better connect us with her experiences thus far as she sets out further into third 3rd generation work. Interview right here! My favorite quote from Lucy’s interview, “people need people” – how incredibly true is that. On a funny note, she reminded me this week of misplacing her office keys when she answered phones for me many many years ago on a few weekend days (hard to open the office without keys!) – please do give her a hard time about that. Heck, I recall mistakenly locking myself in a bathroom when closing up a broker tour (without my phone) and awaiting the next showing to let me out! This is a humbling business at all levels on some days; as we can all attest to. In all seriousness, I’m pumped for my continued work with Lucy…

Happy Anniversary Windermere. Thank you for being home to me for so long and for allowing me to be a part of creating an successful environment with the best people, driven by the the highest of standards and committed to our collective communities. This year is about all of us. Lots to celebrate in 2022 – in many ways, just the beginning…

Let’s do great things in ’22! – Laura