I hate Luke Bryan. First of all, he has two first names. A better name would have been Luke Bryant. Like Kris Bryant, without the ring and with the T. I hate him because he sings ridiculous songs, songs that I cannot name and songs that I cannot hum. Bro-Country songs. I don’t know any of his songs. He throws his voice when he sings, like he’s trying to be someone else, like he’s trying to sing anonymously. He’s a country Elvis, which is not to take any shots at the real Elvis who also sang a bit of country. I hate him because of his name and because of his voice but mostly because I don’t like the way his album cover looks whenever when of his songs cycles into my Pandora. I can’t Thumbs Down fast enough. So there, I hate Luke Bryan for no real reason, but for all of the other ones. Ceasing pettiness was not one of my 2016 resolutions.
But Luke Bryan has a song on the radio where he tells us that 60 seconds felt more like 30, and that is something I can agree with. 2016 is over and it flew by. This year, the year that was so hated by the media, so hated by Memes, so difficult for so many reasons, was a pretty good year to be Dave Curry in Lake Geneva. It wasn’t without difficulty and stress, and there’s a headache that I now get that doesn’t let go for a few days at a time, but on balance the year was a terrific year. For all of the celebrity deaths in 2016, every member of my immediate or extended family made it from the first day to this, nearly the last day. Perhaps this was because the year passed so quickly, in record time, and because of that no one really found the time to die.
On the business side of 2016, it could not have been better. A good year in real estate is wonderful, but it’s so fleeting it’s hard not to find some discouragement in the face of all the delight. I started selling real estate in 1996 when I was just a kid. While my friends went off to college, I just drove a half mile from home to a real estate office and sat there wondering what I should do. I was intimidated by the sound of a ringing phone. Once I decided that on fall Sundays there would be women shopping at the store next to my office, and the men must be sitting in their cars impatiently waiting for their wives to buy something with Lake Geneva written on it or carved into it. I thought the men would be bored and might want to watch the Bear’s game. This was back when people wanted to watch the Bears play. So I found a half sheet of plywood and scratched “BEARS GAME ON INSIDE” onto it and faced it towards the road. I turned on the tube television and adjusted the rabbit ears to get the least snowy signal I could. No one ever came inside, and that was a terrible, awful idea.
From those days in 1996 until the end of 2009, I sold around $50MM in real estate. All the while I had a family and houses and mortgages and insurance payments and bills for ads in local newspapers that never worked. That tally matters, because those were the years where I learned what to do and how to act. I learned what to say. I learned how to fail. I learned the market and the roads and the associations and the way the water looks in the morning as it laps against the rocky point where Fontana meets Williams Bay. Those were the years that mattered more than these years. I’m humbled to write it, and uncertain as to why it happened and sheepishly proud that it did: My 2016 sales volume was in excess of $62MM. Over the last 12 months I sold more real estate than I did in my first 14 years.
I became so accustomed to working from behind, to thriving as underdog, to wishing for some success that I had no business expecting, that now I feel a bit awkward here. I hear the praise from people I know and from others I don’t, and I don’t know exactly what to make of it. $62MM, after all, is a Walworth County all-time record, and a number that leaves my nearest single agent competitor with less than half of that volume. I was thrilled to represent either the buyer or seller in 10 of the 26 lakefront closings during 2016, and sold 5 of the 6 lakefronts that closed over $3.9MM. Per MLS (1/1/16-12/30/16 Walworth County sales), my personal volume was more than the 37 agent @Properties office in Lake Geneva, nearly double the production of the entire Rauland office, roughly quadruple the production of the entire D’Aprile Fontana office, and more than any individual office in Walworth County excepting one. I kind of hate writing all that, but I spent fourteen years being told that the small office can’t be as effective as the large office, so I can’t really waste this opportunity.
Does this mean I’m somehow at the top of this game? Does this mean I have no where to go but down, to slowly fade away as someone who was once pretty good at something but no longer subscribed to the process that brought him there? It seems as though this could be the case, that I might indeed just stall here at this lofty height and realize I never learned to land. But the reality of it is I know this success has very little to do with me. I know I’ve been blessed. And I know that without clients and customers trusting me for their Lake Geneva decisions I would mean nothing to the Lake Geneva market.
So today I thank you for your loyalty. I thank you for reading this drivel. I thank you for recognizing that many days and weeks I have nothing really to write about, but I try to do it anyway. I thank you for trusting in a kid from Williams Bay, who never aspired to do very much but always wanted to matter. I thank you for helping my business grow. Where it goes from here I can’t say, but I know it’s a struggle to stay at the top of anything, no matter the profession and no matter the year. I’ll keep trying, I’ll keep working, and I’ll be here if you need anything. If I’m your agent already, a most sincere thank you. If I’m not your agent yet, this is me begging.