Fafie Moore: Passion and a Positive Attitude Drive Her Success

By Naomi Gitlin

Fafie Moore is no stranger to challenges. When she was just 12, her father died, leaving Moore and her mother alone. “That taught me two things,” she recalled. “Your world can turn upside-down in a day. And everyone always needs a plan so that you can be responsible and take care of yourself.”

Fast forward several years to another challenging time. Moore became a real estate agent in 1981 in Arizona, when interest rates were 18 percent. But that didn’t stop her from being successful and maintaining a “can-do” attitude, which she learned from her dad. In fact, that positive attitude helped Moore sell a house every two weeks during her first year as an agent.

Today, she and her husband own Realty Executives Nevada, one of the fastest growing Realty Executives franchises worldwide, with more than 600 executives serving clients in five offices in southern Nevada.

“My dear friend Jan Ross was working at Realty Executives in Phoenix, and she told me that if I joined the company, she would help me be a REALTOR®,” Moore said. Ross advised Moore to spend time getting to know the properties in the area.

Moore took that advice to heart and toured properties from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. And that’s how she got her first listing and sale. She learned the inventory, which allowed her to talk about the properties she had seen, size up the market value and assess the condition of each property.

“I learned a lot,” Moore said. “But the real reason I was successful was because I got up and went to work every day to do real estate. I didn’t just ‘plan’ to do real estate,” she said.

Building a Company
Fast forward five years to yet another challenging time: Moore had more business than she could handle. Her husband Jeff switched careers and joined her in real estate. As a former service director for five car dealerships, customer service was second nature to Jeff.

In 1988, just seven years after she became an agent, Moore and her husband bought the Realty Executives Nevada Franchise. On Thanksgiving Day, they moved to Las Vegas. They knew no one there, and neither had sold real estate before in the Silver State.

Added to those challenges was a fairly common belief at the time that only men could sell certain properties. In one case in particular, Fafie approached a prospective client and, even though she had several years of real estate experience, the client signed with Jeff.

But times have changed. Throughout her career, Moore has watched more women assume leadership positions within the real estate industry. “People are not as gender-oriented as they once were,” she said. “And women must be in leadership positions to gain power.”

Moore’s focus is on developing the image and reputation of the firm, which she has helped build from the ground up. She handles much of the recruiting, made difficult at first because she did not know anyone in the Las Vegas area and wanted assurance that she was hiring the right people. “I look at recruiting as sharing our dream with other people to help them realize their own dreams,” she said.

“We decided that I would do the marketing and business development and Jeff would run the office,” Moore said. “He makes sure that everything I promise happens.” She noted Jeff’s strength as a broker and as a manager. “We are successful in this difficult financial market because of Jeff’s financial expertise,” she said.

The Moores never set out to be broker-owners. “But after buying the franchise,” she said, “we realized we had a vision of creating a company of highly successful, very professional and ethical REALTORS®.” And growth is definitely part of the company’s overall strategy. Currently, the Moores own the master franchise, which covers seven states: Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Nevada, Oklahoma, Utah and Wyoming.

Clearly, Moore is a leader with deep expertise and a very successful business. “A leader must have the self-confidence to allow other people to have opportunities to lead as well,” she said. “In other words, don’t be threatened to surround yourself with people who are better than you, because that’s one way that you can grow.”

Consider the differences between a leader and a manager. According to Moore, great leaders are visionaries who can communicate their vision so that others embrace it. And great leaders are also great cheerleaders who encourage others, even if there are missteps along the way.

“People don’t fail,” Moore said. “Systems fail.” The secret is looking at how one can change a particular system and avoid making the same mistake twice.

“No one wakes up in the morning and says: ‘I’m going to see how I bad I can do today,’” Moore said. She has a similar attitude about the concept of blame. “People will blame the market or blame their broker, but what they really need to do is focus on how to avoid a particular situation,” she said. The ability to keep moving forward and thinking ahead is one of the legacies that Moore’s father left her. Continue to Page 2

Posted March 2008