Biography
From Aviation to Inspiration!
Let’s face it, bio’s are usually glorified and wordy resume’s. I could fill this page with my professional accomplishments, associations and all my strengths and skills. Or I could tell you a story…
In 1993 I was a bored college sophomore. I decided rather than just drop out of school I would get my pilots license and see if that was something I wanted to do with my life. So I went back to my home town and started taking lessons. I was immediately hooked and decided to enroll in Green River Community College to continue on the path to become a pilot.
A couple of years later I got a job at a company called Allied Signal in what they called the Global Data Center. Basically it was “flight service” for corporate pilots. I ran weather briefings, filed flight plans,
and did lots of tech support and messaging services for pilots flying private jets. This was my first real corporate job and it gave me the opportunity to enroll in Embry Riddle Aeronautical University’s to continue toward becoming a professional pilot.
Right around 1999 I was hired by a small charter company at Boeing Field to run their aircraft charter department. This job entailed a whole new host of more complex project management skills, more customer service, contract negotiations, Aviation law and a whole lot of mediation skills.
At some point in this process I realized that pilots were incredibly over worked and, surprisingly, pretty under paid. I definitely did not want to be a pilot for a living and the timing was good because the aviation industry really took a hit in 2001.
National Charter was a small company and the writing was on the wall pretty shortly after 9-1-1. At that time I was spending a lot of time with a friend of mine who worked in real estate. One day while we were together she had to take care of a problem with a transaction. After about 20 minutes and 15 phone calls between client and opposite agent, inspector and client, roofer and escrow, lender and client… All of a sudden it occurred to me…
I do that every day! I was basically a project manager. I managed transactions, I put people at ease, I negotiated prices and amenities and schedules. I made people who didn’t like each other, do things they didn’t want to do, in order to get everyone where they wanted to go at the end of the day. And I did it in such a way that everyone walked away, in most cases, smiling, without knowing there were all those moving parts to synchronize in the first place and ultimately wondering why on earth I got paid so much.
Weird… That looks just like a real estate transaction! Very soon after that realization I started my real estate career.
Okay, so what does Selling houses have to do with Building houses?
I also have a background in the art world. For several years overlapping my aviation and real estate careers I had a sculpture fabrication and installation company. In 2003 a group of friends and I decided we wanted to do a collaborative project, we wanted to build a great big, dangerous completely unreasonable sculpture and the only place we would be able to get away with it was Burning Man. So we dove into the process of design and fundraising and spent almost 2 years raising $80,000 and building the parts of what would become a 60ft tall, 80ft wide sculpture in the middle of the desert.
In August of ‘05 we rented two giant trucks and drove to Nevada. We spent about 5 weeks assembling our sculpture in 115 degree sun, punctuated by blinding, progress halting dust storms.
It was amazing. It was an exhilarating, team building, back-breaking, incredible scope of work and we did it. I felt just about the happiest I’d ever felt. Then about 5 days after we finished it, we destroyed it.
Sort of an aside… It turns out that not everyone can work at great heights or in searing heat. But I felt super comfortable climbing around up there and I love the heat. So I spent the better part of 5 weeks 40-60 feet in the air, 16+ hours a day, building the top section of the machine.
This was a pretty meditative time. There were only a few of us up there and it was quiet. I remember very clearly, one moment on top of the sculpture toward the end of those weeks, thinking I can’t believe after 2 years, $80,000 and so much work we are going to pull this to the ground. What a waste. Why aren’t we permanently installing it or better yet, why aren’t we building something someone could live in.
As is often the case in life, after a period of self-reflection or epiphany, comes an opportunity.
About 6 months later I was sitting in a real estate seminar and the speaker announced that their organization was putting together a group to go to Baton Rouge to build some houses. I was immediately covered in goose bumps, my heart was beating out of my chest. The plan was to spend 8 days building 4 houses from blank foundations to move-in ready. By the time he said “better hurry it’s filling up fast” I was already in the lobby calling my assistant to get me signed up.
That week was a bit different than my desert experience. It was only 8 days, it was only about 8 hours a day and it was only about 95 degrees – Of intense humidity punctuated by blinding, progress halting rain storms!
It was amazing. It was an exhilarating, team building, back-breaking, incredible scope of work and we did it. I felt just about the happiest I’d ever felt. And at the end of 8 days we handed the keys to 4 very happy families.
One more thing to mention is that it turns out in a group of about 150 realtors there aren’t too many who feel comfortable up on a roof. So I spent 7 of those 8 days up top and that is when I was dubbed “The Realtor on the Roof”.
Not too long after that the real estate market took a bit of a turn for the worse and I’ve spent the last few years really battling to keep my business moving forward. I stuck it out but I realized that through all this battling I lost some passion and inspiration in my business and it has really reflected in my bottom line.
I’ve spent a lot of time this summer reflecting on what drives me in life and work and as always, that self-reflection was followed by an opportunity. One day in October of 2011 a friend of mine invited me to join her for a day of work at the Habitat site in Renton. I got to feel a little taste of that exhilaration that I’d felt really in all the past eras of my life. In one afternoon it became very clear to me what had been been missing the last few years.
So… That brings us all the way from Aviation to Inspiration.
I hope you enjoyed my story and know that if you are able to identify at all with it we will make a great team.
Sincerely,
Domenica Lovaglia
