Today we’d like to introduce you to Fred Venturini.
Hi Fred, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
I shouldn’t be alive right now, let alone leading a top real estate team.
When I was ten, the kid down the street set me on fire. I survived. A few years later, I was in a terrible car accident, thrown from a rolling truck with a broken neck. I had a lot of time to read and think about life at a young age, and I took up the hobby of creative writing.
So the plan was to be a bestselling novelist who wrote every day. You know, a guy with a big, oak desk wearing a knit sweater as I pondered the universe.
But thinking doesn’t pay the bills.
I worked as a Program Analyst for the Department of Defense. My job was to take a process, break it down, and improve it. I had a lot of dreams and ideas and energy locked up inside a cubicle.
Every big idea I ever had would suffocate inside that cubicle. Then, my wife and I bought our first house in 2006, and I knew I wanted to be a real estate agent someday.
That urge truly took flight in 2009, when we sold that home. I saw ways to improve all the processes involved in real estate. I asked common-sense questions about services and ideas that didn’t exist. I wrote my own listing copy, trying to tell the story of the home instead of just describing it.
As I approached 20 years of government service and the “halftime” of my career, something changed. Maybe because I was also approaching forty. I was a father. I had realized some success as a novelist, landing the big New York book deal I dreamed about as a kid. I was tired of those cubicle walls. I saw people who had endured them for forty years or more, and saw myself.
What would it feel like on my deathbed? I would have regretted not breaking out, not taking a chance on my own skills and ideas. People still asked me about homes and financing. They trusted me. All the books I had read, all the writing and communicating.
The creativity and ability to break down a process.
A mind bursting with ideas.
A craving to help people one-on-one with the biggest decision of their lives.
A way to control the impact I could have on something bigger than myself, one client at a time.
A chance to run my own business, to write more, to spend more time with my family.
I couldn’t wait any longer and got my license in less than three weeks, and had an agent ready to follow my lead from day one.
Taking the plunge was one of the best decisions of my life.
Now, I lead some of the top producers in the entire Greater St. Louis area and coach many other excellent agents. I’m proud of the impact I’ve had for hundreds of clients, and helping agents level up their game to change their lives and careers for the better.
They say real estate is a good investment, and it is, but your home is something more. A home is a symbol of your success. It’s a key part of your family’s identity. A new home moves you forward. I take immense pride in leading this journey for you.
Because I know what those big breakthroughs feel like.
Because I know how to handle a challenge.
Because I’ve seen the tears of pure joy when a family gets handed the keys to a house they never dreamed was possible.
Every path is different, so I’ll never be a one-size-fits-all “commodity” agent. Get ready for a real estate experience you never thought was possible, a bespoke experience that removes the hassle and honors your time. I don’t want to find your “move-up” house.
I want you to find your trophy home, the crown jewel of your life’s real estate journey.
I’ll help you honor the memories in your current house as you pursue a home that fills you with excitement and awe every time you pull into the driveway.
And nothing says we can’t have some fun along the way!
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
I give a talk to kids where I try to make the case that the worst day of your life is your own personal secret weapon, because every road is bumpy. Some have more bumps than others. But it’s how we respond to those bumps that really defines one’s success and happiness.
For me? The list is pretty long.
Set on fire at the age of ten.
Brutal car accident, breaking my neck and concussing me in my teens (right after a tough break-up with my high school sweetheart, no less).
Both parents struggling with cancer at the same time, and dying within six months of each other.
Career drama that was peaking in intensity right around a global pandemic.
Those are just a few of the greatest hits.
And as I look back at these moments, I can feel and see the impact they’ve had in my life and I wouldn’t do anything over again. No other person exists except the one who endured those challenges.
As Marcus Aurelius says, “the impediment to action becomes action – the obstacle is the way.” I find power in these words and when bad things happen, I try to respond instead of merely reacting. To find some level of control and embracing my fate as best I can.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
As a writer, I’m known as someone who takes durable, trope-filled genres and tries to do something interesting with them while honoring the source code DNA of those kinds of stories.
In my first novel, THE HEART DOES NOT GROW BACK, I take the idea of superpowers to the extreme and tried to realistically explore what a broken teenage boy would do if he had a useful, but painful superpower. Of course he would just try to impress a girl with grand gestures – so it became a love story, a coming of age story, a horror story, a sci fi story, and a superhero story.
My second book, THE ESCAPE OF LIGHT was the young adult love story where a burn survivor switches schools and has to navigate love, sports, and friendships. But it was also my sports drama. I felt like this was my Rocky of sorts – I wanted to have a training montage, a big game, a big moment where the movie’s musical score in my head would swell and drive everyone to tears as dramatically as possible.
My third novel, TO DUST YOU SHALL RETURN, is my “kitchen sink” book. I find the publishing world to be difficult to navigate and just less fun than writing without pressure and I felt like this was my chance to make sure I would have zero regrets if I never wrote another word for publication. This is my “Stephen King small town” horror story, but I decided I wanted to drop my favorite character right into the middle of it – the “reactivated badass” character in the vein of John Wick (in modern terms). The revenge character who “isn’t like that anymore” reactivated in a quest for revenge. But instead of a few easily-dispatched criminals, he finds himself up against horrific and supernatural terrors that are not quite as easy to kill.
This one was crazy enough to earn a wonderful blurb from FIGHT CLUB author Chuck Palahniuk, who compared my writing to barbed wire – a compliment that still makes me blush.
I have a lot pride in doing three distinctly different books with enough of my voice in each of them to feel like a solid trilogy of who I am as a person and a storyteller.
Can you talk to us about how you think about risk?
Sometimes what we think are the greatest risks are not really risks at all.
The biggest example of this is when people are stuck in a job they don’t like and have the “I can’t quit and do something else, I can’t risk that.”
The math I did on this for myself was pretty simple.
If I didn’t take the risk, and retired in 45 years, would I have regrets? How would I feel?
And if I did take the risk, let’s look at those two options:
1 – I take the risk and it’s a failure. Will I have regretted trying and finding out what I’m capable of? Chasing my dreams? Chasing a happier, better life for myself and my family? Nope.
2 – I take the risk and it works. It’s a success. Exactly what I wanted.
So when I look at those two options, I’m really choosing between a zero-regret, exhilarating failure, or success.
That helps make a great risk look like a no-brainer decision.
But a better life is and always will be on the other side of taking responsible risks with a lot of upside. The best risks are simply able to provide ten times the gain vs. what you’re putting up, which makes it look like a silly bet to NOT go for it.
Take big risks when the rewards are potentially great and you’ll almost never regret going for it. In fact, you will almost never fail. You’ll either get a win or get an education.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.connectbyreal.com
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/venterminator
