Same office. Same RE/MAX in Ithaca, New York. Same building where Lindsay Hart, REALTOR sat at the front desk answering phones and processing paperwork in 2005, learning the MLS system on the fly because someone had to.
I asked her when she decided she wanted to own a brokerage.
She laughed and said she never did.
She just kept doing good work.
That is the conversation I want to walk you through today.
Who Lindsay Hart Is
Lindsay is the Co-Broker Owner with Melissa Miller Fedrizzi NYS Lic Real Estate Broker at Remax in Motion in Ithaca, NY. She built her team, Hart and Homes, from scratch. Started solo. Grew to six people. Almost every one of them started the same way she did, as admin first, agent second.
She also co-hosts a podcast called Under Contract Taking Backup and a Saturday radio show on WHCU 607 News Talk.
She came on Outside the Corporate Box recently and spent an hour being more honest about the real estate business, and about entrepreneurship in general, than most people are willing to be on a recorded conversation.
The Front Desk Is a Graduate Program Nobody Talks About
Before Lindsay ever had a license, she saw things most agents never see.
She heard what agents said to each other when clients weren’t listening. She watched deals collapse and understood why. She processed the checks when they came in and noticed when they didn’t. By the time she got licensed in 2007, she had already been doing the job, without the commission, for two years.
I think about that a lot when people tell me they’re jumping into real estate because they like houses. The agents who last are the ones who understood what they were getting into before they ever had to sell anything. Lindsay understood it better than most because she lived it first.
Savings Is the Real Confidence
Lindsay waited two years after getting her license to go fully independent. When I asked what finally made her jump, she didn’t say confidence. She didn’t say she had a revelation. She didn’t say she found her calling.
She said her husband had steady income. They had savings. They ran the math, decided they could absorb six to eight months of nothing coming in, and she made the call.
She also had something else. She had been doing the real work for long enough to know she could do it. The savings gave her the runway. The experience gave her the conviction. That combination is what actually makes the leap work. Not the motivational speech version of it.
“Relationships before business. That’s the whole operating system.”
Relationships Before Business Is Not a Slogan
Ask Lindsay what runs her brokerage, and she gives you one sentence without hesitating. Relationships before business.
She means it in three directions at once. Her agents’ families come before production numbers. The relationship between her and her agents isn’t transactional, she isn’t a taskmaster. And with clients, the goal is to be the person who actually helps, not the person who closes and disappears.
She’s also honest that this philosophy has limits. Two clients in twenty years became situations where the relationship broke down completely. She left both bad reviews unanswered. Not because she didn’t care. Because she understood that responding would only make things worse.
Knowing when not to engage is part of running a business with integrity. Most people don’t talk about that part.
What She Actually Does When Business Gets Slow
My co-host Jeffrey Scott Stanton pushed her on this one. Not “what’s your strategy when business slows down.” What actually centers you when things get hard?
She gave a different kind of answer than I expected.
Her husband can predict the slow season by the time of year, because she says the same thing at the same time every year. She has been through enough cycles to know that the anxiety is seasonal and that the business comes back. But the thing that actually brings her back to center isn’t a tactical move.
It’s faith. In God. In herself. In whatever is bigger than the moment.
She said she almost didn’t share that publicly. There’s a version of this industry where you’re not supposed to admit that. I think that honesty is exactly what made this conversation worth having.
The agents who last twenty years are not the ones with the best scripts. They are the ones who figured out how to keep showing up when the pipeline is thin and the calendar is quiet.
The Line I’m Still Sitting With
Lindsay didn’t plan any of this.
She took an admin job she wasn’t sure about. Stayed longer than she expected. Got a license she wasn’t certain she’d use. Built a team she never went looking for. Became a co-broker owner in the middle of a pandemic that buried the announcement.
“The slow path is not the safe path. It is just the one that builds something real.”
If you’ve been thinking about making a move, in real estate, in your business, in your career, this conversation is worth your full attention.
Listen to the Full Conversation
Lindsay’s full episode on Outside the Corporate Box is available now. She goes deeper on building Hart and Homes from one person to six, why she only hires admins-first, and the real version of running a brokerage when the market gets quiet.
Follow the show and catch every new episode: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2606315/follow
Outside the Corporate Box, Episode 04.
To follow Lindsay, find her at Remax In Motion in Ithaca, NY, on her podcast Under Contract Taking Backup, and Saturday mornings on WHCU 607 News Talk.
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