The Pizza Paradigm

Every once in a while, I find myself tracing my roots back to the beginning. I don’t mean to Montreal, which is where I was born, or to Europe, which is where my grandparents came from. I’m referring to a charming, 13th century village called Scanno which is in the mountains a few hours outside of Rome (Italy, not Alaska). And, unfortunately, as much as I’d love to go to Italy any day of week, my journey is more figurative than literal.

Everybody has a favourite pizza place, right? Well, MY favourite pizza place is a restaurant called Stefano’s which is in Scanno. If only they delivered. But Stefano’s isn’t important to me just because of its pizza. It’s also important to me because of Stefano’s business philosophy. (You knew there had to be a connection to real estate here somewhere. This isn’t a food blog.)

Stefano’s is a really small place. There are maybe 20 seats in the entire restaurant. Our friends told us to get there early, around 5 p.m., which isn’t the normal dinner hour in Italy.  The pizza was far and away the best I’ve ever eaten (and also far away – sigh).

Given how good the pizza was and seeing the line-up at that early hour, I figured that Stefano probably sold hundreds if not thousands of pizzas every day. Was I ever surprised to hear that he never sells more than approximately 80 pizzas a day! Why? Because he won’t make more than 80 pizzas a day. Why? Because making more would compromise the quality of the pizza. You see, his goal is to make every aspect of the pizza perfect – the crust, the sauce, the cheese, the toppings, everything – and not to sell as many pizzas as he can. Quality is more important than quantity.

That’s also exactly the way Corinne and I operate. No matter what we do, we strive for perfection. Whether we’re doing something unique that other agents don’t do or something that is also done by other agents, we always try our best. Remember, there’s pizza and then there’s pizza. We’re like Stefano. We take great pride in our work and won’t compromise quality for quantity. That’s what makes us most different from other agents and that’s how we’re able to help our clients achieve consistently superior results. It’s the only way we know.

I can’t promise to deliver one of Stefano’s pizzas to you, but I do promise to deliver the best real estate experience you’ve ever had. It’s not as tasty, but it may be more valuable.

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