In one instant my entire world turned upside down. In the days after as I found my new normal, I learned a valuable lesson.
When I was 14 years old, I walked in the door after a regular day at school to find my older brother waiting for me in the kitchen. He had moved out years before so already I knew something was up. When he said, “we need to talk,” I felt goosebumps raise on my arms. Then he gave me the news that shattered my world, my mother was dead.
I felt the world fall away around me as I was left reeling with the news. She’d dropped me off at school just that morning and seemed fine. I didn’t understand how she could be here one instant and gone the next. There was no closure, her autopsy was inconclusive, and I was left with the image of my mother falling out of her chair and the vitality that had filled her moments before simply fading into thin air. I didn’t know how to live my life without her.
My father was devastated, a shell of himself and I waited to see who would come to our rescue. When it became clear that no one was going to step up, the only person who would have already gone, I took control. I called family members, delivered the news and took care of those details that fill your life when you lose a loved one. I just kept going.
Two days after her death, I had a basketball game for school. Everyone said I didn’t have to go, in fact they encouraged me not to. They all thought I needed time to mourn, time to be alone. But I said no. I went to that game and I played as though possessed. Filled with a singular purpose and focus unlike I’d ever had before, I scored 25 points that game and my team won. I like to think that my mom had something to do with it, smiling down upon me.
I kept on living my life in the years after. I went to college on a full baseball scholarship, began my career, a wife, kids. I even started my own real estate company in 2005, always moving forward. When the 2008 crash happened, my son was born only a few months into it. As I saw everyone around me panic, realtors dropping like flies, afraid to move forward, I knew I had to keep on moving. Decades before, I learned how to be resilient when everything you’d thought certain changed. I adapted to my new reality, learning short sales, working 18-hour days, and leaning into my new fatherhood. I never stopped, not once, I never accepted that it might not work out, I just kept moving. Eventually the market recovered, and things changed once again for the better, but I never forgot what kept me going through that time.
I love being a Broker and REALTOR®, spending time with my wife and kids at their sporting events, fishing together, and creating memories with them all, never taking a single day for granted. For me, helping people through the big transitions in their lives is what my business is all about. What I realized all those years ago is that sometimes when all you can think to do is stop, when everyone tells you to stand still, if you just keep going and channel those feelings into movement you will become unstoppable.
Buying a home for a lot of people is the biggest financial decision of their lives, the biggest transition too. That’s why I take a different approach from those big box operations. I give my clients personalized service, they get one REALTOR®, one number to call, a person who knows who they are without layers of identification. You deserve attention and respect and that’s exactly what I deliver. It’s all about your experience and making that as enjoyable and simple as possible. I’ve been in the business for 20+ years and know the ins and outs, I can prepare you for every scenario and I’m upfront with my clients about what to expect during the process. I know moving can be stressful and I learned that even in the most stressful of times, if we can keep going forward, we gain the ability to be unstoppable. That’s what I offer my clients, the unstoppable ability to reach all their wildest real estate dreams and it’s why I stick around as your REALTOR® for life.
With gratitude,
Scott H. Pharris
President/Broker/CDAT