by G. Sax, Head of Communications, RESO
This week’s interview is with Lauren Martin, Senior Account Director at RentSpree and Founder of RENEW (Real Estate Network of Empowered Women). We talked about translating techspeak into business language, increasing the presence of women in real estate tech and fashion. Enjoy!
Q1: Pretty much everything that we do at RESO exists to support sales. The ultimate salesperson, the agent, is at the heart of all real estate. As someone with a strong sales background, how do you see RESO best supporting the salesperson with real estate tech?
Lauren: Education. As a salesperson, I want to feel like I’m confident in what I’m talking to my clients about. RESO, with its membership of CTOs and strong tech representation, provides a way to bridge the gap between technical and nontechnical.
By nature, I’m more of an artistic person and a people person, not a technical person. Understanding data standards can be overwhelming for me and people like me, but RESO does a fantastic job of wrapping up all of that technical jargon and programming language in a nontechnical blanket.
I’ve found that one of my strong suits in this industry is to ingest the kinds of communications that RESO provides and then share that material with marketing and sales professionals, sort of bridging that gap.
So keep that up. Your awareness of the gap is evident in the way you make the content easier to digest.
Q2: You’ve made quite a splash with RENEW, hosting gatherings at national events, starting an active LinkedIn group and more. How has the effort been received so far, and how are we doing as an industry towards raising the voice of women in leadership roles?
Lauren: We are growing like crazy. A big thanks and shoutout to RESO. You have been in support of this initiative since Day 1. We had over 200 members within the first year. I’ve done more than 15 podcasts, and I’d never done one before. The industry has been incredibly receptive to it.
We are already an industry of really powerful women who are real estate agents and brokers. Or they might be assistants or working in the marketing departments of proptech companies. There are so many special edition Barbies in this industry and I just want to share their stories and let them inspire others.
You still see a lot of men on stage at real estate conferences, but Inman has upped their equality game, and RESO has lately had a lot of women on stage. This gives people like me something more to be excited about and offers me new opportunities. I went on stage and talked about AI at a RESO conference. I never thought I would have done that, but I felt empowered to do it!
It’s good and important to get the unique and different perspectives of women, not just in terms of real estate sales or the C-suite but in data and dev work. RESO was the first group we approached, because the conference stages were very male dominated. To your credit, the response was swift and continuous.
At the last RESO conference, someone said to me, “I’ve had to wait in line at the women’s bathroom for the first time at a RESO conference,” and that’s never made me more proud.
Q3: You have a history in fashion and worked for the well-known Michael Kors brand for five years. Fashion isn’t always at the front end of real estate tech, but there are some notable exceptions in my mind, like Rebecca Jensen, Bill Fowler and, well, you! What can a fashion forward approach do for a person’s mindset, especially in the workplace, and is there hope for the tech bro?
Lauren: In life, I think you should find something that makes you stand out and unique. I will always remember Rebecca for her bold red glasses. I am a firm believer that when you look good, you feel good.
Like if I’m having a bad day, I make a point to do my hair and makeup and put on an outfit that makes me feel confident. I think that colors are so important. If I am not feeling the girl power, I’ll put on a pink blazer and blast Spice Girls.
Appearance speaks to who you are. I think that fashion is important, even in tech. Maybe especially in tech! Wear something that is uniquely you. And for goodness sake, let’s try to change the tech bro uniform – the sea of blazers over company t-shirts and jeans!
I sometimes wish that people still put on their dresses and red lipstick just to go to the grocery store instead of their Cookie Monster PJs.
I suppose that’s a statement, too, and it goes back to wearing what makes you feel good and represents who you are. Fashion is subjective, just like all of art.
It’s like that feeling on the first day of school. You go to your first class with a perfect fit and you feel like you rule the world. I do the same thing at every conference I attend!
Compliments go a really long way! If you like something that somebody’s wearing or they look beautiful, make sure to tell them. That one gesture could be held on to for a lot longer than you think.
Jonathan Van Ness from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy once told me he loved my shoes, and I immediately bought a backup pair.
Three Questions is meant to be a fun interview series that features real estate industry pros, their work and how they interact with data standards.
