Business news of late resembles the Monty Python sketch where the starving man in the lifeboat stands up and hollers, “We’re done for! We’re done for!” The local business scene feels a bit like this now. Lots of doom and gloom and panic. But we found a stockpile of success stories, four local businesspeople who actually had one of their best years in 2007. Here’s why:

Take Nothing for Granted
Geoffrey Michel, The Met

The Met is many things. It’s a high-end men’s and women’s specialty-clothing boutique on St. Armands Circle. It’s also a posh day spa offering luxe treatments in 5,000 square feet of marbled, perfumed luxury. Whatever you call it, The Met had a very good year in 2007.

Geoffrey Michel and his wife, Brenda, are its owners. He runs the fashion side of the business. She runs the spa.

What’s the secret of The Met’s success? Well, for starters, Michel doesn’t like to assume that he has succeeded.

“I’m superstitious,” he says. “To me, it’s arrogant to say, ‘We’ve made it. We’ve arrived.’ In this business, you never arrive. If you think you have, you haven’t. Wherever you are, you’ll wind up stuck there.”

As he sees it, the way to avoid being stuck is easy to see and hard to do. Don’t be arrogant. Be vigilant. Raise the bar constantly. Treat your employees well and they’ll treat your customers right. Keep the customer in focus. Make sure his or her experience is supreme.

“We cater to the luxury market,” Michel says. “We need to constantly improve the quality of our clients’ experience. That’s a consistent trend in our business. An economic downturn doesn’t change that.”

He admits that things got tougher in 2007. Costs went up across the board. The Michels responded by keeping quality standards high and avoiding price mark-ups. Their customers responded with continued loyalty.

“We earned that loyalty,” he says. “We don’t take it for granted. At our employee Christmas party, I let them know that Brenda and I are grateful to all of them—and we all need to extend our gratitude to our clients. They’re the reason we’re having this nice party.”

Whenever you get into an economic slow time like this, you need to do an attitude check, he says. “Find that sense of humility and appreciation for who you serve.”

The Michels choose their employees carefully. They think of their business as a family, all working toward a common goal. Where others have lowered standards, they’ve decided to keep improving them.

“Success is never given,” he says. “You have to earn it every day.”

Do Your Homework
Linda A. Page, Prudential Palms Realty

Linda A. Page is a real estate agent at Prudential Palms Realty who specializes in the upscale homes and condominiums of Sarasota’s downtown and waterfront. These days, that’s a tough sell. Even so, she was her firm’s top performer in 2007, with just under $30 million in sales. “It was my best year ever,” she says.

What’s the secret of her success? “I know what I’m doing,” she says. “Simultaneously, I recognize that I can always know more. I’m constantly doing my homework—making myself the expert on every detail of the listings I represent, from the floor plan to the use of materials to the architects, builders and craftspeople responsible. It’s much more than memorizing a list of facts—it’s knowing the facts that matter to your clients, in terms of their needs, from their point of view.”

Page learned this approach when she started in the real estate industry in 1976. She wasn’t an agent, but a go-to person for several major developers, including a six-year stint as the broker and director of sales for Pat Neal’s University Park Country Club.

Developers and real estate agents take different tacks when marketing their properties, she says. Developers assume they have to sell all their properties, so they devise sales plans targeting a specific client base with lots of specific information. Their marketing strategies are creative, and labor and time intensive.

When Page began working as a Prudential Palms Realty agent in 2003, she adapted this research-heavy sales approach and positioned herself as a specialist in the downtown and waterfront niche.

Other real estate agents can easily drop a key in a lock box and let another agent show the property; Page demands that she be there in person. She’s the expert, after all.

“I show my properties because I know my properties inside and out. I can point out a hidden feature another agent couldn’t. I make a point of being the expert, just as I did when I worked for developers. That’s the reason I did so well in 2007,” she explains.