Recently, I was able to confirm my belief in the notion of there being only 2 degrees of separation between any one of us and another person. Even though the more commonly held viewpoint is that there are 6 degrees of separation, or in the case of a fun game, known to many, “six degrees of Kevin Bacon.” I started my belief in 2 degrees after Michael and I first met 7 years ago shortly after which I held a party called the Mix & Match. The intent was to bring my friends together and some new people into our circle by asking each couple and single invited to bring a single person I personally didn’t know to the party. What we found was that there were roughly 2 degrees of separation between a large number of people at the party once people started asking how they knew me or Michael. Leap forward to this year and how I’m even more solidied in my view…
So, a client I’ve been working with for over a year by email comes into the USA for a monthlong trip. The couple lives overseas in South Africa where the husband works for a government run organization. He’ll be retiring in the next 1-3 years and, since they have family here, will be moving back to the Pacific NW to be close to their daughters who live up this way.
Now, I’ll say, these folks were referred to me by an agent in Idaho so I really didn’t think much about who else they might know. I did get them introduced to an agent in Vancouver and one in the Portland, OR area since these are some of the locales they are considering outside of the Greater Seattle area.
It turned out that with my client’s price point requirements we didn’t really find much for them in King County that was interesting, so we ventured down to Pierce County and focused on the City of Tacoma for the most part since it had commuter services to Seattle and a pretty decent housing stock that met our requirements list. The house hunting crew consisted of me, the couple, and one of their daughters. The first day we all went but on the 2nd day their local host offered to take the daughter mall shopping, something she (at 22 yrs old) was more interested in.
While out driving around on our 2nd day of home hunting I got a phone call from a friend and colleague of mine in escrow, Jamie Kondo (yes, one of our co-contributors to this blog). I told her I couldn’t really talk and asked if I could call her back. She asked, “are you with your out of town clients?” Yes. And she then said, “I think I just met their daughter.”
Huh?
It turns out that the host couple who my clients were staying with in Newcastle, WA are related to Jamie. In fact, the lady she was telling me about, who brought my client’s daughter to where she was, is her aunt. That’s 2 degrees of separation to me. So, from Idaho, to South Africa, to Seattle/Newcastle to Pierce County (Jamie’s stomping grounds) and Oregon (where the daughter lives).
Jamie and I have worked together on many real estate transactions over the 5+ years we’ve known each other (through 2008) so it’s pretty funny to have this connection work itself out with neither of us having generated it.
What really cracked me up was to hear my clients say that I’d just proven a point to their daughter. They’d always stressed to their kids that you should always watch your actions in public because you just never know who knows who in the room and where information about any bad behavior might go. A good lesson for agents too as bad service may travel farther and wider than you can imagine.
Kevin Bacon… I may just have you beat.
