There Are No Shortcuts for Hard Work With D’Leanne Lewis

Written by Acme Mag

Principal of Laing + Simmons Double Bay, Director & Shareholder of Laing & Simmons National Corporation, one of the stars of Luxe Listings Sydney, and mother of three young girls, D’Leanne Lewis has consistently been a trailblazer in the inner-Sydney property market since getting her start in the 90s. Acme was fortunate enough to sit down and chat to D’Leanne about her career, starring on Luxe Listings, as well as being a top-performing agent in an often misogynistic industry.

Acme: How did you first become involved in the real estate industry? We heard you originally answered an ad in the paper for a personal assistant?

D’Leanne: I did [laughs]. When I answered the ad I didn’t even know where Double Bay was! I actually spent the first six months of that job driving the director of sales around, not really doing much else, not realising that she had lost her licence and needed a driver rather than an assistant!   Even through this I learned a lot and after that time was up, I was actually able to do work in the office. I learnt from the ground up, which was really fantastic. Before that, I was a legal secretary – which created a phenomenal foundation for attention to detail, understanding contracts and knowing the importance of never missing a page. You look at your life retrospectively and you think, wow, you never really know where you’re going to go with all of it. But whatever you do, do it well, right? 

I remember seeing how women were being treated at the time. They were coming to view properties and the male agents would say, “where is your husband?” or “can I talk to your husband about the property?”. Essentially dismissing the female party as a non-decision making party. It used to happen all the time. I remember thinking, “this is a bit rubbish, why aren’t women/wives/mothers being treated the same as their partners?”. I never thought I would ‘make it’ but what I did think about at that early age was that this just seemed wrong.

Acme: So since your start in the 90s, how do you think you do things differently now? From what we can tell there seems to be a sort of secret sauce at Laing + Simmons that other places don’t quite have. 

D’Leanne: Well. You know, this industry is a very tough industry. There are a lot of knock backs, there is fierce competition and there are a lot of real estate offices that are just not nice offices to work in. Their culture is off. Super competitive. Agents within their own office, each tearing shreds off each just to get to the ‘top’ of their charts on their white boards. I think I’m a pretty tough, savvy operator but I also will not work in an office culture that creates a negative impact on my soul and my spirit. There are a lot of offices that will do that. I have been offered positions in most of them and have turned them down. Not everything is about money. You have to have morals, a spiritual backbone and a reason for doing what you love in an honourable way.

That’s why I love Laing + Simmons, the culture and environment that we have built. It’s about building relationships and that’s not just limited to real estate. At all the Laing + Simmons legacy offices, there’s a positive environment we’ve all worked to create. I’m really proud to say that we’re like a family and we don’t cut each other’s grass. We don’t tear each other down to make ourselves feel better. There are a lot of bigger agencies that do that and I just don’t understand, why? In this industry we should be supporting each other, not trying to tear shreds off each other. I don’t want to be like that as a human being. And I don’t want that as my culture in the office.

There are no shortcuts for hard work. As I was coming up the ranks, I may not have been seen as being equal to my male counterparts. But due to hard work and discipline, they have to see me as an equal competitor now – because my results have consistently spoken for themselves over 30 years. Are things changing for the better? Absolutely.  Do we need to continue to have these conversations? Absolutely. Instead of getting aggressive, you get smarter. You work harder.

Acme: Absolutely, you still see it at the big real estate conferences today. 

D’Leanne: Exactly. I remember getting asked to speak at a conference on a panel with other females, right? I said, “I would love to, but why are there not a panel of combined males and females Because I compete against blokes all the time”. It’s a skills based industry not gender based industry. And I say that all the time. I don’t want to be sitting on a panel with all girls. I want to be on a mixed panel because that’s who I compete with.

Acme: So you eventually worked your way up through the ranks to become principal? Tell us more about that. 

D’Leanne: When I was 20 I actually left Laing + Simmons for a time. I was told by my bosses I couldn’t work there in sales. That I was a girl and I was too young. I thought “bugger that”. I left and went to work for a competitor. I went to work for a company called WJ Bridges. A guy called Billy Bridges. He was so much fun because he gave me a chance when no one else would at the time to move up the ranks. Before that I was hearing “you’re a girl. Girls at your age don’t do this. You don’t know enough. Can’t, can’t, can’t”. For me, that is like a red flag to a bull. I don’t want to hear, can’t I want to hear how can we make it happen?

After a few years working there, I earned my stripes and started to get a good reputation. I worked my ass off.  Seven days a week! Nothing was too much trouble! Then Laing + Simmons asked me back and I gladly went because I love the brand. I became an Associate Director and about 15 years ago I bought the Double Bay office with my business partners Steven Zoellner, Danny Doff & Sally Hampshire. Last year I along with a few cherry picked other shareholders, bought the entire Laing + Simmons National Corporation.

Acme: We imagine now you’ve got a really good team around you. 

D’Leanne: I absolutely do, but I still show that I’m capable and I never ask my team to do anything that I wouldn’t do myself. I still have to put in the hard yards and work the hours. A lot of my competitors say, as they have done with every single pregnancy I’ve had, “D’Leanne’s not going to be capable, she’s not going to be available because she is having a baby/has had another baby”.  I have had to work twice, three times, 10 times as hard to show that I am still capable, still available and am able to do the job and give 100% to what I do.

Acme: Speaking of exactly this, we heard you had to physically walk up some scaffolding on a development while you were pregnant?

D’Leanne: And in heels, thank you very much [laughs]. The client said at the time “I want to give you the listing, but your competitors are saying that you’re not going to be able to do this”.  I was like, “I’m going to walk up and down this scaffolding and I’m going to do it in heels – and you’re going to sign now”. And I did. And I exchanged the last contract on the way to the hospital to have the first baby. 

Acme: Let’s touch on Luxe Listings a bit. Profile in real estate is so important, the more that people are aware of you, the more opportunity. Why did you go down that path?

D’Leanne: It’s funny because when they first approached me, and I’ve made no secret of this, I was really concerned about doing it. I didn’t want them to edit me in an awful way, because there’s always a bad guy for ratings. And there’s a lot of times in the show where, if I wasn’t my authentic self, I would have lost it. You know, I had been treated the way that I was being treated many times before. But I looked and thought, “I’ve grown up in this industry and had to go head to head with guys a lot bigger than this, a lot more experienced than this and a lot tougher than this. I’ve dealt with this before, I am better than this situation and I’m just not going to buy into it. I’m just going to be me”.

And I’m glad that I was, and that the show showed that. In terms of helping my profile, I think what it did was give the market out there a really good understanding of me as a female in real estate and what it takes and what you’re dealing with because you saw it in real life, as my kids like to say. You know, like boys on a boat drinking and saying “Oh, let’s have a go at her”. That’s what I deal with every single day. But I don’t use it as ammunition to make me angry or bitter or twisted. I’m going to not just survive this industry, but I’m going to thrive in it. I was really pleased with the outcome, and it has increased my exposure to a marketplace in a different way. People just have a better understanding of me.

Acme: See the usual story is “there’s a great opportunity to get my name and face out to more people”, but it sounds like it was a really good opportunity for you to allow people to authentically see who you are. Which goes back to everything you were saying before hard work and really showing yourself through your skills.

D’Leanne: Yeah, I refer to myself as the ‘no frills of real estate’. I don’t have time for frills. I just have time for hard work.

Want to read more about the Luxe Listings’ stars? Check out our interview with Simon Cohen.