We Cannot Direct the Wind but We Can Adjust the Sails

MAR’s 2012 president, Trisha McCarthy, is a gentle soul with an infectious sense of determination and strength. She loves being a Realtor® and interacting with and helping people in everything she does. Trisha is a positive thinker who never imagined getting to this point, but she is passionate about the profession and helping to elevate it to the highest level possible.

The more Trisha got involved in Association activities, the more she wanted to do and see how far she could take it. “I became president when past leaders said I could do it and were there to help me. So many were very encouraging and that made it easy to want to serve,” she said. Trisha is ready to assume the role with the mission to help members become more educated and improve the profession she loves.

A Road Less Travelled
Trisha came into real estate from a different path than many, but her passion for helping others, community involvement, and real estate happened by way of a being part of a loving family with deep roots in community service.

Trisha’s mom worked at the Federal Reserve Bank in Boston and her father was a state police officer. She and her two younger brothers grew up in an old Victorian home in Stoneham. “The property had two homes on it so my parents became landlords. After my parents sold these homes, the income property was purchased and moved to Sturbridge Village,” she explains.

Although Trisha studied business management in college and began her career in the field at Bickford’s Pancake House training employees, her call for community service and following her father’s footsteps caused her to make a change. She became a police officer in 1976 and worked for the town of Newbury. “My specialty was rape, child abuse, and domestic
violence,” she explains.

Trisha felt challenged in a career with more males than females but embraced the challenge. She moved on from her cop position in Newbury to a Federal police officer. She served on a special team working with the Massachusetts District Attorney’s office in creating the one-way mirror for interviewing rape victims and worked extensively with the Coast Guard on customs issues and federal property violations. She met her husband Bill on the police force, and they became a blended family with his four children and her son Rick.

Yet real estate always filtered through her work by helping victims locate housing and protecting private property amongst minorities.

Even while still a police officer, the family interests and her drive for helping others helped Trisha decide to get her real estate license and begin selling property part-time in 1991 at Spaulding Real Estate in Newburyport. Trisha quickly saw how much education and training was involved in becoming a professional Realtor® and soon after took the steps to become a full-time practitioner.

Education is Key
As a cop, Trisha realized that she could help people by specializing as a rape investigator and domestic violence officer only by getting better educated, and that thirst for education didn’t stop when she entered real estate. “The better educated we are, the better job we will do,” she believes.

Early in her career as a Realtor®, Trisha began teaching Professional Standards and then the Quadrennial Ethics required course. The more she got involved in teaching other Realtors®, the more Trisha saw the good work of those who volunteered for committees at the Association and how volunteerism was additional education that proved invaluable.

She jumped in with both feet and served as Secretary of the Greater Newburyport Association of Realtors® (GNAR) in 1999, Vice President in 2000 and then President in both 2001 and 2008. She was the 2007 chairperson for the GNAR Bylaws Committee, and served on the Education and RPAC Committees in 2007. For her dedication on the local level, she was honored as Realtor® of the Year by the GNAR in 2001. She is currently member of both GNAR and the North Shore Association of Realtors®.

Her state association involvement is just as impressive, serving two terms as MAR’s Secretary/Treasurer before serving as last year’s President-Elect and also serving as Legal Affairs/Business Development VP. In addition, Trisha’s drive for further education drew her to past President Doug Azarian’s vision of online education, creating a platform where members can continue their training without additional costs.

She served three years on the Online Education Work Group–two as chairman–and was integral in the launch in 2010 of the Online Education Center, a platform currently hosting four continuing education courses available to members at no additional charge. “As our laws change, we can better serve clients by staying educated,” she believes.

Trisha will keep education at the forefront of the Association’s agenda in the coming year as struggles in the marketplace continue to make it challenging to complete transactions successfully. “Education is a key factor in our business success and your Association can heighten your knowledge and help give you the tools to close the deal more often than not.

It’s all about people helping people,” she concludes.

You Get Back What You Give
Trisha’s teaching and educational interests gravitated to arbitration and ethical misrepresentations through her past career in law enforcement. But from this education came her passion not only to educate members about ethical standards but to live by the Golden Rule, “Do Unto Others as. You Would Have Done to You,” the theme by which the NAR Code of Ethics was written in 1913.

“If we could live by the Golden Rule in our business we would be so much the better,” Trisha believes. “And expand on it. We compete all the time, but our ethics is vital to our success.” Trisha is empowered by the Golden Rule and believes that if Realtors® lived by it, they would be respected more in the community and by each other. “If we raised the bar to live by the Golden Rule above all else and take the initiative, we’d all realize the domino effect - one does something great to another, then another does to
someone else.”

Trisha leads by the Golden Rule through example by her volunteer work in her community as a Selectman, member of the Conservation Commission, Planning Board, Emergency Management Department and the chair of the Safety Committee and Safe Route to Schools Committee. Additionally, she has done tremendous work with Habitat for Humanity, taking part in several home builds that NAR has coordinated, including one in 2007 where she travelled to Alabama with 10 other Massachusetts Realtors® for a week to build a home lost in Hurricane Katrina.

Education, community activism, and supporting each other are the ways
Trisha hopes to ignite the membership to improve business practices and help all members be more successful. “The impact we have when we help others is huge. It could be building a house, helping keep someone from losing a house, or even helping another Realtor®,” she explains. “We are all in this together. Times are tough, so now more than ever we need to remember the ‘Golden Rule.’ We are the corner stone of this country’s success and the American dream for the consumer.”