Female Founders: Lisa Bloskas of Willow Bend Title Company On The Five Things You Need To Thrive and Succeed as a Woman Founder
An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
Tenacity wins the day, your plans will evolve into something you never dreamed of, but keep pushing
As a part of our series about “Why We Need More Women Founders”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Lisa Bloskas.
Lisa Bloskas graduated from Texas Christian University with an MBA in Accounting and Taxation and is the founder of North Vine Realty, a brokerage with offices in Dallas, Houston, and Austin.
She holds over twenty years of entrepreneurial experience that encompasses real estate, manufacturing, and finance.
As a real estate agent, Lisa experienced the pressures and pain points that realtors go through to get their transactions to the closing table and chose to open Willow Bend Title Company™. A title company that mirrored the processes and qualities that helped her as an agent: over-communication, exceptional service and a client-focused attitude.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?
I have always come from an entrepreneurial family, my father and mother both co-owned a wood manufacturing company founded in 1963 that sold in the early 2000s. I joined the company in the mid 1980s and steered it to the point of selling, part of which was selling the 150,000 square foot factory with acreage to boot. That’s where I got my first taste of the real estate industry and I was hooked! I got my real estate license a few years later in 2010. After brokering residential transactions, I learned that Title Companies are a very important part of the transaction, and from my manufacturing background, I saw how I could create a more efficient and client focused process that would add value to every party involved in a real estate transaction. Thus Willow Bend Title was born, and I’ve never been happier to show up to work with the goal of helping our clients achieve their piece of the American Dream.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your company?
The most interesting story that happened to me since I began leading my company is the time we closed a multi-million dollar property the day before Christmas Eve. There were several heirs to the property, and half of it was selling as a residential property and the other half as a commercial property, so coordinating all of the necessary signers together to sign the closing documents was a bit like herding cats, especially so close to Christmas Eve. We ended up getting all the documents back around 9PM that night, and myself and my wonderful team stayed until 10PM to input the docs and send them to the necessary lenders as they had to have them officially back in their inboxes before Christmas Eve for compliance purposes. It was wonderful to see how the team rallied together and stayed well after normal business hours to serve our clients.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
Part of the process of closing a real estate transaction is getting something called a tax certificate from the tax authorities to find out how much taxes are owed on a property (since property taxes are paid one year in arrears), the seller pays their portion of the taxes from the day they sell the property and the buyer pays from the day they buy the property. There are services out there that will get the tax data for you, but when we first started we were so green we didn’t know about these companies. Our first closing ever was a $3 Million farm in south Texas with 8 owners, very complicated. We needed to know how much the taxes were, so I went to the county clerk to have them pull the tax statement, however it’s not usually done that way and the clerk was confused, but in my naivety I insisted. Well it’s a good thing I did it that way, because come to find out the county had messed up the parcel numbers and the family never realized it, they had been paying the wrong taxes for years! We had to wade through that mess before we could sell, but if it weren’t for us doing it the wrong way they never would have realized that the parcels were incorrect since tax certificates just indicate a dollar amount for a property and nothing else. Lesson learned, sometimes mistakes have silver linings!
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
The old adage ‘there is no I in team’ is one hundred percent true, even if it is a tad cliche. We would not be this far if it weren’t for my whole team around me, each one of us compliments each other’s strengths and cover each other’s weaknesses. After years of doing business (and life in general) I’ve come to realize that nobody is really self-made, you have to have a great team around you if you’re going to achieve any real level of success.
Ok, thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the primary focus of our interview. According to this report, only about 20 percent of funded companies have women founders. This reflects great historical progress, but it also shows that more work still has to be done to empower women to create companies. In your opinion and experience what is currently holding back women from founding companies?
Personally, and this may not apply to everyone, but I believe the main thing holding women back from founding companies is generally life itself. If women have husbands or families, they are often expected to ‘take care of the home’. However, when those same women join the workforce, they are still expected to maintain the same level of work at home that they had before getting a job. Add kids on top of that and it gets more and more complicated. Yes some boyfriends/husbands pitch in for the ‘domestic duties’ but in reality it mostly falls to the woman, especially if they have kids. So really we as women have two full time jobs, being a wife/mom and a breadwinner. It gets really tough when you’re burning from both ends, and I think a majority of women who want to start a business don’t have the bandwidth to dedicate the time and effort to it while also being a full time partner/mom.
Can you help articulate a few things that can be done as individuals, as a society, or by the government, to help overcome those obstacles?
I believe if most men in relationships or with families really pitched in 50/50 it would help free up space (both mentally and physically) for women to pursue starting a business. We know how on paper relationships and raising kids can appear as 50/50, but when you get to the granular aspects of it a majority of the work falls to the woman. Especially with kids, school lunches, homework, picking up or dropping off the kids at school, outfits, holidays, cooking dinner, doctor visits etc usually falls to the female in the relationship — not always but in my experience it’s a super majority. Women usually don’t have time to pursue other ventures, but if the men in our lives stepped up and really did 50% of the work, I’ll bet we’d see a bunch more women pursue founding companies.
This might be intuitive to you as a woman founder but I think it will be helpful to spell this out. Can you share a few reasons why more women should become founders?
Like my comments above, most of the granular aspects of family life falls to the woman, so we are mentally adept at keeping several balls in the air at once, and doing it well. Women led businesses in my experience transfer that adeptness of granularity to the business. Not to say that male led companies don’t, I just see it played out in female led businesses, most obviously mine! I find that the same mental skills I used as a mother I transferred to my business, and those skills have served me and my company really well.
What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about being a founder? Can you explain what you mean?
One of the myths I’ve encountered that I would like to dispel regarding being a founder is the lack of knowledge you think you have before starting out, and that that is a huge burden you have to overcome. If you had told me in the 2000s at my parent’s manufacturing company that I’d be running a Title Company, I’d have called you crazy as I had no idea what a Title Company was. These days you can Google anything, so lack of knowledge should not be a major factor holding you back. You will make mistakes and there will be bumps in the road, but step out there anyway! I always tell my team, “the only way to do it is to do it”.
Is everyone cut out to be a founder? In your opinion, which specific traits increase the likelihood that a person will be a successful founder and what type of person should perhaps seek a “regular job” as an employee? Can you explain what you mean?
I think everyone has potential to be a founder, however there are certain personality types out there that will actually step out there on a wing and a prayer and start a company. Those people are the ones who should be a founder. It takes great risk to start something, especially if you have to put money toward it. However if you have the guts to do it, you should do it. If you want or need the steadiness of a regular paycheck and can’t imagine giving that up for a bit, then you should definitely seek a “regular job”. There’s nothing wrong at all with a “regular job”, I had one working for Bank of America right out of college so I understand the reliance on a paycheck to survive, but if you can step out there with a dream, you should do it!
Ok super. Here is the main question of our interview. What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)
A few examples that pop to mind are:
- Surround yourself with people who are smarter than you and there is no limit to where you can end up.
- Success is relationships, network network network!
- Always put your client’s hat on — always view everything from their side of things and you will have them for life
- Success is a journey not the destination
- Tenacity wins the day, your plans will evolve into something you never dreamed of, but keep pushing
How have you used your success to make the world a better place?
I love dogs, absolutely love them. There was an SPCA close to our office that hosted adopt-a thons or shelter clean up days, however sadly during the pandemic they had to shut their doors. But any chance I get to help shelters or pounds I jump at the chance. We also do a Christmas tree gift drive for underprivileged kids during Christmas at our office. We each get a gift for a child who would’ve not gotten one but for our tree. I have a special place in my heart to help those who cannot help themselves.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good for the greatest number of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
I would honestly want to inspire a mentorship movement for girls and women in business. There are so many opportunities in the business world that I missed in the past because I didn’t even know those opportunities existed. I really do aim to help show those younger than me, especially girls, an avenue in business that I didn’t even know existed when I first started in business all those years ago. If every woman in the business world were to take a girl in high school and college under her wing and mentor her, and just simply show her the possibilities that are out there for her or even just mentor her in general, I think it could change not only the business world, but the whole world. Thats what I’ve done with so many of my team. I adhere to the principle of helping lift up those behind me as I climb the ladder of success.
We are very blessed that some very prominent names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.
I would love the opportunity to have lunch with Barbara Corcoran. To have a woman ascend the real estate world, in New York City of all places, in the era she did it is simply awe inspiring. I know the uphill climb she had to do while others got to coast and I am continuously impressed with her work ethic and continued success.
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.
Thank you for your time!
