Gateway Title

Reaching Out

You don’t always get what you bargained for when you start your own company. Because Rachel Torchia already had some solid relationships with a good number of real estate agents, she figured she could count on their business when she struck out on her own to found Gateway Title Company.

Fate had other plans.

Getting business from existing relationships was to remain a pipedream. What Rachel hadn’t counted on was that the agents she knew so well were doing business with her former company for a reason: they liked getting paid for each referral they made—to the tune of numbers that Rachel knew a startup couldn’t match—and might never be able to.

Undaunted, Rachel looked into her crystal ball—and did a lot of legwork—to find another approach. Now’s the time, she thought. Time to re-think. Time to get going. When she finally found her answer, she rewrote her business plan to reflect what she’d discovered: a whole new market that wasn’t being served.

Turned out most title companies had no interest in working with owners selling their own homes (FSBO – for sale by owner) because they couldn’t count on the real estate agents sending them business. In three years, she developed an FSBO title kit, produced marketing collateral, and slowly gained a foothold in the market. She even refinanced to keep the business going.

But she realized she needed something more and couldn’t simply wait for things to happen, so she called the Plain Dealer whose readers included her perfect market: owners who want to sell their own houses. It was just the jumpstart her business needed. Rachel is now very proud that she took the bull by the horns and was able to pay back her investors within two years. The lesson: change directions when you hit the wall!