Small Business Today Magazine MAY 2014 CUSTOMIZED REAL STATE SERVICES | Page 10

give her a little advice as he had been listening to the negotiations. He said, “If you
want to do what’s best for your client then
you need to remember your roots.”
Connie really listened to him and said
to herself, “It’s not about me; it’s all about
my client and getting them the best deal.”
Biting her tongue and determined to succeed in getting what was best for her client, Connie returned to the meeting with
“honey just dripping out of her mouth” as
she laid her Southern charm on as thick
as possible! Fortunately, it worked. She got
everything she had wanted for her client
and made it back to the airport just in time
for her flight.

“I don’t know if you are born with determination or if you learn determination
but I am probably the most determined
person you will ever meet in your lifetime,”
Connie reflected, “When I was four and
a half, I had a severe accident and almost
severed my leg. After being in the hospital
for six weeks with a full leg cast, it took
nearly a year for me to learn how to walk
again. The lesson I learned was when you
fall down you have to get up. The day that
I finally was able to walk unassisted was
the point in my life that I knew I could do
anything that I set out to do.”

 After the incident that almost caused
Connie to lose her leg, her mother became
fearful and overprotective.  As a result,
she would try to stop Connie from doing
anything that she thought might have the
slightest chance of Connie being injured.
So it wasn’t until Connie was 13 that she
learned to ride a bike and swim and she
somehow taught herself to do both! In addition, she taught herself how to drive a car
when she was 21. Without determination,
Connie never could have accomplished any
of those things, especially with her mother
strongly trying to dissuade her.

One of Connie’s childhood memories is
that her mother was always good at putting things in perspective. When Connie
and her sisters complained that they were
poor and didn’t have anything, her mother took them to an area of town where
people were truly destitute. Her mother
stated, “This is poor. We’re not poor.” They
learned not to complain as they knew they
had a roof over their head and food in their
bellies. Connie learned that no matter how
bad off she thought she was there was always someone worse off.

Connie reflected, “My mother wasn’t
perfect but she did the best she could with
what she had. It took me being nearly 50

Ileana Leija is a bilingual leasing agent at CRES.
She is also like Connie’s “Left & Right Hand”. They
have been working together for over 10 years.
8 SMALL BUSINESS TODAY MAGAZINE [ MAY 2014 ]

for me to be able to appreciate what all she
had gone through; trying to raise four