Sue Clark likes to say that she has an education in the school of hard knocks, and she’s glad for the opportunity. A career in real estate started out with a career in sales — garage doors. In the late 1960s, Clark and her husband, Mike, took a real estate course from Gene Stanbrough, and with a license in hand, she became one of the first local women to enter the business. In fact, there were so few women in real estate at the time that female apprenticeship programs were established — but firms were limited to two apprentices at a time. She has worked in both residential and commercial real estate. She also has worked in ag implement sales and for an Indianola construction company. In 2017, Clark received the lifetime achievement award during the Iowa Commercial Real Estate Expo. The award doesn’t mean she plans to retire anytime soon. “I keep telling everybody I’m going to live to be 125, and I’m going to work until I’m probably about 115,” she said. 

Explain how you went from selling garage doors to real estate.
Honestly, I just kind of fell into it. I had started working with Moffitt Building Material and Lumberman’s Wholesale, so my first real experience in sales was selling garage doors. I was in pricing and accounting and all these things, things I’d never had in school. It was on-the-job training.
My husband and I sat in on the classes that Gene Stanbrough held. We took our exam at (the former) Johnny and Kay’s steakhouse. We took our test, the old pencil and paper thing, no computers. There were 200 in that class, or in that testing. Only 50 passed. I was one of the lucky ones, my husband, Mike, and I. 
Back in 1968, there was an apprentice program for women. Real estate in the ’60s, those early years, was men. Residential, commercial, you saw very few women in real estate. So they decided that they needed to have an apprentice program for women. A broker, like an Iowa Realty office, for instance, could only have two apprentices a year. So they could only have two women a year. Needless to say, women were just breaking into the real estate industry at that time. There was a waiting list for us women to try to get into the apprenticeship program. As it turned out, I was able to apprentice with Skyline Realty. 
Skyline held my license for six months, but we didn’t really get very far. In the meantime, Lloyd Clarke was building Lakewood. So I went out to Lakewood — I was 21 — and worked my way into sales and marketing. Because he was the developer and owner, I didn’t have to have a real estate license. I learned so much from that experience. That’s when they were building 200 homes a year. The housing industry was just wild. Tract homes were like no other. I was customer service, marketing and sales for Lloyd Clarke.
My biggest achievement or accomplishment was when Lloyd Clarke basically gave me a blank check and let me decorate 13 model homes. We had the old Younkers Store for Homes warehouse. I had more fun going down there and spending Lloyd’s money, getting odd pieces of furniture and putting it in these houses. Of course, 13 houses, I had to have 13 different themes. I was young, I wasn’t tainted. I had lots of wild and crazy ideas. That’s when we were doing “peace, brother.” So I had a hippie room. I had white shag carpets. I wish I had pictures of those, because I know it had to have been a hoot. It was so funny. It was a great time, and it was a great learning experience.
I don’t have a college degree, but I like to say I went to the school of hard knocks. I focused on on-the-job training and majored in life because, I’ve got to tell you, the experiences I’ve had, they’re fabulous. That’s all I can say, they’re fabulous experiences, along with the people I’ve met. I’ve always been here in town. I was in Colorado Springs for a couple years, but Des Moines has been my home. It’s just been fun watching it grow.

You’ve spent most of your career in Greater Des Moines; what have been the major changes in the real estate business?
Back in the early days, all of the agents, at some point or another, had a mentor. There are still some companies that try to do that, but it’s not quite to the degree I think it was in the 1980s. I don’t know why that is. I think part of that is because of technology. Apprentices used to have to do a lot of research and spend days down at the courthouse to get information. Now, today, you just click, click, click, and it’s all right there.
As a result, I think what we’re lacking is that social side of business, meeting people. We are so tied in with technology, seldom do people use the phone to talk. It’s all about emails or Twitter or text messages. To me, real estate is a relationship business. It’s a service business, and if you’re a true agent, a true, passionate agent, it’s not just about being a salesperson as much as it is about building relationships. You’ve got to like people. Whether it’s residential or commercial, you’re playing a big part, taking a big responsibility in helping your clients find that special place, whether it’s a special office, retail, home — it makes no difference. You’ve got to be knowledgeable, you’ve got to know what you’re talking about and, again, technology helps there. You should be well-prepared, but you’ve got to know the people, too. You’ve got to know your customer, and the only way to do that, I think, is face-to-face, quite honestly. You’re not going to really know that person and their styles or their ways or their temperament on the telephone, or on a text message or on an email.
I have clients who will get all wound up about something, and I’ll say, “Why don’t you come into the office and we’ll just talk about it.” Usually they get wound up over emails. It’s easier to be hateful and act nasty and everything in an email. Those who do come in, we usually get things ironed out very well, because we’ve had that face-to-face. Technology is good in all the research side of it, but it’s not so good in the relationship side of it.

How did you get into commercial real estate?
I started out with Vista Real Estate. Let me back up. We moved to Colorado Springs for a couple years, then I worked with Bruce Gerleman for four years. Actually, I hired on there as an accountant. He introduced me to property management and helping with the leasing and brokering. Again, I had my license in inactive status at that point, but he was a developer, so I didn’t need to be particularly licensed. That’s where I really got my arms around the commercial real estate side of it.
He was doing all of the historical renovations, so I had the benefit of all of the development side of it, financing side of it, partnerships, all that sort of thing, the leasing part of it, the brokerage part of it and the property management part of it. I was really fortunate that I was able to have that experience and then have it in downtown Des Moines.
That was in the 1980s, and that’s when I met so many of the brokers that I know today. Got involved in their organizations, went to their luncheons and some of those things, and, again, it’s that networking, getting to know people. Yeah, it was a great first step. From there, Vista Real Estate, Jim Campney, who at that time, was with Ken Smith, recruited me; this would have been in the 1990s. They were developing property and then selling it.
Then the market got real soft and they ended up holding on to quite a bit of their commercial real estate and they needed somebody to manage it. So I started that and worked with them for 10 years. As things settled down a little bit, that’s when Rutland Homes came to town, building townhomes, and needed a third-party manager. That was like 1996. So I got into that part, as well, managing townhomes for Rutland while they were under construction.
Now 75 percent or 80 percent of our business is managing townhomes and condos. It’s quite a niche. It’s just one of those that we fell into. Then Vista kind of changed their angle. Jim Campney went off on his own. I was the broker then for Vista. Then they kind of changed direction that just didn’t fit where I wanted to go. I was 51 then. It was like, “You’ve got your broker’s license, what are you going to do?”
I didn’t want to start over again. I worked for 10 years for Ken Smith and helped build that business and my husband told me, “You need to do your own thing.” But I was comfortable; I liked that guarantee of a paycheck. I have a lot of faith, and I believe that everything came together for me, so that’s when I started Sue Clark Real Estate in 2001. Doors of opportunities opened up for more management and, I mean, at one point before the big crunch in 2008, we had 14 people working for us. Had quite a bit of commercial real estate we were taking care of. Then, of course, (the recession of) 2008 hit.
We had been at it for seven years, doing well. The business was just growing like crazy, because we were doing development, working with all these new developers building all these strip centers and all that.
We were hired as third-party managers and brokers and it was great, and then the bottom fell out of it. I think a little of it, at the time, was I kind of saw the handwriting on the wall. We could see where lenders were knocking on doors to these developers, handing money over to them without any assurances, I mean, it was just really lax back then in 2005, 2006 and 2007. There was just so much demand, or so they thought.
Oh, yeah. I sit there and I break out in a sweat, it’s like, “Oh my God, I don’t want to live through that again.” But this is the other neat thing about real estate is you just step back and you re-create yourself; look at what the need is — OK, so maybe that’s gone now, and I don’t have this and they’re not buying houses and selling houses now, there’s a lot of foreclosures. How can I continue in my career? Well, get connected with a bank. The banks are sitting there struggling right now because all of a sudden they have a whole bunch of real estate on the books and they don’t have real estate people. Go make deals with the banks. There were a lot of things that you could do. Get what you need so you can be an appraiser, because these banks needed that as well. There’s just a lot of opportunities.
When 2008 hit, we took a major hit. I had to lay off some people. But because we were focused on that townhome and condo association stuff, management was always there. So we were able to take on some more properties, trim our business and our expenses, and we survived it. So, yeah, it was being able to re-create our business.

I take it that you don’t plan to retire anytime soon?
You don’t ever retire in real estate. Like I say, it’s a relationship business. I love what I do. It’s more like a hobby than it really is a job, because it’s people. I love to meet people. Some good, some bad. We all have that. Out of my six grandchildren, I’ve got one who’s getting into real estate. His name is Hunter. He got fired up in real estate. He worked one summer for me. Julie Brown, who handles commercial real estate in my office, mentored him. He got a chance to sell two houses, which we generally don’t do, but they just came our way, so we put him on it. He decided residential real estate was not where he wanted to go. I introduced him to Steve Breuer with Peoples Co. Steve invited Hunter and myself to come to one of his sales meetings that first summer; now, Hunter was just a freshman at the University of Northern Iowa. Hunter went to the sales meeting. I went along, too, and kind of explained what Hunter was doing, and Steve invited him to attend them all through the summer. At 8 o’clock on Monday mornings, Hunter was at those sales meetings. Then he decided he wanted to get his real estate license. He graduates in December from UNI and he has a job with Steve. That’s a perfect example of somebody with a passion, to focus on that.
The neat part about real estate is that there are so many areas that you can get into. It’s not just about selling houses. You’ve got banking, you’ve got appraisals, planning, development, financing, the mortgage side of it, consulting. There’s just a vast opportunity.

Do you consider yourself a role model for women?
For people in general.