Before Instagram, We Sold Real Estate at Traffic Lights

In 1996, there was no Instagram.

No Facebook. No Google Ads. No social media.

If you wanted to sell real estate in the Dominican Republic, marketing looked very different.

One of the most effective tools was the classified section of the newspaper. You wrote a few lines describing the property, included a telephone number, and hoped someone would call.

And if you really wanted to stand out, you paid a few extra pesos to have your classified ad highlighted in yellow.

That was premium advertising.

The other strategy was even more direct.

We printed flyers and handed them to drivers while they waited at traffic lights.

That was the world in which I started my first formal company.

I was 26 years old.

Its name was Metrópolis Constructora Inmobiliaria.

The name was probably bigger than the company.

There was only one small problem with the word Constructora.

I wasn't an engineer.

We didn't have the capital to develop construction projects.

And during the years Metrópolis existed, we never actually constructed anything.

But I wanted to build something.

I wanted to succeed.

And perhaps putting Constructora in the name said more about what I imagined the company could become than what it actually was at the time.

Looking back, I smile at the audacity of it.

The First Office

Metrópolis was my first formal company, and I wanted it to feel like one.

We didn't have abundant resources to create an impressive corporate office.

So I painted it myself.

I decorated it myself.

I helped turn that space into the place where I imagined our future would begin.

There is something about that little office that I understand much better today.

Before you can afford to build the company you imagine, sometimes you have to build it with your own hands.

We never became the construction company suggested by our ambitious name.

But we did sell a lot of land.

And with every transaction, every newspaper advertisement, every telephone call and every flyer handed through a car window, I was learning something about business.

I just didn't know yet how valuable those lessons would become.

Two Careers Beginning at the Same Time

There was another interesting thing happening in my life in 1996.

At almost exactly the same time that I was starting Metrópolis, I was beginning a career in civil aviation.

On one side, I was learning about customers, properties, negotiations and entrepreneurship.

On the other, I was entering the highly structured world of air traffic control, where discipline, procedures, preparation and responsibility were fundamental.

At first glance, those worlds had almost nothing in common.

For many years, I probably thought of them as separate chapters of my life.

Today I don't.

Aviation taught me discipline.

Entrepreneurship taught me initiative.

One taught me that procedures matter.

The other taught me that sometimes there is no procedure — you simply have to figure things out.

And both taught me something about responsibility.

The Technology Changed

Thirty years later, the real estate business looks almost unrecognizable.

The newspaper classified has largely been replaced by digital platforms.

The flyer at the traffic light has been replaced by a Reel appearing on someone's phone.

Today we have social media, property portals, CRM systems, digital advertising, video, analytics, artificial intelligence and marketing tools that would have seemed almost impossible to us in 1996.

I now work in real estate again through CanaCity, in a market transformed by technology.

But I have come to believe that the most important part of the business hasn't changed very much.

In 1996, we were trying to get someone's attention.

Today, we are still trying to get someone's attention.

But attention only opens the door.

Trust is what allows you to walk through it.

Technology changes.

Platforms change.

Marketing changes.

But people still want to know who they are dealing with.

They still want to believe you understand what they need.

And they still want to trust the person sitting across the table.

What Metrópolis Really Built

Metrópolis eventually disappeared.

There are no buildings carrying its name.

No towers.

No developments.

No construction projects I can point to and say, We built that.

For many years, I probably would have considered that the end of the story.

Today I see it differently.

Because perhaps Metrópolis did build something.

It built an entrepreneur.

A young man with limited resources painted his own office, gave his company a name slightly larger than reality, placed classified ads in newspapers, distributed flyers at traffic lights and went out looking for customers.

He didn't know where any of it would lead.

Neither did I.

Because I was him.

And thirty years later, I find myself building again.

The tools are different.

The businesses are different.

And hopefully, I know a little more than I did at 26.

But I recognize something in that young man that I hope I never lose:

the willingness to begin before everything is ready.

— Luis Leonardo
Punta Cana, Dominican Republic