Marion Kaiser
Title: Agent, oldCape Sotheby’s International Realty; founder and owner of Aquanor Marketing, Inc.
Age: Over 60
Experience: Four and a half years as a Realtor; 28 as owner of seafood importer
Marion Kaiser has always been drawn to the sea, one way or another. After more than three decades in the seafood business, she found her planned Cape retirement wasn’t enough action to satisfy her, so she’s launched a successful second career in real estate.
Q: You picked an interesting time to come into real estate — you got started in 2008?
A: Well, yeah — it was deader than a doornail. And getting deader. But the nice thing was, I had the patience to wait it out, but I also had the opportunity during that time when it was quiet to have other agents sort of coach me. We have a very nice group of agents here, there’s a cohesiveness — so I could ask questions, I could tag along, I could learn something.
Q: What made you decide to take the plunge in 2008?
A: I had a business in Boston, [Aquanor]. It’s now being run by my son, and that was a planned business succession. So I had been getting to the point where I was going to leave the business and thinking, what in the world am I going to do now? I hadn’t really expected to be quite so reluctant to leave. Everybody I know who is at that point in life, who is ready to retire, they’re not ready to leave it. If they love what they do it’s hard to say goodbye to it. I had started coming down the Cape more, working two days a week in Boston — and the other three days I was calling my son, saying “So, how’s it going?” “About as good as the last time you called me.” So before I drove him altogether crazy I decided I needed to find another career. I’ve always been one of those real estate buffs who knows everything that’s on the market in my neighborhood, so it was a natural fit for me.
Q: Talk to me a little about your previous business. I understand you were some type of fishmonger?
A: We’re actually an [high-end] importer of fresh fish. Which is enough to turn your hair gray — you’re always worried, did you buy too much, do you not have enough, are your prices too low, or you paid too much — because it’s perishable. It’s flying in everyday from Iceland and Norway, and we have to do a mad scramble to get it through our [quality control] department and get it out to the marketplace. It’s very fast-paced. I had to learn patience in this business — you work with buyers who want to look at a lot of houses before making a decision. I’m used to selling something before it goes bad.
Q: How did you get involved in that?
A: I was living in Rockport, getting divorced and needing a job, and I went to work for Gorton’s [Seafood]. I just thought of it as a stop-gap — I went to work in the international department as an administrative assistant, and became fascinated with the global aspect of the fishing industry.
Q: How did you get from administrative assistant to running your own company?
A: Well, I had two kids, and I needed to support them and the administrative assistant’s salary wasn’t working. I was talking to one of the guys and said, “You know, I think I should get into sales.” And he said, “there are no women in fish sales.” And I said, “maybe that’s because there’s no women who want to be in fish sales. But I kind of like this business.” It just sort of evolved … [for a while] I was out there on the road with a Fry Daddy and a sample pack! [Eventually] I ended up working for a major importer in Boston. He was a big gun, and that’s how I launched my career. He was definitely my mentor. I ended up being his national sales manager. At some point, his company was purchased, and I started Aquanor.
Q: You always think of that business as a man’s world, especially back in the day.
A: Well, it’s interesting — I didn’t find being a minority in that world anything other than fabulous. You stood out. If you said, “I met a man in the fish business”, that would not ring any bells with anybody. If you said, I met a woman in the fish business, [people would say] “Oh. Did you mean Marion?” Especially in the early days. There are very few woman who own seafood companies even now. It was always an advantage — I stood out amongst the crowd because of my gender.
Q: It must have been a big shift going from that world to this world.
A: In many ways, the real estate business is an interesting opposite. It’s female-dominated instead of male-dominated. You share your inventory — this was a concept I had never heard of. I had to take my experience and shift my whole way of thinking.
Q: What drew you to the Cape?
A: People always say this, but you go over the bridge, and you get to the other side, and you go “Ahhhh.” It’s a very different lifestyle. It’s beautiful on the Cape. It was a natural thing, the seafood person with the house on the Cape. It was a natural thing with my penchant for seafood and fishing and all of that.
Q: Do you keep a boat at all?
A: I am a boating disaster. I have owned two boats in my life … it’s unfortunate that I never met a man who owned a boat, or a woman who was better at it than I am, but I am a disaster. All my friends have stories of being out on boats with me and never again.
