Tom Cooler

Background

About Tom Cooler

Throughout my life I like to stay active and be productive. I learned to play golf when I was 4. We lived on a golf course. My older sisters would sell lemonade on a tee near our house and I saw a lot of dollar bills in my grandfather's old cigar boxes. I liked to pick up balls in the woods around the course and put them in an bucket in our garage. I found so many I started pouring the bucket of balls into an old galvanized washtub. I couldn't use that many but loved finding them. My dad told me that I should take them to the lemonade stand on the weekends & sell them to the golfers. So I did. And lots of them! I guess at 5 I started to learn how to negotiate deals. That is what started my love for working hard to make money. I cut grass with a Snapper Rider & a Toro lawn mower for most of the neighborhood. I would cut the bushes with shears and learned how to respect the wasp that stung the back of my had. My hand to my elbow swelled up twice its size. At age 11, my Dad handed me a hammer and crow bar to follow him start tearing into our drywall to help him demo and remodel our kitchen. I loved it. I still have the mallet & chisel. I asked to break up the quarry tile from the concrete floor in the entry to the dining room. Bruised but not broken! In my days prior to college I laid sod at my sister's new home. Could not sleep for 2 nights from sore muscles. Before I left high school I learned to paint walls, change oil. rake & burn leaves, sharpen sheers, build a large patio deck, work at a hardware store and a boat shop building Shoreland'r boat trailers. Went to Indiana University with a major in learning to grow up being on my own, marketing major with minor in Real Estate. My first job was at the commercial Coldwell Banker, now CBRE. I was hired as a researcher cataloging Indy's office & warehouse buildings. First to know the base size of Indy's SMSA of commercial buildings. Earned $12,500 year 1 & $13,500 in year 2. Met some great people in my career. I learned how to make over 100 cold calls a week or more. Door to door. And started brokering deals in year 3. Jim Teskey, with a marine background, mentored me. We met every Monday at 7 AM. I turned in a paper showing him what I did every hour of the coming week & reported my last week of cold calls, phone follow up, showings & networking with City & State officials. A taskmaster. Bill Linville mentored me too. He shared his selling skills to me. I was on draw. My first year in brokerage I made them $125K in commissions each. Glad I did! Family/Respect/Hard Work/Give Back & Enjoy Life!