From publishing gripping novels to redefining what it means to be a real estate professional, Fred Venturini is a man of insight, grit, and purpose. A small-town native turned nationally recognized expert, Fred has built a career—and a legacy—on turning life’s challenges into tools for transformation. I had the opportunity to sit down with him to hear more about his incredible journey, what fuels his discipline, and how he’s working to raise the bar in both business and life.

Tell us your story.
I’m a believer in the novelist Alix Harrow’s remarkable quote, “Every story is a love story.” And there are so many kinds of love that carry us through the chapters that make up our lives. For me, the clearest and most cinematic story that has spanned my entire life and defines who I am and where I am in life is probably a romantic love story. I can clearly remember being ten years old and seeing myself in the mirror for the first time after sustaining terrible burn injuries, including second-degree burns on my face, and thinking, “That’s it, that settles it, no one is ever going to love me.” Yet, the community where I grew up, Patoka, banded together and gave me such a supportive upbringing despite those challenges, giving me rich lifelong friendships and a ton of incredible “growing up in a small town” stories.

Those same burn scars were the reason that a pretty girl recognized me many years after we had met in grade school–St. Theresa’s in Salem, before I moved to Patoka during my parents’ divorce. And that pretty girl is my wife Krissy and we’ll be celebrating 20 years of marriage next year. Nothing truly great in my life—not my daughter, my writing, my friends, the business that I’ve built—none of it happens without getting terribly burned and having the love of my life pluck me out of a crowd because of the scars that brought me so much pain and shame when I was a kid. Sometimes, the worst days of our lives become our own personal secret weapons.

What motivates you to succeed?
I was speaking to a large group of students once when I blurted out “motivation is for losers” and had to explain myself. One of the keys to progress and success is not relying on motivation at all. Motivation makes things easy. Motivation gives you those wonderful moments where we feel like doing the hard things. Working out, writing a book, hitting new milestones in your business—it all feels pretty easy when you feel like doing it.

So I’ve always tried to focus on discipline, which is the ability to do stuff when you don’t feel like doing it. And when you apply discipline for a long enough period of time, it becomes a habit. And really, most people are simply what they do every day. As James Clear says, we don’t rise to the level of our goals and dreams, we fail to the level of our habits. So am I passionate about the work I put in every day to improve the lives of my agents and clients? Do I love the feeling of progress when writing a book? Absolutely. But passion can wane and the voice that motivates you is the same little voice that can doubt you or slow you down or whisper, “you can skip today, you’ll feel more like doing it tomorrow.” That’s where discipline comes in. I’m not perfect and some days I tap out and don’t show up at a level ten, but I take more steps forward than I do steps back, and it’s that struggle that makes life meaningful and interesting.

What’s one challenge you’ve overcome, and how has it shaped you or your business?
When I was ten years old, the kid down the street set me on fire, sending me to the burn unit and leaving me with scars that would last a lifetime. After years of grafts, compression treatments, steroid injections, tissue expanders and plastic surgery, I thought I was out of the woods and almost immediately broke my neck in a car accident that nearly killed me and a few close friends. To make that story even more fun, I was brokenhearted over a high school sweetheart, and my friends were taking me to the pawn shop to cheer me up by trading in a piece of jewelry I had gotten here for a paintball gun. I was lying in the field after being tossed from the truck staring at the sky, hearing the sirens in the distance, wondering when life would get easier. Thirty years later, I can say it never does, but it certainly doesn’t have to hurt as bad. The challenges just evolve and without them, there would be no point. The traumas of my youth gave me some valuable tools: perspective, resilience, and a sense of toughness and confidence when things go south. Pretty valuable stuff in the volatile and merciless real estate industry and the wild world of parenting a pre-teen daughter.

What do you hope to accomplish through your work or mission?

Real estate agents have a horrific reputation nationally, and the industry is built to get more licensed agents who pay dues and desk fees, not a much smaller number of truly professional agents who can provide a unique and surprising client experience. When I got my real estate license, my vision was pretty specific—create a platform that empowers and develops incredible real estate agents. Incredible agents can then provide an incredible experience and great results for clients. Working tirelessly on this for years now has taken the entire team to new heights and I can have a legacy in sight: have an incredible impact on the lives of my agents, who in turn deliver life-changing impact for their clients, allowing me to be a driving force in raising the bar for what is expected from a truly professional real estate specialist who isn’t a real estate broker, but a knowledge broker equipped with services and strategies that are specific to the client’s needs.

The only obstacle right now is trying to break the myth that all agents do about the same thing, so the client hires someone at random or someone they know instead of interviewing to try and hire the best agent. Most agents are a gallon of milk so the client shops for the cheap one. I’m trying to make our agents into Van Gogh paintings, something totally unique that no one else can match. So far, the clients have definitely recognized how we’re different and I feel that we’re on the verge of a growth phase that will feel pretty special.

Who has inspired you the most?
The hard road of real estate is difficult to walk alone and I wouldn’t have lasted even a few months if I didn’t get my license alongside my friend, Mitch Cain. He was the first and maybe only person who saw the value in what I was envisioning and he truly put skin in the game to be at my side since day one. I might have given up early on if it was only to fail myself, but I didn’t want to fail Mitch, and we always look back at our origin story, shaking our heads at how tough it was to get started and how crazy we must have been to believe we could get to this level where we’re recognized as top 1% agents with a thriving and talented team.

What’s one piece of advice you live by?
The worst days of your life will end up being the most impactful reasons for your success—unless you let them completely defeat you. I’m a big believer in the Marcus Aurelius version of this: “The impediment to action advances action; what stands in the way becomes the way.” To put it in example form, there is something called the Eminent Orphan phenomenon. When a child loses a parent at an early age, there is an outsize chance that they will end up in prison when compared to the population at large. There is also an outsize chance they will end up at the pinnacle of success as many CEOs and Presidents have lost parents at a young age. In fact, almost a third of our Presidents have lost a parent at a young age, but turned a terrible trauma into having their faces on currency. So when things go bad—really bad—I always think about that choice. Do you let the trauma define you, or do you make it into a tool? Do you become a prisoner or a President?

What makes your business unique?

One of of the wildest things about real estate is that before I started, I did market research. I interviewed people who had bought and sold homes with some top agents. None of them could describe what a listing agent did. They liked their agents as people, but didn’t seem to have any idea about how things worked or the value their agent was bringing to the transaction. I was quite simply shocked. The most common response to “what do you think a listing agent does” was “Nothing—ha ha, I guess they put a sign in the yard and put it on the MLS and wait for a buyer.” Just zero belief by the clients that the agents were doing anything of value, and no understanding of the dynamics in play with their goal of buying or selling a house.

So, my radical premise for real estate was this: what if we explained everything really well, with as much honesty and transparency as possible, and gave clients a clear picture of what we were going to do and how it would help them? For example, our marketing plans get more views than Zillow, Realtor, and the MLS combined. And from the data-driven keywords in the copywriting to the preparation of the home to negotiations, we seek out every little edge we can to tilt the game in favor of our clients. No one else—quite literally no one—is doing the combination of marketing and optimization that we do with every facet of the real estate process. And six months from now, we’ll be doing different things—optimization is a process, not a destination, while everyone else keeps doing flip charts about how their big-box brokerage sold a lot of real estate nationally last year, as if it even mattered. And even our process isn’t linear. We have tools and customizations for many different niches. Not everyone is the same. So when someone asks “What’s it cost to list a house” for example, it’s a terrible question because you’re asking me if we have a one-size fits all product that costs X amount.

We don’t do that. The first step is to figure out what you need before we can decide on what to do and what it would cost. And every client, buyer or seller, gets a menu of services approach to commissions—they can choose what they need and want and there is a clear picture of what you get and what it costs. So, what makes us different from typical agents? From our philosophy to our process, almost everything. A client once said we were less like a real estate company and more like a marketing and consulting firm that just happened to do real estate. I can’t think of a better nutshell summary than that.

What impression do you hope people walk away with after working with your business?

The goal isn’t to just leave someone satisfied with their results. We want to them to think about real estate and the professional standard of agents differently. We want to raise the bar for all of their future interactions in real estate without ever hesitating to call us back if they need anything in the future. The simple truth is most people are pleased with their agent. 87% of them would work with their agent a second time. Only 15% do, and the answer most commonly given? They forgot their name. The impression we want to leave is to make it very hard to forget who we are and how we operate. The impression we want to make, in a word, is lasting.

What does being apart of a community mean to you?

Being part of a community is a two-way street, so one of the easy answers is to talk about giving back. One solution to this is an intitiative we started last year, which I nicknamed “just gave.” Many Realtors love their “just sold” posts and give a cutting board or welcome mat as a closing gift. I encouraged our agents to start giving to local causes in conjunction with every closing, and offer to let their clients choose a cause that is important to them if they so wish. That one tweak has created thousands of dollars in charitable donations across the Illinois Metro-East. In a tight, local community context, my guideline is “when called upon, I will serve.” Every community has an eclectic group of people with different specialties and strengths. When my superpower is needed, I want to make sure it’s available and pour what I can into helping. But when you really zoom out, the biggest impact I can have in a community—to include my real estate team, coaching groups, and other communities I’m involved in—is to lead by example and take care of your own household. If I can create space and opportunity in my household, try to raise a great family, and look inward to follow my own core values, that can have an outsize community impact. One example is how Krissy and I have structured our worklife to give her time to volunteer and directly take on community projects. As a bit of an introvert myself, that is sometimes not my strength, but it’s hers, and by working to open up those opportunities, it serves the community as a whole. A community is like a baseball lineup; it’s a team game with many opportunities for individual impact that can help win games. You just want to be in the lineup and helping more than you’re hurting and being ready to encourage and pick someone up when they’re having an oh-for-five day.

What’s something most people don’t know about you?
I think at this point having published a few novels isn’t surprising cocktail party talk among the people who know or are aware of me. But I’ve identified as a writer my entire life, so I can’t think of anything else that illustrates my personality much better than that: being the kind of person that, yes, writes for fun, draft after draft, with no guarantee of publication or even having a single person read it (I have written plenty of things I’ve just tossed). As hobbies go, it’s been fun and rewarding. As far as something that most people don’t know? I can pull off a few accurate voice impersonations, and some close friends have requested that I leave Arnold Schwarzenegger voice messages for their friends and family.

What’s a simple pleasure you can’t live without?

The nerd answer here is a Kindle—thousands of books, one device? That’s one of the only “desert island” things that I need. But my friends know I’m a bit of gadget-hound self-experimenter so here’s one for the greater good: a Chilipad to control your mattress temperature while sleeping. Sleeping is one of those keystone habits that has an outsize impact on your health and productivity, mood and energy, lifespan and healthspan. Finding that one item that changed my sleep forever is something I can’t live without. Before I could cool my mattress, I would sleep hot and wake up often. After this gadget? No more bed sweats, great deep sleep, consistent sleep quality. Sometimes people joke “With real estate and books and everything you’ve got going on, do you even sleep?” and the opposite is true: obsessing with sleep and protecting and optimizing my eight hours in bed is one of the most valuable superpower hacks I’ve ever discovered and I literally coach my agents on focusing on their sleep since it makes such a big difference.

What’s something surprising on your bucket list?
People are usually surprised to learn that I like professional wrestling. “It’s fake,” they say. Well, as a creative, I can appreciate the blend of storytelling with athletic performance. For contrast, I went to two Bears games the past two seasons and spent six miserable hours watching them get throttled by a combined score of 69-12. When it’s structured and scripted, you never go home feeling like you got cheated out of being entertained, and you always get some of the dramatics you HOPE will randomly happen at a live sporting event. And it’s the one sports environment that highlights something that isn’t really allowed anywhere else: trash talk! So when I was in college we went to live events all the time and my bucket list item was to sit front row at one of their premium events. I got to share this with my daughter, Noelle, at Fastlane in 2023 and it’s one of the greatest nights we ever had together. So I’m upgrading my bucket list to include a front row VIP experience for Wrestlemania, which is the wrestling Super Bowl of sorts. The difficulty and expense to pull that off will keep me working hard and motivated for years to come!

What’s a recent moment that brought you joy?
I try to remain sensitive and open to the little, joyous things that happen most days and are often overlooked, knowing I still glide right past some of the good ones. Fostering gratitude and mindfulness is one of the great challenges of modern life with our attention spans being constantly assaulted and “always on.” A ten-minute walk, reading a great passage in a good book, an unexpected hug from my daughter, joyful things happen but the work is in the noticing. One small thing I’ve started to do as an adult is going to the movies by myself. I have weird cinematic taste and it’s a hard sell to get someone to go see, say, an obscure small-release horror film, and there is something about getting out of the house and shutting off the phone to see a crazy movie on a Thursday afternoon that always puts me in a good mood.

How can people connect with you?
I have an easy name to Google and all of my various inboxes all point to the same places. Since I’m still a writer at heart, I always enjoy a good email conversation, so fred@connectbyreal.com is a good place to send things. For more about real estate, our site has a lot of information and we’re giving it a big update this year: www.connectbyreal.com. For info on my written works, plug my name into Amazon or head to www.fredventurini.com. I’m open to public speaking requests in 2025 and actively working on expanding our team’s agent partnerships in the Greater St. Louis area.

What’s next for you?
The biggest initiative we have in 2025 is our move to Zillow Flex. Many people, agents included, aren’t very clear about how Zillow works, but they are turning the Greater St. Louis area into one of their “enhanced markets” and a part of that is selecting great teams to have deep partnerships with, and we were the only new flex team to be selected in the Illinois Metro-East. What this means is that Zillow has identified us as true “best of” agents to the point that they are trusting us with their connections with no up-front cost. Many agents purchase “leads” from Zillow but we are going to be handling a lot of their connections in 2025 and with the flex program, we will end up with new territories and additional connections. So this is one of the big things that is going to change the game for us, our clients, and the right fit agents that we partner with to handle the spike we’ll experience in clients who want the best local agents backed by the trusted Zillow name.